SAY GOODBYE TO ARCHIE: A Rex Graves Mini-Mystery

by Challinor, C. S.

  “Have you come across other cases of pet poisonings?”

  Dr. Strange pondered the question briefly, tea cup and saucer split between two strong hands. “Not deliberate, no.” He looked Rex direct in the eye. “I hope you find out who did this, for Patricia’s sake. And everyone else’s.”

  *

  Rex sat back in his chair as Dr. Strange moved off to talk to Noel. The little man in the yellow bowtie wore thick lenses in his glasses and appeared nimble and shrewd. Rex wanted to have a word with him as well, to try to determine how much rancour actually existed over the incident of his dog’s nose. He wondered how much money Patricia’s neighbour had stood to gain had Cutie Pie won an award at Crufts, though it probably wasn’t all about the money, but also about prestige. Rex couldn’t imagine owning a show animal. In as far as he had ever envisioned having a dog, it was a large shaggy affair bounding about his weekend lodge in the Highlands, not prancing around an arena before a panel of judges.

  The only other person he had not had an opportunity to speak with was Felicity Parker. The literary agent had just reappeared around the side of the house looking somewhat exasperated. This might be a good moment. She might be in the mood to vent, and people who vented tended to leave discretion to the wind. He rose from his chair holding his tea cup and approached the table at the same moment as she did.

  “Barely enough left in the pot for two,” he said, lifting it. “But by the looks of it, your need is greater. May I pour you a cup?”

  Felicity glanced at him and her gaze fixed. She smiled, he thought, flirtatiously. She was not wearing a wedding ring.

  “Oh, thank you, yes. I’ve just had a taxing half hour with Patricia. Not the easiest client,” she added, looking at him for a reaction, perhaps gauging whether it was safe to engage him in her confidence. She fluttered scoops of black lashes above her pink blush and vermilion lip gloss. Altogether too much artifice for a face of her years, decided Rex, who preferred natural.

  “Old people can be difficult,” he commiserated, pouring out tea. “She’s my mother’s age. They were at school together. My mother is too frail to travel from Edinburgh, so I came on her behalf to offer our condolences to Patricia.”

  “You knew Archie?”

  “Well, I met him many years ago. And got frequent news bulletins from my mother as to how he was getting on. Patricia sent me some of her early books for my son.” He handed the agent her cup of tea and refilled his own with what was left.

  “Oh.” Felicity sounded disappointed. “I, uh, so you’re married?”

  “Widowed.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said with too much feeling.

  “I’ve been a widower for a long time. And my son’s all grown up. But he did enjoy the Claude books. He found the cat very endearing. Roger does a grand job with the illustrations. Really brings him alive. Well, I suppose Claude will live on in spite of what’s happened.” He looked at Felicity, waiting for an answer.

  “Don’t know about that. The last two books haven’t earned back their advances, at least not yet. The Claude series is running out of steam. Roger didn’t want to be associated with those last stories. ‘Not up to snuff,’ he said.”

  Rex could well imagine him saying that.

  “The trade reviews lacked their usual hypey exuberance,” Felicity went on. “Some online reviews were even making jokes like, ‘What’s next?: Claude the Arthritic Cat? Claude the Geriatric Cat?’ It was humiliating.”

  For Patricia or for you? Rex wondered.

  “I’ve just been suggesting revisions for the latest manuscript in an attempt to save it, but Patricia is refusing to listen. Says her heart’s not in it. And yet the deadline is coming up. She’s really left it to the last minute this time.”

  “Could you not just take over?”

  “I could. I’m a published author myself, and I know Claude inside out. I could probably swing it.” Felicity looked pretty determined, but Rex knew Patricia was not one to be pushed around by anybody.

  Charles came over and told them it was time to assemble at the burial site, and then left again.

  “I’m so sad I never had a chance to say goodbye to Archie in person,” Felicity said.

  “That’s the problem with sudden death. We always think of things we should have said and done.” Rex grabbed her elbow as Charles almost bumped into her on his bum ankle on his way back from corralling the people in the wicker chairs.

  “Well, let’s get on with the show,” Roger said joining the group following Patricia to the far side of the garden. “Enough of morbidly sitting around over tea and cake remembering poor old Archie. Isn’t it all a bit back to front? Shouldn’t we have buried him first?”

  At the back by the woods, a grave large enough to accommodate the cedar casket lying beside it had been dug in readiness. Charles stood at one end of the casket and Roger at the other. In unison they bent to grip a brass handle each and with great care and ceremony laid Archie to rest in the earth amid the chaste white azaleas. Patricia had donned green gardening gloves and emptied a spade-full of earth onto the smooth wood surface. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” she murmured.

  Charles took over depositing dirt until the casket was covered and about level with the flower bed. He then placed a commemorative black marble plaque on the ground engraved in gold with the words, “Here lies Archie, beloved cat and muse.” Rex thought the word muse only needed an “o” to change it to mouse, and wondered if it had been done on purpose as a joke. He decided not, since Patricia wasn’t the joking sort. Everyone stood about with their heads bowed in a moment of silence. Someone blew their nose. A female sobbed. Looking up, Rex saw that the sob had come from Faye, whose eyes were streaming. Connie, too, shed a tear.

  “Dear Archie,” Patricia addressed the burial spot. “You kept me company at my computer and reminded me of mealtimes when I got carried away. Cats have clocks in their brains,” she informed the group of mourners. “Oh, Archie, I don’t know what I’m going to do without you!” she cried out in anguish.

  “There, there, old girl,” Roger comforted her. “He’s in a better place.”

  She scowled at him. Dot proceeded to recite Psalm 23, Patricia glancing up sharply when she said, “I will fear no evil.” Rex felt a tremor of evil around him in that moment. Charles busily mopped his brow. Roger gazed serenely at the mound of newly turned earth. Its warm, fecund smell drifted on the breeze. At the end of Dot’s recitation, Dr. Strange proffered a gruff amen. Rex and the other guests respectfully left Patricia to say her goodbyes in peace, and drifted back to the table and lawn chairs, while a few people wandered towards the side of the house. Patricia, relatively composed throughout the proceedings suddenly went berserk.

  *

  Rex, aware of a commotion behind him, a shift in the air, turned around when he heard the guttural yell, which resembled a war cry. Patricia wielded the spade before her like a battle axe and dove into the mass of foxglove by the wall dividing her property from Noel’s, thrashing at the blooms and raking the tall stalks out of the ground. The purple and pink flowers were felled without mercy.

  Charles fretted beside Rex. “She’s being irrational. She might hurt herself.” And yet he hesitated to go to his mother’s side.

  “Might be good therapy weeding out what killed Archie,” Felicity said. “They would only serve as a horrible reminder.” The agent had left a trail of heel prints embedded in the grass, Rex saw, looking back the way they had come.

  “If she didn’t want to be reminded, she wouldn’t have photos of him all over the house,” Charles retorted. Rex realized in that moment that he had seen no pictures of Charles or his sister.

  Patricia bent stiffly over the spade, panting hard, her wrath, or at least her energy, seemingly spent. Rex rushed over to help her, as Charles followed. Before he could reach her, she stooped lower, pushing the spade aside, and picked something up. Straightening with difficulty she stood among the floral carnage looking at whatever it was.r />
  “Patricia, are you all right?” The old lady’s breath was still laboured. Rex placed a hand under her arm to support her.

  Her fingers uncurled to reveal a round mother-of-pearl object. “I found a button.” Her voice held a puzzled tone. “It looks like one off Roger’s cardigan. What’s it doing here?” she demanded, more to herself than Rex, it appeared. After all, how could he be expected to know the answer to that? “Roger has never shown an interest in the garden. Mostly we’re inside working. Did you see him by the foxglove this afternoon?”

  Rex told her he hadn’t, though he had been outside for the duration of the tea party. She closed her hand around the button. “Don’t say anything about this yet,” she said, slipping it into her tweed jacket pocket. “Nor you, Charles,” she added upon seeing her son. A new sense of purpose seemed to grip her. Her features hardened as she strode toward the tea table.

  “I know that look,” Charles said. “Someone’s for it.”

  “Roger, most likely.”

  However, Patricia did not approach Roger. She held her hand out to the teapot as though checking to see if it was still warm. She then addressed her daughter, who nodded and grabbed it and made for the house.

  “What is Mother up to, I wonder?” Charles, whose face reminded Rex of a worried cocker spaniel’s, limped on his sore ankle towards the table.

  Rex stayed by the destroyed bed of foxglove and calculated the distance from the cottage to be about twenty-five feet, which was approximately halfway to the back wall, beyond which stood the wood. He heard Noel excuse himself to Patricia. He needed to get home and put on the sprinklers, he said, as it hadn’t rained since Wednesday and he had laid some new sod. Rex would not get an opportunity to talk to him, after all. Doug Strange was leaving too. As Rex approached the remaining guests, Felicity was saying goodbye to Patricia. She asked if he needed a lift back to London.

  “Reginald is staying overnight,” Patricia told her.

  Rex thought Felicity looked disappointed, or perhaps he was imagining it.

  “Oh. Well, goodbye,” she said, holding out her hand, which he shook warmly.

  Teetering on her high heels, to which clung clods of earth and grass, she made her way down the path to the gate, whipping out a packet of cigarettes from her handbag as she went.

  “I should leave too,” Charles said, looking enviously after her.

  “You’ll at least stay for supper,” Patricia told him. “Dot brought a lamb stew. I don’t think I can eat, but you and Connie dine with Reginald. I’ll go and lie down for a spell.” She instructed Connie to wake her in an hour and thanked Dot for the casserole without inviting her to stay to share it.

  Roger loitered on the lawn, toeing the grass with his fine leather shoe. “Patricia,” he said. “Let me know if there’s anything at all I can do…”

  But she didn’t stop to listen and took off wearily towards the house. Roger helped Connie bring in the tea things, and Rex assisted Charles with the folding table and wicker chairs, which they carried into the large shed on the far side of the garden.

  “I feel such a horrible sense of emptiness,” Charles confided as he shut the shed door. “I keep thinking I’ll turn around and there he’ll be. Never thought I’d miss Archie. I’m more of a dog person, not that I ever had a dog.”

  “The place will probably seem empty for a while,” Rex agreed.

  He spotted Noel in his garden and excused himself to Charles.

  “We never got a chance to meet,” he called out conversationally over the low brick wall as a sprinkler on the neighbour’s viridescent lawn started spraying water in a wide circle. A small white poodle, its size disproportionate to the volume of its bark, darted out from behind the greenhouse and began attacking the water. The dog could not have been larger than Archie. Probably a match in a fight, Rex thought. From this distance, he could not see the disfigurement on its pink nose.

  “Save me having to give him a bath,” Noel said, thumbing back at the wet poodle.

  “Nice wee doggie,” Rex felt obliged to say even as the barks penetrated his skull like tiny ice picks. “Listen, Mr. Cribben, I wanted to ask you if, by any chance, you saw anything suspicious Wednesday night this side of the wall.”

  “Funny you should ask. You’re looking into Archie’s ‘murder’? Someone mentioned you were a barrister friend of Patricia’s. Advocate, isn’t it, in Scotland?”

  “Correct.”

  “Yes, well, Dr. Strange appears convinced the cat was poisoned on purpose.”

  “And what do you think?”

  Noel shrugged. “I think Patricia is hallucinating, and Doug Strange is just humouring her. It’s much easier agreeing with her, as I’ve learnt to my cost.”

  “Still, the evidence—“

  “The evidence!” Noel scoffed. “She’s got you bamboozled, and all.”

  “If the vet is to be believed, and I don’t really see why not, diced foxglove was found in the contents of Archie’s stomach. I don’t think a professional like Dr. Strange would say or agree that the cat was murdered if he wasn’t.”

  Noel pondered this for a moment. “How do you know they haven’t hatched this plot so they can blame me? This afternoon at tea Patricia practically accused me outright of being involved. That’s what our little argy-bargy was about. I firmly believe she got everyone there so she could point the finger at me in public. I should never have gone.” The neighbour’s furious countenance turned a shade of crimson in the fading sun.

  Rex would have preferred not to have been having this conversation over the garden wall, but he couldn’t get any closer without stepping into the flower beds. Charles was over by the foxglove digging out what was left of the flowers and smoothing over the earth, making it more presentable.

  “You asked if I saw something suspicious Wednesday night,” Noel said. “Well, I may have. Couldn’t swear to it, because I wasn’t wearing my glasses at the time and it was getting dark.”

  “Go on,” Rex encouraged him.

  “Well, Patricia’s house was dark so she must have gone out, presumably to her book club. I saw a figure in black approach via the woods back there and creep over her wall and then disappear. I was in the process of closing the upstairs curtains when I caught a glimpse. At first I thought it might be a burglar, but the intruder left within five minutes, returning the way he’d come.”

  “You said ‘he’?”

  “Well, it was dark, and I was getting ready for bed and not wearing my glasses, like I said. If I’d been sure I would have called the police. But we’ve never had any trouble in the village. Sometimes we get teenagers hanging out in the woods. Cutie Pie must’ve scared him off,” his owner said proudly.

  At the sound of his name, the poodle barked even louder and rolled his wet body in the grass.

  “He’ll need a bath now,” Rex noted.

  Noel nodded assent and shrugged. “I need to get the other sprinkler on,” he said. “Unless there’s anything else I can help you with?”

  “No, but thank you.” Rex gave a friendly wave and wandered back to the house, where he found Patricia in the downstairs study seated at her desk staring at a framed photo of Archie.

  Rex was amazed to see that order reigned in the room, all the papers and files methodically organised on desks and shelves. A whole wall was dedicated to books; a step ladder standing nearby. The desk at which Patricia sat held a personal computer attached to a slim printer.

  “I thought you were taking a nap,” he said.

  “It’s not the same napping without Archie. I miss him so much!” Her gaze returned to the photograph of the cat reclining in a semi-circle. “He was left at the shelter because black cats aren’t popular. That’s what they told me. Some people are superstitious. A black cat crossing one’s path is supposed to be unlucky. But Archie brought me nothing but joy and good fortune. All the other kittens had gone to homes.” She smiled wistfully. “His ebony fur was soft as velvet and he was so friendly. As soon as I br
ought him home he lay on the Persian rug in the parlour and started purring. He followed me everywhere. And someone took all that away from me!” She bent almost double over the desk. Tears splashed onto her gnarled hands. She removed her glasses and blotted her eyes with the cuff of her tweed jacket. “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling herself together. “I’m making a spectacle of myself.”

  Rex swiped at a tear of his own and sniffed back the rest. Sitting in a chair beside hers, he took one of her wet hands and pressed it in his. “We’ll find oot who did this,” he promised foolishly in fervid indignation. After all, he was not much closer to solving the case than when he first arrived, unless Noel’s account could be believed.

  When Patricia had sufficiently recovered, he asked her about the premonition she had mentioned before tea.

  “I have a recurring vision where I’m murdered with a letter opener or some other sharp object. It’s been going on since Archie was taken. I believe he’s trying to tell me something, just like when he communicated stories to me. I’d be writing them down at the computer while he contentedly cleaned his ears, knowing how clever he was.” Patricia reached into her desk draw and pulled out a wooden-handled ink blotter of the sort that rocked back and forth, and such as Rex had not seen in a long while. She must still write with ink, he realized. Very old-school.

  “I found this yesterday morning with a red splodge on it.” She held the instrument up so he could see the glaring crimson mark that had blossomed on the fresh blotting paper. “It wasn’t there Thursday night.”

  “The splodge?”

  Patricia nodded. “The blotter was out on the desk where it always was. I put it away afterwards.”

  Could it be blood? Rex wondered. Another warning, like the note? “Do you use red ink?”

  “I do not. I have no red ink. I sign my books with green ink, using a quill.”

  “I always admired your signature,” Rex said. The capital “F” of her last name was composed of a dramatic flourish, the ensuing letters elegantly scrolled.