The Death of Downton Tabby

by Mandy Morton

  ‘Whatever’s been going on?’ Betty demanded, depositing her load onto the counter by the temporary field kitchen. ‘My sister and I have been worried sick, haven’t we?’

  Beryl relieved herself of the bread and nodded earnestly as Betty continued. ‘We thought we’d get the breakfasts set up before the staff arrived on account of the storm, but when we went to wake Mr Bruiser his bed hadn’t been slept in and there was no sign of Miss Scarlet in her shed. Then we checked on Hettie and Miss Tilly, and there was no sign of them either. We had to call Tiddles’ Taxis to bring us in. He was none too pleased at getting up early, I can tell you, especially with the streets running with floodwater.’

  Betty and Beryl busied themselves unpacking the breakfast items and set two large frying pans on the makeshift stove. ‘We’ve had to leave the sausages and the black pudding by the library,’ Beryl said, taking up where her sister had left off. ‘We couldn’t manage to carry any more, and we’re up to here in mud as it is.’ She glanced down at her wellingtons for effect, giving Betty the opportunity to pick up the conversation.

  ‘I’ll never quite understand why cats need to spoil nice gardens with this modern art type of thing. There’s neither rhyme nor reason to it. It’s just plain ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong – the idea of a lovely book festival is all well and good, but sticking statues up in the middle of Marcia Woolcoat’s memorial gardens is plain heresy. And what a statue it is! Beryl and I haven’t seen the like of it since the Lancashire witch trials pageant the year we left home to come here and set up the bakery.’ Except for Poppa, Hettie and Emmeline Brontë, the assembled company was completely bewildered by Betty’s tirade. Poppa stepped forward to save the day by going to fetch the abandoned sausages and black pudding, not wanting anyone to come across the charred remains of Charlene Brontë in the first light of dawn. ‘Right my loves, let’s have your orders – you all look like you could do with a nice big fry-up. You look like you’ve found a shortbread finger and lost an apple sponge!’

  Bugs Anderton considered taking exception to Betty’s analogy, which decried the merits of her homeland’s favourite biscuit, but she thought better of it. Now was probably not the time to lock horns with the Butter sisters over their views on confectionery.

  It was Beryl who noticed Bruiser first. ‘By heavens, lad! What sort of a mess have you got yourself in?’ she said, bustling across to his makeshift sickbed. ‘I thought your fighting days were over. You’re old enough to know better. Look at him, Betty – an extra sausage on his plate, I think.’

  Wiping her paws on her apron, Betty joined her sister at Bruiser’s bedside. ‘Hot beef tea for starters. I sent some across for Mr Page, as he’s particularly partial. I’ll fetch it if Miss Treemints would kindly mix it with some hot water?’ Delirium responded once again to the battle cry and the Butters continued to issue their own special brand of sticking plaster to the weary and shell-shocked gathering, caring little for the horrors of the night or the implications for those left standing.

  The beef tea proved a real hit with Bruiser. Although weak and in pain, he brightened up sufficiently to sit in a chair, allowing Cherry and Hilary Fudge to bandage his wounds properly. The bleeding had stopped and they were able to put his damaged arm and shoulder into a sling, which delighted Cherry as she’d been wanting to put her sling-folding to good use for some time. Hilary crowned the work with a large, bright safety pin, and the two first-aiders stood back to admire their work as praise was heaped on them from every direction.

  Poppa returned with the sausages and the black pudding, and reported that the festival site was awash but starting to dry out. He also discreetly informed Hettie that the ‘situation’ was still standing very prominently in the memorial gardens.

  ‘We need a definite plan,’ she said as the first welcome smell of the Butters’ cooked breakfasts filled the air. ‘I think we should have a meeting over breakfast and work out what to do next. There’ll be hundreds of happy festivalgoers turning up at the gates of Furcross in a few hours’ time, expecting to be entertained. If the festival is to be cancelled, we need to get the message out there somehow before there’s a riot.’

  With Poppa’s help, Hettie pulled two of the authors’ tables together and invited Mr Pushkin and Turner Page to join them for breakfast. Bruiser sat at the head of the table, and Tilly elected to help him with his food; Hettie placed herself next to Poppa at the other end, with Turner Page and Mr Pushkin in the middle. Darius Bonnet joined Bugs Anderton on a table for two and Polly Hodge presided over the rest of the company in the staff canteen area, giving Hettie the privacy she needed for her strategy meeting.

  The Butter sisters had excelled themselves. Within a very short space of time, every cat in the hospitality tent was enjoying a full cooked breakfast of sausage, bacon, black pudding and eggs, finished off with a slice of Beryl’s special fried bread. Even Emmeline Brontë obliged with a clean plate, although the egg stain down her nightdress did very little to enhance her celebrity. Having worked wonders on everyone else, the Butters invited Delirium Treemints to join them for a caterers’ breakfast and the three cats sat behind the counter in the peace of the field kitchen while Hettie’s table got down to some serious conversation.

  ‘The storm has left a bit of a mess out there, to put it mildly,’ Hettie began. ‘The big question is do we continue with the festival or declare the site a disaster area and cut our losses?’ All eyes turned to Turner Page, the only cat at the table who would stand to make a loss in the financial sense of the word.

  Spurred on by Mr Pushkin, he spoke up. ‘As the director of this festival, I stand to lose everything if I have to return the ticket money. As most of you know, we hoped to make a small profit to spend on updating our library books; the rest of the money has already been spent on publicity, authors’ fees and the hiring of tents and marquee. None of these expenses are returnable, and so I fear that I will have to consider selling Furcross House to settle my debts.’

  Mr Pushkin squeezed Turner’s paw. ‘I am sure it cannot come to this,’ he said, using his Russian accent to its full potential.

  ‘Well, let’s try and stay positive,’ said Hettie. ‘Let’s do some “what ifs”.’

  Tilly clapped her paws together in delight. She loved it when Hettie had one of her ‘what if’ sessions. The rest of the table sat in silence, waiting for Hettie’s powers of reason to manifest themselves. ‘What if we tidied up out there and changed the programme round a bit? Muddy Fryer’s a big attraction; we still have Polly Hodge and Nicolette Upstart, and we even still have one Brontë sister. And then there’s the festival band. On the face of it, the only things missing as far as today’s line-up is concerned are Downton Tabby and Ann Brontë. Charlene did her bit yesterday, so she’s done and dusted.’

  Turner Page brightened a little, but felt he had to make the point that everyone else was thinking. ‘But Downton Tabby was due to appear again today, and most of the Saturday tickets have been sold on the strength of his being here.’

  Tilly responded on Hettie’s behalf. ‘I don’t think they’ll mind once they get here. Things often have to be cancelled at the last minute, and lots of cats saw him yesterday. Muddy went down a storm even before he came on, and he wasn’t very nice anyway.’

  Tilly’s honesty often got her into hot water; this time it worked to her advantage and there was a general nod of approval around the table. Hettie continued. ‘What if we front up and invite Hacky Redtop to run an exclusive in tomorrow’s Sunday Snout on the murder of Downton Tabby and Ann Brontë? It would be the biggest story of the year. We could even let Prunella Snap take pictures.’

  ‘Not until we’ve found the head,’ Tilly pointed out.

  Hettie agreed that the head was a bit of a problem, but pushed on with her vision. ‘Instead of giving up, we could really put the festival on the map. There aren’t many events that offer their own murder mysteries. If we tidied them up a bit, we could even charge for viewing the bodies.’

&n
bsp; Turner Page shuddered at the thought but Bruiser and Poppa were fully behind Hettie, knowing that the only way out of a disaster was to make capital from it.

  Poppa offered an idea of his own. ‘If we could transport Charlene in her present state to the library, she’d make a great attraction with her victims around her – a sort of Furcross Black Museum touch. A bit of embalming fluid here and there, and Bob’s your uncle.’

  Mr Pushkin joined in, adding his penny’s worth. ‘In Russia, we keep our important cats going long after they die so that people can visit. It is most respectful, and people queue from morning till night to file past them. I think Miss Hettie and Mr Poppa have a very good idea to get us out of a big hole.’

  The table was now alive with possibilities, and the somewhat macabre suggestion was growing wings; all they needed was Downton Tabby’s head and they could be staging the greatest show on earth, or at least the most extraordinary event the town had ever hosted.

  ‘We should try and keep the events going in the marquee,’ Hettie continued. ‘We need to make the cats think they’ve still had a good day out, and not everyone will want to check out the corpses. What if we could convince Emmeline to do a tribute to her sisters and their books? That would go down well, and Muddy could select her best murder ballads to sing.’

  ‘And we could ask the Butters to put on Crime Teas in the marquee,’ squealed Tilly, getting overexcited.

  The town’s clock chimed five, which served as a reminder that they had exactly five hours to plan and turn day two of the literary festival into a murder and mayhem event.

  ‘OK, all this is going to take a lot of work, so let’s have a vote on it. Paws up if you think we should go for it.’ Hettie was delighted to see a unanimous vote of confidence; even Bruiser managed to indicate his enthusiasm by waving his one good paw in the air. ‘That settles it then.’ Hettie stifled a yawn, fighting the fact that she’d been awake for nearly twenty-four hours without so much as a catnap. ‘Let’s go and tell the others what we propose to do. We’ll need every pair of paws we can get to pull this one off.’

  ‘I can’t see me bein’ much help,’ said Bruiser, looking disappointed at missing out on the excitement.

  ‘You need to get some rest,’ Hettie cautioned. ‘If we manage to get the bodies set up in the library, you can sit and take the money with your good paw and keep an eye on things in there. I’m sure Mr Pushkin would be happy to help.’

  Mr Pushkin nodded in Bruiser’s direction and Hettie stood up to lead her planning committee into the staff area, where the rest of the cats waited for news.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Hettie’s plan was well-received and there was no shortage of volunteers. Turner Page was elected to put in various telephone calls to the local newspaper office and the town’s undertakers. It promised to be another very hot day and it was vital that the bodies on display should be at least presentable and show no sign of deterioration throughout the viewing time. Hettie, Poppa and Darius Bonnet were on body removal and head search, a task vital to the success of the plan, and all the remaining cats were sent out to effect a clean-up and tidy session of the festival grounds. Tilly had appointed herself stage manager of the events marquee, and began re-jigging the running order before approaching the authors and musicians individually to discuss her new programme.

  The Butter sisters wiped their surfaces down from breakfast, tidied the field kitchen, and returned to their bakery via Mr Tiddles’ taxi to begin the pies and pastries required for a new day. Under the circumstances, Tilly had suggested that there should be three themed options to the catering: Murder Munches for lunch; Crime Teas in the afternoon; and Deadly Dinners for those who wished to stay on into the evening. Betty and Beryl were pleased to oblige by dreaming up some new fillings to wrap their famous pastry around, agreeing to serve the three meal sessions in the events marquee between performances. It was decided that Delirium Treemints would remain in hospitality to dispense beverages and snacks to the festival staff and artists throughout the day.

  The cats all scattered to their various tasks. Bugs Anderton, keen to retrieve her organisational status, led Hilary and Cherry Fudge out into the early morning to gather the detritus left by the storm into large, black dustbin bags. Hettie, Poppa and Darius set about the unenviable task of transporting the bodies from their temporary resting places to the library. Mr Pushkin had suggested the biology and science section, and had gone ahead to build a makeshift dais to display the macabre tableau. As crime writers, Polly Hodge and Nicolette Upstart were more interested in the bodies; they followed Hettie and her team out of the tent at a discreet distance to observe, each in the hope of finding a decent plot for her next book.

  ‘Let’s start with Charlene Brontë,’ said Hettie. ‘She’s going to be the most difficult one to move, and we need to get her set up first.’

  They splashed their way across to the memorial garden and stared in wonder at the blackened form which now dominated what had once been a peaceful place. The broadsword that had proved her undoing was propping her up, her paws still clutching the hilt, the point sunk into the ground. Poppa returned to the tent to fetch the wheelbarrow while Hettie and Darius took a closer look at the job.

  ‘Tricky,’ said Hettie. ‘We need to make sure nothing falls off, and I think the sword will have to come with her – it looks like her paws are welded to it.’

  Fighting back the revulsion he felt at the sight before him, Darius offered a suggestion. ‘I had to shift a giant statue once from Sir Downton’s country house,’ he said. ‘It was wearing a full suit of armour and weighed a ton. We rocked it onto a big trolley and dragged it round to the kitchen garden.’ Poppa had returned with the wheelbarrow and agreed that a spot of gentle rocking might free the sword from the ground, releasing the body for transportation. Hettie placed herself behind the corpse to steady it as Poppa and Darius began to rock. The body stood firm after several attempts, then finally gave way, falling backwards onto Hettie. She lay pinned to the ground by the blackened effigy, and an acrid smell rose in her nostrils as she fought to push the horror away from her. Poppa and Darius responded quickly and lifted the body high enough for Hettie to roll away. The puddle she found herself lying in was a great comfort after the close proximity of the charred remains.

  Wringing out the hem of her T-shirt, Hettie struggled to her feet and the three cats lifted the body into the wheelbarrow, taking care not to dislodge the sword or inadvertently break off any limbs. The strange cortège made its way through the marquee and out the other side, with Poppa pushing and Hettie and Darius either side as a guard of honour. Polly and Nicolette followed in hot pursuit, but lost interest as soon as Nicolette discovered that her pop-up stall had become a murder site. Fascinated by the bloodstained puddles that surrounded it, Nicolette raised her stall to its full height, checking that her stock was still safe in the storage pockets. There was no damage as far as she could see, but the stock was a little damp so she set about laying it out in the surrounding borders to dry in the early morning sun. Polly Hodge pulled a notepad from her large handbag and started making furious notes, taking in every detail. It was no secret in the book world that the celebrated crime author was currently looking for inspiration, and – judging by the satisfied look on her face – she had now found it.

  Mr Pushkin had been very busy in their absence. By the time Poppa barged open the French windows to the library with the wheelbarrow, he’d created a small stage and covered it in a pair of purple velvet curtains that he and Turner had disagreed on in their private accommodation.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Hettie. ‘Just the right tone, I think. Let’s get her up there as the centrepiece. We’ll decide on where to put the others when we see how she looks.’

  With Mr Pushkin directing, Hettie, Poppa and Darius lifted the corpse into the centre of the dais, propping her up on the broadsword which stood out in front of her.

  ‘Magnificent!’ declared Hettie as they stood back to admire their work.
‘It’s Joan of Arc all over again. Any news on the undertaker?’

  ‘Mr Shroud and Mr Trestle are sending Morbid Balm to tidy them up,’ said Mr Pushkin. ‘She’s got a special spray to keep the flies off,’ he continued cheerfully. ‘And Turner’s arranged for Hacky Redtop and Prunella Snap to drop in at about nine to take pictures and get the story for the Sunday Snout.’

  ‘We’d better get a move on, then,’ Hettie said, trying not to think about Morbid Balm and her fly spray. ‘Let’s do the camper van next – that should be an easy one. Poppa and I can manage that on our own, Darius – maybe you could have a quick look for the missing head now it’s light?’

  Darius shrank back at the thought, but recovered quickly when he realised that it was his chance to perform a final service for his dead master. The three cats left the library as Polly Hodge arrived to admire their handiwork so far.

  No one had taken much notice of Emmeline Brontë during the conversations and activity to save the festival. She sat wrapped in a tablecloth, staring into space, with her tea only sipped at. Tilly looked up from her newly drawn stage plan, knowing that Emmeline would now be a star attraction: not only was she the last Brontë standing, but of all three sisters she was the most popular. The problem was how to convince her to take part after all that had happened; suggesting that she offer a tribute to her dead sisters when they had both abused her might prove to be a little out of order. It had to be done, though, and there was no time like the present.

  Tilly put down her pencil and made her way to Emmeline’s table. ‘You look all in,’ she said, adopting a sympathetic approach. ‘Maybe you should go and have a nice sleep? I can arrange for your things to be moved to your sister Ann’s old room. If you have a rest, you’ll be fresh for your event later – lots of cats are coming to see you today and you’ll be playing to a packed house.’