Kittens and Killers

by Diana Xarissa

  “We still can. I’ll go and get something later. It’s only two o’clock now.”

  “In that case, I’m going to have a snack. I’m sure Jack left something in the kitchen.”

  Daniel followed her into the kitchen. She found a loaf of bread and some jam and made herself a sandwich. “Are you sure you don’t want anything?” she asked between bites.

  “I’m fine. I had lunch,” he told her. “Would you like me to go and search for kittens?”

  Fenella carried the rest of her sandwich with her as the walked back into the living room. The mother cat was napping, her four kittens curled up around her. “Now I just need to find a way to keep them all there,” she said.

  “I’m sure they do gates and other, similar things for babies,” Daniel said.

  “Shopping means leaving them alone again,” Fenella said doubtfully. “I only just found them all.”

  “I thought you said you only found three.”

  “Yes, well, the last one must have wandered back on its own.”

  “Which suggests that they’ll all come back to their mother when they get hungry enough.”

  “I suppose so. I just don’t like the idea of them wandering all over the house.”

  “Tell me what you want me to buy and I’ll go shopping,” Daniel offered.

  Fenella thought about it and then shook her head. “I’ve no idea what’s available. Let’s go and see what we can find. I’m sure they’ll be okay for an hour or so. Maybe they’ll just sleep.”

  “We can hope,” Daniel muttered.

  Daniel offered to drive, as his car was larger. Not wanting to embarrass herself by trying to explain the magic trunk in Mona’s car, Fenella agreed. She’d never been inside the shop in Douglas that specialized in baby items. For a moment she stood on the threshold, staring at all of the things she’d never needed. The familiar pang of sadness surged through her. It had been many years since her miscarriage, after which the doctors had told her that she’d never be able to have children of her own. The pain had been almost unbearable at first, but she’d learned to live with it. When she was reminded of her loss though, it felt almost as fresh as it had been all those years earlier.

  “Are you okay?” Daniel asked.

  “Sorry, I’ve just never seen so much baby stuff in one place,” Fenella told him. “Do you have any idea where we need to go to find gates and things?”

  “Upstairs,” he told her.

  Fenella followed him through the shop. “Why do you know that?” she asked.

  “Work,” he replied. “I can’t say more than that.”

  The second floor was full of cribs, highchairs, and strollers. Along the back wall there were a variety of different gates that could be attached to stairs to keep children from climbing them.

  “The kittens could get through the bars on these,” Fenella said.

  “This one is better,” Daniel said, pointing to a gate that had several crossbars that were close together.

  “We sell a lot of those for pets,” the salesclerk said. “They work for babies, too, but they’re more expensive than the others and the others are perfectly adequate for babies.”

  “I have kittens,” Fenella told her.

  “If you want to keep them confined to one level, that’s probably the gate you want, then,” the girl replied. “The wide bar on the bottom makes it difficult for animals to climb up the crossbars.”

  “I’ll take one of those,” Fenella agreed. “I’d really like something to keep them all in one room, too.”

  “We have cots and playpens,” the girl offered, waving a hand toward another display.

  Fenella looked at what was on offer. “It seems cruel to put them in something like this,” she said, looking at Daniel.

  “It would keep them from getting themselves into trouble around the house, though,” he pointed out. “Maybe you could only use it when you’re out and at night.”

  Fenella nodded. “That’s a good idea. I’m supposed to be keeping the kittens away from their mother whenever possible, too. Mr. Stone was worried that they might pull out her stitches. I forgot about that.”

  “So you’ll need two playpens?” the girl asked.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Fenella nodded. “Two playpens and a gate,” she said. “That should be enough for today.” She settled on a playpen that had bars rather than mesh, reasoning that the kittens could probably climb the mesh. The bars were very close together on the model she ended up choosing. Daniel loaded everything into his car and then drove them back to her house.

  “Are you planning on staying here with the cats, then?” he asked as he helped her put the playpens together.

  “For a few days, anyway. Katie is staying with Shelly. She didn’t like our guests.”

  “That’s odd. She’s so good with Winston and Fiona.”

  “Maybe she didn’t think the dogs were potential rivals,” Fenella shrugged. “Whatever the reason, she was upset, and the mother cat wasn’t happy either.”

  “You should give her a name.”

  “I don’t want to get attached. Even if I wanted to keep her, I can’t, not after Katie’s reaction to her.”

  “Then you’d better not name the kittens either.”

  Fenella nodded. They had both playpens built. The mother cat was still resting in her bed, but the kittens were nowhere to be seen.

  “Do you want to find them?” Daniel asked.

  “Let’s see if they turn up,” Fenella replied. “We can put the gate on the stairs anyway. If one of them is up there, it will get a surprise when it comes down.”

  The stair gate didn’t take long to fit, and it only took Fenella a few tries before she worked out how to open and close it. “What now?” she asked Daniel.

  “It’s just gone four,” he replied. “Do you want to talk about my cold case for a short while before dinner?”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “I’ll go and get the files.”

  “I’m going to make coffee. I got up early today and it’s catching up with me.”

  Daniel was back before the coffee had finished brewing. Fenella poured them each a cup and then sat down at the kitchen table with him.

  “The chief constable told me to go through the old files and select any case I wanted to look at,” he told Fenella. “I don’t think he was expecting me to start with one of the oldest files, though.”

  “It’s an old case?”

  “About fifty years old.”

  Fenella stared at him. “How can you possibly solve a fifty-year-old case?”

  Daniel shrugged. “I chose the last two cases we discussed because I just had an odd feeling about them. I have the same feeling about this case.” He shook his head. “I know that sounds crazy, but I feel certain we can find the answer.”

  “It doesn’t sound crazy,” Fenella told him. “It sounds like intuition. After all your years of doing this job, it’s only natural that you should have developed some. You’re probably subconsciously picking up on something in the notes that’s a clue that was missed the first time. We just have to work out what you’ve found.”

  Daniel didn’t look as if he agreed, but after a minute he nodded and then opened the file in front of him. “I can’t share more than what was in the newspapers at the time, but it appears from the records that nearly everything in the case file was leaked to the papers as the case was being investigated.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “It was one of a very few murder cases on the island in those days. I’m not sure that the investigating inspector had ever dealt with murder before. He may have been leaking information to the papers himself to try to break the case.”

  “That seems an unusual approach.”

  Daniel shrugged. “I’m sure he did what he thought was best. They didn’t have the same investigative techniques all those years ago.”

  Fenella nodded. “I’m sure things were very different. It was murder, then?”

  “T
he coroner was quite sure about that, even if he wasn’t sure about much else.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m not being fair. It’s just frustrating, reading his report now in light of how differently things are done today. Let me tell you what I do know.”

  “That sounds good.” Fenella got up and refilled both cups. She found a packet of cookies in the cupboard and put it on the table between them.

  Daniel helped himself to a cookie before he spoke again. “It was June, 1967. The police were called to an address a few streets up from the promenade around eight o’clock in the evening. A young woman had gone to collect a friend. They were meant to be going to a party together, but the friend hadn’t answered the door. When the young woman tried the door, she found it unlocked, so she let herself in and found her friend on the floor in the house’s kitchen.”

  “Poor girl,” Fenella said sympathetically.

  Daniel nodded. “The victim was twenty-five years old. Her name was Mabel Gross. She had been living in the house for about six months, renting it from a family friend. The woman who found the body was Jeanne Richardson. She and Mabel worked together and had known one another since primary school.”

  “Primary school,” Fenella repeated. “That’s little kids, right?”

  “Yes, from reception to year six, generally.”

  “Those words don’t really help,” Fenella laughed. “What ages would children be in those grades?”

  “I believe children start reception at four or five. That would make year six children around eleven, I believe. It’s been a few years since I was at school. I don’t really remember how old I was when I left primary school.”

  “Jeanne had known the victim for a long time, anyway,” Fenella concluded. “Possibly for twenty-odd years.”

  “That sounds about right. Obviously, the constable who responded to the call found young Jeanne in hysterics. According to what she told the papers, Mabel’s head had been bashed in from behind.”

  Fenella winced. “What an awful thing to discover.”

  “As I said, she was reportedly hysterical at the scene. She ended up being taken to Noble’s for a few days.”

  Fenella suddenly felt better about how she’d dealt with all of the dead bodies she’d discovered since she’d been on the island. None of them had been friends of hers, but still, she’d never needed hospital treatment after finding any of them. “What else?” she asked.

  “The party the pair had been planning to attend was an engagement party for another friend, a Marilyn Marshall. There was another girl in their immediate circle, a woman called Donna Cannon.”

  “Donna Cannon?” Fenella echoed. “Do you know if she’s still alive?”

  Daniel frowned. “Don’t tell me you know her? I know it’s a small island, but that would be a coincidence.”

  “I don’t know her, but she called me yesterday.”

  “Go on.”

  “She’s another student in the class I’m taking starting Monday,” Fenella explained. “She was helping Marjorie Stevens. Marjorie is the instructor who’s teaching the class. Donna was calling all of the students to remind them that the class starts on Monday.”

  “Did she sound elderly?”

  “She did, actually. Elderly and maybe slightly confused.”

  “I haven’t spoken to any of the witnesses from the investigation yet, but I have confirmed which ones are still alive and on the island. Ms. Cannon still lives here. As far as I can determine, she never married. She’s in her mid-seventies now.”

  “The woman I spoke to said she was around that age.”

  “I’m almost afraid to tell you any more,” Daniel sighed. “You probably live next door to one of the other witnesses or something.”

  “I live next door to Shelly on one side and Peter Cannell on the other. You know them both. I assume they aren’t witnesses in this case. They’re both too young, surely.”

  “They are,” Daniel agreed. “It’s just uncanny how often you seem to stumble into the middle of these things.”

  “I haven’t stumbled into anything. You brought up the case. It’s just an odd coincidence that one of the witnesses is in the class I’m taking. It is a small island, after all. Maybe all three of Mabel’s friends will be in the class. Donna said there were only five or six of us taking it.”

  Daniel didn’t speak for several minutes. He ate another cookie and then drained his coffee cup. “I think it’s time for some dinner,” he announced. “I’ll leave the newspaper clippings here in case you want to read through them while I’m gone. If you find anyone else mentioned that you know, I may have to reconsider discussing the case with you.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Fenella argued. “You aren’t sharing anything confidential with me. Surely there’s no harm in discussing the public aspects of the case with anyone you like.”

  “I’m going to think about it while I go and get us some dinner. Chinese, Indian, or pizza?”

  “Pizza,” Fenella replied. “We were going to go for Italian, after all.”

  Daniel nodded and got to his feet. “I’ll be back soon,” he said, walking out of the room before Fenella had even stood up. She trailed behind him into the living room and watched as he let himself out.

  “It isn’t my fault,” she said loudly to the back of the closed door.

  “Meeroow,” the mother cat replied.

  “I’m going to put you into your pen,” Fenella told her. “You’ll be safe there from the kittens’ antics. You need rest so you can recover.”

  She picked up the animal and her bed. It only took a moment to arrange the bed in the bottom of one of the playpens. The cat settled back into place and shut her eyes. Fenella looked around the room but didn’t spot the kittens anywhere. They’d turn up when they were hungry, she decided as she headed back into the kitchen. Getting through the newspaper clippings before Daniel got back was her priority.

  The headlines on the earliest papers screamed about murder, but the articles seemed to have very few facts. Fenella read about how Jeanne had been excitedly planning for a fun night out with her friends when she’d stumbled across the most gruesome find the island had ever seen. A paragraph detailed how Mabel had been living on her own for six months, working for a local advocate. She’d been involved in her local church and had been devoted to her younger brother, Clyde.

  A few days later, the papers seemed to have run out of new revelations about the case. Instead, they printed interviews with Mabel’s three closest friends, Jeanne, Marilyn, and Donna. They all said nearly the same things about how sad they were to have lost their friend, what a lovely girl Mabel had been, and how their lives would never be the same again.

  A later paper had an interview with the man who’d owned the property where the body had been found. Howard Quinn was around thirty and worked with Mabel’s father. His wife, Patricia, had inherited the property and they’d decided to keep it and rent it out rather than sell it outright. From what the paper said, they were now regretting that decision.

  As the weeks went by, the papers began to hint that Mabel hadn’t been quite as sweet and wonderful as their initial articles had suggested. Fenella felt herself getting angry at the reporter who’d suggested that any young woman living on her own might be suspected of having loose morals. The article pointed out that all three of Mabel’s friends still lived with their parents, subtly suggesting that Mabel would still be alive and well if she’d stayed at home as women were meant to do.

  Fenella shut the folder and paced back and forth in the kitchen, wanting to shout at someone. It was fifty years ago, she reminded herself. Things had been different in those days. That didn’t make it right, but there was nothing she could do about it now. Feeling oddly sorry for Mabel, Fenella looked back through the folder, reading the last few articles. They were nothing much more than speculation about why Mabel might have been killed. One suggested that a serial killer might have made Mabel his first target, but presumably th
e idea was dropped when there were no further murders.

  After reading all of the articles a second time except for the one that had angered her so much, Fenella felt ready to discuss the case with Daniel when he got back. She walked into the living room and found two kittens trying to reach their mother. A third was complaining loudly from the stairs behind the safety gate. Fenella put them all into the playpen with their mother for a meal. A knock on the front door interrupted her search for the fourth.

  4

  “Sorry that took so long,” Daniel said as Fenella let him in. “I thought, since I’d promised you Italian, that I should keep my promise.”

  Fenella’s mouth began to water as she recognized the name of the restaurant on the lid of the box that Daniel was carrying. “They do carry out?” she asked in surprise.

  “Usually only pizzas, but I asked really nicely,” he told her. In the kitchen, he put everything he was carrying down and smiled at her. “I got garlic bread, spaghetti Bolognese, gnocchi with tomato sauce, fettuccine Alfredo, and a huge salad.”

  “You could have skipped the salad,” Fenella laughed. She pulled down plates and bowls.

  “I also brought a bottle of wine,” Daniel added. “You’re staying here and I only have to walk back across the street to get home. I didn’t think a few drinks would hurt us.”

  Fenella got down wine glasses that she hadn’t realized the house even had and smiled at him. “Wine sounds good.”

  Daniel opened the bottle and poured them each a glass while Fenella opened the containers of food and found serving spoons. They each filled a plate and then sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Delicious,” she said as she munched her way through a piece of garlic bread. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

  “It wasn’t. Anyway, I had to apologize somehow.”

  “Apologize?”

  “I was an idiot earlier, getting upset because you know one of the witnesses in the case. As you said, it’s a small island. It’s hardly your fault.”

  “You’ll feel better knowing that Donna’s name is the only one I recognized.”