Cat Among the Pumpkins (5 page)

‘Well, that’s what they think! Just follow my lead, but hang on to Teezle – I need to have a quick word with her before she goes.’ Hettie acted swiftly, pulling the TV plug out of the socket to cut short Teezle and Bruiser’s backing vocals to
I Will Survive
and bring the impromptu party to an end. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said, ‘but we’ve a very important client calling in on us this evening and I’m afraid you’ll have to make yourselves scarce.’

Tilly marvelled at Hettie’s ingenuity and played her part by scurrying around collecting the empty plates, folding her blanket and fetching Teezle’s coat. Bruiser stretched and yawned.

‘Well, I s’pose I’d better make a move. ’Spect it’s a cold old night out there, and I’d better find me a bit o’ shelter afore the frost settles.’

Hettie spotted the paraffin can by the door. ‘No need for that, Bruiser. You can stay in our shed for as long as you like. There are cushions and blankets and we picked up some paraffin for the old stove – you’ll be snug in there.’ Hettie was doing her best to sound hospitable but inside she was seething; after the day she’d had, the last thing she needed was an overweight post-cat and a stray from her past clogging up the fireside.

Bruiser sprang from Hettie’s chair and followed
her out into the backyard, keen to be settled in for the night. Hettie returned minutes later as Teezle Makepeace was about to leave.

‘Before you go, Teezle, I need your help. Miss Spitforce mentioned that she had a sister and a niece – we need to get in touch with them. I don’t suppose they’re on your post round?’

Teezle’s face lit up at the thought of assisting in the investigation. ‘I know where her sister lives, but they don’t get on.’

Hettie sighed. ‘Well, maybe when she knows Mavis is dead they’ll get on better.’ It seemed an odd thing to say but it had been a long day and Hettie’s reasoning was more accurate than she could have hoped.

Teezle wasn’t sure whether she should laugh or not, but Tilly came to the rescue. ‘Shall I jot down the address?’

‘We should phone her tonight,’ Hettie said. ‘The sooner she knows, the better.’

Teezle shook her head. ‘No chance of that. She’s hardly got enough to feed herself, let alone afford a telephone. She lives in one of those tiny flats at the bottom of Cheapcuts Lane – number 7.’

Hettie sighed again. ‘Well, it’ll have to wait for the morning. I’ll call round on my way to Miss Spitforce’s. There’s a lot to be done there, and I don’t want anyone disturbing the crime scene until I’ve gathered all the evidence. I think the sister should be
told, though – unless of course she knows already.’

There was a silence as the three cats looked at each other. Tilly broke the spell by reaching for her notepad and jotting down the address. Keen for Teezle to be on her way, Hettie hesitated over asking any more questions – and if she was honest, the biggest question was what was for dinner now that Teezle and Bruiser had made short work of the Butters’ best steak pies – but the case had to be solved, and the post-cat was perfectly placed to supply local information.

‘Before you go, Teezle, tell me what you know about Miss Spitforce. Was she well-liked in the community?’

Teezle thought for a moment. ‘Well, she was always nice to me. I think some cats found her a bit scary because she was clever and always reading difficult books with long words. She liked doing those family history things, and she made big charts tracing who belonged to whom. She often had one on the go when I stopped in for a chat. She did them for her friends, I think.’

‘Did you notice any particular family names in her research?’ asked Hettie, not sure whether this was an interesting line of questioning or not.

‘She did the Treemints – I know that because Miss Treemints was with her one day when I called in and they were both very excited because Miss Spitforce had discovered a famous actor. Beer Bone Treemints
or something – he was a great, great, great uncle of Delirium’s. Anyway, they were very pleased about that and Delirium was so overcome that she knocked her cup and saucer onto the floor. I helped her clear it up while Miss Spitforce made another cup of tea for us.’

Hettie couldn’t help but think that Delirium Treemints spent most of her time clearing up broken crockery, regardless of her ancestors, but she pushed on as Teezle seemed keen to talk.

‘Did Miss Spitforce share any of her findings with you?’

‘Not really. In fact, I called in last week and she had a chart laid out on her table; she folded it up like greased lightning when she saw me, and stuck it under a cushion on one of her kitchen chairs.’

Hettie had suddenly forgotten she was hungry. Even Tilly, who had continued to take notes, moved in closer as Teezle lapped up the questions, pleased with the appreciation of her responses.

‘Did Miss Spitforce ever mention that she was writing a book?’

Teezle thought again and laughed. ‘She always seemed to be writing or reading something. Like I said, she was clever, but I took her post in one day and she had a parcel which she opened while I was there. It was a book. She took one look at it and threw it across the kitchen. I had to duck. It was a copy of …’

‘… Marmite Sprat’s
Strange But Trues
,’ said Hettie, finishing Teezle’s sentence.

Tilly was impressed. Teezle stared in admiration, and Hettie’s hunger pains returned with a vengeance.

‘One more question before you go – do you deliver to Miss Peggledrip?’

‘Well, not exactly
to
her,’ Teezle admitted, looking quite fearful. ‘It’s not a place I look forward to on my round on account of the old murder. I quite like Miss Peggledrip, though. She’s a bit mad, but that old place she’s got is creepy and it’s the last house going out of the town. I just put her letters in the mailbox at the bottom of her drive, unless I have a parcel – then I have to take it right up to the house.’

‘And what do you know about the old murder?’ asked Hettie, helping Teezle on with her coat.

‘Just that a cat called Milky Myers killed all his family a long time ago. Since then, he’s haunted the old house and he might kill again, especially on Halloween.’ Suddenly realising what she had said, Teezle gasped and put her paw up to her mouth. ‘Poor Miss Spitforce! Do you think Milky Myers killed her?’

‘I think that’s the general idea,’ said Hettie, steering Teezle to the back door. ‘You’ve been very helpful. I may need to speak with you again, and if you think of anything else we’ll be at Miss Spitforce’s for most of the day tomorrow.’

Teezle said her farewells, took custody of her mail
bag and disappeared into the frost, never to be seen alive again. If Hettie had been quicker putting her coat on, she might have seen the figure loom out of the darkness in pursuit of the postcat, but it was the discussion with Tilly over who should have what from Greasy Tom’s mobile food van that delayed her – and it would be some time before Teezle’s body was discovered.

Hettie returned to a blazing fire and a table laid out for supper. While she was stamping her feet in the cold, waiting for Greasy Tom to fry a fresh batch of sausages and bacon, Tilly had flown round their room like a dervish, putting Hettie’s dressing gown to warm, laying out her pipe and catnip pouch on the arm of the chair, and filling her own hot water bottle before sliding it under her fireside blanket. A pan of milk for two large mugs of cocoa came to the boil just as Hettie stepped over the threshold.

Appreciating the sudden burst of heat that wasted no time in thawing out her whiskers, Hettie put the
newspaper-wrapped parcel of food down on the table. Tilly dished it up onto two plates while Hettie pulled off her day clothes and bounded into her armchair, glad for the warmth of her dressing gown.

‘Thank goodness it’s all over for another day! I don’t think I could take much more. Bruiser turning up in the middle of the night, Bugs Anderton and her gaggle of bloody Methodists, a corpse dressed up as a pumpkin with a dagger in her back,
I-RE-NE
Peggledrip and her friend Crimola stamping all over the crime scene and issuing invitations to talk to dead cats – oh and last but by no means least, Teezle Makepeace who eats us out of house and home and seems convinced that a psycho cat from longer ago than any of us can remember marauds round the town on Halloween stabbing elderly cats to death in their own homes.’

Tilly waited patiently until her friend had finished chronicling the salient points of the day, then placed a full plate of sausages and bacon in front of her and took her own plate to the fireside. The cats chewed and licked their way through their supper, gathering strength from the first decent meal they’d had all day. Full, warm and content at last, they were ready to discuss the day’s events in a rational and constructive way. Hettie began by bringing Tilly up to speed with her initial observations of Miss Spitforce’s body and her encounter with Irene Peggledrip.

‘She’s invited me to go and have a session with
Crimola on Friday. She seems to think I’ll get some answers that way.’

Tilly clapped her paws excitedly. ‘Ooh, do you think I could come? I’ve always wanted to go to one of her séances. Jessie goes once a month to speak to Miss Lambert. She says Miss Peggledrip has a real talent.’

‘Yes, I bet she does,’ said Hettie, more sarcastically than she intended. ‘But I can’t help feeling that allowing Crimola to solve all our cases might just put us out of a job. I definitely think you should tag along, though – I’ll need you to take notes and keep your eyes peeled. If Miss Peggledrip turns out to be a fake, I’ll want to know how she knew that Mavis Spitforce had departed this world at midnight on Halloween. She has to be high up on the suspect list, along with Marmite Sprat.’

Tilly was delighted to be included in the Friday visit and, while Hettie filled her catnip pipe, she collected the empty plates and poured milk into their cocoa mugs, humming to herself as she went and excited at the prospect of another case for the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency.

‘There is just one thing I thought of,’ she said, returning to the fireside with the cocoa. ‘Who’s paying us to sort all this out?’

Hettie brought her smoke ring session to an abrupt halt, coughing and spluttering. Tilly had a point: who was going to pay them? Teezle Makepeace had sought
them out after discovering the body, but she had no real responsibility to Mavis Spitforce, and from what they had heard about the dead cat’s family, there was no love or money there.

‘What a bloody nightmare! The best case we’ve had for ages and no one to pay the bill, not even expenses. Maybe the friendship club will have a whip round? Miss Spitforce was obviously well in there.’

Tilly looked doubtful. ‘Perhaps we could ask Crimola to see if Miss Spitforce would be happy to stump up for us herself?’ she suggested, before draining her cocoa mug and pulling her blankets around her. In seconds she was asleep, but Hettie sat long into the night, mulling over the day’s events and determined – money or not – to find the cat responsible for the tears she had shed at Whisker Terrace.

The money came by first post the following morning, a little later than usual and from a very unexpected donor. Both cats had woken early, and Tilly crawled out of her blanket to add some kindling to the fire, coaxing it back to life. She pulled the curtain open slightly and noticed that it was still dark, but the frost had been a hard one and the window looking out over the Butters’ backyard was iced in beautiful patterns.

‘Jack Frost has been busy,’ she said brightly, rinsing the dirty cocoa mugs ready for their morning tea. ‘I hope Bruiser is OK in the shed.’

Hettie rubbed her eyes and sat up. ‘I’m sure he’ll
be fine. He was very pleased to have some shelter, and he’d demolished our dinner before turning in for the night. I bet he got more sleep than I did.’ She accepted her tea gratefully, wrapping her paws round it to feel the heat. ‘We’ve got a difficult day ahead of us. I suppose we should see the sister first, although I’d rather have a better look round Miss Spitforce’s before the relatives start turning up.’

‘Let’s go now then,’ said Tilly enthusiastically. ‘It’s very early and we could grab anything interesting and bring it back here before anyone else gets a chance. We could take my tartan shopper.’

The thought of getting up at this time and venturing out into the cold winter’s morning held no joy whatsoever for Hettie, but she had to admit that it was a very good idea. ‘You’re right – we could get all the crime scene stuff out of the way. I’m keen to take a look at anything Miss Spitforce was working on. This book that Irene Peggledrip mentioned and that family history hobby she had – I wonder if she ruffled some feathers there?’

Tilly downed her tea and leapt into action, choosing her warmest cardigan and socks. Hettie struggled from the comfort of her armchair and pulled on yesterday’s clothes, which still smelt faintly of paraffin. They banked the fire up, equipped themselves with a torch each, put on their business macs, turned up their collars and stepped out into the hallway to be confronted by
Betty and Beryl Butter hauling the first batch of rustic sticks from the oven.

‘Whatever’s up?’ asked Betty, fighting off a hot flush. ‘We’re not used to seeing you two about at this time.’

‘We have an early house search to do,’ Hettie replied, trying to sound important.

‘Well, won’t the house still be there later?’ Beryl forced a tray of bridge rolls into the empty oven. ‘Stay there,’ she ordered. ‘I’ll be back in a tick.’ She disappeared into the back of the shop and returned minutes later brandishing one of the rustic sticks filled with ham. ‘That should sort the pair of you out. Our old mother used to say that leaving the house without breakfast makes a cat repent all day.’ Betty nodded in agreement at her sister’s borrowed wisdom and placed the food in Tilly’s tartan shopper. Delighted with their unexpected breakfast, Hettie and Tilly set off for Whisker Terrace, long before most of the townsfolk were awake.

It was a rare thing to see the Dosh Stores in darkness, and there were no lights on in the rest of the terrace either. Hettie unlocked the door to Miss Spitforce’s kitchen, pleased to be getting on with the investigation without the prying eyes of the community. She moved to the window to pull the blind down and shone her torch round the room, relieved to see that everything was how she had left it the night before. The dagger
lay with the discarded tea towel on the table; the orange silk shroud and witch’s hat were in a heap on the floor; and she hoped that Mavis Spitforce had remained similarly static since she last saw her.

‘I think we should make sure that all the blinds and curtains are closed before we start work,’ she said. ‘We don’t want anyone seeing a light and disturbing us. You take the rooms upstairs and I’ll do down here.’

Tilly followed Hettie into the parlour, where Miss Spitforce appeared to have spent a peaceful night. The room was icy cold, as if the corpse preferred it that way. Tilly shivered and looked for the door to the stairs, eventually finding it behind a faded velvet curtain. She clambered up the steps, torch in paw, and was faced with a choice of three doors off the small landing: the first opened onto a bathroom; the second onto a bedroom with no bed, but packed instead with boxes, suitcases and old newspapers. Tilly crossed the room to the window which overlooked the front of the terrace, and noticed that there was now a light on at the Dosh Stores; carefully, she pulled the curtains before shining her torch more closely across the contents of the room. Leaving the box room, she opened the final door and found a comfortable looking bedroom. She padded across the pink carpet to the window and saw that this room looked out onto the back garden. It was beginning to get light, but she pulled the curtains and did a circuit of the
room with her torch, picking out the bed, a kidney-shaped dressing table, a basket chair and a bedside table piled high with books. Everything was tidy and in its place, including a jewellery box on the dressing table, full of what looked to be valuable trinkets. Tilly closed the box and went back downstairs, avoiding eye contact with Miss Spitforce as she passed through the parlour to the kitchen, where Hettie was slicing the rustic ham stick.

‘Everything all right up there?’ she asked, licking butter from her paws.

Tilly nodded and took a large bite of the roll that Hettie offered her. Through a mouthful of bread and ham, she revealed her findings. ‘There’s a box room full of stuff that we might need to have a look at. Her bedroom’s tidy. The bed’s made and there are some nice bits of jewellery in a box on the dressing table, so I think we can rule out burglars.’

‘I suppose it depends on what they were after,’ said Hettie, pouring two large mugs of tea from Miss Spitforce’s willow pattern teapot. ‘I keep remembering what Teezle said about her tracing family histories. What if she found out something terrible? Something so terrible that she had to be silenced for it?’

‘Mm – that happens a lot in Agatha Crispy’s books. Do you think Miss Spitforce has sugar? That tea pot has made my drink a bit too strong.’ Tilly opened several cupboard doors in the kitchen before returning
to the table with a box of sugar lumps. ‘Is this the dagger she was killed with?’

Hettie nodded. ‘Yes. It’s not your average kitchen knife, is it? Nasty curled blade and a posh sort of handle – this could be the biggest clue we’ve got so far. The question is, did the killer bring it or did it belong to Miss Spitforce in the first place?’

Tilly shuddered as she noticed the staining on the blade. ‘Shall we stick it in the shopper? I could wrap it in the tea towel to make it safe.’

‘That’s a good idea. We can show it to Bruiser – he’s a mine of information on weapons and that sort of stuff, and he used to pick up odd things like this on his travels. I think we’d better start sorting through papers and anything that might point to a motive. I’ll start in the parlour – there’s a desk in there. You take the box room.’ Tilly was relieved not to have to spend too much time in the company of the late Miss Spitforce. Refreshed from her early breakfast, she bounded up the stairs to start work.

Hettie – having made herself very much at home in Mavis Spitforce’s kitchen – reluctantly moved through to the parlour with Tilly’s tartan shopper, ready to collect bits and pieces from a puzzle that might or might not lead to the killer. The torch was no good for this job, so she decided to risk switching the desk lamp on, judging that the curtains were thick enough to hide the tell-tale light. She looked at the clock on
the mantelpiece; it was already quarter past six, and there was no time to waste. First into the shopper was the pot in which she had hurriedly placed the paper fragments from the dead cat’s mouth – an important clue, even if it was unpleasant; whoever had forced Mavis Spitforce to eat someone else’s words was obviously making a point.

Then she turned back to the body. As she would have expected, it hadn’t moved – but Hettie noticed that it was changing colour, becoming somehow translucent and empty. She thought back to what Irene Peggledrip had said about Miss Spitforce not being there any more, and understood exactly what she meant: the bright, talkative, elderly cat that she had shared tea with several weeks ago had indeed gone, leaving behind no more than a husk in her own image.

Quietly, Hettie set to work on the desk drawers, trying not to disturb the perfect order of bank books, statements and other financial papers. It occurred to her that Mavis had been quite a rich cat, and she wondered who in the family would benefit from her death – if, indeed, she had left her wealth to them in the first place. The question was answered by the third drawer down. Inside, there was a tin box full of sovereigns, a coin that Hettie had only encountered in the town’s museum; underneath it was a long document, folded and tied with blue ribbon. She untied the ribbon, guessing that this was the last will
and testament of Mavis Spitforce. At a glance, she could see that there was a list of beneficiaries, with several small bequests to friends. Delirium Treemints, she noted, was to inherit the willow pattern tea set, having no doubt acquired quite a reputation for the dispensing of beverages, despite her unsteady paws. Balti Dosh was promised an entire collection of true crime books to feed her thirst for all things morbid, and the rest of the books were to go to Turner Page for the new library, soon to be opened at Furcross House.

Hettie continued to read through the list of names, hoping that something or someone would leap out at her, but there was nothing – nothing, that is, until the final page. The main beneficiaries were both called Spitforce – Mildred and Lavinia. Mildred was now the owner of the tin of sovereigns, and Lavinia had been left a sizeable sum of cash which was to be used to buy a house. So that was the sister and niece accounted for, but it still didn’t explain what instructions Mavis had left for her own home in Whisker Terrace. Hettie turned to an attachment clipped to the final page, and there was her answer.

The codicil was dated 20th October, just twelve days ago. Hettie took in the details, and her gasp of surprise coincided with an almighty crash from above which continued down the stairs. Tilly made an ungainly entrance into the parlour, pursued by a number of out-of-control cardboard tubes; she sat
dazed for a moment in the middle of Miss Spitforce’s hearth rug, rubbing her arthritic paws, but rallied quickly on coming face-to-face with the cold dead eyes that stared out at her from the chaise longue.

Hettie abandoned the will and helped her friend into the kitchen, which was considerably more cheerful than the parlour. She was keen to share her recent revelation, but made sure first that Tilly hadn’t suffered any lasting damage. Thankful for the knitted tea cosy that had kept the tea hot, Hettie poured two very strong mugs of it, putting a sugar lump in each and adding an extra one to Tilly’s to account for the shock. The milk from the fridge was in short supply, but Miss Spitforce could hardly be blamed for that; the biscuit tin, however, was full and Hettie selected a pawful of chocolate fingers, hoping that they might cheer both Tilly and the tea up a little.

‘There’s been a breakthrough in our investigation,’ she began as Tilly sucked on a chocolate finger soaked in tea. ‘I found the will, and guess who gets most of the money and the house?’

‘The sister or the niece,’ Tilly said, going for the obvious. She knew she was wrong, but she wanted to give Hettie the joy of surprise.

‘No, not a bit of it,’ Hettie said triumphantly. ‘Miss Spitforce added a bequest a couple of weeks ago leaving a small fortune and her house to Irene Peggledrip!’

Tilly missed her mouth with the final chocolate
finger, nearly poking herself in the eye with it. ‘Well, that really
is
a breakthrough. Where do we go from here?’

Hettie thought for a moment. ‘I think we should stick to our plan of taking anything interesting away with us. I’ll have to leave the will and all her private papers here so that the relatives can sort it out when they take over. I don’t suppose they’ll be too pleased about the Peggledrip windfall, but if you make a quick note of the details in the will before I put it back in the drawer we shouldn’t need to see it again. Did you find anything in the box room?’

‘Suitcases full of old photos, a chest of clothes, piles of newspapers and a couple of interesting things that we might want to take away with us.’

Hettie waited for her friend to continue, but Tilly was rubbing her head as the after-effects of her fall caught up with her.

‘I think we should gather up as much as we can and get you home,’ Hettie said, concerned. ‘Do we need to take those cardboard tubes with us?’

Tilly nodded. ‘Yes, and there’s a scrapbook still up there, full of newspaper cuttings. I opened one of the tubes. It was a family history chart, so I think we need to take all of them for a closer look.’

Hettie suddenly remembered something that Teezle Makepeace had said and started lifting the cushions on the kitchen chairs. ‘No, there’s nothing under them.
I wondered if that chart she hid from Teezle was still there. Anything under your cushion?’

‘No, nothing,’ Tilly said, leaving chocolate paw prints everywhere. She sat nursing her headache with one paw and noting down the details of Mavis Spitforce’s will with the other, while Hettie scurried round collecting as much material as the tartan shopper would allow. She tidied the kitchen, scooping the Halloween trappings off the floor and adding them to the already over-burdened trolley. Satisfied that the house was ready for the relatives to take over, the two cats and the tartan shopper made their way out into the winter’s morning, heading home just as the town came to life.