Cat Among the Pumpkins (8 page)

By now, the crowd had shifted from Mavis’s front door and was gathering round Hettie, hopeful of some lurid details to take home. Hacky Redtop barged through the crowd with his notepad and pencil poised
for a statement, just as the local TV crew arrived and started setting up a camera tripod. Prunella Snap seemed to have got into an altercation with one of the TV reporters and had been pushed to the ground, where she became entangled in the microphone cable that was being rolled out by a regional radio engineer. Delirium Treemints had laid out a table of refreshments on the pavement opposite the house and was doing a brisk trade in tea and morning coffee, using the Dosh Stores to boil her kettle. It seemed that Lavinia Spitforce was right about one thing: everyone seemed to know that Mavis Spitforce was dead, even before Shroud and Trestle had taken her away.

Hettie raised her paw and silenced the crowd. ‘I can confirm that Miss Mavis Spitforce has died,’ she said in her best official tone. ‘I am investigating the reasons for this and have nothing further to say at this time. However, I’m sure Miss Spitforce’s niece Lavinia will be happy to talk. She is inside the house at the moment, and I suggest that one of you knock on the door and invite her out to speak to you.’

Hettie had hardly finished the sentence before the crowd shifted as one, laying siege once again to Mavis’s front door. Bruiser kicked the bike into life as Hettie – treating herself to a satisfied grin – leapt on the back, and Scarlet roared away from the community scrum, leaving an unsuspecting Lavinia Spitforce to the mercy of the hungry media.

Having met her daughter, Hettie reviewed her opinion of Mildred Spitforce and promised to keep her informed of any developments in the case when they dropped her off at her flat. But the most urgent thing on the agenda now was lunch, and Bruiser responded by getting them to the Butters’ in a matter of minutes, parking Scarlet outside the post office. Hettie had a fancy for a prawn bap – a new line that Beryl had introduced to the lunchtime specials – and chose a sardine and cream cheese roll for Tilly, while Bruiser settled for a beef pasty. The cats made their way through to the backyard, where Hettie picked the milk up from the doorstep and opened the door on a hive of activity.

The whole of the room was laid out with charts and Tilly was sitting in the middle of them, scribbling notes. She was so engrossed that she didn’t realise she had company until the smell of Bruiser’s pasty reached her nostrils.

‘Oh, lovely!’ she exclaimed as Hettie put lunch down on the only corner of the table that wasn’t covered by family histories. She rose from her labours and paddled across the sea of papers to the kettle, where she prepared three mugs with her best visitors’ tea bags, kept for what she liked to call ‘working lunches’ – although whenever food was available, work tended to grind to a halt. Hettie and Tilly both believed firmly in getting their priorities right.

‘That’s a beauty,’ said Bruiser, eyeing up the dagger that Hettie had removed so recently from Mavis Spitforce’s back. ‘Last time I saw one of these was when it whistled past me ear in Billy Smut’s circus.’

Hettie proffered the dagger to Bruiser for a closer look. ‘What sort is it?’

Bruiser took it and turned it in his paws. ‘It’s one of them ceremonial jobs, valuable I’d say – look it’s got some jewels in the hilt. Nasty curved blade, too – comes from overseas, not yer general sort of dagger. The cat I knew at the circus had a set of ’em for his act. He came from somewhere in the Himalayas. Funny sort of cat, ’e was – in a trance most of the time, and not exactly talkative.’

Bruiser returned the dagger to its tea towel, cleared himself a space at the table and noisily launched himself into his pasty. Tilly sat on her blanket by the fire and sucked the cream cheese out of her roll before setting about the sardines and the bread. Hettie opened her bap and ate the prawns first, then licked the sauce, and finally posted the bread into her mouth just as the kettle came to the boil. Nothing was said as the cats licked and cleaned themselves, and it was Hettie who eventually spoke. ‘This is a rum old case. If I hadn’t met Mavis Spitforce, I’d have said she had it coming to her. On the face of it, she treated her sister very badly and the niece is one of the most revolting cats I’ve ever met – yet Mavis thought the
sun shone out of her. It just doesn’t add up.’

Not wishing to intrude, Bruiser excused himself from agency business and took himself off for an afternoon nap down the shed. Hettie brought Tilly up to speed with the morning’s events before settling down with her to look at the charts they’d removed from Mavis Spitforce’s box room.

‘The most interesting thing I’ve found so far is this one,’ said Tilly, unfolding a large piece of paper which chronicled several generations of one family. ‘Look at the name at the top.’

Hettie screwed her eyes up; the print was small and handwritten. ‘It looks like Thaddeus something,’ she said. ‘Why is that interesting?’

Tilly beamed. ‘Ah well, the “something” is important. Look halfway down the page.’ She pointed with her paw. ‘See what that says?’

Hettie tried to make out the name. ‘Murry Spil … no, it’s not Spil, it’s S-P-I … T. Yes, it’s a ‘T’, but the rest of the name is a squiggle.’

‘
SPITFORCE
!’ said Tilly, clapping her paws together with excitement. ‘Once you get used to the handwriting you can work it out. And it’s Merry, not Murry.’

Hettie looked closer and agreed that it was indeed ‘Spitforce’. ‘Merry was Mavis’s and Mildred’s father,’ she said. ‘So this is
their
family tree?’

‘Exactly,’ Tilly confirmed, getting even more excited. ‘Now go back to the top of the page. You got the
Thaddeus bit right, but look at the second name again.’

Hettie stared at the paper, confused. ‘Well, it certainly isn’t Spitforce. That’s not an ‘S’ and the name is too short anyway. It looks like an ‘M’. Come on, help me out – what does it say?’

‘It says “
MYERS
”! Thaddeus
MYERS
! And looking at the rest of the family, I’d say that Thaddeus’s nickname was
MILKY
. Look – here are his parents and brother and sister; all of them died on the same day. October 31st – Halloween. But Thaddeus survived. He went on to have a son and his son’s son was Merry Spitforce. They must have changed their name along the way. It doesn’t say when Thaddeus died, though.’

Hettie stared at the chart. ‘So Milky Myers was Mavis’s and Mildred’s great, great grandfather. That’s why Mavis was so cross about Marmite Sprat’s book – it was her family that Marmite was writing about.’

Tilly was delighted with her morning’s work, especially as Hettie seemed pleased.

‘There are a couple of other family charts that Mavis had been working on,’ she added, searching through the mountain of paper on the table. ‘She didn’t get very far with this one.’

Hettie looked at the names. This document was much easier to read, and at the bottom of the page she could clearly make out a whole row of Doshes: Rogan, Balti, Bhaji, Masala, Pakora. To make it more interesting, Mavis had traced the family shops as well. ‘That’s quite
an empire,’ she said in admiration. ‘The Doshes have stores all over the place. Look – Southwool, Much-Purring, and all the villages in between. She’s gone back to Rogan’s great grandfather. Looks like a work in progress to me – it’s a shame she didn’t finish it.’

‘She managed to get through several rows of Andertons, though,’ Tilly said. ‘She’s traced her back to The Battle of Flooded Field. I think it says she’s got Scottish royalty flowing through her veins – no wonder she’s so bossy.’

Hettie thought for a moment as Tilly set about rolling up the charts and putting them back into their tubes. The case was complicated, offering several lines of enquiry and a substantial number of suspects. She added some thinking coal to the fire and slumped down in her armchair, tired and confused. So much had happened in such a short spell of time, but as far as she could see the only real breakthrough was the Milky Myers connection to Mavis Spitforce, and she had no idea where that got them.

Tilly could see the frustration in Hettie’s face and knew that the time had come for what she liked to call a ‘case review’. Putting the last of the charts in the staff sideboard, she snatched up her notepad and perched on the arm of Hettie’s chair. ‘Shall we write down a list of suspects?’ she asked encouragingly, doing her best to stop Hettie from dozing off.

Hettie sat up, knowing that the job had to be
done. ‘Well, I wouldn’t trust her family as far as I could throw them, so put Lavinia Spitforce at the top. Mildred can go on the list, too, although I doubt she was involved. We’ll have to pay a visit to Bugs Anderton in Much-Purring – she seems to have been close to Mavis and maybe she can shed some light on Lavinia and the change of will. We’ll put Bugs on the list for now. Marmite Sprat is a contender, especially as bits of her latest effort were stuffed in Mavis Spitforce’s mouth. I’m not sure about Delirium Treemints; I doubt she could aim straight enough to stab anyone in the back, but we could put her down as an outsider along with Balti Dosh and Teezle Makepeace.’

Tilly had dutifully noted down the names until she got to Teezle’s. ‘Surely you don’t think she was involved?’

Hettie looked at the growing list, ‘Well, she had the opportunity: she’s in and out of those old cats’ houses every day and she’s the sort that no one notices. She’s hooked off work for the day as well, so she could be miles away by now.’

Tilly added Teezle to the list. ‘What about Milky Myers? Should I put him down? He’d be about a hundred and fifty by now.’

Hettie laughed. ‘There’s no harm in sticking him down. A lot of cats on that list seem to think he’s done it. Don’t forget Irene Peggledrip – she got Mavis’s
house before dear Lavinia burnt the latest will. I’m looking forward to seeing her on Friday, and if the story of Milky Myers has anything to do with this case at all it will be helpful to have a look round the old house and grounds.’

‘What’s next?’ asked Tilly, eyeing up the clock on the staff sideboard. ‘It’s ten past two. We could go to Much-Purring for a run out in Scarlet.’

Hettie wondered whether she could handle another conversation with Bugs Anderton so soon after the Methodist Hall gathering, but she knew that time was running out and their list of suspects had to be eliminated one by one. ‘OK, that’s a good idea – but you can go down the shed and convince Bruiser to forsake his nap and get his leathers on.’

Tilly had quite forgotten her tumble down Mavis Spitforce’s stairs and skipped round the room choosing a warm cardigan from the filing cabinet and searching out the woolly hat that she reserved for outings in Scarlet’s sidecar. Dressed for the cold November day, she scampered down the garden path in search of Bruiser. Hettie put her business mac back on, banked up the fire and picked up Scarlet’s keys. She had a feeling that it was going to be a very long afternoon.

The post office had just reopened after lunch, and Lavender Stamp’s queue had begun to form outside. Lavender herself had had no time for lunch, which put her in a particularly bad frame of mind. It was some years since she had relinquished her domain behind the counter to deliver the post on foot, but doing both jobs was almost beyond her. There had been no word from Teezle Makepeace, not even the hint of an excuse, and Lavender had resigned herself to preparing an advertisement for a post-cat which she intended to display in her shop window the following day if no word was received.

There were, however, plenty of words on the piece of official post office stationery that had been glued to Scarlet’s sidecar windscreen. After a great deal of scraping and scratching, and a generous amount of spit for the final stages, Hettie released the note from the windscreen. It read:

‘I think Lavender Stamp is trying to tell us something,’ said Hettie, sliding back the lid on the sidecar and helping Tilly into her seat. Bruiser, pulled from his afternoon nap, crammed the ill-fitting helmet onto his head and leapt onto the bike, giving Hettie very little time to settle herself next to Tilly in the sidecar before he was off down the High Street and heading out of town towards Much-Purring-on-the-Rug.

Hettie and Tilly pulled their travel blanket round them as they watched the town whizz by. Bruiser’s face was contorted against the speed of the motorbike and he drove like a cat possessed, only slowing down when absolutely necessary to avoid other vehicles. Had it not been for some quick thinking and an alternative
route through a front garden, things could have turned nasty outside the Peggledrip house as Rogan Dosh and his delivery van emerged from Irene’s driveway at just the wrong moment.

Out on the open road, though, Scarlet excelled herself and it was only minutes before they entered the village of Much-Purring-on-the-Rug. The realisation that they had absolutely no idea where Bugs Anderton lived dawned on Hettie as Bruiser brought the motorbike to an abrupt standstill in a lay-by outside the ancient village church. Clambering out of the sidecar, Hettie looked for divine intervention; it materialised quite miraculously in the shape of a cloaked and gaitered vicar, who looked older than the church he served.

The elderly cat came forward in a spirit of welcome and introduced himself. ‘I am the Reverend Jacob Surplus. May I be of assistance?’

Hettie put on her best posh voice and addressed the vicar. ‘That is so very kind of you. I am Hettie Bagshot of the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency, and I am looking for Miss Anderton’s house.’

Tilly giggled as Hettie engaged with the apparition from the past. The Reverend Jacob Surplus shrank back as if he’d been burnt with a poker. ‘Methodists! Too good for the fires of hell. When the day of judgement comes they shall be drowned in the firmament and the locusts shall come and eat their eyes, and their bodies shall be dissected and thrown to the four winds.’

This was rather more than Hettie had bargained for, but she persisted nonetheless. ‘Absolutely, couldn’t agree more – but in the meantime, could you point us in the direction of Miss Anderton’s house?’

The vicar lifted his paw in the direction of the village. ‘Satan’s plot, just after the Dosh Stores on the left.’ And with that he hobbled away towards the church.

Bruiser elected to stay with the motorbike, and Hettie and Tilly set off to walk into the village. It was very much an old-world scene of thatched cottages, rough gardens with a few dying vegetables, and lines of washing, damp and lifeless in the November gloom. In high summer, Hettie imagined that it was a very different place, with gardens of roses, whitewashed walls and cats chatting congenially over garden gates or sleeping in the sun on their doorsteps. There was to her mind no special season for half-wits, though: they always seemed in plentiful supply in the countryside, fit for nothing but work on the land and courting the wrong branch of the family, which gave rise to the problem in the first place. Much-Purring had a reputation for such cats, but mercifully they never seemed to leave the village, so the problem – if it was a problem – kept itself to itself.

The village green was in sight before they identified the Much-Purring branch of the Dosh Stores, run by Rogan’s Aunt Pakora. She had fought a bitter battle
with Rogan’s father to take over the shop, which had been in the male cat’s branch of the family for as long as anyone could remember. Masala Dosh – having lost out to his sister – opened a sea front shop in Southwool and had recently expanded his interests into the ‘Loads of Dosh’ amusement arcade, making sure that there were plenty of male heirs to follow on from him. Pakora had improved on her empire by purchasing shops in several other villages as and when they became available, giving the family a monopoly in the area between Much-Purring and the sea.

As Hettie and Tilly approached the Stores, Pakora was freshening the vegetable racks outside, selecting one or two items to add to the giant vat of curry that was always simmering on her kitchen stove at the back of the shop. For those in the village who had little interest in cooking, Pakora’s curries and home-baked naans were a life saver; she also bought in samosas from Rogan’s town shop to beef up her take away service, which had blossomed since she acquired a three-wheeler bicycle with a large boot.

Hettie made the approach. ‘Excuse me, I wonder if you could help me?’

Pakora looked up from her carrots. ‘I will try. What is your wish?’

‘We’re looking for Miss Anderton’s house.’

Pakora abandoned her carrots and moved out onto the path. ‘Miss Anderton lives in that extremely
nice house next door to my extremely nice shop. Just there – look,’ she pointed a paw full of exotic rings in the direction of a rather plain but perfect new build, set back from the road and bordered by trees and a white picket fence. It occurred to Hettie that if she had had to find the house without help, this was the one she would have chosen; it stood out for its perfect lines and complete lack of character. In the town it would have been very desirable, but amid the old country cottages and terraces it took on a rather ‘look at me’ quality.

Pakora returned to her vegetables, blowing the dust off some mushrooms, and Hettie and Tilly made their way down Bugs Anderton’s perfectly straight concrete path. The door was plain except for the knocker, an elaborate affair polished within an inch of its life and made in the shape of a thistle, a clear nod towards Bugs’s ancestors. Hettie raised her paw to the knocker, only to be thwarted by an early response from Bugs herself who opened the door and beamed at her visitors.

‘Miss Bagshot! What a lovely surprise, and your friend, too. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Please come in.’

Hettie and Tilly trod carefully on her perfect cream carpet and followed their host down the hall. Bugs ushered them into her sitting room, which – following the trend of the hallway – was also very cream.
Somewhat radically, the sofa and two fireside chairs teetered on beige but the antimacassars were a perfect match with the carpet. The only real flash of colour was Bugs herself: the combination of ginger hair and a duck egg blue trouser suit was very striking indeed, if striking was the right word.

‘Please sit down and make yourselves at home. I was about to take my afternoon tea. May I tempt you to a salmon sandwich and a shortbread finger?’

Feeling awkward but not wanting to disappoint, Hettie and Tilly nodded in unison and Bugs glided from the room, leaving them to wonder exactly what they’d got themselves into. Hettie struggled from her mac, laying it across the arm of the sofa, and Tilly responded by removing her woolly hat and undoing the top button of her cardigan. ‘It’s a bit scary in here,’ she said, looking for somewhere to hide her hat so that the rainbow effect wouldn’t offend the décor. ‘Even the pictures are sepia.’

Hettie studied the framed landscape over the fireplace. It was a harvest scene of cats gathering hay, with mountains in the distance, a small farmhouse, and an old tractor pulling a cart. Hettie marvelled at just how many shades of cream and beige the artist had used to create the painting, and it came as no surprise to her that the work was signed ‘B. Anderton’. The alcove next to the fireplace sported a photograph of a rather beautiful old cottage with a thatched roof; in
the foreground, an elderly cat in a long dress and mop cap smiled out from the picture.

The arrival of the hostess trolley put an end to Hettie’s art appraisal. Unlike most of its kind, this trolley didn’t squeak and seemed easy to manoeuvre; like its owner, it sailed across the thick-pile cream carpet as if on air.

‘Ah, I see you appreciate a country scene, Miss Bagshot,’ said Bugs, parking the trolley next to the sofa. ‘I find them so colourful and invigorating – just the thing to cheer us up on these cold winter days. The old cottage you’re looking at was here before I had my house built – not at all what I was looking for, so I had it knocked down and utilised the plot to its best advantage.’

Hettie couldn’t resist sharing a look with Tilly as Bugs prepared china cups decorated with refreshingly pink rosebuds; the tea plates matched, but it was hard to make a judgement on the teapot as it was swathed in a beige tea cosy embellished with cream embroidery. It occurred to her that the trolley had been prepared in advance as if visitors were expected. The first two tiers of the cake stand were filled with perfectly cut salmon sandwiches, garnished with watercress, and on the bottom there was an array of sugar-dusted shortbread.

Bugs passed the plates round and followed with the cake stand. Tilly took the sandwich closest to her for fear of upsetting the display, and Hettie did the same.
Then came cream serviettes and finally the tea.

‘I should tell you, Miss Bagshot, that I was expecting you to call,’ said Bugs, replacing her cup on its saucer. ‘Lavinia telephoned me and said you were looking into the circumstances of her aunt’s death. She was rather upset, and seemed to think that you regarded her as your number one suspect.’

Hettie absent-mindedly reached for another sandwich. ‘I’m afraid that everyone is a suspect at this stage in the case. There is a considerable list of cats who might have wanted to harm Mavis Spitforce, but – from her behaviour when I met her this morning – Lavinia has to be a favourite, which is why I wanted to speak with you.’

Playing for time, Bugs busied herself in pouring more tea and piling Tilly’s plate with sandwiches. Suddenly, she abandoned her hostess role and sat down in one of the fireside arm chairs. ‘Miss Bagshot, my dear friend Mavis had been concerned for some time about her safety. She seemed to think that she was in danger, and told me that she had uncovered a secret to do with her family. She was even thinking of moving in with that ghastly Peggledrip creature because she didn’t feel safe in her own home any more.’

Tilly crammed the sandwiches into her mouth and pulled her notepad and pencil out of her cardigan pocket as Hettie began her questioning. ‘When did Mavis tell you all this?’

‘After the Friendship Club meeting last week. I went back to her house afterwards, and she asked me if I would witness some papers. It was awful, really, as they turned out to be copies of her will.’

‘Two copies?’ asked Hettie, throwing caution and cream carpet to the wind as she dunked a shortbread finger in her tea. Bugs nodded. ‘Did you see what she did with the wills after you’d witnessed them?’

‘No. They were still on her kitchen table when I left.’

‘And did you have any idea what was in the will?’

‘Not really. She didn’t discuss it.’

‘What about her relationship with Lavinia? Had that changed in any way recently?’

Bugs looked thoughtful, as if trying to make her mind up about something, and the pause gave Tilly time to reach for a shortbread and Hettie to revisit the last two sandwiches. ‘Lavinia is … how shall I say this … a difficult cat. She’s talented, intelligent and a wonderful teacher, but she has a cruel, spiteful streak about her if challenged. As I’m sure you know, Mavis brought her up because her own mother was unable to cope. She showered her with books, educated her and prepared her for the world of work. She even got her a job at the village school here in Much-Purring. The problem was a local boy cat – a different culture altogether, if you know what I mean.’ Hettie hadn’t the slightest idea what Bugs meant, but felt it best not
to interrupt and hoped that all would become clear. ‘Mavis asked me to keep an eye on Lavinia and let her lodge with me during the school terms, which didn’t go down very well with Lavinia or with the boy. He suddenly started staying with his great aunt Pakora next door so that he could see Lavinia more often.’

‘You mean Pakora Dosh?’ Hettie clarified, pleased that the penny had finally dropped. ‘So who was the boy?’

‘Bhaji Dosh – Balti and Rogan’s boy. Anyway, Mavis found out that Lavinia was still seeing him and washed her paws of her niece for several weeks. She moved all Lavinia’s things out of her house – she brought most of them here, actually – and turned her old bedroom into a box room so that she couldn’t go back.’

‘How did Lavinia feel about that?’

‘She was furious. Mavis had always promised her the house in Whisker Terrace, and to make matters worse, she found out that Bhaji had been promised to a very pretty Asian cat who works for Masala Dosh in Southwool.’

‘Why do you think Mavis took against the friendship between Bhaji and Lavinia? The Doshes are a very rich and highly respected family, after all.’

‘I don’t know. Like I said, I think it was cultural differences.’

Hettie could see that there was nothing more to be
gained from that particular line of questioning, so she decided to go for the jugular. ‘Miss Anderton – could you tell me what you were doing on the evening of Halloween? Just for the record, obviously.’

‘I was here at home, preparing some notes for the Friendship Club.’