More Cats in the Belfry (16 page)

  Connie, who is one of the country's experts on wild orchids, would from time to time be away overnight giving a lecture or visiting other botanists, and her friend Diana would take charge of Ming. Di, who ran her own car-transport business, had flexible hours and would come in to keep Ming company during the day. She would feed him and let him out into the garden, and bring him in and secure the cat-flap when she was leaving. An added twist to this routine was that he greeted Di with affection when she came to be company to him, butting her with his head, winding himself round her legs, lying against her neck and purring when she picked him up.

  When Connie returned from wherever she'd been however, and Di fetched her from the station and the two of them went into the house, Ming would hide under the bed, cringing away from Di and wailing up and down the scale about how much she frightened him and he hated her – a put-on act to make Connie think his life was intolerable while she was away which might have worked, so accomplished an actor was he, if Di hadn't persuaded Connie to stay hidden outside one day while she, Di, went into the house alone. With her own eyes Connie saw that cat, through the kitchen window, rubbing his face abandonedly against Di's, cupboard-loving with all his might – till Connie put in an appearance and he jumped from Di's arms, spitting blue murder at her, and fled.

  That is by the way. The real story concerns the occasion when Di, having been with Ming during the early evening, and brought him in from the garden and fastened the cat-flap, went in later to give him a meal and a cuddle before his bedtime, only to find Ming missing, an open cat-flap in the kitchen with the cupboard moved aside from it, and deep black night outside.

  Di's first thought was that she must have left the cat-flap unfastened and omitted to put the cupboard in front of it. Yet she was sure she'd taken both precautions. The question was where was Ming now? She went into the garden with a torch, shone it around, scarcely daring to breathe in case he'd somehow managed to get over the fence – and there he was. It was the frog season and he was sitting frog-watching in the border. She brought him in, fastened the cat-flap and barricaded it once more, and when Connie returned told her just what had happened.

  Next day, determined to find out how he'd done it, Connie seated herself in the spare room from which, with the doors open, she had a clear view across the hall and through the kitchen to the barricaded flap. After a while Ming emerged from her bedroom, where he'd been napping on the bed, made his way to the kitchen and seated himself in front of the cupboard, prising the door open after a few minutes' activity with a hooked left claw. That done, he inserted his right paw in the open front of the small cupboard, put it behind the cupboard door and pulled. Slightly to the left, so that the cupboard slid sideways away from the cat-flap, on which he then undid the fastener to let himself through.

  Any time Connie went out after that she reinforced the cupboard by setting the kitchen table against it, and jamming the kitchen chairs tightly against that. So far Ming hadn't solved the problem of moving that lot but he was probably working on it, said Connie, and it looked awful when she had people staying.

  When Saphra left home to prove he was a Killdown (or was it the adventure stories Sinbad had told him?) he didn't bother about cat-flaps. For safety's sake there wasn't one in the back door anyway, and he did it the way he'd always planned: by hiding in his lair behind the freezer when I was changing the litter trays and hoping I wouldn't shut the door properly. One day his luck was in: I didn't. I kicked it behind me and it hadn't clicked.

  By the time I discovered it he must have been gone some time. I scoured the garden, ran up and down the lane rattling the cat-biscuit tin and calling. There was no sign. All was silence. Tani, when I asked her where he was, said she hadn't seen him. White Slavers had probably got him, she said.

  I was standing at the gate, wondering which way, to turn next, when I saw a procession coming up the lane. A crowd of walkers – ­dozens of them, all wearing psychedelically-­coloured rucksacks, following behind a leader who was carrying a cat in his arms. I'd seen them through the window earlier, going in the opposite direction. They hadn't had a cat with them then. I knew immediately who it was.

  It had followed them, said the leader. Its movements had been noted by various members of the group. One had seen it on the wall, craning its neck at the rucksacks. Another had seen it jump down and start following them. Several had tried to shoo it back, but it had taken no notice. Just dodged them and kept on going, they said. It wasn't till they reached the bottom lane and started to climb the steep hillside up to the ancient camp that they realised Saphra wasn't just taking a cattish stroll. He was deliberately accompanying them. They were on their way to Burrington, to see the Rock of Ages. Miles across the hills, and they weren't coming back in this direction. So they thought they'd better bring him back – all of them together, because it was an organised party which wouldn't have known its way without the leader.

  I thanked them and held him while they started off once more. He was indignant, and would have followed them again if I'd let him. He was Stupid, said Tani. Of course they'd brought him back. They knew he wasn't a Proper Walker. They wouldn't have known if he'd been wearing a rucksack, said Saphra who, like all Siamese, thought of himself as a human being. It was worrying all the same. Some weeks earlier Janet's cat, down the lane, had gone missing. It was found, after a fortnight, right on top of Mendip, sheltering under a fallen tree and practically starving. It, too, was thought to have followed a walking party – one not so caring as the group that brought back Saphra.

  I was still worrying about it – how quickly it had happened; the need to watch his every movement, and see that the back door was closed – when, that afternoon, across in the woods getting logs and carrying the electric chainsaw, I caught my foot in a bramble and went flying. I rolled down the hillside, ripped my knee on the thorns so that it looked as though I'd been mauled by an angry lion and ended up, my knee patched with sticking plaster, flat on my back on the sitting-room floor attempting to compose myself with relaxation. I had my eyes closed, trying to blank out the tensions of the day, when I suddenly sensed that I wasn't alone. I opened my eyes. Sure enough, I wasn't. Seated side by side at my feet like a pair of candles at a catafalque, staring at me intently, were Tani and Saphra. It was past six o'clock – time for their meal – and they were willing me to remember it. I got up at once. Siamese owners know their place, even when they're at the end of their tether.

  The day wasn't over yet. Still limping round and feeling sorry for myself, that very evening I was called out to what looked like rivalling the mystery of the Marie Celeste. Miss Wellington had come down to the valley on one of her nocturnal rambles – to check that the stream was running properly, she said – and had decided to call on her sister. She'd climbed up the side lane to Poppy's cottage, knocked on the door and, getting no answer, lifted the latch and let herself in. She found an ironing board set up in the kitchen, a half-ironed blouse on it (the flatiron had been switched off, which itself added to the mystery) – but, though she had searched, heart in mouth, through every room in the cottage, there had been absolutely no sign of Poppy.

  I limped womanfully back with her. Searched every room myself. Looked in the garage. Her car, even more confoundingly, was still there. Poppy, Miss W. decided, must have been kidnapped, though for what reason, since she was neither young and beautiful nor wealthy, I couldn't imagine. She hadn't been going anywhere that night, wept Miss W. She'd have told her if she had been. We were on the point of calling the police – I'd been deputed to dial 999 – when, as I raised the receiver, I heard a car door slam in the lane outside, Poppy's voice wishing someone goodnight, and in she came. Safe, if a trifle flushed. At seeing us there, it struck me.

  The explanation was simple when we heard it. Poppy, since her arrival in the village, had joined many of the local activities and, being an ex-headmistress and used to authority, had rapidly wafted to the forefront of several of them. Among other things she was on the committee of the Friendly Hands Club and a committee meeting had been fixed for that night – something she'd quite forgotten, having already been to the library committee meeting in the afternoon. When she didn't turn up at the village hall at eight o'clock, and there was no nearby phone on which they could contact her, Mr Tooting, who had also come from another meeting and had brought his car, volunteered to drive over to find out what had delayed her.

  Surprised in the middle of her ironing, appalled at having made such a mistake, Poppy had switched off the iron, put on her coat and gone with him at once. She hadn't thought to phone her sister – it had all been such a frantic rush anyway. All this she explained to Miss Wellington, who was only too relieved to find her intact. One heard such awful things nowadays, said Miss W. And how kind of Mr Tooting to bring her back afterwards. It was indeed. There was only one thing. That flush on Poppy's face. It made me wonder.

I
t made Mrs Binney wonder, too. The news that Poppy Richards had been seen riding in Mr Tooting's car reached her practically at the speed of sound. Fred Ferry saw them going past the Rose and Crown; he told his father who lived two doors away from Mrs B, and Sam Ferry, in pursuance of the feud that had started on the Friendly Hands holiday, made it his business to pass it on to her the same evening.

  Sam, also as a result of the feud, had taken to dressing much more smartly of late. Where he would once upon a time have gone along to the pub in his shirt-sleeves for his mid-day pint and stayed like that for the rest of the day, he now wore smartly pressed trousers, collar and tie and a mustard and brown checked jacket when he went out – presumably to show he was as good as Mr Tooting, though he stopped short of wearing a pork-pie hat. Sam's wiry thatch reared itself around the village as rampant as, and forcefully remindful of, an outsize shaving brush – which was more, I gathered from Mrs Adams, than could be said when Mr Tooting took his hat off at the Social Club. Sam, in fact, was looking a sight more presentable than his son Fred these days. Even the walking stick necessitated by his arthritis didn't detract from the image. If anything it added a touch of elder-statesman distinction that must have had an effect on Mrs Binney because she came down next day to tell me what Sam had said and to find out, by circuitous questioning, what I knew about the matter. I allayed her suspicions by telling her about the forgotten committee meeting and she said, with a superior sniff, 'Some people takes on more than they can manage just for the show of it,' and started back up the hill obviously mollified by what she'd heard.

  Hardly had she left when I had another visitor leaning on the gate – this time Will Woodrow, an elderly retired farmer from over the hill who occasionally walked down through the valley with his old dog and, if I was about, liked to stop and reminisce about the countryside in his young days, knowing I always enjoyed his stories.

  'Thass Maude Binney, innit? Maude Miles as was?' he said, peering interestedly up the hillside after her. Mrs Binney, flaunting her violet curls and wearing an emerald green autumn coat obviously chosen with the help of Shirl, looked more like a hyacinth than ever, and to old Mr Woodrow she was evidently well worth peering after.

  'Han't seen she in years,' he remarked. 'Wears purty well, don't she? Might call on her one day and see how she's doin'.' There was a gleam in his eye as he said it. Mr Woodrow was himself a widower.

  'D'ust remember her uncle, old Walt Miles?' he went on. I said firmly that he was before my time in the village. 'Ah,' he nodded. 'Suppose he would be. But he were a card, I can tell thee. Used to be odd-job man at Downton Farm, up t'other end of the valley, back in the days when workin' men wore bowler hats and red hankerchers round their necks. He were a good worker and Farmer thought a lot of 'n – but there come a time when pats of butter started disappearin' from the dairy, and Farmer were sure that Walt were takin' 'em. He didn't want to upset th'apple cart by tacklin' 'n about it straight out, though, so he and his wife put their heads together and one day they invited 'n in for a glass of cider. They sat 'n on the settle in front of the fire, which they'd stoked up high. Walt always kept his bowler on, whatever he were doin', and he did then too, in spite of their invitin' 'n to take it off. After a bit, sure enough, butter started to run down his face. Walt mopped it with his red hankercher. It went on runnin'. Farmer and his wife took no notice – just went on talkin' as if nuthin' had happened. In th'end Walt excused hisself and near fell over the settle gettin' to the door, his face swimmin' in butter. Nobody said a word about it – but no butter pats ever went missin' after that.'