Doc Dyer sighed. “You’re as bad as he is. The two of you have more pride than is good for you. He broke up with Laetitia Poynter for you. What more do you want?”
“That had nothing to do with me. He had his own reasons for breaking up with her. If he had done it for me, he would have let me know by now.”
“You don’t understand. The last thing he wants is for you to think of him as some kind of playboy who flits from woman to woman. He wanted to leave a decent interval before …”
“There you are, Dad.” The deep voice made them both look around guiltily. “And Fay. I’m delighted to see you. Why don’t you both come inside for lunch and we can talk about stab wounds over our ravioli?”
Chapter 6
“Won’t Morwen mind if you’re not there for lunch?” asked Doc Dyer as he followed Fay into the house.
“Not really. She’s serving toad-in-the-hole today and she knows that’s not my favorite. She makes it occasionally because she, Maggie, and Pen love it so much. But she even said to me when I was on my way out that she wouldn’t hold it against me if I picked up a slice of pizza in the village or something else instead.”
“Sausages in batter.” David shivered. “It’s not my favorite either.”
“I hear you,” said Fay. “Although I’m very partial to corndogs which are just sausages deep fried in batter and served on a stick. Although admittedly the batter is not soft and squishy.”
As they went through to the dining-room, Fay texted Morwen.
Fay: Having lunch with the Dyers. I won’t be back until this afternoon.
Morwen responded with a row of heart emojis and another row of question marks.
Fay: Calm down. We’re just discussing the dead guy.
Morwen responded with a row of smiley faces. Fay shook her head and slipped her phone into her pocket.
“I suppose we shouldn’t really talk about an autopsy over lunch,” said Doc Dyer as he passed the ravioli to Fay.
“When you put two medical doctors and a former police officer together around the same table, the conversation is liable to get a little rough,” said David. “But we all have strong stomachs. I think we can handle it.”
Fay tasted her ravioli and decided that it was a much better option than the toad-in-the-hole.
“From talking to various people in the village this morning, I gather that the dead man was called Edward Mayweather. He had been here about three weeks and was teaching at the fencing school. Does that sound right?”
“It does,” said David. “He gave his profession as ‘lawyer’ though, not fencing instructor. He put his hometown as Exeter and his next-of-kin as Maria Baines who lives right here on the island. Apparently, she’s his sister.”
“Baines?” said Fay. “Any relation to Farmer Baines?”
“His wife,” said Doc Dyer. “You know where the Baines farm is?”
“Sure. It’s that big one with the great view. I presume Sergeant Jones has notified Mrs. Baines of her brother’s passing?”
“He said he’d do it when I told him about the connection this morning,” said David. “I emailed him my autopsy report at the same time.”
“What did the autopsy show?”
“That Edward Mayweather was fifty-six years old, well-nourished, and in good health. He had a muscular physique and was slightly overweight. His right elbow joint was puffy and inflamed, with fluid collected in the joint space.”
“Aha - the sporting injury. Is there any chance it was caused by fencing?”
David looked at his father. “What do you think, Dad?”
“I don’t know. I would have thought it was the shoulder that took most of the strain in fencing, but it’s possible that the elbow could also be involved.”
David lifted his arm as though he were holding a foil and made imaginary passes in the air. “I can feel it in the shoulder and the wrist. But the elbow is affected too. It could well have been a fencing injury.”
“So, he was a lawyer.” Fay tried to imagine what legal business could have brought Edward Mayweather to Bluebell Island. But perhaps his presence had nothing to do with his day job. The fact that he had a sister living here might have been reason enough for him to visit. That and learning new fencing techniques under the tutelage of Mr. Galliano.
“I presume it was the stab wound that killed him?” she asked David.
“Very much so. The blade was travelling in an upwards direction. It entered his torso just below the diaphragm, severed his aorta, and nicked his cardio-pulmonary artery. He died instantly, which is why there was relatively little bleeding outside the abdominal cavity. There was plenty inside it, of course.”
“The entrance wound seemed wide for a fencing sword,” said Fay. “It looked almost like a broadsword, or something like that.”
“No, it was a fencing foil, alright. But the person who stabbed Mayweather slid the sword from side to side when it was inside his body, trying to cause maximum damage. It enlarged the entrance wound and made it look as though it had been inflicted by a wider blade.”
Fay couldn’t help shuddering. Knives of any kind had always given her the creeps.
“So, this wasn’t a fencing accident. The person who stabbed him was very determined to kill him.”
“That’s how it looks to me.”
“Interesting.” Fay finished off her ravioli and took a sip of sparkling water. The mystery of Edward Mayweather’s death would be a tough one. David’s autopsy report was only preliminary at this stage. He would get more results over the next few days, which might change his conclusions about certain things. She could trust him to keep her updated.
Something sharp and pointy pierced Fay’s calf, making her jump.
“Ouch.” She reached down and encountered a bundle of fur. “Oh, it’s you, Zorro. I thought I was being stabbed in the leg by a miniature swordsman.”
The half-grown kitten took a firmer grip on Fay’s jeans and hauled herself up to sit on her lap.
Fay tutted. “You’re a bad girl. I’m sure you’re not allowed to do that at table.”
“Definitely not,” agreed Doc Dyer. But as he moved his arm, Fay saw a ginger head appear over the edge of the table. Zorro’s brother Tigger was sitting on his lap.
Fay had raised the kittens since they were a day old. Their mother rejected the whole litter of four kittens. Two had found a home with Maggie Binnie and her parents, and the other two had been adopted by the Dyers. Fay saw them almost every day when she walked down to the village. They liked to sit on the matching pillars at the bottom of the steps that led up to the surgery. It made Fay happy to know that they were so well loved and cared for.
As she stroked the purring Zorro, she remembered something.
“Have either of you heard anything about a stray cat up on Cliff Road? Morwen got messages about it on one of her WhatsApp groups. I’m going to set up traps this afternoon, but I just realized I have no idea what the cat looks like. I don’t want to kidnap someone’s pet by mistake.”
“I heard it was black,” said Doc Dyer.
David smiled. “How very appropriate for Halloween.”
“Not a young cat, apparently?” said Fay.
Doc shook his head. “One of my patients was talking about it just this morning. She said it’s a mangy, raggedy sort of animal. Definitely not young.”
“Older cats can be difficult to home,” said Fay. “And black cats are the most difficult of all. There are a lot of superstitions about them.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. If I can’t find a home for it, I’ll keep it myself. Penrose House has always been a sanctuary for cats and it always will be.”
Back in her office after lunch, Fay went through her usual afternoon routine of tackling the paperwork and administration that went with running a B&B. This included maintaining a regular social media presence.
While she had been in town that morning, she had snapped photographs of the Halloween decorations and some of the shopkeepers dressed up for the
holiday. She assembled these into a blog post, in which she wrote about how the island was getting into the spooky spirit. She ended it by advertising a last-minute special on a two-night stay at the Cat’s Paw in either an individual suite or a family suite.
As she shared the post to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, she expected the offer to be snapped up by the end of the day. Her last-minute specials usually were.
She was about to go in search of her cat traps when a sudden thought made her sit down again. She did a Google search for ‘Maxie Galway’, for ‘Massimo Galliano’, and for ‘Maxie Galway and Massimo Galliano’.
The results were interesting.
The internet, it seemed, had not put the two men together. Maxie Galway was born and brought up in Swansea, Wales. His interest in fencing dated back to early childhood. Fay found references to competitions he had won and teams he had represented as a boy.
In the early days, he had been the champion of his age group for several years in a row. As a young man, he had been Swansea’s foremost fencer. Then he had represented Wales at the Olympic Games.
Fay checked again.
No, that wasn’t right. Wales didn’t send its own teams to the Olympic Games. He had represented the United Kingdom. Some more digging brought up his results at the Olympics. Fay found it significant that he had been beaten in all his rounds by Italian fencers.
It was after the London Olympic Games of 2012 that Maxie Galway disappeared, and Massimo Galliano was born.
Fay did a Google images search for both men and put the results side by side. It wasn’t surprising that the internet hadn’t made the connection between them. Maxie Galway had a soft halo of sandy blond hair that curled around his head. His skin was slightly freckled, and he looked exactly like what he was – a mild-mannered Welshman.
Masimo Galliano had straight, pitch-black hair that was gelled back from his forehead into a ducktail. His skin was olive, without so much as a hint of a freckle. His eyebrows were severely waxed and then drawn over with eyebrow pencil to create two dramatic arches. His eyes were black too, instead of a watery blue. He must have been wearing contact lenses, Fay realized. He had also dropped something like twenty-five pounds between 2012 and now.
When she looked closely, she could see that it was him. He couldn’t change his cheekbones or the shape of his face. But it was a remarkable transformation.
If he could change himself so dramatically, what else was he capable of?
Chapter 7
Fay loaded the trunk of her car with cat traps, cat food, and bottles of water.
She wanted to get her traps in place before nightfall. Her research on feral cats had taught her that they slept most of the day in a comfortable spot and ventured out as the sun went down to hunt and look for water. Tonight, her quarry would find what he was looking for, and hopefully she would find him safely inside one of her traps by morning. She just hoped he wouldn’t get too cold overnight.
With that in mind, she went back into the house to fetch three sheepskin rugs that her grandmother had kept in the closet with the cat traps. Fay hadn’t known what they were for, at first. Now she realized that they were to line the inside of the traps so that the cats would remain cozy overnight.
Fay climbed into her grandmother’s ancient green Volvo and turned the ignition key with a feeling of trepidation. She breathed a sigh of relief when it started first time. Then she winced when it backfired noisily. She hadn’t driven it in weeks. It wasn’t necessary when you lived in a place as small and safe as Bluebell Village. But David had explained that car engines liked to be driven. They didn’t like to stand idle for weeks on end. He had advised her to take it out at least twice a week for a spin to keep the engine running well. She had promptly forgotten this advice and was now paying the price as the car lurched out of its garage.
There was also a Land Rover on the premises that ran like clockwork, but that was used for picking guests up from the ferry and for taking them on sunrise or sunset tours of the island. She and Morwen tried not to use it for personal business in case a guest needed it.
Fay drove down the driveway towards the road, every tooth in her head rattling as the car juddered and shook.
She turned onto Cliff Road and began to keep a lookout for her turn. The retirement village, Sunset Acres, appeared on her right, but she drove past the main entrance. She was looking for a dirt service road that looped around the back of the estate. It popped up so suddenly on her right that she nearly missed it. The tooth rattling began again as she left the asphalt of Cliff Road and turned onto the service road.
The cat had been sighted by motorists driving along Cliff Road, so she decided to set one trap close to the street. She baited it with cat kibble and water and lined it with one of the rugs. Then she set the spring mechanism that would hold the door open until the cat was properly inside. As soon as the cat put any weight on the metal plate in front of the food bowl, the door would spring shut behind it, trapping it until morning.
Then she drove further into the bushes at the back of the estate and set another trap. It had occurred to her that the cat was probably venturing into Sunset Acres, attracted by the smells of food and humans. She would drive around to the entrance and ask for permission to set up her last trap inside the estate.
The guard took down Fay’s details and waved her through. She intended to speak to the matron in charge of the frail-care unit, Mrs. Sale. In Fay’s experience, she was the one who decided what happened around here.
“Miss Penrose!” Matron Sale seemed delighted to see her. “How have you been?”
“All good, thanks. More importantly, how have you been since the Rowan Court scandal?”
Matron’s smile faded. “It did us a lot of damage, I can’t deny that. People lost confidence in the services we offer here. Obviously, it helped that Rowan Court was arrested and is now awaiting trial. I hear he’s planning on pleading guilty in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence.”
“He’s going to jail for life no matter what he pleads,” said Fay.
Rowan Court had been a nurse in the frail-care center at the retirement estate. He had been introducing large doses of adrenalin into the drips of the elderly patients in order to induce heart attacks. His misdeeds and eventual arrest had been reported all over Britain and internationally, with the media dubbing him Nurse Death. Fay could imagine that the repercussions for the retirement estate must have been huge.
“Some people sold their units and left Sunset Acres when the scandal broke,” said Matron Sale. “But luckily we had no problem filling them again. I think people are starting to see that Rowan Court was just a bad apple who could have been operating anywhere. It wasn’t a failure on our part that he happened to go on his murder spree here. So, what can I do for you, Miss Penrose?”
“I hear there’s a stray cat that’s been spotted along Cliff Road. I’ve set up two traps for it, and I’d like to set up a third here on the estate if you’ll let me. Feral cats are often attracted to humans because that’s where the food is.”
“This wouldn’t be a black cat, by any chance?”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
“I think Laura Schuyler has been putting out food for it. You remember Laura? You should go and speak to her. She’ll be taking her afternoon constitutional around the lake right now.”
Fay remembered Laura. She was a sharp-minded and deeply engaged member of the community. Apparently, she was a cat-lover too.
Fay thanked Matron Sale and went outside to look for Laura. As predicted, she was taking a walk around the lake in the company of a group of elderly ladies. When she saw Fay, she excused herself and came over to chat.
“No serial killers this time, I hope,” she said with a smile.
“Not as far as I know. I wanted to ask about a stray black cat that’s been coming around the estate. I hear you’ve been putting out food for it.”
“No law against that, is there?”
“On the con
trary, it’s very kind of you. It’s just that I want to put out a trap for the cat and I was hoping you could tell me where the best place would be to position it.”
Laura’s eyes widened. “You mean like a bear trap? I couldn’t condone that, my dear.”
“No, nothing like that. I’m talking about a humane trap that keeps the kitty safe, warm and fed until morning.”
Laura looked dubious. “And what are you planning to do with the cat once you’ve trapped it? You’re not going to send it to some awful shelter, are you?”
“Definitely not. What we do with it depends on what kind of cat it is. Some feral cats are happier living wild, in which case we do a TNR, which stands for trap, neuter, release. But if the cat can be tamed and rehomed, then that will be our first option. If not, I’ll keep it myself. My grandmother’s house is enormous and stands on several acres of ground. It has been an established cat sanctuary for years.”
“I haven’t been able to get close to the cat, but I think it has a scrap of a collar around its neck. That tells me it belonged to someone once.”
“I’ve heard that too. If we can get it to trust humans again, we should be able to find a good home for it.”
Laura’s face was wistful. “It’s a beautiful cat. It’s not in good condition now, but you can see it would be lovely.”
“Then let’s do the best we can for it. If you show me where you’ve been feeding it, I’ll put out a trap there and we’ll do what we can to get kitty off the mean streets of Bluebell Island.”
To reassure Laura, Fay showed her exactly how the trap worked. They set it up near the back door of her cottage, which was where she had been putting out food and water.
“That’s so clever,” said Laura, admiring the slam-lock mechanism that would be triggered as soon as the cat stepped on a metal plate in front of the food. “Why, that won’t hurt him at all.”
The Cat That Got the Cream Page 4