She sighed and returned to the tree. How amazing that all these people had once lived, some of them in this house, all the way back to —
She froze, looking at the names at the top left-hand corner of the tree, back another generation from the one she’d been considering. The original couple: John Coneybear and Sybil Muxworthy. John: 1810 to 1893. Sybil: 1837 to 1865. Coneybear and Muxworthy. Two people, whose names had caused an uproar, at least in Mrs. Smith’s head, as she communicated with a restless spirit.
“Look at this, cats!” None of them did. Gerry got up and stood in front of the cold fireplace, holding the tree. “Margaret Coneybear: 1855 to 1945 — the only surviving child of John and Sybil, besides my great-grandfather Albert. Somebody who’s alive now might remember her. Dad and Uncle Geoff would have. I remember Dad speaking about Great Aunt Margie and how funny she was. Married a Petherbridge who died young, leaving her with her son Jonas. I bet she lived here. How can I find out? I need someone really old. Drat the Coneybears, dying in their fifties. (Sorry, Dad. Sorry, Aunt Maggie.)”
Gerry bent over and tickled the kittens, who were waking at the sound of her voice, while Mother slept on, curled half on her back with her paws over her head. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I take your point, Mother. It is getting late.” She leaned on the mantel and gasped. “Oh, no! I’ve still got the shed guy’s finger bone. At least I think it’s a finger bone. I wonder if the medical people have noticed.”
She thought, should I return it? Does it matter? And more soberly, was he a relative? Surely not. A relative would have been noticed if missing, accounted for. A servant? A stranger? A passerby who happened to die at the house or in the street?
As her brain ran riot with possibilities, she hardly noticed as she replaced the bone and picked up the cookie tin. She ate absent-mindedly until her searching hand discovered the tin’s emptiness. “Aw, now I’m sad,” she moaned, and went foraging for real food in the kitchen.
By now, it was after midnight. She munched a piece of cold meat pie with chutney, then another. Eating made her sleepy. When she got upstairs, Bob and Lightning were already stretched (Bob) or curled (Lightning) on her bed. She peeked into Aunt Maggie’s room. The Honour Guard was in place. All was well. Surprisingly, she fell quickly asleep.
A freezing cold draft coming through her bedroom door (always left ajar so the cats could come and go while she slept) woke her. The little light on the bedroom’s portable heater still glowed, so the power was on. The furnace? The drop in temperature as she exited the bedroom confirmed her guess. Well, there was no way she was going to try to fix the problem herself in the dark early morning hours. The furnace was located in a kind of lean-to built onto one side of the back porch and could only be accessed by going outside.
She went downstairs where the grandfather clock in the foyer told her it was six-thirty. “Fair enough,” she said. “I’ve had enough sleep.” She went back upstairs to get dressed. She unplugged both the heater from her room and the one from Aunt Maggie’s. “Sorry, cats.” The members of the Honour Guard stretched and one by one hopped off their dead owner’s bed. Gerry plugged one heater into the upstairs bathroom. Then, trailing cats, she made her way downstairs and placed the other one under the living room table.
“Brrr,” she said and exhaled. “Can’t see my breath, so hopefully no pipes have frozen.” She quickly made a fire: newspapers twisted then knotted as her father had shown her, twigs gathered from the property, and kindling split off logs. She put on the kettle and fed the ravenous mob.
As she brought in wood from the back porch, she remembered she and Prudence would be checking the hole under the floor in the shed. And I should give Cathy’s a quick look. There would be no time for the family tree. She put it away in the table drawer.
Time to get Prudence. She turned the keys in the car’s ignition. Nothing. Again. Again nothing. She noticed the lights were switched on. She groaned and phoned Prudence’s neighbour.
The wife, Rita, answered. “Yes?” Gerry explained the problem. Without covering the speaker, Rita yelled, “Charlie!” Gerry jumped.
“What?” was Charlie’s answering bellow from elsewhere in the house.
“Ya gotta drive Pru,” Rita yelled again.
“She’s in the shower.”
“Not get her, drive her. To work. And bring yer cables. Sounds like the young miss needs a jump start.”
“What?”
“They’ll be there soon,” snapped Rita and hung up.
Poor Prudence! thought Gerry. Quite a contrast to her normal quiet home life. While waiting, she made a piece of toast. She was shovelling walkways when Charlie and Prudence arrived.
Charlie affixed the jumper cables and Gerry’s car started right up. “Got to keep her running for twenty minutes,” he shouted. “Recharges the battery.”
“Groceries?” suggested Prudence. “I have a list.”
“Thank you very much,” Gerry said to Charlie before he drove off.
At the store, Gerry was one of its first customers of the day. She looked at the items on Prudence’s list. Must be in the baking aisle. She added a box of cat litter to her own mundane collection of milk, eggs, ham, cheese and bread. She bought a frozen quiche and another meat pie, then went to the vegetable department. She looked around rather cluelessly, then got a bag of carrots and a broccoli. “Different colours are good,” she muttered. “I read that somewhere, I think.”
“Good thing you came early. We’ll be swamped later,” growled the middle-aged cashier. When Gerry looked blank, the woman added, “You know: New Year’s Eve?”
Back home, Prudence was vacuuming. Gerry unpacked and put away the items, arranging those on Prudence’s list on the counter. Currants and dried apricots seemed reminiscent of the now boring fruitcake and Gerry sighed. The allspice was a mystery. She opened the package and sniffed. Mild, like nutmeg. Disappointing. The almond extract in its tiny bottle smelled delightful. She brightened as she looked at the shortening. That might mean pastry. The four little bottles of food colouring were the real mystery, as was the package of unflavoured gelatin. She’d never cooked or baked with either of those before.
The drone of the vacuum cleaner stopped and Gerry went through to find Prudence in the dining room, removing cats from chairs and replacing hairy towels with clean ones.
Of all the rooms in Aunt Maggie’s house, the formal dining room was the one Gerry least warmed to. The huge heavy mahogany table, which could seat fourteen, was so wide one couldn’t reach the middle of it without standing up. Well, Gerry couldn’t. She had to admit it made a good winter work area with her various art projects scattered about its surface. The chairs, with lightly upholstered seats and straight backs, were comfortable, and the chandelier elegant, but there was something dark about the room, despite the windows in the lake and roadside walls.
The massive marble fireplace was surmounted by a convex mirror that bulged and distorted the room’s reflection. Gerry remembered, as a child, dragging a chair over to the mirror, and standing at its level, making the most dreadful faces into it. It creeped her out a bit, and she wondered why someone had hung it there, rather than a simple flat mirror. She supposed she could replace it. Heavy sideboards and dark ancestral portraits completed the furnishings. Gerry shivered.
Prudence noticed. “It should warm up in here soon. I changed the furnace fuse. Let me show you.”
They put on coats and boots and walked outside along the back of the house. Prudence had shovelled a skinny path around the porch foundation to its far side. There, she produced a key and unlocked the door.
They stepped into the miserable alcove inhabited by the furnace. Gerry had been assured that it was not unusual to situate a new (relatively new, anyway) oil furnace outside a basementless old house, but she still found it bizarre.
Prudence showed her the little fuse box just for the furnace. “I u
sed up the last fuses so I’ll put them on the next grocery list. Get them at the hardware.”
They trooped back into the house and returned to the dining room where Gerry sat on a clean towelled chair and asked, “What’s the food dye for, Prudence?”
Prudence continued replacing fresh towels for used ones. “Thank you, Min-Min. Sorry, Mouse. We just need the red dye today.” The cats, used to the routine and used to Prudence, mostly went limp when she lifted them up and resettled placidly on their chairs, maybe grooming a bit first. The three grey tigers — Winston, Franklin and Joe — chose the occasion to stalk the newest member of their gang, Ronald, the little white with the thin black moustache, all four becoming a ball of joyous energy that mock-fought its way out of the room.
Prudence fumbled in the pocket of her apron. “Here’s the recipe. It’s one of my mother’s. Squares. You can make the base this morning if you want.”
Gerry took the tattered and stained little piece of paper. Mrs. Catford, Prudence’s mother, must have clipped it out of a magazine fifty or more years ago. Marshmallow Squares, Gerry read. But Prudence hadn’t put marshmallows on the list.
Gerry began to prepare what she quickly recognized was a cookie base. She pressed it into a square pan and put it to bake. The soothing smell of buttery, sugary shortbread soon filled the kitchen and adjacent living room.
She made a pot of tea and told Prudence to take a break. The house was warmer as the two women sat in front of the fire.
“They’ve grown since I was here.” Prudence tickled the tummy of one of the kittens.
“Do you want one?” Gerry absently asked.
“I get enough cats coming here three times a week,” was the reply.
Gerry refrained from asking if Prudence wasn’t ever lonely and instead remarked, “That big dining room is wasted space. I don’t need such a huge table taking up the whole room.”
“You wouldn’t get rid of it?” Prudence sounded shocked.
“It’s hideous. So dark and heavy, and the sideboards and chairs: they’re not my style. I’m uncomfortable working in there.”
“I doubt if any of the house is your ‘style’,” Prudence replied tartly, “but your aunt left it to you to maintain the family heritage.”
“I suppose once the Borduas sells, I could insulate the place and use the bamboo room full time.”
“That’s a very good idea,” said a relieved-sounding Prudence. “When’s the auction?”
“They said sometime in the spring. Oh well, I can tough it out for one winter, I guess. Though I miss the bamboo room.”
“It was Maggie’s favourite as well,” Prudence said softly. “She was so happy in spring, when she could open all the windows and take possession of it again. Well,” she said briskly, “those cat towels won’t wash themselves. Do you think you can carry on with the baking?”
Gerry stood up. “Of course.” This was progress. Prudence leaving her to bake alone and using a treasured family recipe.
The shortbread base was done. Gerry put water in a pot and added the gelatin. She measured out the next few ingredients and stirred the mixture on the stove, then added the icing sugar and left it to cool.
She made her ham and cheese sandwich and ate it, then poked the mixture with a finger. It was cool. Feeling somewhat nervous, she got out the electric beater. This was where the magic was supposed to happen. She beat until the mixture was foamy, then added the almond extract and drops of red food colouring and beat again. When the mixture was stiff, she poured it onto the shortbread.
The artist in her loved the soft pink colour. Prudence arrived, sandwich in hand. “Oh, Prudence, isn’t it pretty? If you wanted to make a display, you could tint another batch pale green, and another pale blue, and arrange them together. It would look professional!”
“Why don’t you do that next time you teach your art class or have a tea party? You can fold other ingredients in like chopped candied cherries or coconut, or put sliced almonds on top.”
“No, I like how it looks, just all pink and shiny.”
“Well, that shine disappears. It gets a thin crust, but it’s still pretty.” A small smile appeared on Prudence’s face. “You can keep the recipe. I know it by heart.”
Gerry blinked. Some line has been crossed when Prudence gave her this scrap of browning paper. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I will treasure it,” and put it away in the drawer where Aunt Maggie’s recipes lay in a folder as yet to be explored.
10
“Well,” said Gerry, “we can’t put it off any longer.”
“I suppose not,” agreed Prudence slowly. “Better to go in the daylight than after dark.”
“Right.”
After lunch they’d brought wood from the shed to the back porch, nervously looking at the hole with every trip. The porch was packed with wood and they stood together in the shed, gazing down. Bob, who Gerry had purposely brought outside, was perversely hunting among the bits of furniture and tools, about as far from the hole as possible.
Gerry called him; then, that failing, crawled behind a worm-hole-filled bureau and caught him. “Come on, Bob. I’ll come with you.” She handed him to Prudence and lowered herself into the hole.
Where the bones had lain, the police had dug the earth to a depth of a few inches. Gerry said, “Oh, this is what he likes — fresh soil. I’ll watch where I go. Hand him down.”
Prudence handed her Bob and the large flashlight from Gerry’s car. Gerry crouched and shone the light. “Well, it’s a crawlspace, that’s for sure. I’m heading in the direction of the road.”
Prudence walked carefully towards the front of the shed as Gerry kept up a running commentary from below. “There’s old rotten lumber somebody forgot about. Quite a few stones. Ow. I kneeled on one. No, Bob, no! Not in my face! Oh, gross.”
“What?”
“He pooped, then kicked it at me.”
Prudence laughed.
“Okay.” Gerry thumped the floor above her head. “I’m here. That’s as far as I can go.”
Prudence stepped into the front portion of the shed and called, “I’m in the little potting room. Is the foundation blocking you from going any further?”
“Yes. No! Prudence, Bob’s gone through! There’s a little door, about two feet high, rotted away enough for him to fit!” There was silence except for the sound of Gerry grunting. “I can’t get it to open. No.” The sound of splintering wood. “Gosh, it’s in bits. I’m going on.”
“Gerry, maybe I —”
Gerry’s voice, muffled, interrupted her. “It’s no good. Earth has fallen. It’s blocked. But Bob, or another animal, I suppose, has burrowed through the dirt. It goes down. But it’s tiny. I’m coming back.”
Prudence walked quickly back to the hole in the floor and waited impatiently for Gerry to reappear. It was a pretty grimy face that showed a moment later.
“My goodness, Prudence, there used to be a secret way out of the shed under the road! It could come out anywhere. Maybe in Cathy’s house!”
“But we know it does, Gerry. Bob keeps popping up over there.”
“Oh,” a disappointed Gerry agreed. “But isn’t it exciting that someone, some human, made it, and not just a groundhog followed by a cat?”
“Yes, that is interesting,” Prudence grudgingly admitted. “I wonder if it’s something to do with the bones. Or just a coincidence. Anyway, we better bring the flashlight in case we find the tunnel’s other entrance.” They walked the short distance along the road towards Cathy’s driveway. “How was the curling?”
“Uh, not great. Doug’s teammates were there. Well, two of them were away but the other two played with us. Briefly. I didn’t even get to roll the rock down the ice.”
“Curl the stone down the sheet,” Prudence corrected.
“You curl?”
“Don’t s
ound so surprised. I may have curled. In the past. Who’s on Doug’s team?”
“I met Rick, who seems very possessive of Doug or the team or something. And Steve, who seems okay. Jimmy and Ralph were away. That’s why Doug thought it would be okay to bring me. Apparently, you can’t have a practice with two-fifths of the team missing.”
Prudence murmured, “Rick Catford and Steve Parsley.”
“Oh, that explains why I saw Steve talking to Betty Parsley at church. Relatives. She seemed a bit upset with him.”
Prudence sniffed. “Relatives? Betty’s only a Parsley by marriage. She comes from Puckton.”
“You don’t like her, Prudence?”
Prudence paused by the stone crypt in its lonely position by the road at the edge of a field. “There’s something — oh, I don’t know. She’s worked at the inn and raised all those kids to be hard workers too. Now the twins are another story.”
“Twins?”
“Steve and Ralph Parsley. Second cousins to Betty’s husband Phil. Or is it third cousins? Steve’s all right, I guess. But Ralph. In and out of trouble since he could walk.”
Gerry felt uneasy. “What kind of trouble?”
“Oh, burning down the farmer’s hay barn, for one. When he was little, he was caught drowning kittens in a bucket. Now he’s older, he graduated to house breaking and car theft.”
“You mean he’s been to prison?” squealed Gerry.
“Some.” They resumed walking.
“But, he’s on Doug’s team!”
“You can bet he’s the spare. Doug wouldn’t rely on Ralph Parsley for much. Probably he’s doing Steve a favour.”
“Poor Steve,” Gerry murmured, her heart softening.
“Liked him, did you? You got the key?”
They stomped their snowy boots on the veranda and went inside. “I’m not coming here again in the dark,” commented Gerry, “but this isn’t so bad.” The house in the afternoon was just a big old empty house. Creaking floors and the distant crash of the furnace coming on were not alarming.
The Cat Vanishes Page 9