Prudence went to flick the light switch to light the stairs.
“We don’t need that today,” Gerry said. “Besides, it wasn’t working when Doug and I —”
Prudence flicked. The wall sconce bulb glowed.
Gerry’s jaw dropped. “Every time it’s one or the other. Working. Not working. Working. Not working. Now working.”
Prudence shrugged and flicked the switch off. “Upstairs first?” Upstairs, all was as it should have been. Gerry ran the taps in the bathroom. “Not frozen yet,” she called cheerily.
“Wait. It’s not January yet.”
“Tomorrow it is,” Gerry replied, “and it’s getting colder. I promised to look in on Mr. Parminter tonight. Toast the New Year in. Want to come?”
They walked downstairs. “I think I will. Another evening in with Charlie and Rita will have me going bonkers. Thank you. I’ll phone them. And don’t worry about changing bedrooms. As long as the cats are with me, I don’t mind sleeping in Maggie’s bed.”
As they checked the many windows of the main floor, Gerry asked, “Has Maggie ever, you know, communicated?”
“It’s funny. She never has.”
They entered the kitchen. “Oh, look at that.” Gerry crossed to the sink, pulled the plug and ran fresh water on the dustpan and brush. “I wonder if the basement will still smell winey.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t tell you? Well, when we got here late Sunday night, ashes were still warm in the living room fireplace and, in the basement, the metal wine rack had been knocked over. We had to clean up the glass. Maybe I should wash the floor down there today.”
Prudence wasn’t thinking of floors. “And you didn’t call the police?”
“Just kids, Prudence. It’s not like the police are going to swarm the place looking for DNA and fingerprints.”
“But don’t you want to know how they got in, Gerry? Cathy will.”
Gerry spoke slowly. “I never thought of that.” She rested the pan and brush in the dish rack, then caught Prudence’s look of disapproval. “What? They’re clean. Let’s check the basement. There’s only one window and that’s near the armoire where Bob appeared. Bob. We forgot about him.” She opened the basement door, half-expecting him to shoot into the kitchen.
They stood at the top of the stairs. A smell of stale wine wafted upwards. “Ick,” said Prudence. “I’ll get a pail and mop.”
“In the hall cupboard under the stairs,” Gerry called. She descended a couple of stairs and heard Prudence running water in the kitchen. Wine had also splattered the bottom steps. They were painted, so perhaps hadn’t stained. Not that it mattered. She surveyed the decrepit basement with a shudder. Prudence joined her.
Gerry took the wet mop. “I guess Cathy has so much to do keeping the part of the house people see nice, she’s had to let the basement slide.” She wiped the stairs from above, then gingerly stepped down onto the wet surface.
“You’re getting your socks wet,” cautioned Prudence.
“They’re old ones.” Gerry swabbed the floor until the odour dissipated.
“How about the rack shelves?” Prudence suggested.
“Mucky.”
“I’ll get a rag.” Prudence noiselessly padded back up to the kitchen, returning with a faded tea towel.
Gerry used it to dry the stairs. She bowed before Prudence with a flourish and, in an exaggerated British accent, said, “Modom.”
Prudence stepped down onto the clean stairs. Gerry moistened the cloth and wiped the sticky rack while Prudence cautiously looked around. “I don’t see Bob,” she said.
“Check inside that armoire under the window.”
Prudence walked slowly to the armoire and opened its bottom doors. Then she got down on her knees. “I checked it last time, Gerry. It’s solid wood at the back. He can’t have come through here. He was just hiding in it the other time.”
Gerry joined her on her knees. “Oh. That’s disappointing. Maybe he’s just fooling around in the tunnel today. Must be lots of hibernating mice and voles underground in winter. Do mice hibernate?”
This question was fated never to be answered, as at that moment they heard a muffled noise. “Over there.” Gerry pointed to a corner adjacent to the window where they knelt. They rose and walked to a door, rounded at the top, ajar just the width of a cat.
“I bet I know what this is,” Prudence said.
“What?”
“A cold room. For potatoes and such.” She opened the door. A smell of earth met them. They both looked down. Bob sat, staring at the cement floor, where a beetle crouched, immobile. As they watched, the cat batted it gently with one paw. The beetle hopped once, then froze.
Gerry scooped her cat up. “The bug doesn’t appreciate your sense of humour, Bob.”
Bob struggled to escape. Prudence found an empty jar and inverted it over the beetle. Bob, released, resumed the interrogation, but now through glass.
The room was quite long, but narrow. It contained, as Prudence had guessed, sacks of potatoes, carrots, turnips, onions and beets, as well as shelves loaded with Cathy’s preserves. “She’s almost out of marmalade,” Gerry observed.
“You make it in January,” her companion replied.
Gerry stopped in her tracks, astonished. “Why?”
“Because that’s when the bitter oranges you need are imported.”
“Oh.” Gerry put all thought of Cathy’s excellent marmalade out of her mind. “So, Bob, where’s your bolt hole? Eek!” She’d brushed against something hanging from the ceiling.
Prudence, busy flashing the light around the floor of the cold room, looked up. “Garlic,” she said, adding, “Look at this.”
The stone foundation had at one time been secured with mortar, but the latter had crumbled and loosened with the years. Some animal, or animals, had poked its way through a gap into Cathy’s cold room. The gap was low down and toward the back of the room and might not be seen by a middle-aged person relying on the light cast by the single low-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling. Prudence held her hand in front of the hole. “No draft.”
“So it doesn’t lead outside.” Gerry took the flashlight and let the light play over the end wall of the room. “See how the roof gets lower towards this wall? Would the original room have had a dirt wall or stone like this one?”
“Originally? Probably no wall. They would have had a trapdoor in the floor and a ladder. We’re just below the kitchen. But this is a fancy house for rich people. They might have walled their cold storage.”
“Look. This mortar that’s falling away. What if, behind these stones, there used to be a passageway under the lawn, linking Fieldcrest with The Maples?”
Prudence sniffed. “Unlikely. Why ever would they have bothered with one? They weren’t smuggling or hiding priests or royalty on the run. They left those activities behind in the old country. No slaves were escaping around here, either. The people were trading, farming.”
“Maybe they were eccentric and thought it was fun; or paranoid, needed to feel they could escape their houses.”
Prudence looked doubtful. “You’d have to study the history of the area since the two houses were built and see if there was any reason to be afraid. There are bullet holes in a church’s walls the other side of the lake, but that was —”
“Bullet holes,” Gerry interrupted, thoughtfully, then, “Where’s Bob?”
“Well, he didn’t go in the hole. We’ve been staring at it the whole time.”
They left the cold room, first releasing the beetle, closed its door, and moved around to the other corners of the basement, calling for the cat.
“You don’t suppose there’s another way for him to get out, do you?” Gerry sounded anxious.
“No, I don’t,” snapped Prudence, “but this place is in such a state of disrepair
, I wouldn’t be surprised to see half a dozen holes in the walls, bursting with groundhogs, skunks and rabbits.”
“I don’t want to meet any more skunks,” said Gerry. “Once was quite — wait. Is that him?” She shone her light in the far corner of the room, was in time to see a black shadow slip behind a big old bureau. “Bob, I —” She rounded the corner and looked behind the bureau. “Oh, my God! Prudence! Quick!”
Later that afternoon, a still tearful Gerry and a more than usually thin-lipped Prudence ate pink marshmallow squares and drank strong sweet tea sitting in rocking chairs near the fire. Bob dozed on the hearth rug. The kittens played with a catnip mouse someone had dropped into their box. Mother was taking a break crunching kibble in the kitchen.
Gerry mopped her eyes. “It’s not even that I knew her, just to nod to, you know?”
Prudence nodded. “She was younger than me and had children. We never clicked.”
“I mean, until last weekend, I never even exchanged more than ‘Hello, how are you?’ with her.” She sobbed.
“It’s shock,” Prudence reassured her, patting her on the back. “You feel it more when you’re young, but you get over it sooner.”
“You mean like Aunt Maggie’s death? Oh, but Prudence, that was different. You knew her well and you — you found the body. Oh!”
Prudence nodded. “Exactly. You found it this time. Or Bob did.”
“Bob was more interested in the water drips coming from the pipe to the sump pit.” Gerry shuddered reliving the scene so recently played out. Bob sitting next to the sump pit, feinting at drops of water, the small inflow pipe set in a slimy wall, the woman face downward at the edge of the pit, one hand trailing on the water in it.
Touching the body (reluctantly); Prudence gently turning it over to confirm life was extinct; seeing the battered but still recognizable face of Betty Parsley. Both of them stumbling away to the kitchen, where Prudence made the call. Gerry going back to the basement to get Bob. Closing the basement door and sitting in Cathy’s cold living room to wait for the police.
Then all of that. The questions. The information given. The police officer in charge’s assessing looks, taking in Gerry’s shock, Prudence’s stern resignation, the absence of any signs of struggle on their hands or clothes, though they were both a bit grimy at the pants’ knees. Bob sat on Gerry’s lap patiently, though every time the double doors of the living room opened or closed, or someone went in or out the front door, his ears and tail twitched with curiosity.
Finally, the body was taken away. The police officer asked for Gerry’s key to Cathy’s house. They were free to go. There would be more questions tomorrow.
Numbly, the women put on their coats and boots. Gerry tucked Bob, protesting, inside her coat with his quizzical face peeking out, and they slowly walked back to The Maples.
Prudence phoned her neighbours to tell them she was sleeping at Gerry’s and would return the next day.
“You didn’t mention Betty?” Gerry asked drearily.
“Of course not.” Prudence sounded indignant. “What if Phil or one of the children hasn’t yet been notified? I won’t tell anyone until it’s general knowledge. Then — you’ll see — we’ll be pestered with ‘well-wishers’ wanting to know all about it.”
“Some of them really will be well-wishers,” Gerry said humbly. “Doug, Andrew. I wish Bea was here. And Cece. Oh my! Do you think the police will tell Cathy?”
“Bound to. Perhaps she’ll cut her trip short.” Prudence rose. “Want more tea? No? I’ll do the dishes. Good squares, by the way. Just like Mother used to make.”
The man materialized in front of the living room fireplace. Black and white kittens were fast asleep in a box, curled into a large marmalade cat’s side. She opened her eyes.
The man looked at the objects on the mantel. One provoked no more than a look of resignation, but another brought a tender smile to his diaphanous face. He looked around the room helplessly, as if wondering why he was there.
She had brought him, as she always would. He drifted from the living room into the dining room, in neither of which he’d ever been welcomed; looked at the paintings on the walls.
He barely noticed the multitude of cats, sleeping or not, each on its own chair; a big black one with four white paws, sprawled in the middle of the massive table, blinked at him. The man looked for her portrait.
He found it at last in a smaller room next to the larger. There she was, her sweet expression, those loving eyes. Sybil.
He stared at it for a long time. Well, this was some compensation for being disturbed in his long rest under the woodshed. He wafted into the hallway with its large staircase and stiffened, if smoke could be said to stiffen.
If he’d had any moisture in his wispy mouth, he would have spat it at the large portrait that faced him. Medium brown hair, medium brown eyes, the slight jowls that told of middle-class comfortable living. An old man when he’d married her, yet he’d lived the longest. Of them all.
He tore himself away from the portrait. Past. It was all in the past. And they were at rest.
But he was not. How could he sleep when she was so near? But he couldn’t get to her. Not in there. Not unless he was invited. He sighed and a grey cloud condensed in front of him.
He let himself rise to the second floor, not noticing the black and white cat following. His gaze played from one family portrait to another. The old man’s descendants, no doubt.
He stopped and returned to one of the paintings. The image of a young girl awoke something in his memory. Surely that was how his mother used to look, long ago, when he was a small boy.
A thin face, dark hair and dark eyes, a shy smile. His gentle mother, before life coarsened, toughened her. But his mother’s portrait would hardly be likely to be gracing the walls of the Coneybear home. Who could it be? The girl also had a look of Sybil. Her daughter?
He lost interest and returned downstairs to the room with the dying fire. He began to stretch out his hands to its warmth, then grimaced. It was no use to him now. As if to mock him, the black and white cat stretched and yawned, then curled up on the braided rug, as close to the fireplace as it could get.
The man gave a sigh of infinite weariness and let himself go. The kittens in the box mewed in their sleep. The marmalade cat closed her eyes as he faded from her sight.
PART 3
OLD FRIENDS
11
Gerry, feeling a bit sick to her stomach — and not just because of the seven pink marshmallow squares she’d eaten — went upstairs to lie down. No cats followed her, she thought, but as she went to close her door, Lightning slithered in.
Gerry knew better than to pick her up. She got wearily into bed and the little calico jumped up and settled by her feet.
Where her predecessor, Marigold, had been a long-hair, Lightning’s fur was short. Where Marigold had been a white cat with clearly defined large patches of beigey-orange and black, mostly on her back and sides, Lightning was mostly black, with muted orange zigzags throughout her coat, and a striking orange blaze across her nose.
And where Marigold had had a clear sense of her superiority — after all, she was a calico — and position as First Cat, Lightning was conflicted. She both craved Gerry’s affection and rejected it. Gerry had learned that as long as she let the cat come to her, there was peace between them.
She felt rather than heard the faint purring coming from the end of the bed. The room darkened as the winter sun set, and then she slept.
She slowly came to consciousness. She was deliciously warm. Lightning, having crept up the bed and curled into her side as she slept, immediately jumped off the bed. Apparently, she was willing only to trust a sleeping Gerry, not an awake one.
Gerry yawned and sat up. Now for a nice, relaxing evening at home. Then she remembered. A death. A violent one, by the looks of it.
She put her r
obe on over the clothes she’d slept in and flumped downstairs. Prudence must also have gone for a nap. “I need a coffee,” Gerry told Bob, who was stretching on the hearth rug, raking it with his claws.
The phone rang. She picked it up and got the cream from the fridge. “Oh, Mr. Parminter. I’m so sorry. Yes. I fell asleep. No. No. I’ll come over. May Prudence come as well? Yes. I got some wine. All right. All right. Bye.” She hung up. “Oh, rats. Well, not before my coffee.” Prudence appeared, bleary-eyed. “Did the phone wake you?” When she nodded, Gerry poured her a cup of coffee. “Here. Want to come over to Mr. Parminter’s? Bring in the New Year?”
“Why not?” Prudence weakly replied. “We’ll keep each other company. Should we bring some food?”
“No. He says he’s got cheese and crackers and nuts. I bought a bottle of Prosecco. Cheap and fizzy. Just let me splash my face with cold water.”
They picked their way carefully along the edge of the road. A few cars, no doubt full of revellers, passed them.
Mr. Parminter let them in, his face wreathed in smiles. “How very nice of you to come spend your New Year’s Eve, your Silvester, with me. Drop your coats there. Come through. Come through. We’re in here.”
Here was a large living room with a sofa and chairs drawn up to a glowing electric fire. Gerry had to admire its efficiency, and, of course, there was no way Mr. Parminter could be expected to haul wood inside or, in fact, even kneel to lay a fire.
In his nineties, and still able to make short drives in his ancient Toyota Camry (“They have to send to California, you know, when she needs spare parts.”), he was in good health, but frail.
Now he settled himself in one of the chairs, gesturing to the low table in front of the sofa. “Help yourselves, please. I will have a morsel of Oka, Gerry, if you will prepare it for me.”
The Cat Vanishes Page 10