“Energy bar?” said Kathleen, offered her a selection.
“No, thanks. I want to work up an appetite for my picnic lunch when we stop at the next site.”
Bluebell Island Adventures provided each member of the group with a packed lunch, which they had to carry themselves.
“Sure.” Kathleen sat on a rock next to Fay
“Maybe you can answer something for me,” said Fay. “You know Mavis? The one who works at the Royal Hotel?”
“Yes, of course I know Mavis. Everyone does.”
“She told me she was talking to Martin Caldwell on the night he died.”
“Mavis talks to everyone.”
“She says he told her that he found something while he was on the shipwreck hike. He said it proved he had been right all along. He was really gloating about it.”
Kathleen frowned. “Something he found on the hike?”
“That’s what he said. He said something about how it was no thanks to you.”
“Rude.”
“Morwen says he was a rude man generally.”
“Aye, that he was.”
“What could he have been talking about? What did he find?”
They glanced at Kathleen’s backpack where the pack of gold coins was hidden.
“No way,” said Kathleen.
“He couldn’t have been that stupid, could he?”
“They’re toys. I buy bags of them from the pound shop whenever I go into Torquay.”
“There’s no way he could have thought they were real.”
“They’re made of molded plastic and spray-painted gold. Look.” Kathleen turned her back on the children and opened the flap of her backpack to reveal a bag of gold coins inside. Fay could only nod. There was no way any adult could mistake them for the real thing. Even the small children on the hike knew they were fake.
“Then what?”
“Maybe we’ll figure it out at the third site,” said Kathleen.
She stood up and gathered the tour group, so they could continue the hike.
“This is our third and last shipwreck,” said Kathleen as they arrived at a picnic spot under a clump of pin oaks. “The Jonkheer was a Dutch barge that sailed straight into the rocks when the navigator mistook the Penhale lighthouse in the south for the Bluff lighthouse in the north. He thought he was sailing around the northernmost point of the island but ended up plowing straight into the western shore of it. This is the oldest of our visible wrecks and dates from nineteen-thirty-seven. As you can see, there’s not much left of it. The destructive powers of the sea are incredible.”
“Is that it lying down there on the rocks?” asked the American woman.
“Yes, it is. In a few years’ time there will be no trace of it left, but for now you can still see parts of the hull quite clearly, and some of the iron beams with their metal rivets. I have some pairs of binoculars here if you would like to take a closer look.”
The tour group passed the binoculars around, exclaiming every time they spotted something new. The path had taken them up onto the cliffs again and there was no way of getting closer.
“Could this have been where Mr. Caldwell found his mysterious object?” asked Fay as the group settled down under the trees to enjoy their picnic lunches.
I suppose it’s possible. But it’s hard to imagine what that could have been. We stopped here for lunch as we always do. He ate his food, and then we walked back to the bus.”
Fay subsided into thought.
There was a mystery here, but she didn’t have enough information to solve it yet. It was like trying to finish a jigsaw puzzle when some of the pieces were missing.
Somehow, the shipwreck hike had been central to Martin Caldwell’s death. It was related to why he had come to Bluebell Island and why he had died.
The answer was out there. Fay just couldn’t see it yet.
She opened the picnic lunch the tour company had provided and poked through it with interest. All that fresh air and exercise had whetted her appetite. There was a tub of coronation chicken and a fork to eat it with. Then there was a pack of ham and cheese sandwiches on sourdough bread, and a hard-boiled egg with seasoned salt for dipping. And finally, there were a couple of homemade chocolate truffles.
There had been vegetarian and vegan lunches too, but Fay had gone for the omnivore option.
She took photos of her picnic and made a note to upload them to Instagram later when she had Wi-Fi.
“Hey, Kath?”
Kathleen took a bite of her her sandwich. “What’s up?”
“Sorry to be obsessing about Mr. Caldwell, but I have another question. You said he wouldn’t stop talking on the ride over, but what about on the hike itself? What did he talk about?”
Kathleen rolled her eyes. “What didn’t he talk about? He didn’t stop for one minute. I kept having to shut him up so that I could speak to the whole tour group.”
“What did he want to talk about?”
“He was very interested in the story of the English captain and his Spanish Isabella. He wanted to know if they really made it to shore and lived out the rest of their days on Bluebell Island. He was very persistent, like I was supposed to know the answer to a four-hundred-year-old mystery. The whole point of a mystery is that no one knows the answer.”
“How much of the story of the HMS Coronation is true, do you think? You must have researched it.”
“There definitely was a Spanish galleon, known either as Pablo II or Pablo III. The HMS Coronation defeated it in battle and took on board one survivor. When they got close enough to shore, they communicated the story to the naval base on Bluebell Island using semaphore. That’s an old form of signaling using flags. We have no idea whether there really was any treasure on board or not.”
“That’s the crucial issue.”
“All we know is that the Coronation broke in half on the sand bar, and that all hands were reported drowned. And it’s true that numerous artefacts from that time period have washed up on the beach over the centuries. No silver ingots were found, but there have been at least three confirmed discoveries of gold coins.”
Fay gazed out to sea. “It sounds as though there could be something very valuable out there. No wonder people are interested.”
Chapter 13
It was early afternoon by the time Fay got back to the Cat’s Paw.
She was dying to see the kittens and also to reassure herself that everything was fine in her absence.
“The place is still standing, as you can see,” said Morwen as Fay appeared at the kitchen door. “We managed not to burn it to the ground.”
“I’m not that much of a control freak, am I?”
“Just a little bit.”
Fay stepped gratefully into the warm kitchen and closed the door behind her. The pale sunshine of that morning had given way to clouds and a chilly drizzle. Four of the five adult cats were stretched in front of the Aga, warming their bellies.
“Where’s Ivan?” asked Fay.
Morwen looked up from the scones she was buttering and nodded towards the window. “He’s out there. See if you can get him to come in. He won’t listen to me.”
Fay looked out the window. The huge Siberian was sitting on the pathway with his paws tucked under his chest. The rain fell steadily onto his shaggy coat without seeming to penetrate it at all. The droplets ran off him as though he were wearing a raincoat.
Fay opened the kitchen door, flinching as the cold air slammed against her face. “Ivan! Come here, boy. Here, kitty. Come inside where it’s warm.”
Ivan turned his head towards her and acknowledged her with a slow blink. But he stayed exactly where he was.
Fay pulled her head back in and closed the door.
“Crazy cat. He can come in through the cat flap if he changes his mind. How are the kittens?”
“Still asleep. They’ve had two feeds since you left, and they ate well both times.”
Fay peered into the nesting box. The kittens were s
leeping in a furry heap. “I see the surrogate moms are taking a break.” She looked at Smudge and Olive who were asleep next to Whisky and Sprite.
“They’ve been on duty all morning, but they were lured out by the prospect of a nap in front of the range.”
“I’ll do the next feed. What time is it due?”
“At three-thirty. The bottles are ready. They just need to be warmed.”
“Awesome. Thanks, Mor. What can I do to help before they wake up? I see you found the scones I made for the guests to have for tea this afternoon?”
“Yes. I’m serving them with strawberry preserves and clotted cream. I wanted to make your cheese scones as well.”
“I can do that.” Fay rolled up her sleeves and went to wash her hands. Then she grated cheese and mixed flour and butter. “I found a recipe for whipped cream cheese with herbs. I want to serve it with the cheese scones to see if it’s a success.”
As well as breakfast, the Cat’s Paw served afternoon tea between four and five in the residents’ lounge. The teatime treats were always homemade.
“How was the shipwreck hike?” Morwen asked as she and Fay worked side by side. “Did you get the information you were looking for?”
“I’m still confused about what Martin Caldwell was doing on Bluebell Island in the first place and what that had to do with his murder, but I have more pieces to add to the puzzle. Would you think I’m crazy if I told you he might have been here to look for pirate treasure?”
Morwen laughed. “He wouldn’t be the first, and probably not the last either. Mind you, most of the treasure hunters these days are five years old, not forty-five. Are you serious about this?”
“I don’t know. It sounds ridiculous, but Kathleen said he was fascinated by the story of the pirate treasure and what might have happened to it. And Mavis at the hotel says he kept gloating about something he had found on the hike, and how it proved that he was right all along.”
“That’s weird.”
“Right? The only things any of us found on the hike were the fake gold coins Kathleen scattered on the beach for the children to find.”
“Oh, I’ve heard about that. The kids love it. But that couldn’t have been what he was talking about.”
“No. But what else could it have been?” Fay glanced across the kitchen at the staircase that led up to the guest bedrooms.
“You think whatever he found might still be up there?”
“Let’s rather say that I’m wondering whether it ever was up there.”
“The police searched that room. Surely they would have found… whatever it was.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“It’s a large room,” said Morwen. “With plenty of nooks and crannies.”
“I guess Maggie has already cleaned in there, hasn’t she?”
“We did it together this morning. Maggie was squeamish about touching a dead man’s things, so she asked me to come and help her.”
“Did you find anything unusual?”
“Most of his stuff was already packed up. He thought he was leaving early to catch the ferry in the morning so all he had left out was his toothbrush, toothpaste and electric shaver. He was still wearing the clothes he’d had on that day. Apart from that, we didn’t find anything.”
Fay rolled out her scone dough until it was about an inch thick and cut it into large rounds. She placed these onto a greased baking tray, leaving enough room for them to rise.
“I presume you didn’t go through his luggage?”
“There was no reason to. We just took the stuff that was in the bathroom and put it into his luggage. I took it down to the luggage room and locked it in there. Sergeant Jones said they are trying to trace his next of kin so that someone can come and pick up his stuff.”
Fay opened an oven door and popped the scones in to bake.
“Did it seem as though Sergeant Jones and Constable Chegwin searched his luggage?”
“I think they poked around a little but only superficially.”
“Perhaps I’ll also take a…”
Fay was interrupted by squeaky sounds emerging from the nesting box. Olive and Smudge came to full alert. They rushed to the box and jumped inside to start licking and fussing over the babies. Fay warmed the bottles.
“Let’s see how my little girl is doing.” She reached into the box and pulled out the kitten she had brought back to life the day before. She was still the smallest of the four but was now visibly plumper. She seemed just as lively as her siblings.
“Look how strongly she’s sucking!” Fay was delighted. “I can even see an improvement since this morning.”
“She’s getting stronger all the time,” said Morwen. Then she shook her head. “Or he. They still haven’t been sexed properly.”
“I’ll call Dr. Trenowyth and ask if he will pop by the house to visit them. He can tell us what sex they are and check them for parasites or anything that might infect the other cats.”
Morwen smirked. “For you, I’m sure he’ll be happy to make a house call.”
Fay sighed. “Oh, stop. He must be over his crush by now. I met him in the street the other day and he said hello quite calmly.”
The local vet seemed harmless enough but had unfortunately fallen in love at first sight with Fay. This would have been fine if she had returned his affections, but there was no chemistry between them. She could see that he was good-looking. He was competent at his job. He was single and in his thirties. But when she looked at him, her heart failed to beat even a little bit faster.
His eyes were a mild sky-blue that entirely failed to make her pulses race.
Fay often thought how convenient it would be if she liked Dr. Trenowyth half as much as he liked her. But something was missing – that mysterious X-Factor that made you forget what you were saying in mid-sentence and sent you off into a daydream when you were supposed to be working.
Now, if he’d had brown eyes so dark that they appeared black under a pair of ferociously slanting eyebrows with a blade of a nose and a firm chin, she might have felt differently.
Fay realized with a start that the bottle was empty, and the kitten was turning her muzzle away, wanting to rejoin her siblings.
She put her back in the box and picked up another kitten. It had occurred to her that the face she had been picturing in her daydream belonged to Dr. David Dyer. And now she was embarrassed. Mentally chiding herself for being ridiculous, she fed the remaining three kittens and put them in the nesting box to wriggle around and use up their excess energy. Smudge and Olive were in full mommy mode – licking the babies to stimulate their digestive systems and build muscle tone in their tiny bodies.
The oven-timer buzzed. Fay took out her scones and left them to cool on a rack. She put a block of cream cheese into the food processor and added some cream to make it lighter. Then she chopped flat-leaf parsley and oregano and added that to the blender too. She whipped the cream cheese into a light mousse that could be spread on the cheese scones with delicious effect.
“Are you okay on your own now?” she asked Morwen. “I should get on with some research in my office.”
Morwen made shooing motions with her hands. “I’m perfectly fine. You run along now. Thanks for your help with the tea.”
“Shall I take the kittens upstairs?”
“No need. They are nice and snug here in front of the range. They’ll be fine now for another few hours.”
Fay was deep in thought as she went up to her office. She couldn’t wait to see what the internet had to say about Mr. Martin Caldwell. Thanks to Mavis, she was almost sure that he came from Birmingham. That should narrow things down quite a bit. She hadn’t spoken to him herself, but she had walked past the reception desk while Morwen was checking him in. He had looked up and stared straight into her face. Fay was confident she would recognize him again if she saw a photograph.
She fired up her laptop and began searching through Google and various social media sites for a Martin
Caldwell who lived in Birmingham. She got two hits almost immediately. One was a much older man who appeared to have served in the Falklands War and liked to post pictures of his grandchildren on Facebook.
The other had no photograph anywhere except Linked In.
Fay clicked on his Linked In profile and held her breath while it loaded.
“There you are,” she said as his face appeared. “Hello, Mr. Caldwell.”
Chapter 14
The face on the computer screen was clearly recognizable as the man Fay had seen checking into the Cat’s Paw just a few days earlier.
It was a flattering photo. It looked as though it had been taken about five years and five pounds ago. But Fay was less interested in his appearance than his job description. He called himself a funds manager and investment advisor.
It was one of those vague job titles that people who worked in finance tended to have. When she had lived in New York City, Fay’s only contact with people like that had been when they broke the law, which happened more often than people realized. Handling other people’s money tended to bring out the worst in so-called ‘investment advisors.’ White collar crime followed them around like a bad smell.
Fay stared into the eyes of the late Martin Caldwell and wondered which side of the honesty line he had fallen onto. Judging by the introduction to his profile, he could have gone either way.
I am a full-service investment consultant offering comprehensive financial planning for the upwardly mobile professional.
I will show you how to protect your wealth and take the guesswork out of investing. My clients learn to coordinate their assets in order to fund the lifestyle they desire, both now and in the future.
To accomplish this, I employ a two-pronged strategy - a combination of long-term conservative investment strategies and short-term, high-yield investment opportunities. It is the latter that sets our service apart from our competitors.
The Cat's Paw Cozy Mysteries Page 8