The Cat's Paw Cozy Mysteries

by Fiona Snyckers

  They rang the doorbell of the Saville home. Fay could see the top of Bertha’s head approaching through the fan-light.

  “Can I help you?” Her eyes were full of suspicion as she popped her head around the door. “Oh, it’s you, Miss Penrose. And Dr. Dyer too. Goodness me.”

  “Sorry to trouble you in the evening, Miss Maidstone,” said David. “I have a few questions about the state of Mrs. Saville’s health in the weeks before she died. May we come in?”

  “Of course.” She stood back and opened the door. “If I’d known you was coming, Doctor, I’d have tidied up a bit.”

  “Everything looks immaculate, thank you. Please don’t trouble yourself.”

  “Nothing is too much trouble for you, Doctor. I’ll make us some tea now, shall I?”

  She bustled off to the kitchen without waiting for an answer.

  “See?” said Fay. “She’s one of those who thinks that doctors are royalty. Especially those who look like a young George Clooney.”

  David winced. “Not you too. I cringe every time someone says that.”

  “I know. That’s what makes it so fun.”

  Bertha came back into the living room and distributed tea for everyone.

  “Do you think Mrs. Saville knew that she was seriously ill?” asked David.

  “I think she was beginning to suspect it. She tried to hide it from me, but of course I was aware. You can’t share a house with someone and not know that they are in terrible pain. I dropped hints all the time that she should go to see you or your father, but she wouldn’t have it. She kept on taking those stupid remedies she got from the place at the docks.”

  “Where did she keep them?” asked Fay.

  “They lived next to her bed. An ever-growing collection. I wasn’t allowed to touch them - not even to dust her bedside table. It sickened me to see them lying there, the useless things. And all the while she was in more pain every day. I still hate the sight of them.”

  There was a pause as Fay and David glanced at each other.

  “What do you mean?” asked Fay. “The remedies aren’t still here, are they?”

  “They certainly are. They’re lined up next to her bed just like always.”

  “Didn’t Sergeant Jones take them with him when he searched the house?”

  “He was going to, Doctor. But then he said that you had already tested some remedies from the same source. He said there was no need to bother testing them all over again.”

  David clutched his forehead. “He was supposed to take them into evidence and send them to the police lab in Truro for testing. Just because I tested something that came from the same source doesn’t mean we don’t need to test the pills she was actually taking. They might be from a different batch.”

  “That’s true,” said Fay. “Would you mind if Dr. Dyer takes the pills next to Mrs. Saville’s bed and tests them in his lab?”

  “Not at all. I’ll be glad to see the back of them. I know my poor employer didn’t die from the poison she was taking, but it made her life a misery and I’ll do whatever I can to find out why.”

  She offered to lead David to Mrs. Saville’s bedroom. When they returned, he was carrying several bottles of pills and liquids that he had slipped into a clear plastic bag.

  As the bottles caught the light from the living room chandelier, they seemed in Fay’s imagination to glow with malevolence.

  Chapter 25

  Fay dragged her eyes away from the bottles and looked at Bertha.

  “Your employer surprised a lot of people with her will. In her daughter’s case, it was a shock because she had thought she would inherit everything. But for others her will has been quite a windfall. Did you know what she was planning to do with her money?”

  “I had some idea,” said Bertha. “She would talk to me about it, especially when she was in pain. I think she secretly thought that she had an incurable disease and was going to die soon. She talked a lot about her legacy.”

  “Her legacy?”

  “Mrs. Saville liked to tell people how to run their lives. It made her rather unpopular in the village.”

  Fay nodded. “That’s what she was best known for.”

  “What people didn’t realize was that she genuinely wanted them to live better lives. She believed she had a gift that enabled her to see what people were doing wrong and how they could improve. Leaving her money to them was an extension of that.”

  “You mean she believed she was giving them the ability to improve their lives?” asked David.

  “Exactly. With me, it was constant nagging to save up enough money to put towards the bond on my little house. It irritated her that I was living from paycheck to paycheck and not making proper plans for my retirement. Mrs. Saville was a big believer in property. Maybe because her husband made his money through dealing in it.”

  “Did it annoy you?” asked Fay.

  “I didn’t like being told how to run my life. But when I heard that she had left me enough money to pay off my cottage and live there myself instead of letting it out to tenants, I nearly burst into tears. In one way, it was her final attempt to interfere in my life, but it was also very kind and gave me exactly what I needed.”

  “And what about the vet, Martin Trenowyth?”

  Bertha shook her head. “I had no idea they were in a relationship. I suspected that she was seeing someone, but I didn’t know who it was. I should have guessed, because she talked about the vet often. She said he was much better suited to small-animal practice than to a farming community like this. She wanted him to buy into a practice in Penzance. He couldn’t afford it at the time, but she talked about it anyway. Now, I guess he can afford it and a whole lot more.”

  “She left money to the amateur dramatic society too,” said Fay.

  “I heard that, but I don’t know what that was about. She didn’t mention them much, or at least not to me. I’m not sure what she wanted to achieve by leaving money to them, but it definitely wasn’t random. Mrs. Saville never did anything at random.”

  “Why do you think she left so little to her daughter?”

  “Oh, she made no secret of that. She thought Candice would squander it. Her daughter has lurched from one crazy business venture to another over the last ten years, leaking money as she went. Mrs. Saville couldn’t bear the thought that she was going to waste her inheritance too, so she tried to limit how much she left her.”

  “I suppose that makes sense.”

  “It especially galled her that Candice had driven her father’s business into the ground. Eighteen months was all it took for her to destroy everything he had built up over years. Mrs. Saville never forgave her for that.”

  Bertha finished her tea and suppressed a yawn.

  David caught Fay’s eye and she nodded. It was time for them to leave the housekeeper in peace.

  “Thank you so much for your time,” he said, standing up. “And for the tea, of course.”

  “Yes,” agreed Fay. “You’ve been very helpful.

  Bertha’s smile was directed at David. “Anything for you, Doctor.”

  Fay was thoughtful as they climbed back into the car. “I’m beginning to understand Mrs. Saville better. We need to get these remedies analyzed as quickly as possible.”

  “I was thinking of doing it now. You can come along if you like. I should have a result for you quickly.”

  “I’d like that, thanks.”

  The car pulled into the High Street and immediately slowed down to a crawl. The road was narrow in parts and full of pedestrians. The quaint High Street with its parade of old-fashioned shopfronts and cheerful restaurants was like a magnet for tourists and villagers alike.

  The tourists had a tendency to treat the traffic as though it didn’t exist, stepping in and out of the road with no regard to cars. Fay noticed two families and a young couple who were staying at the Cat’s Paw strolling on the sidewalk. She hoped they were enjoying themselves. Every guest who had a good time on Bluebell Island was likely
to pay a return visit, and also to recommend the Cat’s Paw to their friends and family.

  As she gazed out the car window, she noticed a middle-aged couple walking along hand in hand. There was something familiar about the backs of their heads.

  “Wait a moment,” she said. “Isn’t that Raymond and Pippa from the theatre?”

  “Hmm?” David took his eyes off the road to look where she was pointing. “Yes, it is. Didn’t you hear about them?”

  “Apparently not. I thought their relationship was still up in the air.”

  “Not anymore. Pippa came to consult me yesterday for a minor ailment. She told me she and Raymond had reconciled. It had something to do with the money Mrs. Saville left them. Now that they will both be more secure financially, they realized they had wasted years being angry with each other when they could have been together and getting on with their lives. Now it seems as though all is forgiven and forgotten. They look like young lovers, don’t they?”

  “They certainly do,” said Fay.

  She watched for a moment, seeing them exchange a smile as they paused to let a car pass.

  “I wonder if you can make sense of something I heard the other day,” she said.

  “I’ll certainly give it a try.”

  “When I was at the theater picking up the costumes for dry-cleaning, Raymond said something about how the look on ‘her’ face would haunt him for the rest of his life. I wondered what he meant by that.”

  “Oh, I know the answer to that. He was talking about his ex-wife. He often says he will never forget her expression when he told her he was leaving her for Pippa. The guilt still troubles him.”

  David filled three glass containers with liquids from Mrs. Saville’s bedside stash. He added two reagents each to the liquids, explaining that they were zinc and acid. Then he let them sit for a few minutes.

  This was the second time Fay had watched him in his laboratory. He worked efficiently, his movements economical and precise.

  “Arsenic was such a successful poison in the past because it has no flavor and no odor and can easily be added to food and drink. In the old days, the poison was undetectable in the human body after death.”

  “Creepy.”

  “Then a man by the name of James Marsh developed a test that could detect the presence of arsine gas. You just had to add zinc and acid to the sample to force it to give off gas. He would then set fire to the gas and see whether it left a telltale stain of silvery black arsenic in its wake.”

  Fay’s eyes were wide. “Are you going to set fire to that gas?”

  “Luckily, that’s not necessary these days. I have here a test strip that I will hold above the liquid. It will test the gas in the container and turn blue if it detects arsenic.” He checked the timer he had set for the test. “Thirty minutes. That’s long enough.”

  He inserted test strips into each of the air-tight containers and sealed them again with the strips dangling into the space above the liquid.

  “How long does it take? This strip is staying pink.”

  “This one is too, but look at the one closest to me.”

  As they watched, the test strip changed from pink to blue and then to a kind of silvery navy.

  “Does that mean it’s positive?”

  “It does indeed. Arsenic gas must be present in significant quantities to make the strip turn that color. Let me see which one that is.” He consulted the key he had made. “It’s the Arsenicum.”

  “I thought these homeopathic remedies were supposed to be so diluted that they would show up as pure water.”

  “That’s how it should work. We need to know where Gary Malkin gets these remedies of his. Does he make them himself?”

  “He orders them off the internet. I believe he has a couple of different suppliers that he uses.”

  An hour passed as David tested each one of the remedies that had been on Mrs. Saville’s bedside table. They all came up negative.

  “It’s only the Arsenicum that’s a problem. What would it have been prescribed for?”

  “According to Malkin, she came to him complaining of an upset stomach. He prescribed Arsenicum and Nux Vomica, and something else very peculiar. What was it again? Oh, yes. Petroleum.”

  “Yum.”

  “I know, right? But supposedly it’s all water anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Except in this case, there was actual arsenic in the Arsenicum.”

  David turned to face her, and Fay took a step back. It was a very small laboratory and he was a little close for comfort.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked. “Do you really think Gary Malkin has been systematically poisoning his clients?”

  “No,” she said at once. “I don’t think that’s it. Why would he choose a method that could so easily be traced back to him? And what was in it for him? It’s not like she left him anything in her will. I think this was a case of accidental poisoning.”

  “You think the fault lies with the supplier?”

  “Most likely, yes.”

  “It could also be a matter of cross-contamination,” he said. “I’ve seen cases like that before. It can happen at the warehouse stage. Commodities get stored together carelessly and end up adulterating each other. Or someone uses pesticides in the warehouse to keep vermin away and that contaminates an item.”

  “That could be it. But however it happened, it’s going to ruin Gary Malkin. I don’t think his reputation on the island could recover from that. He’ll probably have to relocate to the mainland.”

  “I feel sorry for him personally, but it will make my life easier when he’s gone. He has caused some real harm to my patients.”

  “Sure. I just don’t think he’s a murderer. There’ll be an investigation into where his Arsenicum came from and whether he knew about it, but my feeling is that the poisoning was accidental and had nothing to do with Mrs. Saville’s murder. The poor lady started taking it for an upset stomach and just got sicker and sicker.”

  “And all the while Malkin was telling her that the pain was the disease leaving her body. You can see why I’m not too broken up at the thought of him leaving the island.”

  “This simplifies things,” said Fay, putting pieces of the puzzle together in her mind. “It never made sense to me why someone would go to all the trouble of poisoning her over weeks, and then just when she was on the brink of becoming irreversibly ill, they shot her. It wasn’t logical. Now I think I understand.”

  “Do you know who did it? Do you know who pulled that trigger?”

  “Yes. I think I do.”

  He gave her a look of deep suspicion. “I know that expression. I hope you don’t have some hare-brained scheme in mind for trapping this person.”

  Fay smiled. “As a matter of fact…”

  The door to the laboratory flew open and Laetitia walked in, startling them both.

  “Laetitia…”

  “You told me you were working tonight.”

  “And so I am. I’ve been testing medication found at the home of the woman I autopsied earlier this week.”

  “What is she doing here?”

  “Do you mean Fay? She’s helping me. Laetitia, why do you sound so…?”

  “I’ll be off now,” said Fay. “Thanks for your help, David. Nice to see you again, Laetitia. Bye now.”

  She sidestepped Laetitia and speed-walked out of the surgery.

  “Fay! Wait a second.” David sounded harassed. “I said don’t do anything crazy…”

  Fay smiled again. Crazy was exactly what she had in mind.

  Chapter 26

  Fay pulled the dress over her head and slid her arms through the delicate cap sleeves. It was a bias-cut wrap dress in cherry red. It fell to just above her knees with a flounced hem.

  It was Fay’s summertime first-date dress. This was the first time she was wearing it on Bluebell Island. She took her hair out of its customary ponytail and brushed it into waves over her shoulders. Then she slipped her feet into a pair of strappy heels and ad
ded a slick of lipgloss.

  “Wish me luck, guys,” she said to the puddle of kittens that were sleeping in their basket.

  She closed her bedroom door and descended the staircase just as Morwen was coming up, clutching a bedtime mug of cocoa.

  “Wow.” Morwen stopped dead. “Look at you. Where’s the ball, Cinderella?”

  “Nothing so glamorous, unfortunately. I’m off to do a spot of rat-catching.”

  “Well, I like your rat-catching outfit. It seems a shame to waste it on a rat.”

  Fay smoothed the dress over her hips. “I hear you. I’d rather be wearing it to a party or a gallery opening, but I needed to bait my trap.”

  “What are you going to do if the rat turns nasty?”

  Fay opened her clutch purse. It seemed too big for such a delicate dress. She tilted it to show Morwen the gun inside.

  “I have my trusty sidearm here to protect me.”

  Morwen’s eyes widened. “Is that your service weapon?”

  “No. I had to hand that back when I resigned from the force. But it’s the same make and model – a Smith & Wesson 5906. I got used to it and now nothing else will do.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I hope you won’t have to use it.”

  “Me too,” said Fay, and she meant it.

  “If you’re not back by midnight, I’m calling the police station.”

  “Sure, Mom. But try texting me first. I might be wrapping things up.”

  Fay said goodbye to Morwen and went on her way. Part of her wished that she was also retiring to bed with a mug of cocoa and a good murder mystery. But this had been going on long enough. It was time to bring it to an end.

  She parked the Volvo two blocks from her destination. The engine had a distinctive growl and she didn’t want to tip her quarry off that she was coming.

  She walked the rest of the way, regretting the high, skinny heels of her shoes with every step. When she reached a small, shabby house with peeling paint on the front door, she stopped and knocked.