“Even in the case of a relatively small cargo like the Sinead’s?”
“Yes, even then. It was not just the cargo we insured, but the vessel itself. English shipping insurance law is complicated, but our name is on the insurance policy. Why has the Sinead been on your mind, my dear?”
“I’m wondering if the insurance on the cargo, and on the ship itself, could have been inflated in some way. In other words, I’d like to know who benefits from the wreck. Who gets the payout?”
Mr. Van Holt looked thoughtful. “I checked that policy myself before I counter-signed it. The other partners might think that I’ll sign my name to any old thing, but I still know how to read a policy document. I didn’t see anything wrong with our agreement with the owners of the Sinead or the owners of the cargo. Everything had been itemized carefully and valued according to current market prices. I didn’t see any inflation of numbers.”
“The ship was due to call in at the harbor here to drop off a crate for Agatha Rose.”
“Yes, of course. I know Aggie. She does a little importing and exporting from time to time. It’s a profitable sideline for her.”
“I thought she might have benefitted from an insurance payout, but it turns out she hadn’t bothered to take out insurance on her crate. As far as I can see, she will be out of pocket thanks to the wreck.”
Mr. Van Holt shook his head. “If there’s one lesson I’ve learnt in life it’s that you should always take out the insurance. Life is uncertain and insurance helps to make it just a little less unpredictable.”
“I hear you. And Aggie regrets not taking out that insurance. But I’m no closer to finding out who might have wanted to wreck a small cargo ship on its way from Dublin to Falmouth.”
“How about an Act of God as we say in the insurance business?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t buy it. You must have heard that the ship’s captain and navigator are saying that the lighthouse was dark while they were rounding the north side of the island?”
“Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? The alternative is that they made a very expensive, career-ending mistake.”
“That’s true. But I looked out of my bedroom window just as the sirens started and also noticed that Bluff Lighthouse was in darkness. Add that to the fact that one of the lighthouse curators died in suspicious circumstances the day before, and you have a situation that doesn’t smell right.” Fay shook her head. “I just wish I knew what the motive might be.”
“All I can say is that if you are right and someone was responsible for Tabitha Trott’s death, I really hope you catch them. She was a lovely person who contributed so much to the village community.”
“How did she seem to you in the last few weeks?” asked Fay. “Was she her normal self or did she seem different?”
“You’ll have to be more specific, my dear. Different in what sort of way?”
“More forgetful, maybe? Absent-minded. Making mistakes that she didn’t used to make.”
Mr. Van Holt tutted. “Typical. People like to treat the elderly as though they are children. Always watching you like a hawk for any signs of creeping dementia. I’ll have you know I saw poor Tabitha several times in the last few weeks and she seemed exactly like her normal self. Just more agitated, perhaps.”
“What was she agitated about?”
“There were rumors going around. There’s no point in denying it. There were whispers behind closed doors.”
“That Tabitha wasn’t her usual self?”
“Yes, and it was most upsetting to her. She must have known it wasn’t true, but the rumors were getting to her.”
“I can understand that.”
Fay knew that the rumors weren’t Tabitha’s only problem. She was starting to see the consequences of her absent-mindedness in daily life. It must have been hard to deny that something was going wrong when she saw evidence of it all around her.
When she finished her chat with Mr. Van Holt, Fay drove out towards Bluff Lighthouse to check on her cat traps.
She had checked them twice a day ever since she and David set them. They had been empty each time, with no sign that anything except insects had nibbled at the food.
This time it was the same thing. Fay refreshed the food and water and checked that the spring-loaded mechanism of the trap was still functioning properly. She was on the verge of giving up hope. She would leave the traps out for another few days because that was the recommended course of action, and then she would take them back to Penrose House.
Whatever it was that she and David had seen that night, it had no intention of getting caught in a trap.
The more Fay tried to remember exactly what they had seen, the more the image retreated from her memory. It was a cat, yes, but how big had it been exactly? What color was it? Did it have stripes or any markings at all? All she could remember were its unnaturally bright eyes.
She remembered how it had run ahead of them, glancing back over its shoulder every now and then to make sure that they were following. She had finished reading The Legend of Bluff Lighthouse the night before and one passage had stayed with her.
There are those that say that the cat with the glowing eyes is an ill omen – a portent of approaching evil. But there are others who recognize it for what it truly is – the guardian of Bluff Lighthouse.
Fay remember the men she had seen coming out of the lighthouse and locking the door behind them. They had carried something away with them. What had they been up to and why could Fay not shake the feeling that the cat had been trying to draw attention to their activities?
But that was ridiculous.
Fay would be the first to admit that cats were clever, insightful, unpredictable, and remarkable. But they were not capable of identifying criminal activities and warning people about them.
Unless this was no ordinary cat.
No. That was even more ridiculous. There were no such things as ghosts, and especially not ghost-cats. It might have left Fay with a strong conviction that it was some kind of protector of the lighthouse, but that was nonsense brought on by the late night and the sinister activities that had been happening around Bluff Lighthouse over the last few days.
Leaving her freshly baited traps in place, Fay returned to the Land Rover. As she was about to get in, a strange impulse made her turn around.
Feeling foolish, she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted her words into the hills and dales that surrounded the lighthouse.
“Thank you!” she called. “Thank you for showing me what they were up to. If I do manage to crack this case, it will be thanks to you.”
Then she climbed behind the wheel and drove to Penrose House. She needed to spend less time worrying about cats – real or imagined - and more time trying to get to the bottom of the mystery of the Sinead. Tabitha’s death and the wreck of the Sinead were connected. Fay knew it as surely as she knew her own name. Sooner or later, she was going to have to go out to where the Sinead lay broken on the rocks and see for herself. If David put his foot down and refused to take her, she was quite prepared to carry out her threat of going to the docks and hiring the first motorboat operator who offered to take her.
She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She would feel a lot safer going with David.
Meanwhile, she hoped that Tabitha’s diary might shed more light on what her last weeks of life had been like.
Chapter 21
Fay paged through the densely written diary looking for any reference to the writer feeling dizzy or off balance. Every member of the Museums committee claimed to have seen Tabitha in a state that resembled drunkenness. Either they were all part of a grand conspiracy or there really had been something wrong with her.
The fact that Doc Dyer had seen her in that condition too blew the conspiracy theory out of the water. He was a man of integrity. If he claimed to have seen Tabitha appearing unsteady, then that was what she had been doing.
Fay had to face the possibility that her hunch was
wrong. Perhaps Tabitha’s mind really had been deteriorating. One of her last acts before her death had been to slip the diary into an envelope and post it to Fay at Penrose House. Fay had interpreted that as an act of desperation – an attempt to be understood. But perhaps it was nothing more than the confused behavior of a dementia patient.
What was the alternative explanation? An elaborate plot to gaslight Tabitha and everyone on the Museums committee into believing that she was losing her mind? For what possible purpose?
“No.” Fay refocused her attention on the diary. “You weren’t crazy. I know you weren’t.”
Fay wasn’t the only one who didn’t believe that Tabitha was losing her rationality. Her best friend – the person who knew her better than anyone – had believed in her too. Betsy McCloud had been mocked by other members of the committee for her support of Tabitha, but she had never wavered.
A word caught Fay’s eye – dizziness. She stopped paging and settled down to read the diary entry.
June 09
I document these events with increasing reluctance. Seeing them written down in black and white in my own handwriting makes me more fearful than ever. But it has to be done and so I will not shirk my clear duty. I must go back to last night in order to make you understand, diary.
I had dinner at the normal hour of seven o’clock. It was a lamb stew that had been simmering in the crockpot all day while I was at work. It had been more than a year since I had last used the crockpot and I was excited to see how the lamb stew would turn out. I mentioned to several people in the course of the day that I was looking forward to getting home and tasting the progress of the stew.
I won’t say it was exactly a letdown when seven o’clock came around and I sat down to enjoy my dinner, but the stew certainly tasted a little unexpected. It was much saltier than it should have been considering the amount of seasoning I had applied that morning. And it had a burning after-taste that shouldn’t have been there considering the mild spices I had used. I wondered if there was some residue on the crockpot that had sat unused in my cabinet for so long. Perhaps that was what made it taste a little strange.
That should have been my first warning that all was not well with me. They say that the belief that you can taste and smell strange flavors is one of the first signs of a stroke.
I retired to bed with a book at around ten o’clock. I believe I fell asleep quickly. Then some time towards dawn, I woke up with a desperate, raging thirst. I have seldom felt anything like it. That should have been the second indication that something was wrong. I have often read that an excessive thirst is a sign of a disordered metabolism. I was lying in bed trying to wake up sufficiently to get up and go to the bathroom for a drink of water when I saw the moonlight glinting on a glass of water next to my bed.
Diary, you will hardly believe me when I tell you that I had no recollection of pouring that for myself. I generally don’t keep an open glass of water next to my bed at night because I once woke up and found a dead cockroach floating in my glass. The thought of accidentally ingesting such a thing in the dark has always put me off.
But there I was with that terrible thirst and there was a glass of cool water. I fell on it like a camel at an oasis. It was refreshing and served the purpose of slaking my thirst, but again I detected a strange aftertaste. Still, no alarm bells went off for me and I rolled over and went back to sleep for the hour or so that was left before my alarm clock woke me.
By the next morning, it was clear to me that something was wrong. Normally, I am a morning person. I am at my best and brightest in the early hours of the day. On that day, I just couldn’t seem to wake up properly. I forced myself to get dressed and have breakfast, spilling some milk from my cornflakes on my skirt. I dragged myself off to the meeting of the Museums committee. I was going to explain that I wasn’t feeling well that morning but hadn’t want to miss it.
It was at the previous committee meeting that we had that dreadful incident where I accidentally substituted thick bleach for the milk. I was anxious to make amends for that lapse.
I thought a brisk walk down the high street would clear my head, but it seemed to make it worse.
By the time I arrived at the committee’s headquarters, my mind felt like it was in a thick fog. I opened my mouth to speak and gibberish emerged. I was mortified because both of the gentlemen on the committee were present – Colonel Trengove and Doc Dyer, who had arrived late. I will never forget how strangely they looked at me, dear diary.
I took a deep breath and tried again. This time I was speaking actual words, but they came out slurred and broken. A wave of dizziness hit me, and I looked for somewhere to sit down. I couldn’t even walk in a straight line, diary, but weaved my way towards a chair with all the uncertainty of a roadside drunk.
Oh, the humiliation!
Dear Betsy, bless her heart, rushed to support me immediately. She led me to a chair and encouraged me to drink some water. She attributed my feeling of unwellness to the flu, which she said was going around the island like wildfire. Of course, it is summer now and everyone on the island is as fit as a fiddle, but she meant well. It gave me a warm feeling to know that I had one ally in that room. I can’t even describe to you the looks of disgust on Gertie and Aggie’s faces. Colonel Trengove too, but he was better at hiding it.
Doc Dyer was all for taking me to the surgery for a medical check-up immediately. I resisted, of course. I was too afraid to have my suspicions confirmed. I wasn’t ready to hear a proper diagnosis about what was happening to me.
I told him the truth, which was that I am under the care of another doctor on the mainland and that I would prefer to consult her. I could see that the committee members barely understood me because my words were coming out so slurred. But Doc Dyer got the gist and didn’t press me.
I waited until I was feeling better and tried to participate in the committee meeting, but it was hopeless. I could barely keep my head off the table and everything I said came out in a garble.
Dear Betsy drove me home and tucked me into bed. She said I would get over my flu in a few days.
I slept for many hours, diary, and when I woke up it was the late afternoon. I felt considerably better.
I wrote a long email to my doctor describing what had happened to me. She agreed that it sounded very much like a stroke and said she wanted me to come into the emergency room because I was at risk of suffering a second stroke. I understood her concern, but I was too tired. All I wanted was to go back to bed and sleep some more. I read on the internet that a person can recover quite quickly from a minor stroke and that it is not necessarily followed by another.
And so here I am. My weakness and confusion are gone, and I feel strong again. I have an appointment with my doctor in two weeks’ time. I am sure she will confirm that I am much better.
Fay checked the date of the diary entry. Tabitha’s appointment with her doctor would have been for the next day. Now she would never make it.
Something had happened while she was up on that platform at the top of Bluff Lighthouse. Had it been another dizzy spell like this one? That could easily have tipped her over the railing. Or had it been something else?
Yes, Tabitha’s dizzy spell at the committee meeting might well have been caused by a minor stroke. All the symptoms were there – dysarthria, a sudden weakness almost causing collapse. Disorientation and the inability to think clearly. And this had been followed by a fairly swift recovery.
But there was another way of looking at it too.
When Fay had been at Tabitha’s house to rescue the fish, she had noticed signs that someone had broken the catch on the kitchen window and used it to climb in and out of the house.
That crockpot had been simmering in the kitchen all day. Tabitha had told everyone who would listen about the lamb stew she had cooking in her kitchen. What if someone had slipped in during the day and put some kind of drug in the stew that made Tabitha appear woozy and off balance the next day?
; Fay shook her head. No, that didn’t work. Tabitha had eaten dinner at seven o’clock the night before. As far as Fay knew, there was no such thing as a drug that would stay inactive in your body for fifteen hours and then kick into effect the next morning. That theory was no good.
She stared into space, stroking the cats on her lap. Smudge and Olive had settled themselves on her – one on each knee. Their heads turned from side to side as they watched the kittens racing up and down on the bedroom rug. None of them showed any ill effects from their vaccines. They would be ready to go to their new homes the next day.
“Wait a minute.”
Fay picked up the diary again to check something. For once she was grateful for Tabitha’s habit of writing down every second of her day in great detail. Fay had zoned out slightly, but hadn’t there been something about a glass of water next to her bed?
“There it is.”
The intruder didn’t need to drug the stew. All they needed to do was put something in the stew that would make her wake up violently thirsty towards dawn. The drug had been in the bedside water, at a dose that would begin to take effect within a few hours – just in time for the morning committee meeting.
Fay scratched Olive’s head, feeling pleased with herself. She looked at the theory from every angle and couldn’t find a flaw in it.
“Looks like I still have those awesome detective skills,” she told the cats. Smudge gave a huge yawn, looking unimpressed.
“You’re right,” Fay admitted. “It’s far-fetched and I have no proof whatsoever. A much more likely scenario is that Tabitha had a mild stroke or was suffering from progressive mental impairment.”
The Cat That Wasn't There Page 13