“But—!”
Juliette passed him Dove the cat. Angus sat down and stroked her anxiously.
“I think Angus needs a holiday,” Pattie said quietly to Matthew.
“I quite agree. Officer Palmer, there’s really no need for you to be here. I don’t believe that the threats have anything to do with the statue.”
“Oh no?” asked Pattie. “The letters were addressed to ‘the lion’, after all.”
“Coincidence,” said Matthew, smiling widely. “However, dear Patricia, if you’d like to keep me company tonight, to ensure my safety…”
“We’ve been through this,” Pattie said calmly.
Juliette sighed and stood up. “Leave her alone, Conrad, you sleaze. You should know better. Have some respect, why don’t you?”
“Oh what do you know?” Matthew snarled, scowling darkly. “You’re useless here – you have just as little idea who’s behind this as the rest of us. Why don’t you piss off back to the station and write up some paperwork?”
“Matthew!” Pattie exclaimed. “I appreciate that you’re under some pressure here, but that’s no need—”
“Don’t give me your mouth!” he growled at Pattie, jabbing his finger aggressively. “All you’ve done is put your nose in where it’s not wanted, instead of investigating what I told you to investigate! In fact, why don’t you get out, too? Go on! And if you breathe a word about this statue to anyone – either of you – then I’ll make sure you can never show your faces in this town again!”
“Sir…” said Angus, stepping in, but he was rounded on fiercely.
“You’ve said enough for one day,” Matthew said to him, lowly. “I don’t want to see you for the rest of the night.”
“I’m going to let your threat slide, Mister Conrad,” Juliette said, pulling on her officer’s jacket. “But if you ever need the help of the police, I suggest you think carefully about how you should behave towards them. Come on, Mrs Lansbury. Let’s go, and leave him to his precious statue!”
“Yes,” said Pattie. “I think I’m finished here.”
Chapter 9
Pattie went home frustrated and rattled. Matthew’s sudden change of temperament had startled her. Juliette had been kind enough to drive Pattie home, with Dove in the carrier on Pattie’s knee.
“Forgive me for being blunt, Pattie, but that guy’s a real jerk. Why would you even want to work for him? The vet thing, I mean.”
“I needed an investor, and Matthew was very keen,” Pattie replied. “He gave me a very good deal. Up until now he’s been a little questionable but generally behaved well. I rather think this whole thing has him on edge.”
“I’m not surprised, but it’s all his own making. He should take responsibility for it and do the sensible thing by letting the police investigate. If he wants to take his life in his own hands, then so be it.”
Juliette let Pattie out near her house on Shepherd’s Street, wishing her farewell before driving away. Pattie said a few sweet nothings to Dove as she walked to the doorstep and put in the key. She was surprised to see Elliott still there, who was putting the kettle on the stove.
“Patricia! Good Lord, you won’t believe what happened to me earlier…!”
“Oh?” asked Pattie wearily.
“That Laura Conrad journalist woman … She came to see you not long after you left.”
“Sniffing around for a story, I’ll say.”
“Sniffing around for more than that! She tried to seduce me!” he declared, wide-eyed.
Pattie released Dove, who trotted calmly upstairs to her usual reclusive hideout. Pattie rubbed her eyes after taking off her coat. “Oh, come on, Elliott. You must have misread something.”
Elliott seemed adamant. “I certainly did not! She wouldn’t take her hands off me. Oh, I know she was just in it for a juicy story about her father, but still. It was a bit of a shock, I don’t mind telling you!”
Finally, Pattie laughed. She had been holding in so much tension ever since Juliette had called her about the threatening letter, and she hadn’t even realised it. Now that she had put the case behind her and left the unpleasant man to his own devices, she could finally release all that tension. Perhaps Dove didn’t have a magical calming influence after all!
She hugged Elliott and they chuckled together whilst making lunch. Pattie filled him in on everything.
“You know,” he said, as they sat at the table to eat their sandwiches, “the family of the doctor I replaced when I moved here had been serving the community for generations, right back to the first settlers. She left a lot of personal papers in the office, some of which were very old. There was an old journal she’d been translating from ‘ye olde English’ and typing up on her computer – dating back to almost a thousand years ago.”
“You must be joking!” said Pattie. “Do you still have it?”
Elliott shook his head sadly. “A courier came to collect all that stuff a few weeks after I got here. But I remember some of it. Apparently the area was originally settled after Vikings sailed into York. There were only a few remnants from that settlement by the time the English spread out from Winchester into the countryside, but apparently that was why our settlers chose this spot to build the first stone houses. A lot of them were exceedingly rich, Pattie, and moved away from the capital, which was Winchester in those days, to invest in their wealth by becoming their own lords. It’s no wonder one of them ended up with that lion statue. He probably hid it for his own safety. I bet they’d all have killed one another over it, which is precisely why Matthew will want to keep it secret. That’s the sort of treasure that people murder for.”
After lunch they treated themselves to a quiet afternoon. Pattie was deep in thought, with her many cats all around her. She became almost like a statue herself as the animals roamed, dream-twitched and played.
The sun set and Elliott offered to head to the shop to pick up something for dinner. “You’ve hardly moved a muscle all afternoon,” he said. “You’re still thinking about the case, aren’t you?”
She nodded slowly, then looked him in the eye. “I can’t help thinking that the threats had nothing to do with that TV programme of his. I keep coming back to this statue, which was given to Richard the First when he had conquered Normandy. When I looked into who might have hand-delivered those letters, the only out-of-towner was a Frenchman…”
“It adds up, but it’s hardly damning,” Elliott said reasonably.
“No, but he’s not even available to talk to, as Clara said he disappeared from his room at the B&B that same night…”
They went to bed thinking about the mystery. Pattie’s natural distaste about leaving a job unfinished was getting the better of her. As it happened, she shouldn’t feel bad about the case. The case would come back to her.
At just after midnight, there was a loud banging on her door.
Pattie went to answer it, wrapped in her dressing gown and rubbing her eyes. It was Angus.
“Mrs Lansbury – I didn’t have your phone number,” he said, out of breath. “Please come quickly. It’s Mister Conrad – he’s been attacked by an intruder!”
“What’s happened, Angus?
“He’s been stabbed…!”
Chapter 10
They rushed back to Cliffton Cottage. Under instructions not to call the police, Angus hadn’t known what else to do. He’d raced down to Pattie’s house in the car, and now they raced back. The front door was hanging off its hinges, the wood splintered around the frame.
Matthew Conrad was in his kitchen in silk pyjamas, holding a bloody towel to his stomach. He looked pale but otherwise okay, although his hand trembled as he brought a whiskey glass to his lips. Pattie couldn’t blame him; from the amount of blood on his clothes and the towel, someone had really done a number on him.
“What happened?” she asked, prompting him to move the towel so that she could see.
“Some mad bugger kicked down the door and stuck me with a knife, is what happ
ened,” Matthew replied bitterly, grunting as the towel peeled away. The blade had cut through his pyjamas and into his stomach, leaving a two-inch gash.
“This doesn’t look good, but you’ll live. We can patch you up and then I think Angus had better take you to the hospital. Did you get a look at the attacker? Did he take anything?”
“He didn’t say anything, just stuck me and knocked me down, then started ransacking the place. Angus burst in before the guy found anything and scared him off. Tall guy, right Angus?”
Angus nodded. “At least six feet tall.”
Pattie eyed him. “Is that right?”
With only a short hesitation beforehand, Angus nodded.
“Then I suppose I’d better call the police,” Pattie mused out loud, taking out her phone.
“Wait—!” said Angus, but Pattie was listening to a voice message she’d received. It was from Benjamin Rosswell at the B&B. Their Frenchman had returned.
Chapter 11
Pattie and Elliott went over to the B&B, but they realised right away that they were on the wrong track. The Frenchman sat in Ben and Clara Rosswell’s lounge with a cup of tea, looking dishevelled and alarmed.
“This can’t be the attacker,” Elliott said to Pattie discreetly, telling her what she already knew: “He’s barely five foot tall. You could knock him down with a feather.”
He was wide-eyed, with the plain lined face of an average man of fifty. His hair was short and bleached blond, which surprisingly suited him. “tes-vous la police?” he said hesitantly. “I am … in trouble?”
Clara came to sit with them, having brought cups of tea and coffee from the kitchen. Elliott needed the extra caffeine, but Pattie wouldn’t touch the stuff. Tea only for her. Clara said, “He didn’t tell me when he checked in, but he brought a second guest – a cat! It escaped from his room. He just spent the last twenty hours in the countryside searching for it!”
“You’re not serious…” said Elliott.
But there was no denying the evidence. The Frenchman looked like he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, and the grizzled old cat he had on his lap didn’t look much better. It was a male striped tabby they learned was called Tempeste. He was missing several of his teeth and only had half a tail; the other half was lost to a large river rat a few years ago, before he and his owner moved to England.
Clara smiled encouragingly at the Frenchman, but spoke to Pattie. “I speak a little French. Timothée lives in Royst Hamton, do you know where that is? He used to have to go all the way to York to see a vet, but then he heard that we had one here in Little Hamilton now. It’s practically next door.”
“He came here … to see me?” asked Pattie, amazed.
“Il vomit beaucoup,” said Timothée, miming.
Elliott stifled a chuckle. Pattie nudged him with her foot. “Clara, please can you tell him that I’ll see him and Tempeste at my house tomorrow at two o’clock?”
Timothée was so overjoyed with the news that his eyes welled with tears. He stood and hugged Pattie gently, speaking softly in French. Pattie didn’t know anything about the story behind his love for the little old cat, but she was sure it was one that only a few would understand.
Back outside in the dark, Pattie said to Elliott, “First thing tomorrow I’m going to have a little gathering at Matthew Conrad’s place. Did that lovely Laura girl leave her phone number?”
Chapter 12
It was nine thirty the next morning, and there was a gathering at Cliffton Cottage. Angus waited outside anxiously, rubbing his arms; it was a cold morning, and their breath hung in the air in clouds.
“He’s inside,” he told Pattie, watching as yet another car pulled up. “He’s not too happy about this. He feels cornered.”
“That’s exactly what’s happening,” Pattie replied dourly, watching as D.C. Juliette Palmer got out of the car to join the rest of them: Angus, Pattie, Elliott, and the journalist Laura Conrad, who had been the first to show up.
“I hope this is worth it, Pattie,” Laura murmured, typing something into her phone.
“Would you have been here half an hour early if you didn’t think it wasn’t going to be?” Elliott said, raising his eyebrow. Pattie was happy to see how nonchalantly he was dealing with his supposed seduction, giving his best to the persistent journalist.
Once they were all assembled, Angus led them into Cliffton Cottage.
Matthew was waiting for them in the basement lounge. The lighting was set low. The plinth, from the hidden room, had been brought into the main space, and the majestic golden lion gleamed slickly from atop it. Matthew stood alone with his shoulders slumped, staring at it. He still wore his pyjamas and robe, although they had been changed since his attack. Pattie could see the faint bulge caused by bandages beneath the silk.
When he turned, everyone saw his expressionless eyes. “You may as well all sit down,” he said. “I’m sure Patricia has some revelations for us.”
“What’s that?” asked Laura, pointing to the statue. “I know there’s a story behind that.”
“That, Miss Conway, is incidental,” Pattie said as they all gathered on the sofas. “Matthew’s discovery of the statue, its history and value, only featured in this case as a distraction – perhaps even a deliberate one. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Matthew. “I would have preferred that none of you knew about this statue at all.”
“Well, we certainly wasted our time searching for a connection between the two elements: that statue, and your threats and subsequent attack. I trust you’re quite well?”
“Barely a flesh wound.”
“Then I’ll continue. The letters you received were unaddressed, isn’t that right, Angus?”
Angus nodded. “They didn’t have envelopes, address or stamps. Just the letters.”
“So we naturally assumed that the sender was someone in the village. Perhaps a local, perhaps a visitor – someone with a grudge against Matthew. Matthew suspected it was a disgruntled applicant who was rejected on his TV show.”
“Seems reasonable,” Matthew said, shrugging.
“Not just reasonable,” replied Pattie. “Premeditated. The show is the centre of all this – but not because of some threat. We already know that there’s unlikely to be any outsider here in Little Hamilton, so the suspect must be a local. Someone who could post a letter by hand. But who could sneak up on this secluded cottage on this ridge without being seen – not just once, but three times? And would a man who has such wealth that he can afford to renovate and extend this cottage, as well as fit it with hidden rooms, try to save a few pounds on his home security? I doubt it.”
“What are you saying?” asked Juliette. “That he wrote the letters himself?”
“Exactly right,” Pattie said flatly, staring at Matthew.
“That’s juicy enough,” laughed Laura, “but then that means he stabbed himself with a knife? Come on!”
“He would have to be pretty determined to do that to himself, wouldn’t he?” said Pattie. “Not many people can fight the natural urge to avoid self harm, not with something as brutal as a knife to the stomach. No, he would need help. Someone who could make it look convincing without causing too much harm. Someone Matthew could trust.”
Angus sat down on the coffee table, looking miserable. “I’m sorry. But Mister Conrad is my employer, and I do what he tells me to do. I didn’t like it one bit.”
Matthew rolled his eyes. “Well, you were all going to walk away from the ‘case’! What was I supposed to do? I needed to convince you to stick around for a bit longer.”
Laura couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Dad, you’ve got to be kidding me! Why on earth would you do that to yourself?”
“Publicity,” Juliette guessed. “The third series of Lion’s Den is due to be aired this week. No wonder you didn’t want the police involved. Wasting police time is an offense. But it’s not an offense to waste the time of a consulting detective,
a citizen like Mrs Lansbury. And you knew your daughter would be all over this once she got wind of it, didn’t you? A simple press release just gets lost in the clutter, but a scandal involving threats and a bloody attack? You’d get ten times the promotion for your latest series of Lion’s Den, and all for free!”
Laura laughed bitterly. “You scum. You’d let me make a fool out of myself just to get a bit of free publicity?”
Matthew shrugged. “It’s not like we were on good terms anyway.”
“This is unbelievable!”
Elliott laughed and nudged Laura in the arm with his elbow. “Bet it would have been pretty embarrassing if you’d gone all the way with me for this stupid story!”
Murder Most Familiar (A Pattie Lansbury Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 4) Page 4