by Mandy Morton
The fish and chip shop was a far cry from Elsie Haddock’s fish emporium back in the town, where chips were large or small and the only fish on offer was cod or haddock. Elsie had resisted becoming a general fast-food outlet and had stuck to plain but nourishing fish and chips; her Cornish counterpart couldn’t have been more different. Arnold Fritter had left his native Porkshire to seek his fortune in the fish and chip trade, armed only with a fish slice and a block of lard. It was luck rather than judgement that had brought him to Porthladle to visit a sick aunt, who obligingly died soon afterwards, willing him her small terraced house tucked away in a little street just off the harbour. Within days of the funeral, Arnold had turned his aunt’s old front room into a place completely dedicated to deep fat frying. First came straightforward fish and chips, but it wasn’t long before he began to add to his range. Arnold was of the opinion that if you couldn’t dip it in batter, it wasn’t worth eating, and his popularity spread – around the village at first, and then to visitors who would purchase coach tickets especially to savour his crispy fried bits.
The sign outside his shop boasted that he served award-winning fish and chips, and although no one was quite sure where the award had come from, the list of possibilities to be found in his shop was impressive if a little peculiar. Tilly began to read the menu, a note of bewilderment in her voice. ‘Battered chocolate mice, mango fritters, battered Swiss roll, octopus fritters, ice cream fritters, banana fritters, pea fritters, duck fri …’
‘Quick!’ said Hettie, pushing Tilly behind the menu board. ‘It’s Saffron Bunn – she’s coming out of the chip shop. She mustn’t see us or she’ll tell Hevva we’re still here and that will put them on their guard.’
They crammed themselves unceremonially into the middle of Arnold Fritter’s ‘A’ board as Saffron emerged from the shop and stopped to exchange niceties with the chemist, who was cleaning a little seagull present off her window. ‘Damn birds!’ the chemist exclaimed. ‘Fit for nothin’ but roastin’. Are you goin’ up the Atlantic tonight, Saffron?’
Hettie and Tilly moved themselves and Arnold Fritter’s ‘A’ board closer to Saffron, waiting for her reply, and were rewarded for their quick thinking. ‘I’m goin’ up for an hour or two with ’Evva, but I can’t stay long as ’Er Ladyship might need somethin’. She don’t take kindly to bein’ left these days on account of Christmas Paws bein’ about. I’m fetchin’ us a bit of tea, as I shan’t ’ave time to cook.’
The chemist splashed her sponge back into her bucket. ‘I’ll see you up there for a bit, then. Bye now.’
Saffron waved and turned back to the harbour with her tea tucked under her arm, then walked briskly in the direction of the coastal path. Hettie and Tilly fell out of the ‘A’ board, much to the amusement of some of Arnold Fritter’s customers who had watched the board move subtly from chip shop to chemist and back.
‘We’d better get a move on,’ said Hettie. ‘Let’s grab some fish and chips and eat them on the way back to the hotel. We need to stake out the manor and wait for the Bunns to leave so that we can have a good look round.’
Arnold Fritter wasn’t in the mood for fast service. Spotting two new faces, he spent some time regaling them with his family history, including a lengthy comparison between the Porkshire Dales and the Cornish coast. Tilly ordered cod and chips twice while Hettie did her best to look interested, hoping that Arnold Fritter would run out of steam. Ten minutes later, they fought their way to freedom with two hot parcels, having avoided all recommendations for the more unusual battered items, and succumbing only to a sprinkling of crispy bits on their chips.
The food was excellent, and there was nothing left but a pile of greasy paper by the time they reached the An Murdress Hotel. Sooty’s bar was in full swing as they made their way upstairs, and Hettie breathed a sigh of relief that they were saved from engaging in any further banter; she was keen to get along to Crabstock without meeting the Bunns coming the other way. Back in their room, they busied themselves with choosing dark clothes, wellingtons and the pair of torches they’d bought from the harbour. Tilly rolled up the map that Sooty had leant them and tucked it inside her greatcoat, adding an assortment of festive biscuits to her pockets for emergencies. Both cats crammed bobble hats on their heads and made their way downstairs, past the bar and out onto the cliff road. They passed the Atlantic, pulling their collars up to avoid recognition, and walked on towards Crabstock Manor.
The road was dark and full of puddles, and the wind rose with the incoming tide. The cold was raw against their faces, and at times it was hard to progress more than one or two steps before they were buffeted off course. The landscape was wild and unsympathetic to their mission, and Tilly couldn’t help but think that the plan that Hettie had set in motion was a little incomplete. Resting for a moment to catch her breath, she decided to offer her concerns. ‘Even if the Bunns do go out together, how will we get into the manor?’
Hettie rubbed her eyes with her paw, trying to shield them from the wind which had now developed into a stinging, icy rain. ‘I have no idea,’ she said defensively. ‘We’ll just have to find a way if we’re ever to get to the bottom of what’s going on.’ The wind and rain carried her words away and they trudged on towards the manor house, squinting into the dark for any sign of the Bunns. Eventually, they reached the driveway and left the path to pick their way towards the house under the cover of a rhododendron hedge. The ground was sodden and muddy, and Tilly tripped over what appeared to be a stone sticking out of the earth. Hettie helped her back onto her feet and was just about to lead on when she noticed that they were surrounded by stones. Taking the torch from her pocket, she shone the light at close range onto the obstructions. ‘Well, that’s all we need!’ she mumbled. ‘You seem to have stumbled on the final resting place for the whole of the bloody Crabstocks!’
Tilly gasped in horror as her own torch took in the scene. ‘Look over there! It just got worse.’
Hettie picked her way through the gravestones in the direction of Tilly’s torch beam, and there on the edge of the burial plots was a newly dug grave, the soil piled high next to the hole. The friends stared down into the earth, and Hettie’s torch beam revealed that the grave was beginning to fill with water. ‘Looks like we may be too late. I assume that this is a little Christmas present for Lady Crabstock-Hinge.’
‘Singe,’ said Tilly, shivering.
Their thoughts were interrupted by a noise from the driveway, and they switched off their torches and crept back towards the line of rhododendrons. They were close to the house now, and watched as Hevva Bunn emerged from the front door and paced up and down. ‘Come on, get yourself out here!’ he shouted as Saffron Bunn hurried out, still buttoning her coat. ‘Night will be gone by the time you’ve finished preenin’. Get locked up an’ we’ll get on before this weather gets any worse.’
Hettie and Tilly held their breath in the shrubbery as the Bunns prepared to make their way to the Atlantic Inn. Before they left, the bit of luck that Hettie always hoped for came her way: Saffron banged the front door shut behind her, turning the key in the lock; reaching down, she appeared to slide the key under one of the giant stone crabs that formed the ornamental welcoming committee at the door of Crabstock Manor. The couple made their way arm in arm past their unseen visitors, still crouching silently in the rhododendrons. Hettie waited for them to reach the end of the driveway, then wasted no time in climbing the steps to the front door, with Tilly following warily behind.
‘Yes!’ said Hettie, triumphantly recovering the key. ‘That’s the best bit of luck we’ve had in this case.’
Tilly, still suffering from her fall and the shock of the open grave, was slightly less enthusiastic about the word ‘luck’; the thought of spending any more time in the confines of Crabstock Manor would never be top of her Christmas wish list, but she had to agree that things finally seemed to be going their way. Hettie unlocked the door, replacing the key under the crab, and briefly looked back down the driveway t
o make sure that they really were alone. Pushing the door open, the cats crept inside, taking care not to make any noise until they’d established their next course of action. The house was in darkness and the giant staircase reared up at them from the hallway. Hettie risked her torch and signalled to Tilly to follow her upstairs to the first landing. ‘I think we should try and find Lady Crabstock’s room,’ she whispered. ‘We may be too late to save her, but it’s a good place to start.’
Turning right at the top of the stairs, they located the door which had previously led them through to Lady Crabstock’s rooms. Faced with a corridor of possibilities, Hettie chose the second door on the right and gently turned the doorknob. The door resisted and there was no sign of a key. Deflated, she moved on to the next door, and this time she was successful. Before them was Lady Crabstock’s giant four-poster bed, lit dimly by a small bedside lamp and shrouded in net curtains as before – but it was the smell that instantly caught Tilly’s attention. Her eyes focused on the dining table to the right of the bed, and there were the remnants of a hurriedly finished meal.
It was hard to see if the bed was occupied and Hettie decided to throw caution to the wind. ‘Your Ladyship,’ she began, speaking to the curtains, ‘I wonder if we might have another word with you?’ There was no reply, so Hettie moved closer to the bed. ‘Your Ladyship?’ she repeated, this time with more urgency. There was still no reply. Seizing the corner of one of the curtains, Hettie drew it back and stared at the empty space where she had expected to find the corpse of Lady Crabstock-Singe. Relieved but puzzled, she shone her torch round the rest of the room. ‘What the hell has been going on in here? Look at this – it’s that bloody Christmas tree we saw them lugging back here this afternoon.’ The tree was set up in the bay window overlooking the sea, and the decorations were a work in progress; a number of glass baubles hung from the branches, with more waiting in boxes underneath, and there were several wrapped presents on one of the chairs. The whole scene looked perfectly normal for the evening of the 23rd of December.
Hettie began to panic, thinking that Her Ladyship would return to her room at any moment and treat them as intruders – which, after all, they were. But it was Tilly’s observations regarding the dining table that temporarily put their minds at rest. ‘Either Lady Crabstock is quite greedy or the Bunns have had their tea in here,’ she said, taking a closer look at the table. ‘Look – they’ve left their fish and chip papers and two slices of bread and butter, and that teapot is still warm. I think that this room has been taken over by Hevva and Saffron.’
Hettie joined Tilly at the table, noticing that it had clearly been vacated in a hurry. ‘It looks to me as if the Bunns have got a bit above themselves. Perhaps their takeover of Crabstock Manor is complete, but where is Lady Crabstock? She was here in this room yesterday. We both saw her, and she was giving orders from that very bed as if she was still very much in charge.’
Tilly thought for a moment. ‘Maybe we haven’t actually met Lady Crabstock yet,’ she offered. ‘We didn’t exactly see her, and when we did see her she didn’t want to see us. Maybe if we had seen her, she wouldn’t have sent us away. She did ask to see us in the first place, and she went to a lot of trouble to get us here.’
Hettie slumped down on one of the dining chairs, trying to hang on to Tilly’s reasoning. ‘So what are you saying?’ she asked, slightly irritated.
‘I’m saying that the cat in the bed yesterday might not have been Lady Crabstock, and that we’ve been tricked into believing it was.’
Hettie stood up. ‘So who was it? It can’t have been Saffron – she brought us in here, and Hevva was on his way out when we arrived back from the village. There must be another cat involved, and one we know nothing about – which means we might not be on our own in here tonight. And let’s not forget that if it wasn’t Lady Crabstock, she may be lying dead somewhere in this godforsaken house, waiting to join her relatives out in the front garden as part of the landscaping.’
‘Maybe it was Christmas Paws,’ said Tilly, trying to be helpful.
‘You do have a point there.’ Hettie looked under the four poster, beginning her search for Lady Crabstock. ‘Christmas Paws is the only other cat we’ve seen here, and she could easily be playing the bit parts under the Bunns’ direction, but she’s not hiding under this bed.’ Dusting herself down and removing a cobweb from her bobble hat, Hettie knew that there was no time to waste. Saffron had made it clear that she would be returning early from the Atlantic party, supposedly to look after Lady Crabstock, and there was very little time left for them to search the manor. ‘Let’s have a quick look at Sooty’s map,’ she said. ‘If you’re right and we haven’t met Lady Crabstock, she may be a prisoner somewhere in the house – that’s if she’s not dead. But why would you dig a grave if someone wasn’t dead? It seems to me that we’re just too late to save the Crabstocks from extinction.’
Tilly opened the map on the table and the two cats pored over it, looking for possible areas of interest. ‘Most of the secret passageways seem to link the big rooms,’ Tilly observed. ‘The best places to hide things are in the cellars or in those rooms near the kitchen. I think with the time we have left we should forget about the posh bits of the house and take a closer look downstairs.’
Hettie agreed and they set off back to the main staircase, watchful of any movement or sound in the old house. They turned into the kitchen corridor and systematically opened the doors, peering into all the rooms. Each was neglected, and stacked with the abandoned days of domestic glory that the manor had once enjoyed: a butler’s pantry without the butler; a once-neat housekeeper’s sitting room, piled high with greying laundry and giant cooking pots; a boot room with brushes lying forgotten under polish-stained benches; and a dairy, inhabited by several redundant butter churns. It occurred to Hettie that if they were looking for the ghosts of Crabstock Manor, they had found them in the very fabric of these sad and lifeless walls.
The kitchen was tidy and unwelcoming. The fire in the grate sulked and smoked as the wind roared down the chimney, doing its best to deaden any sign of life. Hettie shone her torch into the corner where they had seen the ghost of Christmas Paws. There was the door that Sooty had told them led down to the old wine cellar, and eventually to the sea. In the opposite corner was another door which they hadn’t noticed during their previous visits. ‘Let’s take a look in there,’ she said, moving across the kitchen and lifting the latch. She gasped. ‘Well – just take a look at this lot!’
Tilly’s eyes threatened to pop out of her head at the sight before them. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much food in one room,’ she said, allowing her torch to sweep the shelves. ‘This must be the larder, but look at the hams hanging from those nasty hooks! That’s the biggest turkey I’ve ever seen, and that pudding’s the size of a football!’
‘It seems to me that the Bunns are planning a very fine Christmas indeed, unless Lady Crabstock-Twinge has invited the whole of Porthladle to Christmas dinner here at the manor.’ Hettie took in the size of a whole Cornish Brie and a giant slab of Cruncher Cheddar. Tempted, but determined to resist the Aladdin’s cave of festive comestibles, she shut the door on the larder. ‘I don’t think we can put it off any longer,’ she said. ‘Let’s take a look at the other door that leads to the cellar. Saffron could be back at any minute.’
The door was locked. ‘Bugger!’ said Tilly, then brightened. ‘If Saffron leaves a key under a stone at the front door, she’s probably left one for this door somewhere simple, too.’
The two cats swept the kitchen with the beams of their torches, looking for a likely hiding place. Tilly launched herself into an inspection of the drawers in the dresser, while Hettie focused on various pots on the mantelpiece, but there was no sign anywhere of the cellar key. ‘Wait a minute,’ said Hettie, returning to the door. ‘You said simple, so let me see.’ Reaching up, she ran her paw along the ledge of the door frame; suddenly, there was a resounding clink that seemed to echo through t
he house as the dislodged key rattled onto the kitchen’s flagstone floor.
Hettie and Tilly waited in silence, afraid of being discovered at any moment by an unseen presence, but nothing happened. ‘Come on,’ said Hettie, recovering herself. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
She unlocked the door quickly, replacing the key on the ledge, and pulled the door open onto a flight of worn stone steps. Instantly they could hear the sea below them, growing steadily louder as they descended into the bowels of Crabstock Manor, their torch beams almost meaningless in the vast cavern before them.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The pre-Christmas celebrations were not going too well up at the Atlantic Inn. Marlon Brandish’s makeshift sleigh had broken down shortly after leaving the harbour; Marlon himself had broken down just outside Sooty’s hotel, due to the astonishing amount of Doom Bar he had consumed. To make matters worse, Boy Cockle had had one of his turns after smoking too much catnip, and had had to be airlifted by a helicopter from the Cold Nose Airbase to the cottage hospital at Fowlmouth. Sooty had done his best to pacify the village’s kitten population by explaining that Santa Claws was overtired and wouldn’t be putting in an appearance any time soon, and The Wooden Hearts hadn’t shown up at all. The Crispy Cringle Male Cat Choir had seized the opportunity to provide alternative entertainment, but had been beaten to the Atlantic’s stage area by six members of the Porthladle Brass Band, all of whom had taken strong drink.