by T. H. Hunter
Blind Cat’s Holiday
T.H. Hunter
Blind cat’s Holiday is the fourth book in the Cozy Conundrums series.
Copyright © 2018 T.H. Hunter
All rights reserved.
ISBN:
Dedication
To my beloved spouse, who believed in me from the start.
.
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
I thank first and foremost my readers. It would be impossible without your support.
1
Abigail Pomeroy stretched out a podgy, wizened hand and reached for the teacup on the three-legged table next to her. It was a brew of her own making, consisting mostly of camomile and valerian, that she used only when she needed something to calm the nerves. And to say the day had been exhausting would have been an understatement.
Sipping the last drops of tea, she decided to close the window. It was late October, and the wind quickly turned chilly once the sun had disappeared. She puffed as she painfully lifted herself from her armchair. Her ankles had been giving her trouble all week. She suspected that the altercation with her elder son, Matthew, earlier that day had something to do with it.
Whenever she thought of his ingratitude and misplaced sense of entitlement, it made her blood boil. She had given him the benefit of the doubt for far too long. Her late husband, she thought, had been right all along. Matthew was no good and never would be any good. But she would put up with his behaviour no longer. And she knew just what she had to do. She was going to change her will whether he liked it or not.
She moved over to the desk and opened the top drawer. After fumbling with the hidden latch, she opened the false bottom to reveal a few sheets of paper. She placed them all on the table. Now all she had to do was to make the alterations and place the magical seal upon the document. But where had she placed her wand?
Suddenly, footsteps outside her door and three taps announced that her nightcap, a large glass of sherry, had been brought up to her. Was it time already? She must have been lost in thought for quite a while. She checked the large magical hourglass on the wall, but then she remembered that it had broken down the day before.
She retrieved the glass of sherry from the deserted corridor beyond and closed the door again, locking it firmly behind her. She took a large swig of sherry that would have surprised anyone who didn’t know her. She noticed that the liquid tasted a little different than usual. Perhaps the staff had changed the brand. She made a mental note to have that decision reversed immediately in the morning. She liked keeping things just the way they were.
Spotting her wand behind one of the cushions on the armchair, she picked it up determinedly and approached her will lying on the desk. She flipped over the second page that announced the inheritor of her magical powers. With a wave of her wand, the name of ‘Matthew Pomeroy’ was erased. With another flick, it had been replaced by ‘Archibald Pomeroy’, her younger son. Then, she spoke the incantation that sealed the will again, murmuring it over and over again like a mantra.
The will glowed bright green for a moment. It had been successfully changed. She lifted her glass of sherry and put it to her lips once more. But as she drank a second time, there was no mistaking a bitter taste that had nothing to do with the sherry.
Her head was suddenly beginning to spin, and her stomach retracted violently. She couldn’t think clearly anymore. She tried to walk towards the door, but her feet would no longer carry her. A moment later, she collapsed to the ground. She was dead.
2
“Let me go,” Barry said indignantly, trying to clamber off Val’s lap. “This is an outrage.”
“Shhh, Barry,” Val whispered, nodding towards the only remaining four-legged patient, a British bulldog who was beneath his elderly master’s chair. “They’ll hear you.”
“It won’t be long, Barry,” I said softly. “It’s our turn next. The receptionist should be coming any minute now.”
“It’s already been a lifetime!” he hissed. “I’ve been barked and snapped at all morning. If that Doberman had got any closer it would have been curtains for me.”
“You did walk straight into him, though,” Val said, fondly stroking his fur. “Anyway, it’s a vet, Barry. What do you expect?”
“I don’t expect to be in constant fear for my life, thank you very much,” he said. “Being incurably blind is bad enough.”
At this last utterance, the elderly man turned in his seat and stared at us in disbelief. Sensing his owner’s change in mood, the bulldog opened its eyes. I blinked and smiled at the man in the most innocent manner I could summon, while Val held a hand over Barry’s mouth to prevent him from talking any further. After a moment’s hesitation, the man finally put a grubby finger into his ear and jerked it around twice. He had evidently decided that his ears had played a trick upon him.
With Barry still struggling on Val’s lap, the receptionist finally opened the door and announced that the vet would now be able to have a look at Barry. Although he appeared to be miffed by being simply referred to as ‘your cat’, I think he was rather glad to get out of the waiting room at last.
We passed along a corridor to our left and were led into a large vet’s office, where a very tanned man in his late forties was sitting behind his desk.
“Hullo, hullo,” he said good-humouredly, getting up and extending his hand towards me. “I’m Dr. Bentley.”
“My name is Amanda Sheridan. Nice to me you, doctor. This is my friend Valerie Morgan.”
But Barry, sensing his last chance of escape slipping away, struggled free just as Val and Dr. Bentley were about to shake hands. Landing on all fours, Barry scrambled across the floor in the direction of the door. Or at least where he thought it was, for he slammed headlong into a pair of black metal drawers next to the actual door.
Both Val and I rushed over to recover Barry, but Dr. Bentley was there first. With an expert grip, he gently but firmly lifted Barry up and placed him on the examination table.
“Nervous little fellow, isn’t he?” Dr. Bentley said, smiling.
“Neurotic is more the word,” I said, as Barry scowled vaguely in my direction. “But, erm, that’s not really why we’re here. The thing is that Barry is blind. That is, almost entirely.”
“I see,” said Dr. Bentley, taking a rubber glove from a box on his desk and putting it on. “How old is he, exactly?”
“Well,” said Val, eager to enter the conversation, “you can’t get a straight answer from him on that one, but there’s a picture downstairs in the…”
“What Val means to say,” I said, silencing her with a quick jab of the elbow, “is that we haven’t had him for long. We inherited him a year ago.”
“We think he’s in his more senior years, though,” Val added, trying for some damage control.
“That is something of an understatement,” Dr. Bentley said, examining Barry’s teeth. “I’d say he’s well above what might be considered the usual lifespan for a normal cat.”
“You can say that again,” I said heavily. “So, is this an age-related problem?”
“Quite possibly,” said Dr. Bentley. “You expect a lot of wear and tear for such an old cat, of course. That especially holds true for yours. This one’s been through the mill, by the looks of it.”
Barry, who was sensitive about his age at the best of t
imes, looked daggers at the vet, hissing angrily. The vet seemed unimpressed, however, and began to measure Barry’s blood pressure with a tiny apparatus from one of the many drawers.
“Mmh,” he said after a moment, frowning.
Val and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Perhaps Barry’s problems were quite serious after all. Next, Dr. Bentley produced a small flashlight from the chest pocket of his white coat and forced Barry’s left eye to open wider with his gloved hand.
“Mmh,” he said again, examining Barry’s other eye. “How quickly did these symptoms appear?”
“Well,” I said, thinking back to Barry’s excellent eyesight a month ago in the woods of Warklesby’s School of Magic. “It can’t have been all that long. Last week, he had a serious accident when a bookcase fell on top of him. He knows the house quite well, you see. Such a thing wouldn’t normally happen to him.”
The incident was true, and it had been Barry’s howls that had first alerted us to the problem of his eyesight, though he had made every effort and every excuse to hide the fact from us as long as he could. His attempts at self-healing by magic had failed, however, so we had finally decided to show him to a heb vet. He was, after all, technically a cat, albeit with an oversized ego.
“I see,” Dr. Bentley said, turning off his flashlight. “I will need to run a blood test on him to be sure. One moment, please.”
He stepped over to a large shelf at the end of the room and returned with a shaver and a syringe. He quickly shaved off a patch of hair from Barry’s neck. Then, he removed the cap from the syringe. It was lucky that Barry couldn’t see the needle aimed in his direction, because I think he might have made another dash for it if he had.
As it was, Dr. Bentley pinned him down with one hand before inserting the needle. Shocked at the sudden spasm of pain, Barry hissed furiously, but there was no escaping this time. After a moment, Dr. Bentley calmly withdrew the needle.
“I’ll have the blood analysed in the lab right away,” he said, stroking a thoroughly resentful-looking Barry. “I’ll contact you as soon as we have the results.”
“Thank you very much,” I said. “That would be wonderful.”
***
The trip back to Fickleton House was not a pleasant one. Barry couldn’t quite make up his mind whether us dragging him to a vet was worse or the fact that he might be suffering from some terminal illness.
Though I was sure that Barry was in far too combative a mood to be under any immediate threat of dying, his sudden onset of blindness still worried both Val and me.
As far as I knew, no warlock had spent such a long time in feline form – or as any other animal for that matter. The long-term effects were simply unknowable. I only hoped that Barry’s blindness was not a symptom of something far more sinister. Thus far, I hadn’t even contemplated that he, too, was mortal. Even magic couldn’t prevent that.
Finally, we arrived in the cosy village of Fickleton again. It was unusually but pleasantly windy, so that the red and gold leaves of autumn danced around our car as though to welcome us home.
Turning the corner, I spotted PC Bowler outside of the butcher’s shop. Ever since our first encounter a year ago, we had been irreconcilable enemies. I, for one, would not forget how he had attempted to pin a murder on me. At present, he seemed to be berating one of the village youth in his usual pompous manner.
A few minutes later, we drove through the wrought-iron gates of Fickleton House. Even my serious worries about Barry’s condition couldn’t quite close my eyes to the fact that it was more beautiful than ever. Doused in autumnal sunlight, it looked much friendlier than usual, as though it had made an effort to be especially hospitable during a time of uncertainty and illness.
Barry had been unusually quiet for much of our trip home. His usual level of grumpiness notwithstanding, I could tell that he was just as worried as Val and I were.
It was not until we were in the kitchen, helping ourselves to a little snack, when he spoke again.
“I just cannot understand it,” he muttered, a pained look on his feline face. “All my spells, my research. Useless. Utterly and totally useless.”
“I don’t know,” Val said, trying to lift the mood. “I think your spells allowing cats to drink cocktails will go down in history. You know, in case another warlock gets stuck in a cat’s body. Wouldn’t be so dull then.”
“Don’t be silly,” Barry snapped. “I’m not talking about my life’s work in general. That is beyond reproach, of course. I’m talking about it in regard to this.”
He pointed vigorously at his eyes with his paw.
“Perhaps we should give it another go,” I said, though after countless hours of trying I couldn’t pretend that I was particularly optimistic. “Our holiday to the Magical Holiday Retreat in Bath isn’t until next week, anyway, so we might as well use the time we have.”
Initially, we had hoped to cure Barry’s ailment quickly enough, so I had written a letter, asking whether it was alright to move our holiday back a bit. A few days later, I had received a morose letter from Mr. Pomeroy, whose father had unexpectedly died, welcoming the change in schedule and promising that everything would be prepared for our arrival. Now, however, it looked as though we’d have to cancel our holiday altogether.
“We have tried everything,” Barry continued, frustrating flying from his every syllable. “Every spell in the book, and several of my own invention. Cataract cures. Longevity charms. Even a magical lens correction. Nothing works. And by the day, I see less and less. I can’t even read with a magnifying glass anymore. Not that I don’t regret reading a lot of the drivel I had to endure in the Daily Warlock over the years. But at least I’d like to stop by my own choice, perhaps after a particularly terrible piece by one of my esteemed colleagues.”
“By the way, did anyone answer the public request we placed in the Daily Warlock?” asked Val.
“You placed there, you mean,” said Barry sniffily.
As a last, desperate attempt, we had sought the help of the larger magical community. Barry, as one might imagine, had been mortified at the idea of having his condition made public. Perhaps even worse, if one of his many academic rivals did manage to cure his blindness, Barry would be eternally indebted to him or her, a thought that surely haunted him.
Finally, however, Barry’s sense of self-preservation had trumped his ego, and he had placed his signature under the plea for help. Ever since, he seemed to have convinced himself that he had been somehow forced or duped into doing so.
“So, did you get any answers?” Val asked.
“Oh, yes,” Barry said, wearing a sardonic smile. “Hundreds of letters sent by magical post, professing their ‘greatest sympathies’ for my situation. Expressing what a ‘shame’ it was that I would no longer be able to keep up the ‘pretence’ of contributing to magical theory. One letter even suggested that I ought to deflate my head to put less strain on my eyes. Such impudence!”
“Hang on,” I said. “I thought you couldn’t read anymore?”
“They were read aloud by the couriers. Bats, mostly. Though I think there might have been one or two ravens mixed in. It was a most humiliating experience, I can assure you.”
“Lucky that we don’t have any neighbours,” said Val.
“And there wasn’t a single useful suggestion?” I asked.
“Pah,” said Barry dismissively. “One or two mediocrities promised to look into it. But they’d hardly be up to the task of writing my obituaries, if you ask me. Curing this mysterious ailment is well beyond their powers.”
“That’s gratitude for you,” said Val, grinning at me.
“There must be something we’ve overlooked, though,” I said thoughtfully. “Perhaps we should go through the stack of papers Warklesby’s sent you.”
Barry simply waved a paw irritably in front of him as though he were dealing with an irksome fly.
“No, no. Hardly worth the scrolls they are etched on. Second rate research at best
.”
“Well,” I said, sighing. “Then there’s nothing we can do until we get the results from the vet.”
“Please,” Barry said, “if the greatest minds of the magical community – including myself, that is – cannot solve this problem, a heb certainly won’t be able to cure my condition.”
“You mean…” began Val, a look of horror on her face.
Barry nodded gravely.
“My condition might be terminal.”
***
As the days passed by, Barry’s dark prophecy was not disproven. Though bats regularly brought post up to Barry’s library window, no new avenues of a possible cure were opened up for us to try. Barry’s usual level of hypochondria notwithstanding, I was beginning to get restless myself. As horrible as turning blind was, life went on. If it was a prelude to something else, however, that was a completely different matter.
As I paced about the library, lost in my own circular ruminations, the door suddenly burst open. It was Val.
“Amy,” she said, with a note of urgency in her voice. “You’ve got to come.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“It’s the vet,” she said. “They’re on the phone. At Mrs. Faversham’s house. They want to talk to you.”
With all the talk of magical remedies, I had completely forgotten about the vet.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “I’m coming.”
“Don’t waste your time, Amanda,” came Barry’s mournful voice from the armchair. “The hebs won’t be able to find anything. It’s too late. We’ve just got to accept that I’m dying.”
Val frowned at Barry’s defeatism and then looked at me.
“Don’t listen to him,” I said softly. “Can you look after Barry while I’m out?”
“Sure,” Val said, squeezing my arm affectionately. “We’ll get him out of this somehow.”