The First of Nine

by James Barrie

  ‘But I killed him. That horrible old man. I killed him.

  ‘I didn’t know it. Not until I heard later that he was dead.

  ‘Then I knew that I’d killed him.’

  Zeynep’s face was buried in Bal’s fur.

  ‘I did it,’ she spluttered. ‘I killed him. I killed Peter Morris.’

  She looked down to where a pool was growing on the linoleum between her feet. She placed Bal on the table and reached for her mobile.

  ‘Ahmet,’ she said into her phone. ‘It is time.’

  What the Cat Brought In

  Theodore listened as Ahmet’s taxi started up and the Turkish couple departed for York Hospital. The two Birman cats, Bal and Belle, sat on the dining table and waited. They weren’t aware that the peace of their home was about to be shattered by a squalling usurper. Rather you than me, thought Theodore.

  He turned tail and jumped down into the back alley. He was pleased with himself. He had managed to reunite Bal with her owner. He had helped to put a temporary stop to the Lucky Twin’s operation, and he knew who had killed Peter Morris. Not bad work, he thought, as he padded softly across the cobbles. He now just needed to prove that he hadn’t eaten any pigeon.

  He jumped up on the back wall of Diane’s house. Her bedroom curtains were drawn. She was still in bed. It was Sunday morning after all, and she had no cat to get her out of bed.

  In the undergrowth among Arthur’s dried turds, he discovered the bones of a pigeon’s leg encircled in a hard plastic ring. A string of letters and numbers carved into the ring could prove that the leg had once belonged to a certain pigeon that had gone missing at the start of summer.

  Theodore cast his mind back to the morning he had discovered Peter Morris’s body in the shed. Arthur had been cleaning himself in the back alley by his back gate. Evidently he had eaten the bird while Theodore had still been asleep. He recalled something his mother had once said to him about the early cat catching the bird.

  Theodore took the thin bones encircled in plastic and carried them home. As he entered the kitchen, Emily jumped up from the dining room table.

  ‘Theodore,’ she cried. ‘Where have you been?’

  She grabbed him up and hugged him to her. ‘I’ve been up half the night worrying.’

  ‘I told you he’d come back,’ Jonathan said, not looking up from the Sunday papers.

  Theodore dropped his package of bones onto the Review.

  ‘Ugh!’ Jonathan said with a grimace. ‘Look what he’s brought in…’

  ‘Eh!’ Emily said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think it’s part of a dead bird,’ Jonathan said, prodding the bones with his forefinger. ‘And there’s a plastic ring.’

  ‘Not again,’ Emily said. ‘Just put it in the bin… Outside.’

  Theodore looked on as Jonathan carried the newspaper supplement with the pigeon remains outside.

  It was definitely time for a nap, he thought, as he heard the bin lid being replaced with a clatter.

  The Case Is Altered

  Theodore went to sleep on Emily’s bed sound in the knowledge that he had solved the case. He knew that Zeynep had killed Peter Morris and Arthur had eaten Ethel. What he would do with the information was another matter.

  It was late afternoon when he stirred. Through the open window, he could hear voices. One voice he recognized straightaway as Emily’s. The other he soon realized was Michael’s.

  He heard Michael say, ‘Haven’t seen you in a while… Not since…’

  ‘No,’ Emily said. ‘Not since that morning.’

  Every few seconds Michael took a sharp intake of breath, and Theodore understood that he was running on the spot.

  ‘How’s the drawing going?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Good,’ Michael said. ‘I’ve started on a new series.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Portraiture…’

  ‘How exciting!’

  ‘I’m looking for a new model actually.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Emily said. ‘What happened to the last one?’

  She laughed but Michael didn’t.

  ‘You have quite an interesting face,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘Some interesting curves.’

  ‘Well, no one’s said that about it before!’

  ‘Perhaps you can sit for me sometime?’

  ‘Like model?’

  ‘Yes, like model,’ Michael said. ‘Though you’ll just have to sit still… No fidgeting!’

  ‘Modelling?’ Emily said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Me a model!’ Emily said and laughed. ‘When?’

  ‘This evening?’ Michael said, ‘If you don’t have anything else planned.’

  ‘I’ve got no plans for this evening.’

  ‘Well, I’ll see you later then. Say seven? I’d better get on… I want to do two laps round the racecourse before dinner...’

  ‘All right,’ Emily said. ‘See you at seven.’

  Theodore listened as Michael panted off up the back alley and Emily returned inside.

  Theodore tried to go back to sleep but something nagged at his mind. When he had gone to sleep he had been confident that the case was solved. Now he wasn’t so sure. He began to think over the facts.

  Peter Morris, it transpired, hadn’t been a particularly nice man. He’d told Zeynep that her husband had been having an affair. He had made a racist remark to her. Zeynep had hit him over the head with a cobblestone. She had fled the scene. She had thrown the cobblestone in Craig’s garden as she dashed by.

  So far, so good.

  Theodore did not doubt for a moment what Zeynep had confessed to Bal. What owner would lie to their cat?

  But something did not add up.

  He cast his mind back, searching for clues, thinking over the details. He went right back to the beginning, before he’d discovered the body of Peter Morris.

  He had entered the back alley, smelling the morning air.

  There were the smells of other cats, the fragrance from what flora grew, the human generated waste that lay decomposing in rubbish bins, the faint smell of cocoa hanging in the air…

  He knew that the local chocolate factory, Terry’s, had closed down some years earlier, and they were starting to build houses on the site. The other chocolate factory, Rowntrees, was located on the northern side of York.

  Had the wind blown the smell of cocoa across the city? he wondered.

  He remembered the wind had blown the feathers and other debris in Peter Morris’s yard mainly towards the wall opposite the gate and not the other way. The wind had been blowing from the south that morning. Theodore realized that it couldn’t have been the Rowntrees factory that he had smelled that morning.

  The only other explanation was that someone had been up and made cocoa before the sun had risen.

  Who drank cocoa?

  ‘Me, I like a mug of cocoa in the morning,’ Wendy had told Laura after Peter’s funeral.

  So Wendy was already awake when he had entered the yard and discovered Peter’s body. She hadn’t been woken by Emily’s scream, as she’d claimed.

  He remembered Wendy unlocking her back door and entering her yard. She had on her fur-lined slippers. If someone screamed in your yard, would you stop to put on your slippers? No, Wendy had been awake; awake and waiting.

  Theodore got to his paws. If Wendy had already been awake, why did she claim that she’d been woken by Emily’s scream?

  He then remembered Zeynep’s confession. ‘He was groaning in pain,’ she’d told Bal.

  So when Zeynep fled the scene, Peter was still alive, and when Theodore discovered the body, Wendy was already awake.

  ‘He wouldn’t have known what hit him,’ the police officer had told Wendy.

  Theodore remembered the state of Peter Morris’s head that morning. He wouldn’t have been lying groaning in pain with an injury like that.

  Zeynep might have hit him on the head with a cobblestone, but someone else had finished him
off with something else.

  That someone had to be his wife, Wendy, Theodore concluded. She had whacked him over the back of the head with her rolling pin.

  He stirred from the bed, got to his paws and stretched.

  The case is definitely altered, he thought.

  Wendy Puts Out Her Rubbish

  Shortly after six o’clock, Wendy put out her rubbish. She opened her back gate and carried her two black bin bags outside and placed them against the side wall of her house.

  Theodore knew from his reconnaissance that he only had a few seconds. As soon as her back was turned he dashed from the corner of the alley and through the open gate.

  He was inside the house. He made for the stairs. He paused on the landing.

  The front bedroom was painted salmon pink, a double bed with pink duvet. The back bedroom was magnolia with a single bed up against the window. Theodore understood that Peter and Wendy had slept in separate bedrooms, and the back bedroom was where Peter had slept.

  ‘If owt got into the yard, he’d be out there in a flash,’ Wendy had said.

  From the windowsill Theodore peered outside.

  Michael’s house was directly behind. He looked across into the back bedroom.

  Philip was lying in bed. He was wearing his yellow trainers and his arm was laid over the duvet cover, his gold watch on his wrist. The duvet obscured his face.

  Theodore glanced down at the yard below. Wendy Morris had shut the gate and was walking to the back door. She glanced up as she passed below.

  Theodore jumped down onto the bed. On the bedside table he noticed a mug. He looked inside. There was an inch of greyish brown solidified hot chocolate in the bottom of the mug.

  ‘Your dad never liked hot chocolate either,’ Wendy had said to Laura.

  It had been Wendy who had brought the mug of hot chocolate upstairs on the morning of the murder, thought Theodore, before he had discovered the body. She had sat on his bed and waited. She had sipped at her hot chocolate, knowing that her husband was not coming back up to bed; waiting for a reasonable hour to go downstairs and discover her husband’s body. Then she would phone the police and let them know that someone had been in her yard in the night and killed her husband. But before she could call the police, Theodore had discovered the murder scene.

  Downstairs he heard the back door being shut and then locked. A moment later there were heavy footsteps on the stairs.

  He made for the landing at the top of the stairs but Wendy was already half way up. In her right hand she held her rolling pin. The rolling pin she had used to kill Arthur and finish off her husband…

  Theodore raced down the stairs on the banister side, keeping to the wall.

  As he passed, the rolling pin came down, sending a lump of plaster from the wall.

  Reaching the bottom, he turned to see Wendy turning mid-flight, rolling pin in hand.

  He made for the back door. It was closed. There was no cat flap. He carried on, into the downstairs bathroom. There was nowhere to hide. He ran back into the kitchen, but Wendy was blocking the door. He ran into the corner, by the sink. As far from Wendy as he could get.

  Wendy stood in the middle of the kitchen, holding up the rolling pin. She slapped the rolling pin into the palm of her other hand. Then she did a few practice swipes, preparing herself to crack open the cat’s skull.

  Theodore backed as far back into the corner as he could. There was no escape.

  Wendy raised her rolling pin. Theodore cowered. He closed his eyes, and braced himself for the blow. His end would be the same as Peter Morris’s, he realized.

  At least it would be over quickly. He braced himself and waited.

  Then there was a sharp rapping on the window.

  He opened his eyes, and looking up past Wendy, saw Irene’s face pushed up against the kitchen window.

  ‘You leave that cat alone!’ Irene shouted through the glass.

  A Nice Mug of Tea

  ‘I’ll make us a nice mug of tea,’ Irene said, filling the kettle at the kitchen sink.

  ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ Wendy said.

  She was sitting at the kitchen table, wringing her hands.

  ‘It’s like he knew all along,’ she said. ‘He knew and he wasn’t going to let it drop. He knew, I tell you.’

  ‘He’s just a cat,’ Irene said, switching the kettle on, and then turning to her friend: ‘An inquisitive one, I grant you that. But just a cat at the end of the day.’

  Wendy shook her head. ‘He was like a dog with the scent of a fox,’ she said, glancing out of her kitchen window. ‘He knew there was more to it… Than I was letting on.’

  Irene tutted. ‘It’s all in your head,’ she said.

  ‘I’m going to call Fulford police station first thing in the morning. I’m going to tell the police everything. Come clean.’

  ‘You’re going to tell them you did it?’

  ‘Me?’ Wendy said, clucking her tongue. ‘I didn’t do it.’

  She shook her head and clucked her tongue.

  ‘But I know who did.’

  ‘Who did it then?’

  Irene leant forward.

  ‘I heard everything,’ Wendy said. ‘Everything that went on that night… First it was that foreign girl. I heard them arguing… She hit him, but she didn’t kill him. He was hurt all right. Lying there, groaning in pain. But I didn’t go out to him… I sat there in the back bedroom and I waited.

  ‘Then I heard a gate open and a minute later someone else came into the yard. There was a sharp crack and then Peter was quiet.

  ‘I heard a gate scrape closed. Then it was quiet. Dead quiet. I sat there. I didn’t go back to bed. I sat there, on his bed, and I waited.

  ‘With the first light, I crept downstairs. I didn’t go out. I made a cocoa in the dark and went back upstairs. I sat on his bed and waited… The funny thing was: I felt relief.’

  ‘Relief?’ Irene said.

  ‘Yes, relief,’ Wendy said. ‘Relief it was over. Relief he was gone and never coming back.’

  ‘I knew there was more to it,’ Irene said, handing her a mug of tea. ‘Than you were letting on…’

  Wendy began to cry, big sobs from deep inside.

  ‘Come on,’ Irene said, putting a hand on Wendy’s shoulder and patting her.

  ‘You have no idea,’ she spluttered. ‘You have no idea what he was like.’

  ‘I knew,’ said Irene consolingly. ‘I knew.’

  ‘He cared more about his pigeons than me,’ Wendy went on. ‘For years I washed his socks and made his meals… and never any thanks. He even named his pigeons after girls he’d courted before me… Deirdre, Helen, Daisy, Ethel… I could hear him on a night, “Oh Ethel, you’re such a pretty girl,” or “Helen, I love you so much.”’

  ‘And then when Laura started seeing David he wouldn’t even let me mention his name in the house. I thought maybe he would change his ideas when he knew Laura was serious about him. But when the baby came, he got even worse… He even went off his Jamaican Ginger Cake… Said it tasted foreign. Used to be his favourite as well.’

  Irene shook her head and sighed.

  ‘All those years I’d had to listen to him and nod my head and say “Yes, dear”. Well, no more, I thought. Is that so bad?

  ‘I sat there and waited. Then I heard that girl scream.’

  ‘But if you didn’t finish him off,’ Irene said. ‘Who did?’

  Wendy sucked in a mouthful of air. ‘It was him behind.’

  She nodded to the kitchen window and the house behind.

  ‘I don’t know why he did it,’ she went on. ‘But the way I see it, he did me a favour. That’s why I didn’t say owt to them about it at the time…

  ‘But that cat knew something was up. And he wouldn’t let it lie.’

  Theodore, sitting on the back wall, looked from Wendy’s kitchen window to the house behind. He noticed the gate sitting on the concrete. He remembered Philip opening the gate to check if some sausage-st
ealing intruder was lurking on the other side. He remembered the gate scraping closed. Then he remembered Michael checking the soles of his trainers for blood on the morning of the murder.

  The murderer always returned to the scene of the crime.

  Greetings from Louisville

  The picture of the back alley was complete. It was rich in detail. Theodore picked out Craig’s house, where a cobblestone lay waiting to be discovered in the overgrown grass. He examined the back of his own house. The curtains in the back bedroom were closed, Emily still sleeping in bed.

  Then there was Michael’s own house. The curtains of the back bedroom were open a couple of inches. The dark silhouette of a figure behind the glass.

  Theodore’s eyes were then drawn to the house on the corner. He noted the pigeons, five of them, perched on the eaves. The door to the outbuilding was open and Peter Morris’s slippered foot was visible, the concrete stained dark beneath.

  In the centre of the picture, coming up the alley, was Arthur, a pigeon in his mouth, its head hanging to the side. Specks of blood dotted the cobblestones indicating where it had come from. It was all in the details, Theodore understood.

  Michael gave the drawing its title, The Morning of the Murder, and signed it in the bottom right hand corner: Michael Butler.

  Theodore should have known. The clues had been there all along, he realized.

  Michael had finished off Peter Morris; then returned home. He had been unable to sleep. Had he left a bloody footprint behind at the murder scene? He checked his trainers. There was a faint smear of blood. He took them off his and washed them in the kitchen sink. He scrubbed at them frantically. Upstairs Philip slept on, unaware of what he’d done, or so he thought at the time.

  Michael realized what he had to do. When the wife discovered her husband’s body she would scream. He would be up, about to set off on an early morning run. He would dash in to see what was going on. He would trample over any evidence he might have left behind. He put on his running gear and waited.