by Mandy Morton
Hettie wondered if a blow-by-blow account of the average evening at Furcross was about to unfold, and headed Marcia Woolcoat off at the pass. ‘Who discovered the bodies were missing, and when?’
‘It was Tuesday lunchtime. Nola – that’s Nola Ledge, our retired schoolmistress – was taking flowers to her sister Dolly’s grave when she noticed the mounds of earth beside the new plots. It gave her such a turn that she ran slap bang into Digger Patch’s wheelbarrow. I was summoned immediately, and after seeing for myself that the new graves were empty, I called the residents and staff together and ordered Marley Toke to serve lunch to give me time to decide what to do. By tea, one of our clients had left and two more were making arrangements to go, and Marley – seeing my distress – suggested I call you in.’
With all the talk of lunches and teas, Hettie realised that it was some time since she had put away the Butters’ pie of the day. As the missing cats were already dead and tomorrow was another day, she could afford time to think before making her next move. Her head was full of questions, mostly about what Tilly had planned for their supper, and she took leave of Marcia Woolcoat, promising to return in the morning to talk to the residents. She collected her best work mac from the peg in the hallway, then made her way out to Sheba Gardens and the safe haven of the transit van.
Poppa listened as Hettie brought him up to speed on the first ever No. 2 Feline Detective Agency case, this time with the handbrake off. Having agreed to deliver her back to Furcross in the morning en route to a blocked sink, he dropped her in the High Street just as Oralia Claw was getting her board in. The Butters had shut up for the day and retired to their flat over the shop, so Hettie made her way down the side of the building to the back door, which opened onto the storeroom and ovens and led eventually to her own rented office. Tilly worked a magic trick every evening, transforming the office into a cosy bedsit: Hettie’s desk was now adorned with a slightly stained tablecloth and bowls and forks for two; the Butters’ luncheon vouchers had been exchanged for a steak and kidney pie and a large packet of Salt & Shake crisps; and there was a saucer each of melted ice cream for pudding. As Hettie walked in, Tilly was just putting the finishing touches to the fire and laying out her blanket for later. Hettie’s pipe and catnip pouch were on a small table by her chair, which had been dragged away from the filing cabinet and put centre stage in front of the grate, where a small but inviting collection of flames was coming to life.
Tilly looked up expectantly as Hettie hung her mac on the back of the door, and waited for the good news she’d spent the afternoon hoping for. She was not disappointed. ‘Looks like the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency is in business,’ said Hettie, trying hard not to skip round the room with sheer delight as Tilly offered a raw vocal soundtrack of ‘We’re in the Money’. She threw her bounty of three pounds down onto the dinner table, and the cats set about dividing the steak and kidney pie in half and breaking open the crisps; this proved a little more energetic than expected, but Tilly soon scooped them off the floor and into the bowls where they belonged.
The meal was soon over, and they retired to the comfort of the fire to enjoy their ice cream before getting down to the business of the day. With no real experience of detection, and no appetite for putting herself out, it dawned on Hettie somewhere between the second and third pipe of catnip that she had rather landed them in it: she had taken a case she had no idea how to solve, accepted money on account, and made an arrangement to return to the scene of the crime the next day to do whatever it was that detectives do. Bewildered and tired, she looked across at Tilly, who had been making copious notes as the case was outlined to her.
Tilly put her notepad down with some sort of resolution. ‘It’s quite simple really,’ she said. ‘It has to be an inside job, or someone close to one of the residents, or they wouldn’t know who was dead and who wasn’t. And if they weren’t dead, then they wouldn’t want them, would they?’ Hettie was already lost but she tried to hang on as Tilly moved closer to the fire and continued. ‘What we need to find out is if they wanted the cats who were dead or just the stuff they were dead with – and if that’s the case, why didn’t they leave the cats where they were and just take the stuff?’ By now, Hettie felt obliged to make some sort of contribution to the conversation, but her head was spinning with Tilly’s enthusiasm and there was no space for her to interject. ‘This calls for a plan,’ Tilly continued. ‘We may have to set a trap. We need a plant.’
This was Hettie’s moment. ‘I’m not sure we should spend money on making the office look nice until we have a few more cases,’ she observed cautiously as Tilly sucked the rubber off her new pencil and spat it into the fire. ‘What sort of plant had you in mind?’
Refusing to follow Hettie’s train of thought, Tilly pushed on with hers. ‘This is a job for Jessie. Her charity shop’s going through a rough patch and she’s desperate for money. Could we run to another pair of paws?’
Hettie – more confused than ever but not surprised at the news that their old tabby friend’s backstreet venture into retail would not be launched on the stock exchange any time soon – agreed to consider Jessie as a temporary recruit, provided there was good justification. A little late, the penny dropped. ‘Oh I see! Jessie is to be planted at Furcross as an insider – brilliant! But can she be trusted not to lose her temper? She does have a bit of a reputation. We could end up being sued by Marcia Woolcoat.’
Tilly thought for a moment as she put the pan on for their bedtime milk. ‘Do you think this Marcia Woolcoat can be trusted? She’d have to go along with Jessie being there. We couldn’t afford to pay Furcross rates, and getting the TV back should be our first priority after the rent.’
Clearly they were both tired and the conversation was becoming more surreal by the second. It was eventually agreed that Tilly would go to Furcross with Hettie in the morning, and would take notes during the questioning of residents and staff. The matter of their mole could wait until they had a better idea of what was going on – which, in Hettie’s case, was a bit of a tall order. Delighted to be going further than the High Street, Tilly turned out the filing cabinet to look for her best cardigan while Hettie downed her hot milk, wound her alarm clock and curled up in her chair. It had been a long day, but there was no doubt that the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency was definitely on the map, even if the contour lines were a little shaky.
CHAPTER THREE
Tilly awoke as she always did to the firing up of the Butters’ bread ovens. As she lay waiting for the warmth to permeate the walls of their room, she nuzzled each of her arthritic paws, encouraging them to face the day. She’d tried all the usual cures, but found that heat and nice dinners did more good than any nasty stuff in bottles. Since Hettie had taken her in, life was full of good food and warm beds, a great improvement on frosty old sheds and foraging in dustbins. Now, with their detective agency up and running, she actually had a sense of purpose in life – as well as organising and executing Hettie’s every comfort, of course. With that in mind, she struggled from her blanket, folded it up and placed it in the filing cabinet for later, and put the kettle on for their morning tea. She padded softly round the room, reversing her evening ritual to transform bedsit into office again: the tablecloth was stowed in the bottom desk drawer; the dinner bowls – after a cursory wipe – were stacked in the fireplace; and the few stray crisps which still littered the carpet were tidied away as a breakfast starter. Licking the salt from her paws, and making some attempt to clean her face and ears at the same time, Tilly was now ready to coax Hettie into Thursday and their appointment at the Furcross home for slightly older cats.
Hettie had been awake for some time, but preferred the chores to be concluded before she opened an eye or stretched a paw. Tilly was good at homemaking, and it would have been sinful to interfere with such a well-oiled machine before the first cup of tea had been delivered. The tea was hot, that was the best that could be said for it; this was the third day that the same teabag had been dangled i
nto water and milk, but Tilly had conjured up a slice of bread with a scraping of cheese from somewhere, and they shared it before Hettie rose from her bed to start the day.
Feeling a little underfed, Hettie’s heart leapt as she remembered Marcia Woolcoat’s ‘as and when’ invitation to meals at Furcross. Pulling on her best mac, she made a mental note to string her interrogations out and make sure that she and Tilly were able to embrace every opportunity offered by Marley Toke’s home cooking; Marley’s jerk chicken had been legendary at rock festivals across the land in the days when Hettie and Poppa lurched from one summer gathering to another. Whilst Tilly buttoned her cardigan, Hettie took two pounds through to the Butters’ shop to pay the rent and salivate over the prospects for dinner. Having exchanged their Thursday voucher for a lamb and leek pasty and one of Betty’s extra cream doughnuts, Hettie collected Tilly, notepad and pencil and strode out with great purpose on to the High Street. They were just in time to see Poppa’s van mount the pavement and come to a shuddering halt outside the post office, much to the annoyance of the elderly cats queuing to be first at the pension counter should Lavender Stamp, postmistress, feel inclined to unlock her doors and open for business.
With difficulty, Tilly climbed into the passenger seat of Poppa’s van, getting a helpful shove from Hettie, who followed swiftly and slammed the door before Miss Stamp could unleash a tirade of abuse about pavements being for cats and roads being for motorised vehicles. Poppa took his time in forcing the van out into the traffic, making sure that Lavender got the full benefit of his exhaust pipe, and turned the radio up to drown out any further communication from the postmistress. Tilly found herself tapping along to one of her country music favourites, as Poppa and Hettie all but drowned out Tabby Wynette’s version of ‘Stand by your Van’ with their own less tuneful but more energetic rendition. ‘Oh, this takes me back,’ sighed Hettie. ‘The open road, driving to the sea to watch the sun come up, sleeping in the van, stealing milk from doorsteps and pushing on to the next happening, with giant jellies and as much catnip as a hubble bubble pipe would allow.’
Her raptures were rudely interrupted by a radio newsflash: ‘The bodies of three female cats have been discovered in the dumper bins at the back of Malkin and Sprinkle. If they belong to anyone listening, could those concerned fetch them immediately as they are a distraction from the department store’s end of season sale. For the time being, the bodies have been moved to the haberdashery department; interested parties should contact Mr Sprinkle’s office without delay. We now return to Country Cats, with the latest track from The Mavelicks.’ Hettie was speechless. Poppa shut the radio off and swerved into the Cat and Fiddle’s car park, and Tilly responded with a rare expletive. ‘Bugger! They must be the missing cats. If they’re found, we have no case, which means no TV and no teabags.’ She had missed a trick in her panic, but Hettie was never short in rising to an occasion which had ‘triumph’ written all over it. Poppa read her mind and did what ended up being a seven-and-a-half-point turn, then headed back to the bottom of the High Street where the grand edifice of Malkin and Sprinkle had stood for over seventy years, offering everything a cat’s heart could delight in: six floors of loveliness, from groceries to galoshes and – more recently, it would appear – a house of rest amid the buttons and ribbons.
‘All we have to do is get the bodies back to Furcross and it’s job done, plus a five-pound bonus into the bargain,’ cried Hettie, throwing herself out of the van and dragging Tilly along by her cardigan. Poppa took advantage of a rare parking space and followed the girls into the store, only to find that he had arrived ahead of them due to a slight miscalculation on Hettie’s part in exactly when to alight from the revolving doors. All present and correct, they took the escalator to the third floor and charged on through kittenware, toys and games, skidding to an ungainly three-cat pile-up in haberdashery, where a bespectacled Siamese cat patrolled her counter as if it were the Great Wall of China. Miss Lotus Ping, as her name tag suggested, was ready to call security, thinking that her department was under siege, but Hettie – putting on her most official voice and winning smile – calmed the situation by announcing their purpose. ‘We’ve come for the bodies,’ she said, as if asking for a yard of knicker elastic. ‘They have been stolen from the Furcross Home for slightly older cats. My fellow operatives and I have come to collect them and return them safe and sound to their rightful resting places in their designated, state-of-the-art, futuristic, ecologically sound burial plots.’ Tilly and Poppa felt there was nothing they could add, and hadn’t a clue what Hettie was talking about anyway, so they stood by and waited for Miss Ping to get her head round the situation.
‘You have to spleak wiv Mister Splinkle. I send for him to come quickerly.’ Miss Ping dialled the manager’s number, giving a brief overview of Hettie’s mission. Within minutes, a silver-haired but bright-eyed gentleman cat, resplendent in a beautifully tailored three-piece suit and white carnation buttonhole, made his way to the counter. Miss Ping, overcome with emotion at sharing the same floor space, shrank back into her button cabinet.
‘Hettie Bagshot from the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency,’ said Hettie, pushing herself forward. ‘I have come to claim the bodies you are storing here in haberdashery. They belong at the Furcross Home for …’
‘Yes, yes, my dear, I’m sure you have,’ interrupted Mr Sprinkle, ‘but you need to have a look at them first, just to make sure they’re the right ones. Miss Ping, kindly show our visitors into the storeroom. If the bodies prove satisfactory, we would appreciate immediate removal as they are attracting an unfortunate clientele. And Miss Ping – once Miss Bagshot has identified them, please see that they are nicely wrapped and ready for travel.’ He turned back to Hettie and gave her a charming smile. ‘Please excuse me. Mr Malkin and I have to inspect the final arrangements for our Autumn Fashion Event. We’re lucky enough to be launching the new collection from Cocoa Repel, including her new fragrance. Make sure that Miss Ping gives you and your colleagues free dinner tickets for the evening before you leave the store.’ With that, Mr Sprinkle melted away into his shop like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, leaving Hettie, Poppa and Tilly with the task of identifying three dead cats they had never even seen.
The bodies were laid side by side on a table normally used for measuring out bolts of material, and were respectfully covered in muslin. Miss Ping drew back the cover for Hettie to take a closer look. Three sweet, elderly faces appeared, peaceful and beautiful in death, but – on closer inspection – Hettie noticed that they had all undergone some form of shearing process; most of their body fur was missing. Not wishing to hold Poppa up from his blocked sink any longer, and knowing that the offer of lunch at Furcross would be off the menu if they didn’t get a move on, she confirmed to Miss Ping that these were indeed the missing corpses and asked her to wrap them ready for transportation.
Poppa rearranged various pipes, toolboxes and – for some unknown reason – the front part of a vintage motorbike to fit the dead cats into the back of his van, all nicely parcelled up and secured with string and sealing wax. Miss Ping left her counter in haberdashery to wave them off, making sure that Hettie was also the proud owner of three tickets to Malkin and Sprinkle’s fashion event of the year, and the twin-wheel base transit made its way down Sheba Gardens to Furcross House.
They parked in the driveway and Poppa sat with Tilly while Hettie made her way to the front door. Before she had a chance to use the knocker, the door was once again hurled open by Marcia Woolcoat, looking more than a little thunderous. ‘Thank goodness you’ve finally arrived. I should tell you that I have a major rebellion on my paws. My residents and staff have been assembled in the dining room since breakfast, waiting to be interviewed. I have needlessly cancelled the Thursday morning country dance class; I’ve put off Oralia Claw’s mobile nail bar until next week; Marley Toke is telling me that lunch will have to be cold cuts with Jamaican piccalilli, as she’s left it too late to fire up the deep fat fryer; and Digger Pat
ch is currently boring everyone to tears with a reading from his unpublished manuscript.’
Miss Woolcoat paused long enough to snatch a breath, which gave Hettie the window she needed. ‘I do apologise, but there has been a major development in the case. My colleagues and I are delighted to be able to return to you the missing cats, and if Digger Patch would care to abandon his manuscript long enough to locate his wheelbarrow, we will transport them back to their burial plots and have them tucked up in time to help lay the tables for lunch.’
Marcia Woolcoat’s overburdened lemon trouser suit threatened to burst at the seams, and her sigh of relief deadheaded the two tubs of roses that guarded the front door to Furcross. ‘That is the best of news,’ she gushed, ‘and we have found their bespoke caskets at the back of Digger Patch’s potting shed, so we won’t need to run to the expense of new boxes. What luck we are having today! I’ll be right back.’
With this, the chatelaine of Furcross blew down the hallway and disappeared into the dining room. Hettie returned to Poppa’s van and waited for the unmistakable squeak of a wheelbarrow, followed by the gardening heart-throb and novelist, as he now liked to be known. Digger Patch was not so good-looking these days: his boyish face had become a little jowly – grumpy, even – and it was clear that his once famous whiskers had developed independent directions of their own. It occurred to Hettie that the producers of Down Your Patch, the show which had made his name, had been right not to consider a new contract; the downside of the decision was that the axed television star had found other ways of cashing in on his fame, unleashing a series of unfortunate literary disasters on an unsuspecting fan base. ‘Miss Woolcoat says you needs the barrow,’ mumbled Digger. ‘I’d give you a hand but me back’s bad, see – all them years turnin’ the soil, cuttin’ back, prunin’ and the like, and I’ve a nasty sprain givin’ me jip on me shoulder from diggin’ up me Maris Pipers.’ He paused, but the sympathy and recognition did not come so he pushed on. ‘I expect you know who I am – the face of gardening since I was barely out of my kitten dungarees. Born with green paws and liquid fertiliser runnin’ through me veins.’