by Mandy Morton
Hettie flung open the door in a somewhat irritated fashion. She’d seen enough cats for one day, and the last thing she needed was an unexpected visitor encroaching on what she liked to call her ‘downtime’. Betty beat a hasty retreat back up to her flat, leaving Hettie’s visitor to introduce herself. ‘I am so terribly sorry to bother you,’ she said, ‘but I was told that you might be able to help me. My name is Binky Crustworthy, and I’m looking for my brother, Bartlet.’
Hettie stared at the cat for a moment, taking in her rather strange outfit. She was dressed from head to toe in country tweeds, with a matching cape and a deerstalker hat, which she held in her paws rather nervously, twisting it as she spoke. The brindle-coloured cat gave off an overpowering smell of mothballs, as if she spent her days in an old wardrobe. ‘Please come in,’ she said, as Tilly scrabbled round trying to make their cosy bedsitter look like an office. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
Binky shook her head. ‘That’s very kind of you, but your landladies have just treated me to sandwiches and cake. I’m absolutely fine for the moment.’
Hettie offered the cat a seat at the table, which now looked more like a desk. Tilly had whipped the rather stained gingham tablecloth off and replaced it with Hettie’s diary, which she never used, and a selection of pens and pencils. There was nothing to be done about the smell of fish and chips that filled the room, now punctuated by mothballs, but Tilly reasoned with herself that it was dinner time. ‘Now,’ said Hettie. ‘You say you’re looking for your brother, Bartlet?’
‘Yes, that’s right. He had some business at Wither-Fork Hall on Monday and I haven’t heard from him since.’
Hettie shared a look with Tilly, knowing that they were about to solve the identity of the dead stranger on Bonny Grubb’s onion patch, but she let Binky Crustworthy continue, ‘My brother and I run a charity called the National Crust. We save historic buildings and invest our money in preservation. A lot of our work involves setting up housing in these buildings for cats who find themselves homeless through no fault of their own. Bartlet is rather good at cat-lets, as we like to call them – self-contained “des res” with communal responsibilities. “Reserve to preserve” is our motto. No building too big, no venture too small. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes – we received a letter from Miss Wither-Fork, asking if we might be interested in taking on her property and land as she was having difficulty in propping the place up. My brother, Bartlet, was very excited at the prospect, as Wither-Fork Hall is a fine specimen of Jacobean architecture, unsullied by modernisers. He made an appointment to look round the property and see if we might take it on. He suggested last Monday, and – as he heard nothing to the contrary – set out for Wither-Fork on his motorbike. That’s the last I saw of him. He’s never away from Crustworthy Manor for more than a night or two, and he always phones to let me know when he’s due back. I’m now very worried, and the cat I spoke to this afternoon at the Wither-Fork gatehouse said she hadn’t seen him. I returned to the town and went to the post office in case he’d been in to send me a telegram or something, and the postmistress said you were detectives and might be able to help. I fear that he may have had an accident en route, and could be lying in a hospital bed or a ditch. He’s a bit of a maverick when he hits the open road on his beloved motorbike. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s come off the thing.’
Hettie hated to be the bearer of bad news, but the help that she and Tilly could offer amounted to a trip to Shroud and Trestle, where Bartlet Crustworthy was currently a non-paying guest. To avoid any unnecessary grief, Hettie had to make sure. She nodded to Tilly, who brought the sketchbook over to the table. Binky Crustworthy pounced on it. ‘Where did you find this?’ she asked, looking relieved until she caught the look on Hettie’s face.
‘I’m so very sorry to tell you that I believe your brother was killed on Wither-Fork allotments some time on Monday night or early Tuesday morning.’
Binky stared at Hettie in disbelief. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘How can he be dead? And what do you mean, “killed”? How can you be killed on an allotment? That’s ridiculous. It can’t be him. I’d know if he were dead. You must have made a mistake.’ Binky Crustworthy stared down at the sketchbook in her paws, absent-mindedly flicking through the pages as her tears added to the watercolours that had been so skilfully painted by her brother. ‘Please tell me – how did the accident happen?’ she asked, not really wanting to know.
Hettie felt that at this stage there was no point in softening the blow. ‘I’m afraid your brother was murdered. We’re investigating his death and another killing up on the allotments.’
‘Murdered!’ cried Binky. ‘Who would want to murder Bartlet? This is a nightmare. And another killing, you say? Where is my brother now? The cat at the gatehouse said there was a funeral this afternoon – surely he hasn’t been buried without me?’ Binky Crustworthy began to rock with grief, her sobs coming loud and fast. All Hettie and Tilly could do was wait until things became a little calmer before explaining the whereabouts of Bartlet Crustworthy.
Tilly boiled the kettle and made three mugs of sweet, milky tea. Hettie offered the fire another shovel of coal and returned to the table, where Binky’s sobs had become more of a whimper, interrupted by the occasional gulp. Her face, paws and tweed suit were soaked in tears, and Tilly proffered a tea towel to help with the worst of it. Binky blew her nose and wiped her eyes, gratefully accepting the mug of tea, which she clutched to her for warmth and comfort. ‘Is there anyone we can contact for you?’ asked Tilly.
Binky shook her head. ‘No, there’s no one – not now, anyway. It was always me and Bartlet. Please tell me where he is. It wasn’t his funeral, was it?’
‘No,’ said Hettie. ‘He’s being looked after by our local undertaker. Would you like me to call them for you?’
‘That would be most kind. I can’t even remember where my car is. I think I may have parked it outside the post office.’
Hettie and Tilly shared a look. If Lavender Stamp had anything to do with it, the car would have been towed away by now; she took great exception to any cat parking outside her post office, except for the library van, which brought in more customers. Tilly crawled into the staff sideboard and pulled the telephone out. Hettie dialled and got Mr Shroud himself, who was very pleased to be able to put a name to the stranger in one of his refrigeration drawers. He counselled that if a viewing was to take place, Morbid would need to ‘tidy things up’, and that would take an hour or so as she had gone home for the day. Hettie rang off, having made the appointment for Binky, who sat hunched at the table.
‘I’ll go and see if I can find your car,’ said Tilly, needing to do something helpful. ‘What does it look like?’
‘It’s blue with mud all over it. Bartlet was going to wash it for me, but …’ Binky Crustworthy collapsed again in a sobbing heap, and Tilly flew out of the door, leaving Hettie to staunch the flow with another tea towel. The car was indeed outside the post office, covered in mud with one of Lavender Stamp’s abusive little notes stuck to the windscreen. There were no official parking restrictions, but Lavender was a law unto herself, and the very thought of any cat clogging up what she regarded as her shop frontage threw her into a rage, tempered only by the hit-and-run delivery of one of her nasty bits of paper.
An hour, two very damp tea towels and three mugs of tea later, Hettie and Tilly waved Binky Crustworthy off as she set out for Shroud and Trestle to claim the body of her brother Bartlet. Hettie had offered to accompany her for support, but was pleased and relieved when the offer was declined. Binky had decided to make the necessary arrangements to have Bartlet’s body delivered to Crustworthy Manor, where he was to be buried in the family vault. She asked that Hettie keep her up to date with the murder enquiry, but refused the offer of a night on Betty and Beryl Butters’ sofa, choosing instead to return home after identifying the body.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Hettie’s mind was racing when they returned to their
room. It had been frustrating to offer a sympathetic ear to Binky Crustworthy while so many revelations were swimming round in her head. She knew that the case was close to being cracked, but her thoughts needed to be ordered, and the only way to do that was to sit down with Tilly and sift through what they knew in the hope that all would become clear.
No sooner had they closed the door than their peace was shattered again, but this time in the best of ways. Seeing the look on Hettie’s face, Tilly opened the door and was pleased to see Beryl Butter. ‘Sister said you’d brought these in for your supper. Stone cold, they were, so we collected them while you were waving your visitor off and showed them the oven for a few minutes. Nice and hot now, and Betty’s added a couple of iced cream slices for your pudding.’
Tilly accepted the hot parcels of fish and chips, and Hettie took charge of the cakes, using up her last beaming smile of the day on their landlady. They wasted no time in devouring their supper. Tilly – almost too full to move – tidied the fish and chip papers away into the coal scuttle for burning. Hettie threw off her clothes and replaced them with her dressing gown, then reached for her pipe and catnip pouch.
‘So where do we go from here?’ Tilly asked, struggling with the buttons on her pyjama top. ‘We know the dead stranger is Bartlet Crustworthy, but why doesn’t Miss Wither-Fork know who he was if he came to see her?’
‘Well, that’s the whole point,’ said Hettie, blowing her first smoke ring into the fire. ‘I suspect that Fluff Wither-Fork had no idea that Bartlet Crustworthy was coming to see her because she never got the reply to her letter. She told us that no one was interested in taking on her property.’
‘So do you think it got lost in the post?’
‘No, I think it got lost at the gatehouse. We know that Mash Wither-Spoon takes the mail to the Hall for her sister, so she could easily have kept Bartlet’s reply to herself.’
‘Why would she do that? She knows the money’s running out and that Fluff’s in dire straits – or at least she was before Miss Jingle’s legacy.’
‘I think Micks and Mash have every reason to fear anyone who attempts to take on Wither-Fork Hall. Fluff is a soft touch as far as her sister’s concerned, and the Wither-Spoons suffer none of the day-to-day hardships that she has. Just think – if the National Crust had taken on the property, the chances are that Micks and Mash would be trading in their glorious little castle for one of Bartlet Crustworthy’s cat-lets at the Hall. The gatehouse would be perfect for a visitor centre and a shop selling jams and tea towels.’
‘I suppose that goes for all of the allotment holders,’ Tilly pointed out. ‘Perhaps Bartlet would have rehoused them as well. I can’t see Bonny Grubb living in a cat-let and giving up her caravan, and Jeremiah Corbit’s compost heaps wouldn’t look great on the lawn in front of the Hall. Gertrude Jingle would never have left her lilies, either. It might turn out to be like one of Agatha Crispy’s stories, where they all got together and murdered him, and then Miss Jingle threatened to tell and had to be silenced.’
Hettie had to concede that it wouldn’t be the first time Agatha Crispy’s work had inspired them in solving a case, but this time things were a little more complicated. ‘Let’s forget about Bartlet Crustworthy’s murder for a minute and look at the death of Miss Jingle,’ she said, reloading her pipe. ‘I agree with you – I think she was killed because she knew something, but I’m not sure it was entirely connected with the first murder, although I do think the killings are linked. I can’t remember her exact words when I spoke to her, but she said that Micks Wither-Spoon lived in an ivory tower. Well, that suggests to me that he’s not responsible for anything he does, especially as Mash seems to spend her life protecting him.’
Tilly leapt up and dragged her dictionary out of the staff sideboard. ‘Let me see,’ she said, pawing through the tome that was almost as big as she was. ‘Ah, here it is. “Ivory tower. Secluded place of shelter. State of being far removed from the harsh realities of life. An unworldly dreamer.”’
‘Exactly!’ said Hettie. ‘“Shelter” is the big word there, and “removed from the harsh realities of life”. That’s what Mash does for him, but the big question is how far would she go to protect him, and what is he capable of in the strange world that he inhabits? The one consistent thing that everyone we’ve spoken to agrees on is that Micks Wither-Spoon lives in a world of his own. And what about Miss Jingle’s letter to Fluff Wither-Fork? She suggests that Mash will need propping up at some point in the future, and that Micks is a danger to himself. That’s a warning of bad stuff to come, if ever there was one. And Binky Crustworthy said that Bartlet got here on his motorbike. Could that have been the same one that Micks drove away on yesterday?’
Tilly was excited now. Putting all the evidence together was one of her favourite parts of the cases they’d worked on, and she had a few observations of her own to add. ‘It’s odd that Mash wasn’t more helpful to Binky Crustworthy when she called at the gatehouse today. Mash told her that she hadn’t seen Bartlet, even though she knew that there’d been a body on Bonny’s onion patch. Surely she should have put two and two together? And if the motorbike was Bartlet’s, perhaps she thought they should get rid of it after Binky had been. And why is Micks in such a state that they can’t now give their Macbeth at the show? He looked suicidal, perched on his battlements this morning, and they didn’t come to Miss Jingle’s cremation, which is really strange as they got on so well with her. Even if Micks didn’t know they were related, you’d think they’d have turned up out of respect.’
Hettie put her pipe down in the hearth and absent-mindedly reached for a cream slice, pleased with their deductions so far. Tilly did the same, and for a few minutes there was much lip-smacking; her teeth were past their best, and sucking the cream out of any cake had become a ritual she enjoyed, especially if it had been baked by one of the Butter sisters.
The clock on the staff sideboard told them it was nearly midnight, and it had been a very long day. Hettie yawned. ‘I think we’ll interview Micks Wither-Spoon tomorrow, regardless of Mash’s protestations. It’s long overdue. Ivory tower or not, I intend to break the walls down and get to the bottom of this case come hell or high water.’
‘I want to know where the scarecrows are disappearing to,’ said Tilly, settling down on her blanket.
‘I think that’s for another day,’ Hettie replied before falling into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The morning ritual of hot sweet tea and cheese triangles on toast was sidelined by Hettie’s need to pay a month’s rent to the Butters before Fluff Wither-Fork’s fee burnt a hole in the pocket of her business slacks. Unusually bright, she dressed and left Tilly choosing clothes from the filing cabinet, returning with three sausage baps and three extra-milky frothy coffees – or lappes, as Tilly liked to call them. ‘The rent’s paid up and Bruiser’s on his way up to join us for breakfast,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d treat us to something substantial. I think it’s going to be another difficult day. I’ve ordered pies for supper and cream horns for afters. Betty said she’d leave them by the bread ovens if we were late back.’
Tilly clapped her paws at the thought of a cream horn and was energised by Hettie’s mood. It was rare to see Hettie Bagshot bright-eyed and bushy-tailed before ten o’clock in the morning, and she admired the sense of purpose that her friend had adopted. ‘Do you think today’s the day?’ she asked.
‘I do,’ said Hettie, taking a large bite of her bap. ‘Case solved by teatime or I’m a short-haired black cat.’
Bruiser was less cheerful when he arrived at their door, having sat up late into the night with his new edition of Biker’s Monthly. The sausage bap cheered him up immediately, and Hettie sketched out her plan of campaign for the day. ‘It’s Micks and Mash first, even if we have to break their door down,’ she said, wiping the frothy bit of the coffee from her whiskers. ‘Bruiser, I’ve got a special job for you while Tilly and I are with the Wither-Spoons. I want you to ch
eck and see if there’s a motorbike anywhere near the gatehouse. If you can’t find one, go for a run on Miss Scarlet and have a scout round. It’s mostly countryside beyond Wither-Fork, so a quick look in fields and ditches would be good. If Micks Wither-Spoon has tried to get rid of it, it won’t be far away.’
‘What sort of bike is it?’ asked Bruiser, always keen to discuss the finer points of his passion.
Hettie thought for a moment and realised that she had no idea. ‘Two wheels, and it made a lot of noise,’ she said lamely.
Bruiser grinned, showing all the teeth he didn’t have. ‘Right-o. Leave that one with me.’
Tilly made an ineffectual attempt at tidying their room before they emerged into the sunshine, ready to do battle at Wither-Fork Hall. Miss Scarlet was ready and waiting and parked outside the post office, much to Hettie’s amusement. Lavender Stamp was lurking by her postbox, ready to pounce as Bruiser kicked the engine into life. Hettie and Tilly clambered aboard the sidecar and pulled their lid shut just as she reached them, and Miss Scarlet sped away leaving the postmistress in a cloud of white smoke.
Miss Scarlet climbed Wither-Fork Hill with ease, passing Clippy Lean’s bus, which was stationary halfway up. Clearly today was not a good one for the ageing bus, but Hettie noticed that the stranded passengers were far from annoyed as they sat playing board games while waiting for the mechanic. There was no sign of Clippy, but Hettie – if she’d been a gambling cat – would have put money on the bus conductress being busy lifting potatoes on her allotment for the Michaelmas Show. Bruiser parked the bike and sidecar outside the gatehouse. There was no sign of Micks on his battlements; in fact, the gatehouse looked gloomy and unoccupied as Hettie and Tilly made their way round to the back door. The kitchen curtains were drawn closed, and there was no sign of life.