Kittens and Killers

by Diana Xarissa

Clyde seemed to swallow his first reply. “Sure,” he said eventually.

  Fenella handed the cat to Clyde. The animal quickly settled into his lap and went to sleep.

  “What’s she called?” he asked her.

  “I found her in a shed and I’m only looking after her temporarily,” Fenella explained. “I haven’t named her or the kittens.”

  Clyde frowned. “She needs a name,” he said firmly. “How about Crystal?”

  The girl laughed. “I’m not sure you should name her after me.”

  Clyde looked at Fenella and winked. “Why not? It’s a good name.”

  Fenella shrugged. “You can call her whatever you like,” she offered.

  “She’ll be Crystal to me, then,” he said happily.

  Crystal’s smile didn’t reach her eyes as she turned to Fenella. “I’ll just leave you with Clyde for a bit, if that’s okay?”

  “That’s fine.”

  Crystal nodded and then turned and walked quickly away. Clyde chuckled as she went.

  “She doesn’t like me,” he said, “because she knows I don’t like her.”

  “She seems nice enough,” Fenella countered.

  “Oh, she’s nice enough. That’s part of the problem. She’s always nice and she never raises her voice. When my neighbor turns his telly all the way up to jet engine volume, she taps on his door and asks him ever so nicely to turn it down a tiny bit, please. When Mrs. Christian changes the channel on the telly in the residents’ lounge right in the middle of someone else’s program, Crystal very politely listens to everyone’s point of view until we’ve all missed whatever it was we were trying to watch anyway.” He shook his head. “I never should have let my doctor talk me into moving in here. A nice community full of like-minded people, he told me. Ha.”

  “I’m sorry,” Fenella said as she sat down in the chair next to him.

  He shrugged. “The food is good,” he conceded. “I never did learn to cook very well, so it’s nice not to have to worry about meals. Otherwise, I tend to keep to myself. It’s cold and damp back here most of the time, so no one else uses this room. That suits me. I have my books,” he added, nodding toward a small pile of books on the table in front of him. “They take me to faraway places and help me forget about all of this.”

  “Books are so much better than television,” Fenella said.

  “And they’re more reliable. You read a book and then, ten years later, you read it again and everything is the same. I was in the lounge the other day and a program I used to watch came on. All of the actors I remembered were old people now and the new characters they’d added were dreadful.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Clyde scratched the cat under her chin and then looked back up at Fenella. “Why are you here?”

  “I brought the cat and her kittens.”

  “Yes, of course. I wondered if there was something more to it, that’s all. Everyone seems to want to talk to me at the moment. I’ve been living here for four years without a single visitor. You’re my second visitor in two days.”

  “I read in the paper about your sister. I assume the other visitor was with the police?”

  “Yes, Inspector Daniel Robinson, CID. He was awfully young, too, like all those new characters on that show. Maybe it’s just because I’m so dreadfully old, though.”

  “You aren’t that old,” Fenella countered.

  He shrugged. “I feel old, but then I’ve felt old since the day my sister died. Tragedies age people.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  He looked surprised and then leaned over and patted her arm. “Thank you, my dear. No one has said that to me in a great many years, even though I feel the loss just as much now as I ever did. I don’t believe I’ve ever recovered from losing Mabel.”

  “I don’t want to pry, but if you want to talk about her, I’m happy to listen.”

  “I haven’t spoken about her in more years that I want to remember, well, not until yesterday. It was, well, odd and distressing to talk about her with the police again after all these years.”

  “I certainly don’t want to distress you.”

  “Crystal here is helping a lot,” he replied. “The police should bring cats along when they interrogate witnesses.”

  “I visited with Marilyn earlier.”

  “Marilyn?”

  “Marilyn Coleman.”

  “Marilyn Coleman,” Clyde repeated slowly. “I’ve done everything in my power to block that name from my memory.”

  “I didn’t realize.”

  He shook his head. “I see her once in a while, being pushed through the corridors. I don’t know if she knows I’m here.”

  “She was the one who suggested you might like to meet, um, Crystal,” Fenella said, nodding toward the cat.

  Clyde frowned. “Did she? I shall have to think about that for a moment.”

  He sat back and shut his eyes, leaving Fenella to stare out at the rain. Cars were rushing along the road, windshield wipers sweeping back and forth at high speeds. She was just thinking about saying something when Clyde suddenly shifted in his seat.

  “She suggested you visit with the cat?” he checked.

  “Yes, she said she thought you might like to meet her.”

  “I see.”

  A long silence seemed to stretch between them. Fenella could think of a dozen different questions to ask, but none of them seemed appropriate or polite. She was relieved when Clyde spoke again.

  “How is Marilyn?” he asked.

  “I gathered from what she said that she spends most of her time in her room. She was going down to the residents’ lounge to see the kittens, though.”

  He nodded. “She’ll like that. She was always the motherly type. Jeanne and Donna were like sisters to me, but Marilyn was always more like another mother. I should say she tried to be more like another mother, always telling me what to do and how to do it and getting angry with me when I’d have a few drinks or whatever.”

  “That must have been annoying when you were younger.”

  “A little annoying, but also somewhat sweet,” he countered. “She only did it because she cared. The four of them had met in primary school, when I was just a tiny baby. They’d all known me for my entire life. That made them all think they were entitled to opinions on everything I did.”

  “But you lost touch with them after Mabel’s death?”

  Clyde frowned. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said tightly.

  “Of course not,” Fenella said quickly. “As I said before, I don’t want to upset you.”

  Another awkward silence descended. “I used to work with Ewan. I know they had children. Why doesn’t she live with one of their children?”

  “None of their children survived for very long,” Fenella told him.

  He frowned. “Ewan moved to another store, and I’ll admit that I did my best to avoid him. Things were so awkward between all of us by that point that it seemed easier. Poor Marilyn. All she ever wanted was a small house and a handful of children. She was desperate to get away from her mother and be on her own.”

  “As I understand it, her mother moved in with the newlyweds during Marilyn’s first pregnancy and never left.”

  “I should go and talk to her,” Clyde sighed. “All this talk about Mabel has reminded me of so many things.”

  He fell silent again. Fenella counted cars, first the ones going in one direction and then the other. Eventually Clyde spoke again.

  “You seem to know a lot about Mabel’s death.”

  “There was an article about it in the local paper on Monday,” Fenella explained, “and I met Donna Cannon on Monday night.”

  An unreadable expression settled on Clyde’s face. “Donna Cannon,” he repeated slowly. “Tell me what she’s been doing for the last fifty years, then. No doubt she married well and had a few children of her own.”

  “Actually, she never married. She said something about never finding much use for men. S
he became the first female vice president at one of the local banks, but she’s retired now.”

  “Is she living here, too, somewhere?” he demanded.

  “No, she still lives in the same house where she grew up.”

  “My goodness, I can’t imagine,” he exclaimed. “It would almost be worth going to visit her, just to see that old house again. I hope she hasn’t modernized it, although she probably has, after all this time.” He stared out the window, clearly not seeing the view in front of him. “How many hours did I spend in that house, playing board games with Mabel and her friends?” he asked.

  “She told me she hasn’t seen you in a great many years.”

  “We had a stupid argument at Mabel’s funeral about something insignificant,” he told her. “I don’t even properly remember what we fought about, but it got heated. We were both upset about Mabel and we took it out on each other, of course, but I didn’t see it that way at the time. Anyway, by the end of the day we weren’t speaking to one another, and over the years we were both too bloody stubborn to make amends.”

  “You don’t remember what you fought about?”

  Clyde glanced at her and then looked down at the ground. “It was fifty years ago. I’m seventy-two now. I don’t remember much of anything, really.”

  Fenella was certain he was lying, but she didn’t argue. “Did you fight with Jeanne and Marilyn then, too?”

  “No, I never really fought with Jeanne or Marilyn. They knew that Donna and I weren’t speaking and, well, they both took her side, which was to be expected, really. It was just easier to cut them all out of my life than to try to resolve things, I suppose.”

  “How terribly sad.”

  Clyde looked at her and then nodded solemnly. “Looking back now, it was terribly sad. At the time it felt temporary. I always assumed Donna and I would cross paths at some point and everything would simply resolve itself. It took me a while to realize that she was avoiding me, but once I knew that, I did my best to avoid her, too. It’s a small island, but somehow we’ve managed to stay apart for fifty years.”

  “You live in the same building as Marilyn and you’ve managed to avoid her,” Fenella pointed out.

  Clyde laughed. “I’m rather good at it now, I suppose. I’ve had many years to practice.”

  “Maybe it’s time to think about resolving things,” Fenella suggested.

  Clyde shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t even remember what the fight was about.”

  “But it was important.”

  “It was important when you were twenty-one. Maybe it isn’t so important now.”

  “I can’t,” he said softly. “I might be willing to talk to Marilyn, but I’m sure everything I said to her would get straight back to Donna.”

  “Donna told me she hasn’t spoken to Marilyn in over ten years.”

  Clyde’s jaw dropped. “I don’t believe it,” he said after a moment. “The three of them were like sisters. I can’t believe they don’t speak every day.”

  “According to Donna, they drifted apart. She doesn’t talk to Jeanne anymore either. Jeanne got married and had several children in quick succession. I gather Donna didn’t believe they still had anything in common after that.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t quite get my head around all of this. Mabel would be so sad if she were still alive. I’m sure she expected them all to be friends forever.”

  “Perhaps they would have been if Mabel were still here.”

  “That’s very true. Mabel was the one that they all revolved around, and I’m not just saying that because she was my sister. She was incredibly special and everyone who knew her loved her. She kept the little group together, and no doubt she would have continued to do so until now if she’d survived.”

  “As it is, I don’t think any of the women still speak to one another regularly.”

  “Marilyn lost touch with Jeanne, too?”

  “I believe so. She didn’t actually say as much, but I got the impression that they haven’t stayed in touch.” As the words left her mouth, Fenella was sorry she hadn’t specifically asked Marilyn about Jeanne.

  “The police didn’t tell me any of this.”

  “It isn’t their job to tell people things.”

  Clyde nodded. “I suppose that’s right. Inspector Robinson just asked questions, lots and lots of questions. I kept apologizing for not remembering things better. As I said, it was fifty years ago.”

  “Who do you think killed your sister?” Fenella asked.

  If he was surprised by the question, he hid it well. “I think about that every single day. It’s my first waking thought and the last thing to go through my head before I fall asleep. I wish I could help the police solve the case, but it’s been such a long time…” he trailed off and then shrugged. “I’m not sure what the police hope to gain by reopening the case, really. We’ve all forgotten anything we might have known that could have helped.”

  “Sometimes people are more willing to talk many years later,” Fenella suggested. “Maybe something they saw or heard has been nagging at them for years, but they’ve never felt as if they should mention it to the police before. I’m pretty sure the inspector is hoping for something like that, a tiny something that will break the case.”

  “A tiny something?” he repeated. “It seems a lot of fuss and bother for the man to go through just on the off chance that someone remembers something that seemed insignificant at the time.”

  “Maybe it didn’t seem insignificant,” Fenella replied. “Maybe someone will remember something that seemed important at the time, something that they felt they couldn’t talk to the police about during the initial investigation. Maybe they heard something that implicated someone they loved or saw something that pointed to someone they had reason to fear. Fifty years later, maybe that person is dead or tucked away in a nursing home, leaving the witness free to talk.”

  Clyde chuckled. “So you think Donna is going to tell the police that I killed my sister?” he challenged. “It sounded like that, anyway.”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest that at all. Inspector Robinson will be talking to everyone involved in the case. Goodness only knows what he might learn.”

  “I’m sure Donna will be happy to say horrible things about me. As I said, we had a disagreement. I’m sure she’s spent fifty years blaming me for everything.”

  “Do you blame her?”

  “I’m more inclined to blame the circumstances,” he told her. “It was a very difficult time for all of us. I’m prepared to concede that I was too easy to anger and too slow to forgive. I doubt Donna would make the same concessions.”

  “If she’s willing to do so, would you like to speak to her?”

  Clyde blinked several times and then held up a hand. “Not so fast,” he said. “I never said anything about speaking with her.”

  “It was just a suggestion. You, Marilyn, and Donna all seem sad about the situation. Maybe you should try to reconcile.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this any longer,” he told her. “I think you should go now.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Talking about Mabel is always difficult. I shouldn’t have engaged with you at all.”

  “We can talk about something else,” Fenella suggested. “Do you think the rain will stop soon?”

  “It was raining that night, the night Mabel died. It was raining and far too cold for June.”

  Fenella patted Clyde’s arm. “I think we should talk about something else,” she said gently.

  “I never talk about Mabel. I ended all of my friendships with all of her friends. I couldn’t talk about her. I didn’t want to think about her.” Tears were streaming down his face, and Fenella felt horrible as she tried to find a tissue in her bag.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she handed him a crumpled tissue.

  He wiped his eyes and then sat back and patted the cat slowly. “What really brought you here
today?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I came with the cat and her kittens because Mr. Stone, the veterinarian, asked me to visit. I didn’t know you were here, and I didn’t know Marilyn was here, either.”

  He nodded slowly. “I hope you’re telling the truth. I’d hate to think that the police are sending in cats to help with interrogations.”

  “I hope you don’t think I interrogated you.”

  “Perhaps that was a poor choice of words. It was a difficult conversation, though, and not one that I enjoyed.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “I have enjoyed spending time with Crystal, though. Perhaps it was worth it.”

  Fenella smiled tentatively. “I hope, on balance, it hasn’t been too awful. I truly never meant to upset you in any way.”

  “The police inspector yesterday, he was less kind. He asked all manner of questions and didn’t seem to believe my answers. At least you’ve pretended to believe what I’ve told you.”

  “I’m just making conversation. It’s Inspector Robinson’s job to solve your sister’s murder.”

  “He’s wasting his time, and you can tell him I said so. No one is ever going to work out what actually happened to Mabel.”

  “I hope you’re wrong. I think she deserves justice.”

  “You may think what you like.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “When is Crystal coming back? I’ve had quite enough of you and your cat for today.” He stood up abruptly with the cat in his arms. He handed her to Fenella and then grabbed a cane that had been leaning against the couch. She sat and watched as he slowly limped out of the room.

  “I hope you didn’t have any issues with Mr. Gross,” Crystal said a moment later as she rushed into the room. “He can be difficult sometimes, but he’s usually a lovely man.”

  “I’m afraid I upset him. We started talking about his sister and the police investigation, and he got agitated.”

  “He was in a terrible state yesterday by the time the police left,” Crystal told her. “I believe he and his sister were very close. I’m not certain that he’s ever recovered from losing her.”

  Fenella followed Crystal back through the building to the large lounge where she’d left the kittens. It felt as if many hours had passed, but it had actually been less than ninety minutes since her arrival.