When the Cat's Away

by Molly Fitz

  “Well, she heard I was a history major in college so she set me up to come see the artifacts. I’m just glad your dad didn’t mind me barging in.”

  “Not at all. I imagined he loved it. He adored that sort of thing, showing people his little trinkets and telling them all about his grand adventures.” There was a slight bitterness to his tone that I couldn’t ignore.

  “You didn’t approve?”

  “It’s not that.” Lucas sighed. “It’s just…he left me and my mother when I was very young to go galivanting off halfway around the world. Growing up was a lonely and not just for me, but for my mother, though she found ways to deal with it and so did I.”

  I was beginning to put the pieces together now. An absentee father could lead to resentment, but then I begin to wonder…could it lead to murder? Could Lucas have done something to his own father? Before I could think of a polite but probing question, Mr. Dougal appeared in the doorway and politely cleared his throat.

  “Sir, your father’s solicitor has arrived and is ready to go over your father’s will with you.”

  “Ahh, thank you, Dougal.” Lucas rose and I stood as well.

  “I’d better go.” I tried to breeze past the immediate awkwardness of the moment with an airy smile.

  “Thank you for returning, Osiris.” Lucas replied, and then, ever gentlemanly, he escorted me to the door. I caught a faint scent of cologne and something masculine that made my heart give a little flutter. He really was far too attractive.

  I prayed that Osiris would stay here where he belonged and not give me any more reasons to come back to Champsley Manor. As I stepped out onto the gravel drive, I saw the cat in the window, staring at me. He wasn’t moving and the early evening sun made his eyes glow. In the past, that would have creeped me out, but something about Osiris didn’t scare me. He gave me a little nod. A nod… Wait. Cats can’t nod, right? And if they could, why would he be nodding at me? All I was doing was being nosey and…trying to solve his master’s murder.

  Chapter 5

  Osiris

  I wasn’t happy that my new human ally, Pepper, had departed the house. But at least I could tell she was doing what I wanted, namely investigating Nicholas’s murder. Now that she was on her way, I had matters to attend to such as eavesdropping on whatever my human’s son was about to hear.

  Padding along to the study, I slipped in the door just as Dougal attempted to close it.

  “Ach! Watch it wee fellow.” The butler warned as I skirted around his legs and ducked under the nearest chair facing Nicholas’s desk. Lucas was seated in his father’s chair and another man was in the chair I’d just crawled under.

  “Now, Mr. Willow, please tell me what I need to know.”

  “Well.” The man above me who I could not see except for his boots, made a rustling sound, likely from paper.

  “Your father left the house to you, naturally, and the artifacts from his collection are to be sent to the British Museum if you do not wish to keep them. But the money…” Willow hesitated.

  “Yes, what of the money?” Lucas asked, his tone a little sharper.

  “Well, half goes to you and…half goes to wait…that cannot be right.”

  “What?”

  “Half goes to your elder half-brother.”

  The room went so still that I could hear a distant mouse scuttling several rooms away inside the walls. My ears twitched to the side, momentarily distracted.

  “My elder half-brother? I don’t have an elder brother.” Lucas snapped.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Havers, but it seems you do. Your father handwrote a codicil into the will granting a Mr. Paul Littleton half of the money in your father’s accounts.”

  “Paul…” Lucas choked on the word. He seemed to be having trouble processing it.

  I, however, did not. So Nicholas had mated another human female and produced another child. A child who was now grown and worked as the gardener. The man who favored dogs. The scoundrel. My loyalties lay with Lucas; he at least had the good sense to know cats were superior creatures.

  “I just don’t…” Lucas suddenly sounded tired. “Dougal, you’d better bring Paul in here.”

  “Of course, Mr. Havers.”

  I’d heard enough for the moment. I needed to think. Cats are very good at thinking. I escaped the study and followed Dougal until he passed by a rather lovely window that cast a sunlit square on the carpeted ground. I settled into the sunny spot and tucked my legs underneath me until I looked like a loaf of bread. As I lie there, I let my mind ponder over all I’d learned while the warmth of the setting sun put me into a trance.

  Pepper

  I had every intention of going back to the cottage, but as I started down the walk, I heard voices coming through the open window facing the front gardens. It was Lucas and another man, someone he called Mr. Willow. Willow had to be the attorney.

  Unable to stop myself, I creeped along the flower beds until I was kneeling just below the window and could hear the conversation quite clearly. My mouth dropped. Lucas and Paul were brothers…and Paul was older? How much older, I wondered. It couldn’t be by very much. Not only was the secret sibling revelation a shock, but Paul was getting half of the money in the estate, likely a huge sum.

  After Lucas requested Paul be brought in, it was just he and Willow alone in the study.

  “Mr. Willow, will that codicil hold up in court, if I choose to contest it? At least until Paul takes a DNA test?”

  “I suppose a test is a good idea,” the solicitor said. “But I doubt you’ll have much luck challenging the codicil.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.” Nicholas sighed. “Well, the joke is on all of us, because I know my father put most of his money into those damned Egyptian artifacts. I don’t imagine they’re safe to resell to other collectors. I’ll be forced to either keep them or gift them to the British museum as you said.”

  “Yes, I believe that may be the wisest course of action,” Mr. Willow agreed.

  “Ahh, Paul, there you are,” Lucas said.

  I had every intention of staying right where I was to hear the entire conversation, but at that moment, I noticed Mrs. Daly walking through the gardens in what I can only describe as a suspicious way. She was slightly hunched, her steps careful on the ground to reduce the sound of her movements, and she kept glancing around. She was definitely up to something.

  As I trailed her, I kept at a safe distance between us so as not to let her hear me. She walked all the way to a wooden shed in the back gardens. I hid behind a hedge and peered around the corner as I watched her digging around in the dim interior of the shed. When she emerged, she was holding a flower I recognized all too well. Foxglove.

  Hadn’t Lucas told Paul to get rid of it all? Maybe he’d moved the plants to the shed until he could properly dispose of them. That had to be it, but then why was Mrs. Daly carrying it out of the shed? Was she planning to use it?

  My mouth ran dry as something terrible occurred to me. If Mrs. Daly was the murderer, she could possibly target Lucas next. She had to have known that it was unlikely Lucas would keep her on at Champsley since he bore even less love for her than his father seemed to. I had to call Officer Fitzgibbons immediately.

  I practically ran all the way back to my cottage before I pulled out my cellphone. The constable had given me his card in case I remembered anything else after our initial interview.

  “Officer Fitzgibbons?” I asked when I heard his gruff voice answer.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Pepper Park, the woman staying at the cottage across the street from Helen.”

  “Yes, the American.”

  I rolled my eyes at that. Yes, boil me down to a nationality, I thought.

  “Look, I was just up at the manor house and I saw something that freaked me out. The housekeeper, Mrs. Daly, was digging around in one of the garden sheds. After a moment, she came out with a stem of foxglove.”

  “What were you doing up at the house?” he dema
nded, his tone full of suspicion.

  “I was returning a cat.”

  “A cat?” the constable echoed.

  “Yes, the Egyptian Mau, the one that belonged to the late Mr. Havers. He showed up at my door.”

  “He did, did he?” Again, the suspicion in the constable’s tone was making me decidedly uncomfortable.

  “So are you going to look into Mrs. Daly or not?”

  “I will get to it all in good time.”

  “And you should know—" I added, “—that Mr. Havers has a second son. Well, actually a first son because this one is older than Lucas. They’re half-brothers.” I explained all I’d overheard about the will and the equal split of the family fortune.

  “I see…” Fitzgibbons murmured. “Thank you, Miss Park.” The constable hung up so abruptly that I actually pulled my cell phone away from my face and stared at the screen.

  “Mreow?” I screeched at the sudden unexpected sound.

  Osiris was perched on the sofa facing me.

  “How the hell did you get in here?” I asked him. He meowed at me again.

  “Oh my god, seriously…” I rushed to the kitchen and found the window open. Immediately, I shut it and picked up the cat.

  Once again, we made the trek back to the house but stopped in the shelter of the trees as a police car raced past me toward Champsley.

  “Mreow?” Osiris said.

  “He’s probably going to check Mrs. Daly out. I’d bet anything she’s the murderer.”

  Osiris sank his claws into my arm; I yelped and dropped him. He landed on his paws and stared at me so intently I began to think I could almost read his mind.

  “What, you don’t think Mrs. Daly did it?”

  The cat twitched his tail back and forth and his ears flat.

  “That’s a no…I guess?” I was going crazy, talking to a cat, assuming I could even understand him. “Look, let’s just get you home. Hopefully you’ll stay there this time.”

  As I walked up the drive, I froze at the edge of the woods that faced the front of the manor. Two men in police uniforms were escorting Lucas down the steps. His hands cuffed behind his back. Officer Fitzgibbons followed behind them. I broke free of the trees and ran toward the police car.

  “Officer Fitzgibbons, what are you doing?” I demanded.

  “I’m arresting Lucas Havers for the murder of Nicholas Havers.” The constable waved a hand at Lucas.

  “But he didn’t do it!” I nearly shouted this.

  Lucas met my gaze and I stared back at him. When I saw the pain reflected in his eyes, I felt more helpless than I ever had in my life. The defeat on his face had aged him, like a modern, tragic Lord Byron.

  “Please step aside, Miss Parker.” Fitzgibbons shoved me out of the way a little too hard and I stumbled. There was an earsplitting screech as Osiris leaped at the constable, digging his claws into the man’s pant leg.

  “Bloody beast!” He tried to kick the cat out of his way, but I swooped in and scooped up the hissing Egyptian Mau, clutching him to my chest.

  “Alright, in with you.” One of the officers shoved Lucas into the car. Just before they closed the door, Lucas caught my attention.

  “Take care of him for me?” He nodded at the cat.

  I stroked Osiris’s fur and nodded back, biting my lip to keep from crying. This was all a mistake. I’d told Fitzgibbons what I’d heard to prove Mrs. Daly was up to something, but I didn’t think telling him about the will would put a target on Lucas’s back. He hadn’t known about the change in the will, but surely he’d known the father didn’t have much money that wasn’t tied up in artifacts. There was no real motive for Lucas, at least to me. I’d wanted to solve Nicholas’s murder; instead, I’d gotten his son, someone I believed to be innocent, arrested.

  Chapter 6

  Pepper

  “Mr. Dougal, you know this is wrong,” I whispered to the butler as we watched the police car pull away from the manor house. The usually polite but stoic Scotsman was standing beside me at the bottom of the front stairs, tension making him a rigid mass of muscle. His hands were at his sides with his fingers curled into fists.

  I clutched Osiris to me, attempting to take comfort in his purring, but even the cat was trembling.

  “Aye, I know lass. Lucas is no murderer. He and his father had many disagreements, but he wouldna kill Mr. Havers.”

  “It’s Mrs. Daly. We have to stop her. Do you know where she is?”

  “I havena seen her since the police arrived.” Ewan scowled as he glanced toward the open front door of the house. “We’d better find her.”

  “We’ll need more proof before we do. I tried to tell the constable about her, but apparently carrying around a poisonous plant that killed someone isn’t strong enough evidence.”

  “She has a small office near the kitchens. We can check there.” The butler waved for me to go inside where I carried Osiris and sat him down. Thankfully he didn’t twine around my legs and try to trip me, though he stayed close.

  “This way.”

  Ewan led the way. I followed him and the cat followed me as we took a staircase down to the kitchens and the other storage rooms below. We paused in front of a closed door and I tried the knob.

  “Locked…” I muttered.

  “Not for me.” Ewan removed a set of keys from his pocket. “I have access to all the rooms in the house.” He unlocked the door, and we entered the housekeeper’s office. There were stacks of papers on the desk and opened letters that the two of us took a peak at.

  “She has several bills unpaid, long overdue too.” I held up a few notices for Ewan to see. “Could be that she’s desperate. Maybe she thought she could get money out of Mr. Havers?”

  “Blackmail?” Ewan stiffened suddenly. “Follow me.” We left the office and went straight to Nicholas’s study.

  “She took him his tea after you left this afternoon while he met with Lucas. Mr. Havers was upset after the talk and I assumed it was because he and Lucas had argued but perhaps…” Ewan lifted the tea tray up and searched the abandoned cups. One had been collected by the police and taken in as evidence but other than that the one missing piece of china, the tray hadn’t been disturbed.

  “I don’t see anything. I thought perhaps she’d slipped him a note? If she was in front of Lucas, she wouldn’t have said anything.”

  “A note…” I glanced around and my gaze skidded to a halt on the fireplace. “Which he might burn to hide?” I asked Ewan and we both rushed to the hearth and I knelt, carefully sifting through the ashes. There, half burned, was a folded piece of paper.

  I struggled to read the words aloud. “Havers, it’s long past the time you owe me for all I’ve done. You know I’ll tell the world your dirty secr—” The remaining words had burned away.

  * * *

  “Dirty secret.” I pondered the idea that the jovial elder Mr. Havers could possibly have anything worthwhile to hide. “What secret?” When I looked at Ewan, the butler was pale.

  “It’s me, lass. Somehow that old bat figured out what I’ve done.” He collapsed into his master’s empty chair.

  “What? Mr. Dougal, what have you done?”

  The butler’s shoulders sagged and he looked utterly defeated. “Years ago, when Mr. Havers was traveling all the time, he left his wife and son alone. Mrs. Havers, Lucretia, spent most of her time at the house. I was here, running things while the master was away and…” He shrugged, his eyes full of regret as he reached for a picture on Nicholas’s desk and turned it to face me. A beautiful blond woman stared out from the old photograph. She was a timeless beauty with stars in her eyes and probably a laugh that made the world sparkle.

  “You and Lucretia…” I guessed, keeping my tone soft. I actually didn’t blame him. She was stunning.

  “She was quite a woman, not just in looks, but in manner. She was all heart, all passion, all kindness. And Mr. Havers never even seemed to notice how lucky he was. I just didna want her to be lonely.”


  “I understand, but why would that have anything to do with Mrs. Daly? Did she know about you and Lucretia?”

  “I think she suspected. She has worked here longer than I, since she was a young woman of twenty.”

  Something about that bothered me, not that I could say way. “She worked here longer than you? By how much?”

  “A year or two. She and Lucretia got along, but I sensed there was something off. Perhaps it was just the usual housekeeper and lady of the house battles that happen so often in homes like these.” He was silent a long moment. “Mrs. Daly resented Lucretia, that was obvious enough, but Lucretia was too sweet a woman to cause trouble.”

  “Mr. Dougal, you should take the note to the police. This is obvious blackmail. They’ll have to listen to us now. They’ll have to take her into custody. I’ll stay here, keep an eye on her so she doesn’t leave the house. I can also search her bedroom if you tell me where it is.”

  “That sounds dangerous. Maybe I should be the one to stay. I wouldn’t want you to put yourself in danger,” the butler argued.

  “Officer Fitzgibbons apparently doesn’t trust me, so if someone else comes to him with additional information on Mrs. Daly, he might just listen to you rather than the nosy American, you know?”

  “Sadly, you may have a point lass. Very well, I’ll go. Her bedchamber is on the second floor at the end of the hall, but you really shouldn’t risk it until I return.” He slipped the paper into an envelope and tucked it into his pocket. “But you’d better stay safe while I’m gone. And take these…” he passed me his set of keys to all the doors in the manor house.

  “I will.” I was confidant I could handle myself. All I had to do was keep an eye on a housekeeper, who might also just be a murder… No problem, right?

  I accompanied Ewan to the door and we both froze at the sight of Mrs. Daly coming down the main stairs. She halted in the same manner as us when she caught us watching her.

  “Ah… Mrs. Daly, I have to go into town. The police station called and Mr. Havers has need of his wallet. I shall return shortly. Miss Park is staying here at Mr. Havers’ direction to discuss his father’s artifacts for when he’s released from the station.”