The Michaelmas Murders Read online

  The Michaelmas Murders

  MANDY MORTON

  For allotment cats everywhere

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BY MANDY MORTON

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  Bonny Grubb and Fluff Wither-Fork stared down at the dead cat. ‘I ain’t seen ’im round ’ere before,’ said Bonny, giving the body an exploratory nudge with her garden boot. ‘’E’s not done much for me onion patch, either, Miss. ’E weren’t there yesterdee, when I done some weedin’.’

  ‘Well, the fact is he’s here now, Bonny, and judging by the look of him, he’s clearly been murdered.’

  ‘On account of ’im ’avin’ is ’ead bashed in, Miss?’

  ‘Yes, Bonny – and I would think that the rock lying next to him had a great deal to do with it.’

  The sarcasm in Fluff Wither-Fork’s reply passed Bonny by in her keenness to assess the damage to her onions. Some lay half out of the soil, others were trampled beyond recognition, and all were tainted by the blood of the corpse that lay stretched out in the contorted throws of his final moments. The early-morning sun shone on the body, giving life to his jacket as steam rose from the damp clothing.

  ‘’E ’as the look of a compost ’eap, all steamin’ like that,’ observed Bonny, breaking the silence.

  Fluff, who usually enjoyed her Gypsy tenant’s views on life, shook off the prospect of any further conversation by heading back up the allotment. When she reached the gate, she turned back to bark out an order. ‘Cover him up with some sacking and tell no one of this. Leave everything just as it is, Bonny. I’m calling in the professionals.’ In no mood to wait for a reply, Fluff Wither-Fork snapped the gate shut behind her and strode off in the direction of Wither-Fork Hall.

  Bonny Grubb stared after her, bereft at the realisation that her onions would not be winning any rosettes at the Michaelmas Flower and Produce Show this year. She returned to her caravan and hauled an old sack out from under the wheels; dragging it back up the allotment, she threw it over her unwanted visitor, then returned to her caravan to fry sausages on her stove and await the professionals that her landlady had promised.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency had been closed for two whole weeks, as Hettie Bagshot and her friend and chief assistant, Tilly Jenkins, were treating themselves to a late summer holiday. The agency, which they ran from the back of Betty and Beryl Butter’s pie and pastry shop on the town’s high street, had clocked up enough assignments across the spring and summer months to make the holiday affordable.

  The two tabbies had spent a week on their friend Poppa’s narrowboat, exploring the cuisine on offer at every riverside hostelry that the waterways could offer, and transferring at the end of their first week to a holiday camp by the sea, where Hettie had developed sunburnt ears and Tilly had won first prize in the clock golf competition. The two friends had enjoyed every minute of their time away, adding pounds to their tabby waistlines as their pockets grew emptier – but now, the holiday was well and truly over, and their much depleted coffers meant that they would have to get back to work as soon as possible.

  The rent on their office, which doubled as a small but comfortable home, was due any minute, and although the Butters charged very little and threw in coal and luncheon vouchers to be exchanged in their bakery, Hettie and Tilly knew that the debt would have to be paid on time. Hettie sat on her fireside chair, still in her dressing gown, cleaning the remains of a cheese triangle from her whiskers as Tilly hauled their office phone out of the staff sideboard. ‘We should have a listen to the answerphone,’ she said. ‘I hope I connected it up properly before we left.’

  ‘Well, you certainly wasted enough money phoning it up every day. All that palaver we had over trying to find a telephone box that worked.’

  ‘I just wanted to make sure that everything was all right at home,’ said Tilly, engaging a logic which – as usual – made no sense to anyone but her.

  Hettie was tempted to explore the concept further, but no sooner had she opened her mouth to speak than the answerphone sprang into life. The first message was a little distant, but Tilly’s voice was unmistakable: ‘Hello, Tilly here. We’re having a lovely time on Poppa’s boat and we’re cooking sprats for lunch in the galley – that’s what Poppa calls his kitchen, although it’s not a proper kitchen, it’s really one gas ring plugged into a big gas bottle. We’re having our tea at the Shove and Halfpenny later if Hettie can manage the lock gates. Poppa says she’s a—’ At this point the answering machine appeared to cut Tilly off with a bleep and moved on to the next message. ‘Hello, Tilly here. Forgot to say, Poppa caught a very large fish today. He’s having it stuffed as he says it’s the biggest fish he’s ever caught. Hettie wanted to eat it, but Poppa says a big one like that doesn’t come along every day and he’s putting it on display in his salon – that’s what he calls his sitting room on the boat, although it’s not really a sitting r—’ Once again the answering machine bleeped, bringing Tilly’s appraisal of Poppa’s living quarters to an abrupt end.

  Tilly had settled down on her blanket by the fire, enthralled by her audio postcards. More than a little irritated by Tilly’s new-found friendship with the machine, Hettie attempted to bring matters to a head by reaching for the pause button before Tilly could continue with her travel log. ‘How many messages did you leave on that thing?’ she asked. ‘It’s supposed to be for prospective clients.’

  Upset by Hettie’s lack of enthusiasm, Tilly pressed the fast-forward button, promising herself a catch-up with her own messages later. ‘It says we have twenty-nine messages, but I’m certain that I only left 28 – two for each day of our holiday. So there’s one spare.’

  Hettie resisted the temptation to put the answerphone and Tilly back in the staff sideboard, and quickly ran through the messages, fast-forwarding to the final one; according to the time and date setting, it had come in earlier that morning when both cats were still fast asleep. At the sound of a very different and somewhat authoritative cat, Hettie and Tilly drew closer to the machine and the dulcet tones of Fluff Wither-Fork, the town’s most illustrious landowner, filled their ears. ‘This is an urgent message from Fluff Wither-Fork for the No. 2 Feline Detectives. There has been a murder on my allotments, and I would appreciate your attendance at Wither-Fork Hall at your earliest convenience.’ The caller rang off and the answering machine added a series of bleeps, signalling that it had no further messages to offer.

  Hettie threw off her dressing gown as Tilly clapped her paws. ‘Just in time for the rent, and it sounds like a nice murder to get our teeth into,’ she said, springing to the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet to choose a cardigan suitable for the case.

  ‘I’m not sure there�
�s such a thing as a nice murder,’ said Hettie, pulling on her business slacks. ‘If we get a move on, we should catch the ten-thirty bus from outside the post office. It’s a bloody nuisance that Bruiser has chosen this week to go fishing with Poppa. We’re going to have to rely on public transport.’

  Tilly nodded, saddened by the fact that Miss Scarlet, their motorbike and sidecar, was out of action; their friend Bruiser was the only cat who could drive it. ‘I suppose Bruiser’s entitled to a holiday,’ she said wistfully, as she took her best mac down from the back of the door.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The town’s bus service could never be described as reliable. Even those cats lucky enough to catch a bus in the first place had no guarantee that they would reach their destination on time, or in some cases at all. The main problem was breakdowns, due partly to the age of the buses and partly to a lack of maintenance. The depot at the back of Malkin and Sprinkle’s department store boasted a large garage that housed two buses and an assortment of spare parts, all taken from the original fleet of six as they gradually ground to a halt on routes in and out of the town. There was no money to replace them, but the cheerful and optimistic staff of four did their best to make several journeys each day up and down the high street. Breakdowns had become a regular feature on Clippy Lean’s route, so the town’s bus conductress of the year had taken steps to ensure that there was plenty of on-board entertainment for her passengers to enjoy should they become victims of an unscheduled delay. She had placed an assortment of board games and jigsaws in the luggage racks above each seat, and on cold days she procured a number of hot-water bottles, which she filled from the bus’s radiator as it boiled over the silent engine. Clippy loved her job and would do anything to keep her customers happy.

  Hettie and Tilly only had to wait ten minutes before the bus loomed into view. The fact that this was the 9.30 service, arriving at 10.40, didn’t concern them as they clambered aboard, enjoying a royal welcome from Clippy, who regarded them as local celebrities thanks to a number of headline-grabbing cases. The bus coughed and lurched its way down the high street, and Clippy made unsteady progress up the aisle to the back seat, where Hettie and Tilly had settled themselves. ‘Two returns to Wither-Fork Hall please,’ said Tilly, proffering a pawful of change.

  Clippy dispensed two pink tickets from her machine, which she wore with pride strapped across her chest. ‘I’m not sure how far up Wither-Fork Hill we’ll go today, so I’ll just take for two singles to save me having to issue a refund. We’ve already had a boil-over and a fan belt incident this morning, and I’m thinking that Wither-Fork Hill just might break the camel’s back.’

  The bus made an unscheduled stop outside Meridian Hambone’s hardware store, and Clippy skipped back down the aisle to welcome aboard the Gamp sisters, who did everything in unison. The sisters carried identical bags, and wore identical coats and wellingtons, and spoke as one to order their tickets, synchronising the opening and closing of their purses to perfection. They, too, were headed for Wither-Fork Hall, where they worked one of the allotments at the top of the town.

  Several more stops came and went without incident, and by the time the bus had reached the foot of Wither-Fork Hill, Hettie and Tilly were feeling almost confident of reaching its summit. Reality struck halfway up the steep incline with a hissing and bubbling noise, followed by a rhythmic banging from the back of the bus where the engine lived – or, at this point, died.

  ‘Sorry, everybody,’ said Clippy, apologetically. ‘This is as far as we’re going at the moment. If you’re in a hurry, I suggest you leg it from here. For those of you who’d rather stay on board, there’s lots of games to keep you happy. I’m off shift for an hour, so I’m going to lift some spuds while we’re waiting for the mechanic.’

  Clippy abandoned her ticket machine in a locker at the front of the bus. She collected a spade and an empty sack from the suitcase hold, swapped her sandals for a pair of heavy gardening boots, then set off up the hill towards the allotments, whistling a cheerful tune. The Gamp sisters followed at a much slower pace, and Hettie and Tilly – pulling up their mac collars against the threat of rain – puffed their way up the hill towards Wither-Fork Hall, leaving the rest of the passengers to their backgammon, tiddlywinks, and snakes and ladders.

  At the top of the hill, to the left, was a substantial parkland where Wither-Fork Hall nestled in baronial splendour; to the right, a gate led through to the allotments. Catching her breath from the exertions of the hill, Hettie watched as Clippy Lean and the Gamps made their way down the central path, peeling off onto their designated patches of land. She was no stranger to the allotments: she had, in one of her past lives, lived on a plot there until her shed with a bed was taken in the great storm. Shortly afterwards, the Butters had offered her sanctuary in their old storeroom at the bakery, which had now become a permanent home for her and more recently Tilly, who had never had a proper home until Hettie befriended her.

  ‘I hope we can solve this murder quickly,’ said Tilly. ‘I’m not sure I could climb up here too often. I don’t know how the allotment cats manage.’

  ‘Most of them live on the allotments,’ said Hettie. ‘There’s some sort of ancient entitlement connected to Wither-Fork Hall, if my memory serves me well – sitting tenants with vegetables, or some such nonsense. I spent a summer up here in an abandoned shed. So did Bruiser. No one seemed to mind until the storm came and did for us. Several of the older cats died that night when their sheds collapsed around them. I was one of the lucky ones. It was this time of year, actually – they had to cancel the Michaelmas Flower and Produce Show out of respect. That, and the fact that the storm had taken all the vegetables.’

  Tilly stifled a giggle at the thought of a legion of flying beetroot, carrots and cauliflowers heading down Wither-Fork Hill towards the town. ‘I hope we can go to the Mickeymouse Show this year. I think it’s next weekend.’

  ‘That depends on this murder, I suppose,’ said Hettie, as they approached the gatehouse. ‘They hold the show in the grounds in front of the Hall – and it’s Michaelmas, not Mickeymouse! After the saint.’

  ‘I always preferred Minnie, anyway,’ said Tilly, threatening to take the conversation in a completely different direction, which Hettie had the sense to ignore.

  The gatehouse was a sizeable property made of red brick, rising to miniature turrets that stood clear of the roof at each corner. It looked like a small castle, and stood as guardian to the main entrance of Wither-Fork Hall. The gates to the driveway were firmly shut, and Hettie pulled on an iron bell pull to attract attention. There was no instant reply, so she tried again.

  ‘Ahoy there!’ came a voice from nowhere. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Hettie and Tilly moved closer to the gates and peered through the bars, trying to locate the voice.

  ‘Hello!’ came the voice again. ‘I’m up here!’ Hettie stepped back and looked up at the roof of the gatehouse, where she found the voice and the cat it belonged to leaning out over one of the turrets and training a pair of binoculars on them. ‘Captain Micks Wither-Spoon at your service. How can I help?’

  Hettie responded in her official tone. ‘I am Hettie Bagshot from the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency, and this is my assistant, Tilly Jenkins. We have an appointment with Miss Wither-Fork.’

  ‘Is that the “as was” or the “as is” Miss Wither-Fork?’

  Hettie – already confused by the fork and spoon issue – was becoming more than a little irritated by the keeper of the gate, who seemed to be talking in riddles. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Wither-Spoon, but I don’t know what you mean. All I know is that Miss Wither-Fork is expecting us regarding an urgent matter, and if you’d be kind enough to open the gates we can go about our business at Wither-Fork Hall.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ replied the cat on the turret, ‘but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let every Tom, Dick and Harry in, would I? And it very much depends on whether you want the “as is” or the “as was”, because t
he “as was” Wither-Fork lives here with me at the gatehouse and is now a Wither-Spoon, and the “as is” Wither-Fork lives at the Hall. Or to put it plainer – do you want to see Fluff or Mash?’

  Tilly giggled as Hettie’s hackles rose above her upturned collar. ‘My business is with Miss Fluff Wither-Fork and is a matter of life and death. I have no interest in speaking with anyone else at this point, so would you kindly let us in?’

  Micks Wither-Spoon moved grudgingly away from the turret and appeared several minutes later by the gates, unlocking them from the inside. Hettie and Tilly swept through, noting that the gatekeeper was dressed in some sort of bizarre costume left over from the Napoleonic Wars, with a cutlass jammed in his belt, a three-cornered hat on his head, and a row of medals splayed across his chest. The overall effect was ridiculous rather than authoritative, and the two cats made sure to put a safe distance between him and them before bursting into peals of laughter.

  The driveway to the Hall was long, and it gave them an opportunity to pull themselves together. ‘That gatekeeper is a bloody lunatic!’ Hettie observed shrewdly. ‘And is he saying that he’s married a Wither-Fork, who’s now a Wither-Spoon, called Mash?’

  ‘I wonder if they have a gardener called Spread Wither-Knife?’ added Tilly, and the two friends collapsed into another bout of laughter, which was only brought under control at the steps of Wither-Fork Hall.

  The door was opened before Hettie had even considered lifting the heavily decorated knocker. Fluff Wither-Fork must have watched their progress up the driveway and was ready to receive them, dressed for the weather in a long trench coat and a pair of wellingtons. ‘Welcome to Wither-Fork Hall,’ she said. ‘I assume you are from the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency, and before we go any further, let me apologise for any rudeness you received at the gatehouse. My sister’s choice of life partner is a constant concern to me. Micks Wither-Spoon lives in a world of his own, harmless but completely unfathomable, and my poor sister Mash just laps up his imbecilic outbursts and sometimes even joins in. Last week they got themselves done up in doublet and hose, and performed a revised version of Romeo and Juliet, in which neither of them died. It received rapturous applause from a charabanc of visitors to my water gardens, but now they’re threatening to give their Macbeth at the Michaelmas Show, and that’s the last thing I need – especially as they intend to reverse the roles and let Micks wear a dress! Never a truer statement than “’tis better if it be done quickly”. In fact, I could be tempted to run the pair of them through rather than suffer any more of their antics. If they had the cares and the worries that I have to put up with, they wouldn’t have time to dress up and be so ridiculous. If Mash had been born two minutes earlier than me, I could be putting my paws up at the gatehouse and she would have to deal with the day-to-day nightmare of running an estate with no money and no help.’