The Death of Downton Tabby Read online

  The Death of Downton Tabby

  MANDY MORTON

  In memory of Polly Hodge and Mr Pushkin

  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

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  About the Author

  By Mandy Morton

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  Betty and Beryl Butter’s bread ovens were going into overdrive as the day of the town’s first literary festival finally arrived. There had been months of careful preparation, and most of the more outgoing residents had involved themselves at every level: as queens of pies, pastries and cakes, the Butter sisters had stepped forward to supply the throng of authors with the expected hospitality. As they retrieved the first batch of festival doughnuts from the fryer – ready for Beryl to roll in sugar – a legion of wordsmiths was already headed for the town to proclaim the merits of their latest novels to festivalgoers, all keen to dissect every word and leave happily with a personally dedicated copy of their favourite author’s latest tome.

  Hettie Bagshot and her sidekick Tilly Jenkins, who ran the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency from the back room of the Butters’ high street bakery, had naturally been involved from the start. Hettie, for her sins, was appointed head of festival security, while Tilly had been able to indulge her passion for crime fiction by being entrusted with the booking of authors, poets and a sprinkling of what she liked to call ‘musical interludes’. There had been a few hiccups along the way. The biggest howler arrived in the shape of the official festival poster, announcing the town’s first ‘Littertray Festival’. The mistake was unfortunate but not untypical of Dorcas Ink, the local printer, who was more than slightly deaf and had misunderstood the instructions given to her over the phone by Turner Page, Festival Director. With limited funds and a tight schedule, Turner had chosen to apply a blind eye to the mistake, taking heart instead from the list of correctly spelt authors’ names on the lurid orange background.

  Tilly had done a fine job, pulling together an exceptional line-up which included the cream of feline novelists and celebrities. The biggest scoop was to bag the aristocat-turned-author, Downton Tabby, whose books chronicling the lives of the upper crust and the lower orders had hit the TV screens in a big way and taken the country by storm. The Brontës of Teethly had also accepted Tilly’s invitation, and all three sisters – known for their bonnet novels set against the backdrop of the Porkshire Moors – were to appear. The field of crime fiction was led by P. D. Hodge, known to her fans as Polly, who was conveniently local, owning a rather fine town house on the seafront at Southwool, where she summered each year. Appreciated for her generosity as well as for her talent, Polly Hodge was one of the main festival sponsors, which was probably why her name was so much bigger on the poster than anyone else’s – although Dorcas Ink had been known to get her font sizes mixed up on more than one occasion.

  Hettie decided to reserve judgement on the wisdom of holding a book festival in the town. When Turner Page was unseated from his job as chief librarian, and the library demolished shortly afterwards, Hettie and Tilly had both mourned the resource, if only for the loss of warm radiators on cold days. Then came Turner’s mobile library, followed by the purchase of Furcross House; these days, Furcross was a flourishing library centre with space for community groups and activities, as well as a rather idyllic burial plot and memorial gardens dedicated to the late Marcia Woolcoat, one of the town’s prominent philanthropists who had come to a sticky end during a case in which Hettie had been involved up to her elegant tabby neck.

  Unlike Tilly, Hettie found socialising a bit of a strain, despite having lived much of her life on the front row. Her ability to reinvent herself when the going got tough was a quality to be admired, even though some of the turns in her road map were a little extreme. She had enjoyed a fairly successful music career back in the mists of time, and had tried being self-sufficient in a shed on the town’s allotments until the great storm put paid to her shelter; more recently, due to a couple of high-profile cases, she and Tilly had pooled their limited resources and continued to run a seemingly professional detective agency. They were much in demand and revered by most of the community for their knack of getting to the bottom of things, but the downside of all this for Hettie was that she never seemed to have any time for herself; as she was by far the most interesting cat she knew, socialising was always a bit of a let-down. Tilly, of course, was the exception, and probably the best thing that had ever happened to Hettie; inviting her to share the back room at the Butters’ bakery still ranked as one of the best ideas she’d ever had. The two cats propped each other up through thick and thin, and Tilly was rare in her ability to handle Hettie’s moods and outspoken views with the patience and humour they deserved.

  Tilly had hardly slept. The summer heatwave had been relentless and all but unbearable for long-haired cats, and now that the bread ovens were underway in the corridor outside their room, she knew that any further attempt at sleep was futile. She scrambled from her cushion and stretched her arthritic limbs; the pain was nowhere near as bad in the summer, but she still had to coax her swollen joints into life. Hettie was out for the count in her armchair, lying on her back in a twisted, somewhat ungainly fashion, with legs sprawled in every direction and a mass of long, peach-coloured fur exposed to the elements.

  Tilly padded to the kettle and prepared two mugs for their morning tea. She opened the curtains to reveal the first rays of a sun that had hardly gone down before offering the promise of another scorching day. Looking out on to the backyard, she marvelled at the striking reds of the potted geraniums, contrasting with the deep blue lobelia. It was her favourite time of year, when everything was still new and vibrant and before the stress of high summer exhausted the colours.

  ‘Shut the light out! It can’t be time yet,’ came a bad-tempered voice from behind her. Tilly turned to see the crumpled heap in the armchair gradually gain some composure as Hettie Bagshot sat up. ‘What time do you call this? It’s the middle of the night. Don’t think that by putting the kettle on you can pretend it’s morning.’

  Tilly giggled and poured hot water into the mugs as Hettie continued with her early morning observations. ‘I can’t believe that we’ve signed up to this festival for the whole bloody weekend. It’s been months in the planning, and all it’s doing is encouraging the stuck-up cats in the town to parade around with books under their arms, getting together for their nasty little reading groups where they just sit and gossip about other nasty little reading groups. And now we’re about to be descended on by a bunch of authors planning to bore the fur off us with the intricacies of how they approach their work, the terror of writer’s block, and whether they prefer pencils to typewriters.’

  ‘You’ll enjoy the music,’ said Tilly, trying to put a more positive spin on Hettie’s rant. ‘Muddy Fryer is going to perform her complete Arthurian cycle for the first time ever.’

  ‘Only because no one else would let her,’ retorted Hettie, accepting her morning tea with very little grace. ‘I can’t understand why we’re not havin
g a proper festival with proper stages and proper music instead of all these books everywhere. Too many blurred edges if you ask me.’

  Tilly could have pointed out here that no one had asked Hettie, but being confrontational before her friend had drunk her first cup of tea wasn’t a good idea and could easily have ruined the rest of their day.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The clock on the staff sideboard said seven o’clock, much to Hettie’s annoyance. Even in summer she never rose before nine, but on day one of the ‘Littertray Festival’ she had to concede that there was still a lot that needed to be done before they set out for Furcross House.

  She threw on an old T-shirt, splashed some cold water across her face and positioned herself at her desk to try and make sense of the list of authors’ names that Tilly had attempted to type out earlier in the week. As head of security, Hettie had insisted that all participants in the festival should wear lanyards with name tags; it hadn’t occurred to her that she would be making them up herself and, as with most things Hettie took on, the last minute seemed exactly the right time to get on with the job.

  Giving the list a cursory glance, she knew that she’d have to wait for Tilly to return from the breakfast queue in the Butters’ shop: in the months they had been running their detective agency, Tilly’s relationship with the typewriter had not improved and the list needed translating.

  ‘Sorry I was so long,’ said her friend, falling over the threshold with two large bacon baps. ‘They’ve gone mad out there, all queuing down the high street for Betty’s festival hampers. I think she wishes she’d never come up with the idea. Beryl looks a bit rattled, too, and the heat doesn’t help. It’s really warm out there already.’

  Hettie pushed the box of lanyards to one side to make way for the breakfast as Tilly filled the kettle. ‘What’s she putting in the hampers? If they’re that popular, maybe we should have ordered one. We’ll need to take some food – I think it’s going to be a long weekend, and it’s only Friday.’

  ‘No need – we’re all found for two days once we get to Furcross. There’s a hospitality tent in the memorial gardens for festival staff and authors – non-stop dinners, teas and suppers, and an all-day festival breakfast which finishes at two.’

  Hettie was visibly cheered by Tilly’s inside information on the comestible prospects for the weekend, although she was a little confused about an all-day breakfast which wasn’t quite what it said on the frying pan. She took a sizeable bite out of her bacon bap, allowing the butter to linger on her chin. Tilly made the tea and joined her at the desk, where – for the next few minutes – all conversation consisted of appreciative grunts, followed by a round of satisfied licking and cleaning.

  ‘I suppose I’d better get on with these name tags,’ said Hettie, downing her tea in one go. ‘I’ve been trying to read your list of names, but there seem to be more numbers than letters, which doesn’t give me much to go on.’

  Tilly stared down at her abortive attempt and had to agree that it did need more work, although she was convinced that the staff typewriter had had it in for her right from the start. ‘I’ll call the names out while you write them on the tags,’ she offered.

  ‘OK, but you’ll have to spell them – some of these authors have such stuck-up names. Let’s start with the Brontës as there are three of them. What are their first names?’

  ‘Charlene, Emmeline and Ann,’ said Tilly, tipping the lanyards out of the box and beginning to sort the red ones from the blue.

  Hettie treated herself to a snigger and wrote out three name tags, passing them to Tilly for clipping on to the blue ribbons. ‘You’ve got to put the dots over the “e”,’ Tilly said, passing them back. ‘It’s not proper without the dots.’

  ‘What do you mean? What dots?’

  ‘The dots over the “e” in Brontë. I think they call it an umalot or something.’

  ‘“An umalot”? Whatever next? Shall I stick dots over all the “e”s to make them feel even more special than they think they are already?’

  Tilly ignored Hettie’s comment and reached for the staff dictionary. ‘Here it is. “Umlaut: indicating the modification in the quality of the vowel”.’

  ‘Sod that,’ grumbled Hettie. ‘With all these bloody name tags to write, the quality is going to be poor across the board. Who’s next?’

  ‘Downton Tabby. I think he’s titled but I’m not sure. He doesn’t use it on his books, so plain old Downton will do.’

  Hettie wrote out the name and passed the tag to Tilly. ‘He’s going to be my main problem this weekend. Everyone you speak to wants to meet him. High profile doesn’t even begin to describe him. His publicist has asked for a private parking area for his Rolls-Royce and an escort at all times as he moves around the festival. I’ve asked Bugs Anderton to look after him – she’s more than used to dealing with enlarged egos as she’s got one herself.’

  Tilly had to agree that the town’s Friendship Club President was the perfect choice, but the clock on the staff sideboard had moved its hands to eight o’clock and only four name tags had been completed; with the festival’s official opening at midday, there was still a long way to go.

  Two hours later, all the festival authors and their entourages were threaded and ready to go, although Hettie’s copperplate letters had descended into an erratic scribble with a few unwanted umlauts thrown in for good measure. Next came the red lanyards, bestowing an air of importance on those from the town who had stepped forward to help – or, more especially, to qualify for a free ticket.

  ‘At least we know this lot,’ sighed Hettie, taking up a new felt-tip pen. ‘Reel them off.’

  It was an impressive line-up; a battalion of the town’s great and good: Delirium Treemints on refreshments; Lavender Stamp, postmistress, on tickets and passes; Irene Peggledrip and her spirit guide Crimola on the information desk and lost kittens; Poppa Phene, the plumber, on car parking and chemical toilets. The list stretched ever on, finishing with the vendors, those folk in the town who had taken advantage of the influx of visiting cats to boost their businesses: Elsie Haddock had invested in a mobile fish and chip van in direct competition to Greasy Tom’s fast-food outlet; Tilly’s best friend Jessie, who kept the charity shop in Cheapcuts Lane, was bringing her stall of cloche hats and rainbow knits; Meridian Hambone, who ran the high street’s hardware store, had ordered boxes of hurriedly printed festival T-shirts and tote bags from Dorcas Ink, all boasting the word ‘Littertray’ in their branding; and Betty and Beryl Butter, being shrewd and businesslike, had won the jewel in the crown and had their images emblazoned all over the paper bags which would carry off the books and food bought at the festival.

  ‘Just us to go then,’ said Tilly, putting the red name tags in a box. ‘You, me and Bruiser.’

  Perfectly on cue, Bruiser Venutius popped his grizzly grey head round the door. ‘Wotcha! ’Ow’s it all goin’?’

  Bruiser had been a friend of Hettie’s for years. He was one of life’s wanderers, never staying too long anywhere and thriving on his own company. He’d turned up one cold, frosty morning and had instantly been welcomed and adopted by the Butters as their ‘lad about the yard’, as well as being taken on by Hettie as driver of the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency’s mode of transport, a fine bright red motorbike and sidecar which Tilly had christened Miss Scarlet. Bruiser and Miss Scarlet shared a purpose-built shed at the bottom of the Butters’ garden, and due to his advancing years and the joy of a place of his own, his wanderlust had dwindled. Like Hettie and Tilly, he had become very much part of the Butters’ family of displaced, but now settled friends.

  ‘You’re up early,’ said Hettie, stuffing the final batch of lanyards into the box. ‘Just in time to receive your official name tag. Here – stick that round your neck.’

  Bruiser received his lanyard with pride and pulled it over his head as if he’d been given a gold medal. ‘I s’pose Miss Scarlet will need one of them on-site parkin’ things? Are you doin’ them?’

&
nbsp; ‘Mercifully that’s Poppa’s department. He’s on parking and toilets.’

  ‘Ah, I’ve seen ’im already today. ’E’s up there now, markin’ out the bays on the old cricket ground. ’E says we’re expectin’ ’undreds of cats from outside the town on account of Downton Tabby comin’.’

  Hettie nodded sagely at Bruiser’s words. ‘Yes, I can see that he’s a big attraction but he has the potential to be a bloody nuisance for the rest of us – and he’s down to appear tonight and tomorrow, so we’re stuck with him for both days.’

  ‘But it’s all very exciting,’ said Tilly, lapsing into a surprisingly tuneful rendition of the theme to Downton Tabby’s TV series, In the Kitchens and Up the Stairs.

  Hettie groaned, as she did every week when the show was aired. She didn’t mind the programme itself, but the aftermath of Tilly humming the tune constantly for days put her teeth on edge. ‘I think we should make a move. I’ll need to check entrances and exits before the hordes arrive and we’ve got to give out the name tags to the helpers. Are you free to run us to Furcross House, Bruiser?’

  ‘Yep. I’m waitin’ for another batch of stuff to run up there from the Butters, but they’re so busy in the shop that they’ve given me a bit of a break, so now would be a good time.’

  Bruiser left Hettie and Tilly to gather themselves together. The big question on a hot day was what to wear, and they needed to be smart but not too done-up. Hettie always relied on Tilly to strike the right note regarding fashion, but heatwaves were a real problem for any cat with long hair.

  ‘I think I’m going tabby chic,’ Tilly said, hauling a pile of clothes out from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and sorting through them.

  ‘And what, dare I ask, is that?’ Hettie was already getting irritated at the thought of having to discard the baggy T-shirt she was wearing, which was cool and comfortable.