SAY GOODBYE TO ARCHIE: A Rex Graves Mini-Mystery (2 page)

“On to business then.”

She led him slowly down the hall into a back sitting room, which was as chaotic in aspect as its owner, with too much mismatched furniture and
barely a free space on any elevated surface. Rex bowed his head beneath the low ceiling beams. The net curtains drawn across the bay window overlooked the back garden, which he could only perceive as a square of diffused green with a few splodges of colour, resembling a child’s picture. There was no air conditioning in the cottage, and probably no need for an old person who invariably felt the cold regardless of temperature. Patricia wore an un-ironed blouse, a tweed jacket and skirt, stout shoes, and thick nylon stockings that failed to hide her bulging varicose veins.

“My digging shoes,” she said in answer to his gaze.
“For later.”

Presumably she was referring to Archie’s interment.
Rex, for his part, divested himself of his jacket and, having seen nowhere to hang it, draped it over the arm of the chintz-covered sofa, which Archie had clearly abused as a scratching post.

“Reginald, it’s so very good of you to come.” Patricia took both his hands in her knotty ones and looked hypnotically up at his face through her eye
-magnifying lenses. “You haven’t changed. Perhaps a bit heavier. You look well.”

“You too, Patricia.
Or, at least, as well as can be expected under the sad circumstances.” He handed her the condolence card from his mother.

Patricia shifted a heap of books and magazines to one side of the sofa and indicated for him to sit down. She smoothed the white envelope in her lap without making a move to open it. “Dear Moira.
So thoughtful.” She gave a deep sigh. “This will only make me cry,” she said, finally placing it on a cluttered table where a tray held a pitcher full of ice and yellow liquid, and two beakers.

“Lemonade,” she said pouring him a glass. “We’ll have tea in the garden later, but for now it’s more private inside. My neighbour is pottering about out there and he might overhear
us. Now, before they all arrive, we should discuss the matter of Archie. I won’t let his murder go unpunished. It was a heartless thing to do. To him and to me.” Patricia pulled a crumpled handkerchief from her jacket pocket and blew her nose into it. “I can’t live on here in Woodley always wondering which person committed the crime.”

“You think it was someone local?”

“Sure of it. It’s a small village and I’ve questioned everybody. No one recalls seeing a stranger this past week. Believe me, they’d know.”

“Well, that limits the pool of suspects to under twenty or so,” Rex said encouragingly.

“Seventeen,” Patricia corrected. “And some of the residents can be ruled out. Mr. Davis is confined to a wheelchair. Madeline Squire at the B&B would have no reason to curtail poor Archie’s life. She has quite a few guests who come to Woodley in part because I live here and the children like to get a glimpse of Archie. He was quite obliging. Sat grooming himself in the front window so they could see him and take his picture.”

A portrait photo of Archie encased in a wreath stood on the piano. His long snout lent him a regal mien, softened by eyes as round as marbles and the hue of chartreuse gazing out from black fur. A silver bell dangled from his collar. Archie had allowed him to pet him on that visit ten years ago, and Rex had marvelled at how soft and sleek he was; soot black from his nose to his paw pads. A good size too, tufty-eared and bushy-tailed. Patricia had sworn he had some Maine Coon in him, but couldn’t be sure.

“Could a child have done it?” Rex asked.

Patricia resolutely shook her head. “The only kids who live here took off to France with their parents for the summer hols.”

“Did Archie have any enemies?” There, he had said it.

“Everyone loved Archie! Except perhaps Noel Cribben.”

Rex gave her a questioning look.

“The neighbour.”

He
took a sip of the bitter-sweet lemonade and waited to hear more about this Noel Cribben.

“You’ll meet him this afternoon. His dog got into my garden and received a scratch on his nose for his efforts. Noel swore it was Archie who’d attacked him and wanted me to pay the vet bill. Of course, I refused. Cutie Pie shouldn’t have been in my garden in the first place. Isn’t that a ghastly name? He went on a rampage in my bed of delphiniums, snapping the blooms in two. Ruined half of them and dug a big hole. Fortunately, Archie chased him off before he could do more damage. He was only defending his territory, which is what cats do. I didn’t see the actual altercation, just heard the growling and howling. By the time I got to the garden, the poodle had gone. Just as likely he cut his nose on some barbed wire. Noel couldn’t prove Archie had actually attacked him.”

“How did, ehm, Cutie Pie get in? I seem to remember your back garden is surrounded by a wall. Did he jump over?”

“I should say not!” Patricia seemed almost amused. “Not on those short legs. Q-P is a miniature poodle. Part of the wall had crumbled and he must have managed to clamber over. It’s been mended, and there have been no further doggie incursions.”

“If Archie was poisoned—”

“He was. Dr. Strange, our vet, found chopped foxglove in the contents of Archie’s stomach and in his bowl.” Patricia’s tensely clenched knuckles whitened to the colour of the hankie she was holding.
“Digitalis. Deadly poisonous. He didn’t stand a chance.”

A phone rang in the hall, but she took no notice. Was she hard of hearing? She didn’t wear an aid that Rex could see, although it was hard to tell behind the wild tufts of hair. She certainly didn’t appear to have difficulty hearing his questions.

“Foxglove is a common enough flower,” he said.

“Oh, yes, it’s all over the village.”

“Presumably, it was mixed in with cat food.”

“In Archie’s tinned tuna.
He began to get rather picky about his food and, naturally, I indulged him. After all he had done for me…” Her words ended in a sob and her hands trembled in her lap, but she found the fortitude not to break down.

“I kept his food bowl in the conservatory. I had that put in since your last visit. It doesn’t have any windows or an exterior door. As for the rest of the house, I used to live in a city and never got into the habit of keeping my doors unlocked like some of my neighbours. In any case, I don’t like the idea of someone coming in and snooping at my unfinished manuscripts. Or typescripts, I should say. It’s not really a manuscript, is it, if it isn’t written by hand? But I suppose that’s being pedantic. It’s old age, you know. You start obsessing over little things.”

“What aboot a cleaning lady or someone visiting here? And on that note, I really would be fine at the B&B, you know.”

“Nonsense.
I told Moira I wouldn’t hear of it. Charles and Connie are staying over, and it will be a bit snug, but Charles can sleep on the sofa.”

“No, really—”

“I insist. You’re the guest, and you came all the way from Edinburgh to help me find out who murdered my Archie. You can have Charles’ old room.”

“Och, I would not dream of throwing him oot his own room,” Rex said, aghast at the thought.

“A night on the sofa won’t hurt him. He’s not as busy as you are. I was so proud when you became a Queen’s Counsel. Perhaps Charles should have gone into law. His business is floundering. He won’t admit it, but I know from Connie and the stress he’s obviously under. No head for figures has Charles. Always was a dunce at arithmetic. You don’t need it to practise law, do you?”

“Not as much as for business, I imagine.”

“Well, good. That’s settled.”

Rex was not quite sure what had been settled, but he assumed it to be the sleeping arrangements; and he knew better than to broach the subject with Patricia again.
She was a woman who knew her own mind. He would apologize to Charles when the opportunity arose.

“Where are Charles and Connie?” he asked. “I’m looking forward to seeing them again.” He was not, particularly. However, he was curious as to their whereabouts. He had not heard anybody else in the cottage.

“They went for a hike to Alfriston. I make Charles walk every day when he visits. He’s very sedentary.”

Rex imagined Charles in a permanent sitting posture.

“And Connie needs the exercise too. She never lost the weight after her two children. They’re with Nigel for the weekend. They get shunted from pillar to post like a pair of parcels!” Patricia set her mouth in a grim line. She had no doubt been a formidable school mistress in her day, feared by pupils and parents alike, and probably by the other teachers as well.

Attempting to get the conversation back on course, Rex repeated his earlier question about whether anyone came in to clean. Not that the house looked like it received a regular clean. All the clutter would have to be moved first, a Herculean task in itself. “Such a person would have ready access to Archie’s food,” he suggested.

“Faye comes every other week. She didn’t come this past week. No one was here the night Archie died. Apart from the killer, I mean. Anyway, Faye would never have hurt Archie. She was fond of him, as we all were.”

Someone wasn’t, Rex
thought.

“And she knew that if I went before
Archie, she was to live at the Poplars and take care of him for as long as he lived, and would be amply compensated.”

“I see.” Rex took a moment to ponder the situation. “I take it she was not averse to the arrangement when you discussed it with her?”

“She was delighted. She lives higgledy-piggledy with numerous siblings and a ne’er-do-well father in Eastbourne.”

“Does she receive a gratuity under the current sad circumstances?”

“A small sum, as does the gardener and a few close friends.”

“It might be as well to review the terms of your will to see if anyone benefits from Archie’s death…”

Patricia topped up their lemonade glasses. Most of the ice had melted by now. A breeze blowing in through the window helped with the heat, but not much. “It’s a natural question in a murder case, isn’t it? Even though it wasn’t my murder. Although I need to tell you about that, too. But later.” She gazed into the contents of her glass and resumed speaking before he had a chance to ask what she meant. “Apart from gratuities to my help, I have bequeathed the same sum of three thousand pounds each to my friend Dot Sharpe and Roger Dalrymple, my illustrator. My library also goes to Dot. My piano I’ve left to Roger. Neither of my children ever got the hang of it. And my property and the remainder of the contents are to be split between Connie and Charles, who receive twenty thousand pounds each. The rest of my money goes to the cat orphanage in Eastbourne where I adopted Archie.” She supplied a few further details. “No one benefits from Archie’s death, really. Only from mine.”

“Who has a key to this place?”

“My daughter. She insisted. She lives in Eastbourne and runs over when she has time, to check up on me in case I have a fall or I take ill. Charles has one too.”

“Do any of your friends have a spare key in case of an emergency?”

Patricia paused for a moment. “You’re right,” she said slowly. “Dot has a house key. I gave it to her when I was away on a book tour so she could feed Archie. I’d forgotten to ask for it back.”

“She’s a good
friend, I take it, since you’ve remembered her in your will?”

“Well, we’ll have to see. She lives in the village, up by the manor house.
Moved here about three years ago. She organizes our little book club.”

“Retired?”

“Oh, by a long chalk. She’s writing her memoirs. A tough sell unless you’re somebody famous.”

“Has she got a story to tell?”

“Dashed if I know. I’ve only seen a few excerpts of her work. She did grow up in some exotic locations. Indonesia, and such. She’ll be joining us later.”

The clock on the mantelpiece struck three with a triple chime, reminding Rex of precious minutes ticking by before Patricia’s guests arrived for the ceremony. It had been three days since Archie’s alleged murder and in this heat
he would decompose in a hurry. Had Patricia put him in the freezer? Reining in these disturbing thoughts, he asked Patricia who else could have had access to Archie’s bowl.

“No one.
I kept his bowl and water dish in the conservatory,” she repeated herself, as old people tended to do. “That’s where he could go in and out through his cat flap.” She took a deep breath and appeared to draw strength from her inner core. “No one could get in there from outside. You can take a look.”