Staithe and Willow Private Investigators The Cat

“I’m sorry, we don’t handle lost or stray pets, whatever you may have read about us finding

a dog, that was an unexpected happenstance from an entirely different investigation.”

This telephone conversation was repeated at least twice a week since they had

found a famous local dog, by accident, a couple of months ago.

“Oh, I see, you mean it isn’t a real cat? And it hasn’t been lost or strayed, it’s been

stolen, and it’s worth about £30,000.”

Petra ‘Pussy’ Willow carefully swung her long legs off the desk and shifted upright in

her comfortable office chair. Those noughts demanded a more professional attitude.

“I assume you have reported the theft to the Police, M/s . . .?

Peter Staithe paused what he was doing to listen to this one-sided conversation.

“Mrs Tofull, right. It’s complicated? But, Mrs Tofull, we do need to know if it has

been reported, we don’t want to find ourselves being arrested if we find it first, do we? So,

it hasn’t been reported, but you can explain all that when we meet. Let me look in the diary,

Mrs Tofull . Oh, you can only make it at 4pm this afternoon? Well, that’s the hairdresser

cancelled then! No, only a joke, Mrs Tofull, only a joke.”

Peter had heard enough to start clearing the spare desk full of maps that he was

cross referencing to find likely hotels that may have been used by a straying husband in a

local divorce case. It was 2.30 already, the sandwich wrappings from the last couple of days

were poking out of the wastepaper bin and a pile of unopened letters littered his desk.

“What do you know about Egyptian bronze cats, probably from the twenty sixth to

the thirtieth Dynasty, and possibly sacred to the Goddess Bastet?” Pussy said it as though

expecting an informative answer, strange facts were part of her husband’s success as a PI.

“About as much as you at the moment. Did you have to throw in that bit about the

hairdresser, by the way? That wasn’t very professional, despite slipping your Crocs off and

trying to negotiate high heels without looking. Now who are you ringing?”

“Continue the good work of sprucing up the place, and working out what to charge,

my dear, while I get on to my contact in a London auction house and sweet talk him in to

giving me a history lesson, and how we check the provenance of these cats.”

By 4pm Peter was looking anxiously down onto the High Street from the first-floor

office window. Below was the local Estate Agent, also owned by Staithe and Willow, a

modified layout including a discrete lift for disabled, or specially security conscious clients to

use when seeking anonymity. A more normal entrance was adorned with a modern door

with nameplate and exhibiting the latest security locks, camera and lights.

It was to this entrance that a late middle-aged lady was heading, having abandoned

her ten-year-old Bentley to the yellow lines by putting a disabled sticker in the windscreen.

Pussy pressed the automatic door unlock, and hurried down, in case the lift was needed, but

the disability was clearly one of the less obvious complaints, as the lady was already five

stairs up and climbing steadily.

After introducing her partner, Pussy motioned her client to the leather Chesterfield

sofa and enquired after her preferences for coffee or tea.

“A gin would be good, make it a double, it’s been a stressful day.”

Peter looked at Pussy with a grimace.

”And, before you say anything about driving, I dropped Archie, my husband, off at

the little supermarket up the road, he can drive back. I don’t want him involved in this,

won’t do his heart any good, poor old sod. He’d probably forget, anyway, luckily he still

remembers road signs.”

Having disposed of the latent objection, and half the gin, Mrs Tofull revealed why the

Police had not been informed.

“The truth is, I’m not sure how it ended up in our family. We never had much money,

that came when I married Archie, he was a bit of a lad in the stock market when Maggie

Thatcher decided to give them carte blanche to make millions, the Big Bang. Porche’s

everywhere, most of them got through a million in three years, but Archie met me, and I like

a good time, but coming from nothing I persuaded him to invest it. So, we’re comfortable,

not rich anymore, but comfortable.

“Which doesn’t explain the cat, and it is genuine, I had it valued by one of the big

auction houses, anonymously, of course. That’s why it was in the house and not in the bank

for the weekend.”

Pussy’s eyes lit up. “The missing cat.”

“What!” Mrs Tofull looked startled.

“I checked, confidentially, with one of my contacts in an auction house, and he heard

a rumour that there might be an uncatalogued cat in circulation. There are a few that are

well known but others might have been ‘discovered’ without being registered with the

Egyptian government.”

“Have you any idea how this might have come into the family, and how long ago?”

Peter was trying to remember what the law said about cases like this.

“At least back as far as my grandfather, he was in the Army, I suppose he might have

been in Egypt. Anyway, you concentrate on getting it back and let me worry about

provenance and what to do with it.”

“Fair enough, let’s sort out the finance and then we can get started.” Pussy kept the

books and usually didn’t have any problem with negotiations on charges, particularly with

male clients.

Mrs Tofull was also keeper of the family finances and a shrewd negotiator, although

two more large gins helped secure a deal they could all live with.

“Do you suspect anybody of having stolen it?” was Peter’s first question.

“Yes, it had to be one of the family, nobody else knew about it. So that is my sister

Mavis, her husband, Elvis, Norman actually, but we call him Elvis because he won a

competition at school for dressing like him, and he was the only kid who owned a guitar.

“Then there is our daughter, Joyce, and her second husband Ronald, the first

husband wasn’t around long enough to know about it once he knew there was a kid on the

way. That’s it.”

“You said on the phone that someone broke into your house through an upstairs

window, do you think any of them are physically capable of climbing up there and

disconnecting the alarms before breaking in?” Pussy sounded sceptical.

“I thought of that, they must have employed someone to do it.”

“Was anything else stolen?” Peter looked puzzled “And do you think they would

know how to contact a professional thief?”

“Nothing else has gone, all my jewellery is kept in the bank so there wasn’t much

else, nobody keeps cash in the house now we all have cards. And they must have gone out

down a ladder, so couldn’t take a television. They may have met someone down the pub

who knows someone. I don’t know.”

“Curiouser and curiouser.” Peter steepled his fingers and relaxed back on the sofa, after Mrs

Tofull had decided to rush off, in case her husband forgot he was with her, and decided to

drive home by himself.

“OK, Sherlock, but before you decide to take up smoking a pipe and playing the

fiddle, consider this. We have four unlikely suspects, a professional thief with inside

knowledge that the cat would be in the house, and who can turn off alarms and open

windows without breaking them, and there is no chance of an insurance claim. What is the

scam?”

“Precisely, tomorrow we will inspect the scene of the crime and have a close look at

the alarm to see how it was disabled, my guess is a simple bell that can be filled with

expanded insulation foam.”

The house lay back off a small lane, with a semicircular drive protected either end by

electrically operated gates. The alarm system was more sophisticated than Peter had

guessed and would need either inside knowledge or a skilled thief to turn it off.

Meanwhile, Pussy was scouting round the garden, beneath the window that had been

opened to enter an unused bedroom.

“This is a remarkable ladder, it must float in the air, there are no marks in the grass

and the ground is soft. Peter, I don’t think this was ever a burglary from the outside, that cat

was stolen by someone in the house.”

“I agree, but what Mrs Tofull didn’t mention, until I spoke to her just now, was that

she also has a cleaner and a gardener, both of whom were in on the Saturday morning.”

“Oh, hell! We have the other four back in the frame if it was an inside job, and now

two more, and we can’t interview any of them without explaining that something has gone

missing.”

Peter was frowning. “The sequence is all wrong. It would mean the person had no

need to disable the alarm system, simply go upstairs and open a window in an empty room,

so that it appeared there had been a robbery, steal the cat from the bedroom, and then

smuggle it out of the house, all in daylight. So, when the alarm was switched on at night,

why didn’t it sound as there was an open window upstairs?”

“The alarm was never switched on! Whose job was it to do that?” Pussy was up to

speed. “It would have been Archie, Mr Tofull, I’ll bet, but why would he steal his own

property? This gets weirder by the minute.”

Finding Archie having a nap beside the fishpond, Peter decided a softly softly

approach might be best, so he was startled when Archie opened his eyes as they

approached and struggled up to shake their hands.

“Hello, you must be from the estate agents, my wife said you would be round to

value the house, not that we are thinking of selling, but must be careful. The old Inheritance

Tax, you know. Wife says we might have to give it to the kids, or something, then not die too

quickly. I don’t understand it. Have a seat.”

“Actually, we were wondering about your security system, you turn it on every night,

do you?”

“Every night, that’s right. Unless I forget, memory’s not what it used to be. Luckily

the wife hasn’t caught me out yet.” He winked.

“At the weekend, did you find that old cat statue in your bedroom, you remember it

do you?”

“Oh, that thing. Never liked it, face like it had been in a wind tunnel, I wanted to be

an aircraft engineer, you know. Didn’t like the way it looked at you, staring eyes,

malevolent. Not going to have that looking at me all night, I took it upstairs and stuck it in a

cupboard in one of the spare bedrooms. Very stuffy in there, needed airing so I opened a

window. Good job you reminded me, the wife will be looking for it, better fetch it down.”

Surprisingly, Mrs Tofull didn’t argue too much about the agreed fee. They had got her cat

back, highlighted a home security flaw, namely, Archie, and all very discreetly.

Likewise, Staithe and Willow, Private Investigators, did not enquire as to the future

of the Egyptian Cat, after all, they were neither the Police nor the Tax Inspectors.

Colin Payn

Find Colin’s books here: https://amzn.to/2ChlBkA