THE LOST CAT PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS: SEASON 5: EPISODE 5: THE DUNNERING DEMON
THE LOST CAT PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS: SEASON 5: EPISODE 5: THE DUNNERING DEMON
Released on : 5th June 2020
https://thelostcat.libsyn.com/season-5-episode-5-the-dunnering-demon
My cat was walking along a quiet hedgerow-lined road in the country, of the kind where the tarmac gives way to gravel at the edges, and passed a sign reading ‘you are now entering the village of Dunnering’.
Some bunting had been draped it.
It was a beautiful village on a green hill surrounded by rolling fields dotted with comfortingly ancient trees where birds sang just out of reach, with delightful rows of mismatched cottages leading up the hill to the stately old manor house.
From every lamp-post hung bunting and flags, on every window flowers.
It could not have been a more pretty, peaceful place.
But Dunnering was a village beset by ill-fortune, sickness, violence and, as of this morning, murder. For the village of Dunnering was cursed.
THE LOST CAT PODCAST, BY A P CLARKE, SEASON 5, EPISODE 5: THE DUNNERING DEMON
As my cat wandered up the delightful high street, he noticed a general movement of humans up the hill towards the manor house. A crowd of them. He made a habit of following crowds for the inevitable heaps of dropped food that always accompanied them.
But there was a strange feel to the crowd, less of the excitable and chaotic energy that one usually gets when something out of the ordinary has happen, and replaced with some kind of grim magnetism that pulled them all up the hill.
The crowd was full of mutterings about ‘the curse’, and ‘the demon’.
And they all walked, leaden foot, up the hill towards the manor. And so my cat held back, not wanting to get caught under any of those feet.
Then my cat also noticed one human, an old lady, walking slowly but very determinedly in a different direction. She walked over to the side of the road, bonked her stick off the helmet of the police constable, who was watching the whole parade with a bemused expression, and made him open his car door so that he could drive her up the hill. My cat leapt in to her lap, just before the officer closed the door, and immediately began purring.
The old lady said, “oh? What’s this with the purring? I don’t have any food.”
But she scritched at his head, and he settled down gently.
“Ah dear, do we have to, Mrs Lipeston?” Grumbled the officer. “It’ll get fur everywhere!”
“I’ll worry about this cat dirtying your car, when you’ve bothered cleaning it up after last night’s joy ride. Don’t think I didn’t notice!”
And the officer coughed and changed the subject.
“And if there’s anything else I can do for you, Mrs Lipeston.”
“This will be sufficient, Jason.”
They drove carefully up the road to the gates of the manor house, avoiding the crowd.
The gates were closed, and being guarded by large groundskeepers with even larger dogs. The crowd drew up to the gate, but all stopped a very specific distance away from the hardened scowls that greeted them, and absolutely none tried to push past.
The groundskeepers owned absolutely everything beyond that point.
So the crowd peeked around the edges of the gates, and over the fence, to try and sneak a look at what might be happening within.
As the police car pulled up to the side of the road, the constable asked, “Do you know what this is about, Miss Lipeston?”
“No, but I fear any business concerning Lord Dunnering will come to no good.”
“Some say he’s quite mad.”
“Don’t mention the curse, Jason.”
“He was a good child,” the old lady began, and the constable knew better than to interrupt again. “Brighter than all the others. It would get him in to trouble, but I never had problem with him. I think what gets ascribed to madness is often an unwillingness to accept a life of rules and traditions such as run right through an ancestral manor such as this. However, at some point, as he grew into a man, it turned him inward, and dismissive of others, and I simply could not talk to him at all after that. But he grew in to a man of immense will. He had unbounded energy, a world striding ambition, and he did not suffer fools, or his family, gladly. He abandoned his inherited wealth and then went and built an entirely new fortune by himself that dwarfed that of his family. Mad? I am not so sure.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the constable, opening the passenger door for her.
Miss Lipeston held my cat in her arms, and the constable helped her out of the car.
As the two began slowly making their way through the crowd to the gates, passing plenty of whispers about ‘the looney lord’, they saw a handsome lady rush up to the gates, with a clear attitude of authority, and began speaking to the crowd with a high manner. She kept looking at the Groundskeepers with a mildly-hidden mix of fear and disgust, while the groundskeepers were in turn barely keeping their disdain in check.
It seemed a common goal - of keeping the crowd out - was allowing a temporary impasse.
She said: “Now please, please, Lord Dunnering is a VERY private man and this is a very sensitive matter. We must ask for the GREATEST of respect in this unfortunate time.”
“That’s the Lord’s niece,” said the constable. “Turned up recently.”
“Lord Dunnering knows,” the lady continued. “Lord Dunnering knows that he can reply on your FULL support at this time.”
And while the lady was speaking, Mrs. Lipeston leaned in to the constable’s arm and continued: “Then the story takes a turn. For he took off. Vanished. Overseas, and no-one knows where, or what he did. Rumours, of course, and of a most unkind nature, flourished. He came back some five years later, with no word of explanation, kicked everyone out of the ancestral pile and filled the halls with the uncounted, not to mention mysteriously gained, treasures that he had acquired in his travels. And that, I am afraid, is where the trouble began.”
They approached the gate. The neice blocked them. The dogs snarled at my cat, and my cat hid further down in the woman’s arms.
“Uhh, excuse me but where are you going?”
“To speak to Lord Dunnering.”
“As his niece I will be handling all questions regarding the estate at this time.”
And Mrs Lipeston gripped the constable’s arm, just ever so slightly.
“Mrs Lipeston will be assisting the police today, Lady Carstarse.”
“Well, I…” Lady Carstarse began, but Mrs Lipeston walked straight past her before she could finish.
“Grace,” she said, as she did.
The handsome woman clearly wanted to follow them in, to assert authority again, but that instinct was caught in a conflict of not being willing to give up the gates to the groundskeepers. As such she just sort of stood still, and stuttered.
“Well, aren’t you going to do something?” she said.
The groundskeepers said nothing, but kept their eyes very carefully on the old lady as she passed. The dogs growled at them, and pulled at their leashes.
My cat stayed very deep in Mrs Lipeston’s arms.
And they walked along the gravel path towards the house, past withered flower beds, thick bramble, and endless cages for animals, of all sizes, now empty and overgrown.
And Lipeston was in full flow now: “Once the family was gone, he filled The Manor House with every kind of treasure, the grounds were filled with every kind of exotic animal. He hired a full staff of groundskeepers to look after this extraordinary collection. The house had never seen such success. But bad luck began befalling the Dunnering Estate. Plants would not grow, the animals began dying, there were strange sicknesses among the staff: breakages, accidents, sightings, and more”
My cat did notice a strange atmosphere in the grounds. He heard no birdsong, he smelt no trace of wildlife. He looked back, and saw the guard dogs had stayed right where they were, on the other side of the gate.
“These events became so severe Lord Dunnering became convinced that he had been placed under a curse and that he was being hunted by a demon. And a darkness came over the manor then. It radiated out from him and smothered all within its influence. He became more and more paranoid, more fearful of every tiny threat until he locked himself away inside his great hall and was never outside again. And of course, such behaviours simply fuel gossip like gasoline.”
“They say he desecrated an ancient Syrian tomb.”
“Precisely,” said Mrss Lipeston.
And with that, they entered through the vast doors of the Dunnering Manor.
And they saw just what the gossiping had all been about.
The entrance hall had been completely gutted, and replaced with an immense glass case, stretching all the way up to the now removed roof, forty feet above, and enclosing some 80% of the vast atrium.
It was a complete second, sealed, inner room. The old roof had been removed, so that the glass was exposed to the sky, with nothing breaking its smooth surface but a small ventilation port barely two feet across right at the top and right at the centre.
Inside the room the floor was filled with furniture and statuary, of Marathan, Byzantine and Zhou heritage, and more. Some of the sculpture was immense. Beds, divans, tapestries and dining tables of many styles, filled in the spaces between. Marble and bronze, wood and glass: The treasures of many worlds.
And there, lying at the centre, quite dead, was a young woman with her head bashed in.
“Oh my dear girl,” Mrs Lipeston said, so quietly, and my cat could feel her body straighten as her aspect changed, and she slew off some of her little old lady body language.
My cat gave the room a good sniff.
The constable said with a gasp: “Is that Maud Montgomery?”
“I’m afraid so,” said the detective in charge, calling over. “Lord Dunnering’s fiance. Daughter of the head groundskeeper. We’re just getting the doors open now.”
A group of medical staff and police officers stood by a complicated set of doors on one side of the glass enclosure. Groundskeepers stood around them, checking over their every action with grim expressions.
And the medical staff, even the police officers, worked with great and visible, care.
An older man was with them, handsomely dressed, entering a code into the door.
Mrs Lipeston leaned over to the constable and whispered “Uncle.”
“They do keep popping up, don’t they.”
The Uncle was speaking: “Double-redundancy, Time release airlocks. A fully featured quarantine with de-comtamination chamber. The, uhh, renovations were made without any expense spared.”
He looked up at what was left of the Manor’s roof as he said this. “Which of course were entirely Lord Dunnering’s privilege to make, and we have supported him in every way. There.”
The heavy doors unlocked with a hiss of escaping air, and the medical staff went in to check on the body, lying still in the centre of the room.
My cat, sitting in Mrs Lipeston’s arms, got a good smell of the escaping air.
When the uncle saw the body through the doorway he turned away, holding his hands to his face.
“Oh it’s too awful,” he said. “They were to be wed this Saturday.”
Just then the niece bounded in from outside, out of breath, clearly having made the decision that it was more important being there than at the gates.
She saw the body, and held her uncle’s shoulder.
“It is a tragedy, Uncle Freddie.”
“We put bunting up all over the village,” said the sobbing Uncle.
Mrs Lipeston asked, “And why all this?”, gesturing at the great class enclosure.
It was the niece that responded.
“I’m afraid Lord Dunnering is... sensitive to outside contagion, and demands everything go through two weeks of quarantine before being let in to own sanctuary. He built this entire chamber for his fiancée so she could pass her time in quarantine in comfort. When the quarantine period was finished, she would have been transferred to his own quarters so that they could have been, finally, together.”
“The two struck up a relationship while she worked around the house, doing groundskeeper duties. She would sit by his chambers for hours, apparently. She was an incredible solace to him. Such a lovely girl, surprisingly so. We thought she might finally bring him out of himself. It is so tragic.”
Mrs Lipeston said, “I might need to speak to the groundskeepers too at some point.”
“Uhh, be careful,” said the niece, speaking more quietly now. “They don’t mix well with... locals. The Lord brought them in after working with them on his travels. They are insular, proud, and fierce.”
“The story I tell,” said the uncle. “From my great-grandfather, about how their people fought in some war or other. They faced an invading force ten times their number, and over days of battles broke that number down to less than half. Extraordinary fighting. But when the invading force finally overwhelmed them, and stormed their settlement, they found every last one of them dead. Facing capture, they had killed their own rather than face dishonour. I would be careful.”
“Nevertheless,” said Mrs Lipeston, and moved over to the quarantine doors.
The groundskeepers all watched as she approached, and she made a point of catching one of their eyes and holding his gaze.
Some of the police officers were speaking:
“It’s the curse. It’s got to be.”
“It is a crime,” said the detective in charge.
“But how could it have been done? There’s no way in, and no way out?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it.”
“No human could have done this.”
Mrs Lipeston interjected: “Has Lord Dunnering been informed of the death? We should speak with him.”
“Lord Dunnering don’t want to see anyone,” came a booming voice from behind them.
Heavy steps sounded from the darkened hall that led to the East Wing and the hunched form of the Head Groundskeeper emerged into the space, and stood, blocking the corridor.
And the other groundskeepers joined him, standing shoulder to shoulder.
Mrs Lipeston approached, leaving the others behind.
“I can not offer you solace, Mr Montgomery,” she said. “But we will catch who did this.”
“If it was a demon, then we will catch a demon. May I pass?”
Mr Montgomery did not move, and a couple of the groundskeepers leaned in and they spoke quietly for a moment.
Eventually he said, “Ma’am.” and he reluctantly stepped asideAnd Mr Montgomery reluctantly stepped aside, and then led them in to the darkness of the East Wing.
“I am utterly sorry for your loss, Mr Montgomery.” Said the uncle as they walked.
And Mr Montgomery cleared his throat so aggressively at that no-one spoke at all the rest of the way.
There was no lighting in the corridor, and it was lined with towering statuary and other treasures, piled high on either side. The deepening shadows loomed over the party as they walked in to the East Wing.
The corridor emerged to show another huge glass enclosure had been built, and filled the space. It was all in darkness, covered in drapes and curtains, save a single beam of bright sunlight from the ventilation port at the very top.
A man stood there just inside wall of the glass room, almost in silhouette, and watching them approach.
“Mrs Lipeston, it has been a long time.”
He was gaunt, he did not fit his clothes, he was pale, and his body was almost completely still. He had none of the vitality of the world-striding young man she had known, he did not have the squirling pestilent energy of the sick, nor even the floating unreality of a ghost, only the cold grey blankness of death, and it bled out from him to fill the entire room, the entire wing, and it poisoned everything it touched.
“Miss Lipeston, it has been a long time.”
And he held in his arms a small, hairless cat, of the type popular in Northern Africa and the Middle East, and it hung limply from him, it’s shallow breaths showing through its ribs, with barely enough energy in it to raise its head, which lolled forlornly over his wrist. Its pale, bare skin stretched and stuck to its master’s until you could barely tell where one started and the other finished.
Lord Dunnering then looked at my cat, which was sitting in Mrs Lipeston’s arms, looking all about with some interest, and the merest trace of a wince could be seen on his brow.
Instinctively, almost unconsciously, he reached for a handkerchief, and began waving away imaginary cat hairs from around him. He caught himself doing it, and then began self-consciously rubbing at smudges on the glass wall with the handkerchief, as if to cover his mistake up.
The hairless cat in the Lord’s arms languidly raised its head enough to see what was going on. But Its heavy lidded eyes were barely even open.
Some smudges the Lord could not budge, no matter how hard he rubbed. He snapped when he realised they were on the outside of the glass.
“Mr Montgomery I have asked you repeatedly to ensure the cleanliness of the quarantine. Increase the rota. This place must be clean!”
Lord Dunnering caught himself again, and straightened, taking a half step back. It was clear he was finding himself doing this sort of thing more and more.
He took a deep breath, put the handkerchief into a waste receptacle, and gathered himself.
Calmly, the Lord turned back to the gathered crowd.
“I’m afraid this is a police matter, Lord Dunnering.”
“And then why is she here?”
“We must ask you some questions.”
“There is nothing to say.”
“Your fiancée has been murdered,” said Mrs Lipeston.
“The curse takes everything!” he spat, suddenly wrathful, with that old energy passing fleetingly across his parchment face. “Oh, at first I did not believe it, in my arrogance, as staff fell sick, animals began disappearing, began dying. You never could solve those deaths could you, Mrs Lipeston.”
“No, Philip, I could not.”
“But still I careened blindly on. Then my own pets were lost. I came back to this manor with three sibling cats, Mrs Lipeston.” and he stroked the pallid, lone creature in his arms. “By the time the second one was taken from me I could not deny the truth any longer: I was cursed, and it was killing everything around me, so I retreated here, to this sanctuary, out of the world, so I could keep what I loved safe.”
And his face passed in to shadow, and any trace of the old Lord that remained was entirely gone.
“But it did not work, for now the curse has taken my beloved. Even here, even with all I have done, the curse follows with me. The demon will come for me, will come for every thing I love. There is no escape. Leave, for there is nothing here. Not any more.”
He turned away from the glass then.
“Mr Montgomery, you are relieved of duty, you may do as you wish.”
And Lord Dunnering retreated from the wall, back in to the darkness, absently stroking his withered pet.
“Be careful with your cat, Mrs Lipeston. They don’t last too long round these parts.”
They walked back towards the Entrance Hall, towards the light.
As they walked, the uncle shook his head with worry. “I am concerned this could send him over the edge entirely, and we’ll never get him back, right-minded and competent again.”
“It is a terrible tragedy,” agreed the niece.
Back in the entrance hall, the body of Maud Montgomery had been brought out of the quarantine, on a stretcher and covered, and was currently waiting for the coroner to remove her to the hospital.
Mr Montgomery knelt by the stretcher’s side, and held the body’s hand.
He placed it back, gently, beneath the cloth and then rose.
“Well,” he said. “What’ve yer got?”
“We are following up a number of leads at this moment…”
Mr Montgomery scowled at him, shook his head, and stormed off.
“Have you checked the roof?” said Mrs Lipeston, and pointed up at the ventilation port.
“It’s too high, it’s too small. We’ve discounted it as a means of ingress.”
“Discount nothing, Detective.”
And the detective sucked in sharply. “Fine,” he said. “Officer: send three men up.”
And, as he ran off, Mr Montgomery and a couple of the groundskeepers stood at the East Wing corridor, arms folded, and glaring.
While they were climbing towards the roof, my cat wriggled in Mrs Lipeston’s arms and the old lady let him go to the floor, where he began sniffing around the doors of the opened airlock.
Forty feet above them, long wooden ladders were stretched out over the gloss roof, as they tried to attach to the support of the ventilation apparatus without touching the glass itself. This entire edifice was designed by someone who wanted it perfect in form, with no care as to how hard it was to access.
Police officers banged and wobbled their way along the ladders to reach the ventilation port. They checked it thoroughly, then reported down that there was no evidence of tampering at all.
Then one of the officers almost fell off the ladder. In the Entrance Hall they all looked up at the figure half dangling off the struts, then clasping himself very tightly to the ladder.
The detective called up, “are you alright? What happened? Report!”
“I’m sorry sir. I’m sorry. But I think you are going to need to see this, sir.”
“What is it?” asked the detective “what is it?”
The officer was brought a tablet so he could beam an image down to the detective.
And the image told its story. Close to the ventilation port were two large, non-human footprints next to each other. They neared half a metre long, with complicated claws around their outside and, one on each foot towards the front, was the round outline of a large sucker.
“Like a squid or something.”
“It is the demon! It used the suckers to climb straight down the glass walls and do for poor Maud. We have to tell the Lord!”
They ran back to the East Wing.
Mrs Lipeston followed, silenced by the evidence of the footprints.
Back in the East Hall, The Lord looked at the footprints, then put his hand upon the glass and bowed his head.
He said, “My love, my love.” Then he collapsed, putting the cat down upon a table where it melted to the surface like custard. He said, as he sobbed into the floor “I have cursed you too.”
And then two large thumps were heard above them, coming from the darkened roof. Then two more, towards the back of the house.
“The demon is still on the roof!”
The Lord grovelled on the floor “It is come for me. At long last, it is come for me.”
Mr Montgomery stood tall and said: ‘If it leaves footprints, it is real. And if it is real, you can put your hands on it. And I will lay my hands upon this demon.’ he pointed at the detective. “Bring everyone!”
And they rushed, all of them, the family, the police, the hangers-on and the groundskeepers, out into the grounds, carrying clubs and whatever was to hand, leaving only Mrs Lipeston and Jason the constable.
They looked into the glass case and the Lord lying there.
“It is not unheard of for someone to be so convinced of their own guilt that they create their own punishment. But could that self-destructive will become so strong as to manifest physically? To actually become real?”
“I don’t rightly know, ma’am.”
“You should probably go with them, if only to ensure they do not harm each other.”
“I think you might be right.”
“And Jason,” she added as he started to leave. “Do be careful of yourself out there. Just in case.”
“I will Mrs Lipeston,” he said, and ran off.
Mrs Lipeston left the East Wing slowly, and met my cat as he walked back from the Entrance Hall. She lent down and scritched behind his ears, speaking distantly, mostly to herself.
“I don’t know. I just… don’t know. I am not so foolish as to dismiss the existence of demons. But I’m not so sure it is monsters that do things like this. Let us say: Trapping the lord in a cage would most definitely benefit some of those outside of it. Something doesn’t smell right, and I am sure you sense it too, little one. Go on. And be careful.”
My cat ran off in to the halls.
My cat walked down the shadowed corridors of the vast manor house, lined with the relics of ancient worlds, and things more unimaginable, all towering over him.
Faint noises echoed in the halls: movements in the shadows in the corners of eyes. My cat was used to reading the endless activity of the city at night, but he was not used to the almost complete stillness here, and so found it hard to interpret it.
So he mostly ignored it, for he had a scent to follow. He was following the strange mix of smells he had found all around the tragic sanctuary of Maud Montgomery.
Outside the quarantine, he had smelt all of the usual country smells of village people but also stranger smells, chemical smells - smells he only knew from certain parts of parts of the city.
When the airlocks had opened he had smelled Maud, sweet and sad, coming from her clothes, from everywhere she had touched, but could not make out the scent of any other person. What he did smell coming out of that airlock door, that had so peaked his interest, was the very faint smell of an animal.
And it was this smell he was following right then.
He followed them down stairs, past kitchens, well passed where the statues began to thin out, with the smell of this animal getting stronger and stronger, and onto a corridor right on the edge of the manor house.
There was a bang! And a scrape!
And my cat hid beneath a statue, as one of the groundskeepers walked by, come back alone from the hunt, and constantly looking behind him.
And, at the very end of the corridor, the groundskeeper unlocked a door with three locks and went in. My cat snuck by before he closed the door and went in too.
And there the strange mix of chemical and animal was strongest mixed in with the sweet, sad smell of Maud Montgomery.
It was a small, plain bedroom, and the groundskeeper was lighting dark candles and incense of the kind to ward off dark spirits, filling the air with the smell of chemicals.
Then, in front of a small book case, he put down two small bowls, pushed the case aside, and revealed a small cubby hole, filled with blankets, soft lights, and a tabby cat curled up tight right in the corner.
And a cloud of cat hair spilled out of the cubby hole. The cat had been there a long time. And the tabby cat shuddered – it was absolutely terrified.
The groundskeeper filled one bowl with water, one with food, patted the poor creature on the head, and then left, locking the doors again.
Alone again my cat rose and, very carefully, before he revealed himself, made a thin high yowling noise.
The noise said ‘I am just passing through, and I pose you no threat’
And then he stepped out in front of the terrified creature, and waited for the animal to accept his presence.
But it would not leave its hiding hole. It kept checking on the windows, at the grates in the walls - all of the places a demon could get in. The terrified cat checked all around the skirting boards of the room. It all made perfect sense from my cat’s point of view - it was checking for any gaps.
As far as this poor cat was concerned, if he left this hiding place, the demon would get him.
My cat stayed small and gentle so as not to scare the cat any further. My cat purred and moved slowly to calm the animal and, eventually, my cat approached, sat down next to it, and began licking its fur.
This was Maud Montgomery’s cat, hidden away so that the curse that killed all the other animals would not get to it. It said a great deal that the cat was hidden, rather than given away or left with relatives. Maud was clearly a lady who was not going to give up her cat. This animal was loved, and had been cared for. It is possible that the cat had already sensed that something had changed, and that Maud was never, ever coming back again.
My cat gently groomed the poor creature. And when it was calm, they settled down and napped with each other, just for a little while.
My cat left the animal sleeping and happy a little while later, stopping to eat a bit of the food first. My cat knew the killer of Maud Montgomery now, and he had work to do.
It was the dead of night now. The halls of the Dunnering House were silent and still. And my cat paced through the East Wing to the great glass wall of Lord Dunnering’s quarantine.
The glass shone in the moonlight, smooth and clean.
The Lord was long asleep, the hunting party long since returned empty-handed, and the house closed up for the night.
My cat approached the glass, and he yowled.
And, slowly, out of the shadows withered the hairless cat, its head barely lifted from the floor, its limbs swaying like noodles.
It came and sat on the other side of the glass, its shoulders like knitting needles through the skin of its back.
They stared at each other.
And then the hairless cat straightened its limbs, its eyes narrowed to points, it rose up and sat regally. It opened its mouth and called out in a coarse, breathy hiss. But it was not addressing my cat. It was looking behind him.
Where, out of the darkness, two more hairless cats approached, stalking, like panthers.
The cat behind the glass cocked his head just slightly, as he watched. He showed his teeth, and hissed.
My cat backed away from the hunting pair, towards the glass.
One of the hairless cats circled round to cut him off, rubbing up against the glass to close that escape route, and leaving an oily smudge.
My cat had nowhere to go.
The two hunting cats closed in.
And then two nets came down upon them.
Mr Montgomery and the constable came out of the dark, holding on to the nets.
The cat within the glass howled a shrieking howl with its feet up on the glass wall, unable to do a thing.
Mrs Lipeston called for the lights to be turned on.
Mr Montgomery leaned in close to the cat in his net, and he said “I got my hands on you.”
The captured cats spat and yowled.
Lord Dunnering himself walked bleary eyed towards the glass.
“What is the meaning of this!” he said.
“We have captured the murderers of Maud Montgomery, Lord Dunnering,” said Mrs Lipeston.
The lord rubbed his eyes awake and saw.
“My cats.... Those are my cats! They did not die!”
“No. I imagine it would be relatively easy to live in the roofs and basements of this manor without being detected.”
“They are the killers? But this is ridiculous, Mrs Lipeston! You are making a fool of me! Of Mr Montgomery! Of Maud!”
But Mr Montgomery said, “i’d hear her out.”
“Fine!” said Lord Dunnering, looking at his long-lost pets struggling in the nets. “So tell me: HOW did they commit this murder?”
And Mrs Lipeston took a deep breath, and began:
“It was a simple plan, really. Jason, could you fetch me a chair. Thank you. Last night, the cats waited for the poor lady to fall asleep, then one blocked the filtering system bringing air IN to her quarantine - most probably that one, and you may find some slight scorching on one side of its body, as the machinery can get hot when blocked.”
Jason checked, and confirmed a slight reddening on one side of the cat.
“The other then simply sat on the ventilation port above and their smooth, hairless skin created an airtight seal on the glass. Then they had simply to wait for the oxygen, in what was now a completely sealed room, to run out.
“Poor Maud woke up eventually, choking and already dazed from carbon dioxide poisoning, and fell hard upon a marble statue and quite bashed her head in. Dramatic, but unnecessary, for she was doomed as soon as they sealed off the air.”
“And what about the footprints?”
“Ah,” said Mrs Lipeston, who was finding her rhythm. “The footprints were caused by these cats sitting on the glass while they waited for the lady to sleep. When a normal cat sits down they leave a bundle of hair, but these ones, they leave only an oily smudge of their sweat. The footprints were simply the oily residue of their hairless skin imprinting on the glass the outline of their seated forms, which can easily be mistaken for the footprint of a much larger beast’s footprints.” Then miss Lipeston leaned in. “Those suckers some were so sure helped them walk down the walls were, my dear lord, the oily outline of their hairless ani.”
She said this with some relish.
“But why would they do this?”
“Greed. Selfishness. Covetousness. Do not think that such desires are purely human inventions. They had the Lord and wanted him alone, so they began a campaign of destroying anything that would take the Lord away from them. This was the beginning of the curse. Then they hid in the roofs and grounds of this estate and attacked anything they saw as a threat. Other animals, new pets, staff and now, rising to human murder, the future wife of Lord Dunnering, Maud Montgomery: the biggest threat they had faced so far.”
Lord Dunnering was silent for a long while.
“My god,” he said. “My god.” he had his hand to his head.
“Well,” said the detective. “We shall take away these murderous animals immediately.”
And the Lord said “Stop! They are mine, and I will do with them as I please. Put them in quarantine so that they may join me in two weeks. These cats were my everything, and I thought I had lost them. Now I find them returned, and will not have them taken again, for they are all I have now. So this is done. The curse is complete, and the demon has found me. Leave my estate, you are all of you no longer welcome.”
And so they left. They closed the gates and went down the hill to the village, leaving the manor house behind.
And my cat had a very nice evening on the old lady’s lap, in front of her fire, as she told stories to her very patient friends of the many other mysteries she had solved. And they drank very large glasses of red wine.
After a day or so, the cat moved on, walking through the strangely quiet village on his way out.
It still was as bright and cheerful as ever, but it was not the same.
Some of the bunting lay coiled, higgeldy-piggeldy in the street where the wind had blown it down and no-one had picked it up.
And, on top of the hill, the manor house darkened and was shuttered up, its ground left to wild, its unused wings closed up and left to rot, and deep at its heart, three cats wrapped themselves around a man, alone, and lost, deep in an unfathomable darkness of his own.
THIS HAS BEEN EPISODE FIVE, OF SEASON FIVE OF THE LOST CAT PODCAST, CALLED ‘THE DUNNERING DEMON’, WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY A P CLARKE
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