Дорин Тови - More Cats in the Belfry

It had been dug out previously, years before, but more earth and stones had since slipped down the hillside and piled up against the back wall. It was making the kitchen wall damp, and in places the pile-up reached to quite a height. It needed clearing out and cementing, said Bill. It would be a tight squeeze, working in that narrow space, but he and Norm would do it in two shakes of a turkey's tail. Where would I like the rubble dumped?

The earth and small stones could be spread over the lane, I told him. It would help build up the surface. But the larger stones had better be put in the long grass on the verges, behind the part I kept cut. I didn't want them damaging my neighbours' car axles.

So they delved and dug and loaded the debris into a wheelbarrow, which Norm trundled out into the lane, putting the large stones where I directed and spreading the rest over the lane surface under my supervision. When I decided he could be left to get on by himself I came indoors to do something else. An hour or so later I made them a cup of tea, and while they were drinking it I wandered out into the lane to look and nearly had a fit.

Piles of rubble dotted the surface like molehills, obviously tipped straight out of the wheelbarrow and left. Each one had its quota of rocks and large stones sticking out of it like bumps on a landmine. All it needed was Poppy Richards to come down from her cottage in her car, or Miss Wellington to prospect past in the other direction, for the fat to be really in the fire.

Why hadn't he spread the stuff out as I'd asked him? I demanded of the hapless Norm. He'd dumped so many stones on the verges there weren't no more room – they kept rollin' down, he said. And Bill was shovellin' so fast he din't have time to level out the loads before he had to run back with the wheelbarrow. 'Keeps I goin' till I nearly meets meself comin' back,' he assured me. 'An' Bill said the cars 'ould level it out.'

So there was nothing for it but to get out there with a rake, scramble the rubble about as best I could, and heave the big stones on to the verges further up the lane. Thank goodness I got it done before Miss Wellington came past on surveillance bent and said how nice it was of me to be improving Poppy's surface for her.

We did our best, I panted weakly. After which Bill and Norm departed, informing me that they'd be back on Monday to do the cementing – Bill had Monday off and Norm, it seemed, was temporarily jobless – and I went indoors and lay on the floor to try to unwind my back with Tani and Saphra sitting pointedly beside me asking me what on earth I was doing lying about like that. Didn't I know it was time for their Tea?

THIRTEEN

The only real snag on Monday was that Bill arrived at 8 a.m. with the cement mixer he'd hired from the DIY and Norm, who must have been brighter than he looked, didn't turn up till nine, whizzing down independently on his motor-bike. This meant my having to help Bill unload the mixer from the home-made camper in which he'd brought it – the camper having been converted by Bill from a secondhand ambulance. The cement mixer got caught on a bed-fitting inside the van; we had a job to unhook it and it was a hazardous job lowering it to the ground; but by the time Norm arrived saying sorry he was late but he had to do an errand for his mum, it was in situ in the yard with Bill busy churning up the first brew of cement in it and I was able to retire and feel my back for signs of breakage while the two of them got on with laying the path round the rear of the cottage, watched by Tani and Saphra from the cat-house window.

They were there so they couldn't get on the cement – or into the mixer, which would have been a distinct probability with Saphra. They stayed there until the path was finished and Bill and Norm went home, having got the cement mixer on board the camper without my assistance. Bill gave strict instructions that the path should be left for two days to set hard before anybody walked on it, so I blocked it at either end with chicken wire and made sure the cats didn't go anywhere near it on their way down from the cat-house, and we settled down for the evening.

I settled, that is, glad that the job was over without too much upheaval. The cats, aware that something interesting had been going on behind the cottage and if they got up into the horizontal window that looked out on to the hillside they could peer downwards and see what it was, spent the evening glued to the glass, making chittering comments at intervals as a mouse or some other denizen of the night trekked, I hoped light-footedly, along the new path. Around eleven I lured them up to the bedroom with a few cat-biscuits while I came down to finally lock up. I checked everything and went up again leaving the sitting-room door propped open: that way they could come down to look out of the windows some more if they liked, but I'd made sure they couldn't get out to the kitchen, and that the outer doors were bolted without a cat's being on the wrong side of them, which was still one of Saphra's chief ambitions.

As soon as I re-opened the bedroom door the cats erupted through it like greyhounds out of a starting trap, pelting down to resume their vigil at the window. I got into bed and started to read while I waited for them to come back again. They didn't usually stay down there very long. I had a book called The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern by Lilian Jackson Braun, the writer of a series of American whodunnits whose hero is a seal-point Siamese called Koko, who helps his journalist owner solve some extremely baffling murders. In this one the Danish Modern that Koko ate was not, as I'd expected, some kind of pastry he'd taken a fancy to, but a style of furniture whose upholstery he persisted in chewing, not only ruining it in the traditional Siamese manner but thereby providing valuable clues which eventually solved the mystery. He was also in the process of acquiring a female Siamese companion who was to become his accomplice in further adventures.

As if two masked Machiavellis of my own were not enough, I was absorbed in the machinations of this other pair. I read and read. Tani came up and sat upright on the bed waiting for Saphra to join her: she will never settle for the night without him. I read on. Saphra still didn't appear. There must be something riveting outside the downstairs windows, I thought detachedly...

I must have fallen asleep. Suddenly I woke up, still clutching the book. Somebody was hammering on the front door. I looked at the alarm clock. Ten past three in the morning. The bedside lamp was still on. Tani and Saphra were curled up asleep beside me.

Mind working like clockwork... maybe it was would-be intruders, seeing the light and pretending a breakdown to gain an entry: never open the front door to anybody after dark was my motto... I slipped out of bed and through the bedroom door, closing it so that the cats couldn't follow me, crept into the spare room without putting on the light, opened the window and called out 'Yes? Who's there?'

A torch shone upwards on to a peaked cap and checked hatband and a voice replied quietly 'Police.'

They were after somebody! They wanted my assistance! Just as I'd been reading in The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern . How could I help them? I enquired, in unruffled control of the situation. They'd known the right one to come to. I hadn't been on the Parish Council for fourteen years for nothing.

'Are you all right?' asked the policeman, still very quietly.

Puzzled, I said 'Yes.'

'Only all your lights are on and all your curtains are pulled back,' he went on. 'Your neighbours noticed it when they drove down the hill a while ago and they were worried and rang us. Are you sure everything's all right inside?'