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Recently the Pooles had been on a Downton Abbey kick. Well, more Odelia and her mother and grandmother, actually, with Chase, Tex and Uncle Alec reluctant bystanders.

“Do you think he has a butler and maids and all that?” asked Dooley.

“I’m sure he doesn’t,” said Odelia. “And I’m going to have to disappoint you again, I’m afraid, as I can’t take you along on my interview. Lord Hilbourne’s rider specifically states he doesn’t want any pets present at the interview. He must have heard about you.”

“A rider? You mean he brought along his horse all the way from England?” asked Dooley.

“No, a rider is a list of stipulations for interviews,” Odelia explained, “and the rider I got from Lord Hilbourne’s people clearly stated I should leave my pets at home.”

“Too bad,” I said. “I would have loved to meet the guy.”

“I don’t,” said Dooley. “If he doesn’t like cats, I don’t want to meet him.”

Odelia smiled and crouched down to pat us both on the head.“While I go and talk to Lord Hilbourne, why don’t you ask around to see if anyone has heard something about what happened to Bob Rector? And while you’re at it, maybe you can ask about Evelina Pytel, too. A woman who loses seventy-five thousand dollars in a botched handover and doesn’t callthe police just may have something to hide.”

So Odelia went one way, while Dooley and I went the other.“Do you think Evelina had something to do with the death of her boyfriend, Max?” asked Dooley.

“I’m sure I don’t know, Dooley. Though it’s entirely possible, of course. At this point we don’t know very much, do we?”

“No, we don’t,” he said. “All we really know is that Lord Hilbourne doesn’t like cats.”

“Pets,” I corrected him. “He doesn’t like pets.”

“So weird. I thought all those English lords loved pets. Like that guy in Downton Abbey. You practically never see him without his dog. As if they’re attached at the hip.”

“He probably left his dog at home,” I said, “and now he doesn’t want to see any other dog because he misses his own dog so much and other dogs remind him of his own sweet mutt.”

Dooley sighed an exaggerated sigh.“Max, you always think the best of people, don’t you?”

Soon we’d arrived at our destination, which was the General Store, where our friend Kingman resides. He belongs to the General Store’s owner and proprietor Wilbur Vickery. The impressive piebald was sitting in his usual place: out in front of the store, greeting passing pets and people, and generally being true to his reputation as Hampton Cove’s unofficial feline mayor.

“Max! Dooley!” he cried when he caught sight of us. “I was just thinking about you guys!”

“You were?” I said, greatly surprised. Kingman isn’t all that fond of male cats. He’s more into the female of the species. In fact whenever he sees a female feline he gets all giddy and starts putting the moves on her—rarely though his seduction techniques bear fruit. In that sense he’svery much his owner’s pet. Wilbur is crazy about the ladies, too, but only very rarely—or ever—succeeds in dragging one back to his cave for some much-desired nookie.

“Shanille was here just now, and she told me you’ve made friends with a snail? I told her that couldn’t possibly be true. No friends of mine would ever lower themselves to the level of the slimiest of bottom-dwellers, the creepiest of crawlies.”

“Well, for your information Shanille was correct,” I said. “We have indeed made friends with a snail, and he’s told us a lot of very interesting stuff, too.”

“Impossible,” Kingman sneered. “Look, you guys, I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this, but there’s a strict order in this world we live in. At the top of the food chain, of course, there’s our humans, then just below there’s cats and dogs—and maybe horses, too. And then you get the lesser mammals like cows and goats and sheep and the like. Even lower you have your chickens and your birds, which serve only one purpose and that is to be eaten by us. And at the bottom you’ll find such slithery creatures as worms and… snails.” He laughed a deprecating laugh. “Now you’re not seriously going to lower yourselves by getting chummy with the scum of the earth, are you? Seriously!”

“But aren’t we all creatures of God, Kingman?” asked Dooley. “The fishes in the sea, and the crickets in the field, and the birds in the trees? We’re all part of this same beautiful world, aren’t we?”

“Oh, Dooley, Dooley, Dooley,” said Kingman, shaking his head at so much naivet?. “You really have a lot to learn about the way the world works. Look, let me give you this one piece of advice: don’t talk to this snail again, and if anyone asks you, simply tell them it’s just a load of filthy gossip. No truth to the rumor whatsoever. You never saw this snail, you never talked to this snail, you never laid eyes on the foul creature!”

“But we did lay eyes on Mr. Ed,” said Dooley. “And we did talk to him. And he hired us to find out what happened to his human’s boyfriend Bob.”