More Cats In The Belfry

  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?'

  I leaned out and looked down. The policeman was right. Light was streaming out across the lawn from all three sitting-room windows. Behind me it was shining out through the bedroom window too – naturally, as I'd fallen asleep with the bedside lamp on. To the right, the hall light illuminated the yard and fishpool. Seen from the road down the hill, it must have looked as if a space ship had landed. I had a good idea how it had happened, too, but I kept my counsel for the moment, just in case. 'If you wait a moment, I'll come down and look around,' I told them.

  I opened the bedroom door, grabbed my dressing gown, shut the door once more on the cats and crept downstairs. The policeman and his companions, who'd been out in the lane reporting back to base from the squad car­ presumably in case they needed reinforcements – were now positioned outside the middle sitting-room window. I opened it, the picture of calmness and confidence, and said 'All's well so far. I'll just look round the back of the cottage.'

  'You're sure you wouldn't like us to do it?' asked the first policeman.

  'No, I'll be all right,' I said. Leaving them no doubt thinking what a courageous female I was, I inspected the kitchen and lobby beyond it, peered up the newly cemented path with a torch... I was certain there'd be nothing there and there wasn't... and back I went to the policeman. 'Everything's all right,' I assured them. 'I fell asleep reading. I've had a heavy day and must have overlooked the other lights. And' – my voice dropped at this: I didn't know how they were going to take it – 'I've got Siamese cats who like to look out of the windows at night and I always pull the curtains back so they can.'

  Their faces were a study. I could see it even in the semi-darkness. I bet they'd never heard anything like that before. 'Glad everything's all right, then. Goodnight,' they chorused weakly and retreated to the squad car, no doubt to phone the station again and wonder whether the sergeant would believe it.