Page 39 of A New Family at Puddleduck Farm (Puddleduck Farm #6)

For a few moments no one moved. And then it seemed as though everyone was moving at once.

Dogs were barking, someone was shouting, and there were people in yellow duster tee-shirts all over the place.

There were far more of them than Phoebe had noticed before, and, to her shocked eyes, they seemed to be on both sides of the demolished fence.

They were running in and out of the garden, which was clearly visible now the fence had gone, with what looked like cat baskets, filled with cats.

She must be having some sort of hallucination.

As her stunned brain tried to catch up with what was happening, she saw there was a long wooden building in the garden.

An outbuilding of some sort. Maybe a summerhouse but bigger.

The end door was hanging off by its hinges and one glass window was smashed.

Had that just happened? The rest of the building seemed to be intact.

The people coming in and out of the garden did indeed have cat baskets. Phoebe could have sworn one of them was Rufus. Where had he sprung from? She was definitely imagining things. This was totally surreal.

‘Have you any idea what’s going on?’ Sam’s voice broke through her shock.

‘No.’ She blinked rapidly. ‘Oh my God. Yes.’

‘Mission Cat Rescue.’ Sam cottoned on at the same time as she did. ‘This is Duncan Jukes’s house?’

‘It must be. But blimey. Surely that wasn’t all done deliberately.’ Phoebe was galvanised into action. ‘We need to help them.’

‘I think they’ve pretty much got it in hand,’ Sam said as they both hurried towards the now totally exposed back garden with an excited Roxie, pulling on her lead.

The tree was lying in the bottom third of a very long garden.

Its heavy trunk had hit the fence but its branches were fanned out on the ground like some enormous decorative garden ornament.

The summerhouse was surprisingly unscathed. It had been just out of range and the tree had missed it by inches, only the tree’s uppermost feathery branches were brushing against the door that was off its hinges.

Phoebe peered inside the summerhouse, which was jammed with pens and cages, all of which were now empty, although they’d clearly been occupied until very recently. The sour smell of cat urine and faeces hung in the air.

‘It’s so lucky that tree didn’t go through the roof,’ Phoebe said. ‘If it had it could easily have injured any of the cats in here.’

‘Luck or skill?’ Sam murmured, touching the shattered hinges with his fingertips. ‘If you ask me, those cats were long gone when that tree hit the fence. And I don’t think those branches caused this damage either. Even though it does look like they did.’

‘You’re saying the cats were already in the cat baskets before the tree came down? But how did anyone get access to the back garden before the fence was down? And where were they all?’

‘I suspect we’re going to find out any minute,’ Sam said as Maggie appeared in the garden beside them.

‘What are you two doing? We need some help, getting all these rescued cats to safety. They can’t stay here. Come on, chop chop.’

She disappeared around the side of the summerhouse and Phoebe realised Sam was right. There were three cat boxes lined up beyond it. They all grabbed one and hurried after Maggie, back onto the forest path.

There was now a Land Rover with its engine running parked in a clearing in the woods.

The back of it was already half full of cat boxes and a chain of people were passing in more.

Phoebe recognised Denise Wyatt, Oscar’s owner, amongst them.

A stocky man in a tweed jacket was by her side.

Presumably he was her husband, Ken, the Rottweiler barrister.

‘My God, how many cats did they have locked in that shed?’ Phoebe asked in horror.

‘A lot,’ Denise told her grimly. ‘Cats and kittens. Thank goodness for freak accidents, or we’d never have been able to liberate them all.’

There was no trace of irony in her voice, but Rottweiler Ken was smiling as he glanced at Phoebe. ‘A terrible freak accident.’

Not far from them, Emilia was bent over one of the cat boxes with Archie by her side. ‘Minka and Charly. I never thought I’d see you again, my babies.’ She poked her fingers through the grille of the box.

‘You can say hello to them properly later,’ Rufus was saying. ‘Come on, we need to get all this lot safely home.’

Emilia nodded. She didn’t seem at all fazed at what was going on, Phoebe realised, and as she arrived beside her, Emilia glanced up guiltily.

‘You knew about this, didn’t you?’

Emilia had the grace to blush, but before she could reply, a young blonde woman Phoebe didn’t recognise, wearing a faded denim jacket, arrived beside Emilia.

‘He’s on his way back,’ she said urgently.

‘I think the neighbours must have phoned him when the tree came down because he just texted me to see what was going on. I told him I’d just got here to check the house.

He’s been away. You need to get the rest of the cats loaded and that Land Rover out of here. ’

Emilia nodded, and Rufus swung Emilia’s cat basket up into the Land Rover. ‘Any more to go in?’ He looked around the assembled people, and they all shook their heads.

Rufus shut the doors and then hurried up to the driver’s door and spoke to someone, and the Land Rover pulled smoothly away, bumping across the uneven ground until it disappeared between the trees.

Emilia turned towards Phoebe. ‘This is Carmel, our cleaner. Carmel, this is Phoebe, our lovely vet.’

Carmel smiled shyly, and Phoebe wondered fleetingly if Emilia tagged everyone she knew with the word ‘our’ and introduced them as a member of staff. Maybe that’s what everyone did when they had staff and a title. She berated herself for being so cynical.

‘Carmel’s on our side,’ Emilia told Phoebe quickly, misinterpreting her expression. ‘Carmel has been helping with Mission Cat Rescue. She let us know when Slimy Balls would be away.’

‘He must never find out,’ Carmel said quickly. ‘I think he would kill me.’

‘You did turn off the CCTV before you let anyone in?’ Emilia asked, and Phoebe glanced back towards the garden, noticing for the first time that there was a camera on the summerhouse.

There had been another one on the back gate, which had come down when the fence had been smashed, but that one lay broken on the ground.

Some fragments of it were scattered across the path.

The security must have been pretty tight then.

‘Yes.’ Carmel nodded vigorously. ‘When he checks he will find that it mysteriously cut out around ten thirty this morning.’

‘Excellent. We’d better stop talking.’

‘Yes. I’m going to leave before he gets back.’ Carmel hurried back into the garden and disappeared.

The rest of the people in the clearing who’d been helping with the cat baskets were now chatting, the adrenaline of a few minutes earlier evident in their voices.

‘Well, that was exciting…’

‘Thank goodness the cats were all safe.’

‘Do you think we should get back to the walk? We can’t get our sponsorship if we don’t finish.’

As Phoebe glanced around, she realised she knew most of them. As well as Maggie and Eddie, and the Holts and the Wyatts, there were a few of her dedicated volunteers.

She was about to thank them all for their help with what had clearly been a meticulously planned operation when she saw a furious figure negotiating the felled beech tree that now lay in his back garden and stomping his way towards them.

‘What the hell’s been going on here? Who’s responsible for this bloody fiasco?’

He was so angry he couldn’t say any more.

Rage was coming off him in almost palpable waves and his face was beetroot red as he stomped around over bits of broken tree boughs, occasionally stopping to kick one out of his way.

He paused beside a window of the summerhouse.

Then he looked inside, did a double take, and looked again. ‘Where are my bloody cats?’

Rufus stepped forward. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Lord Rufus Holt.’ He held out a hand in a gesture of appeasement. ‘I’m afraid this is down to me. My man’s been tree felling. Slight miscalculation.’

‘Lord Holt – er…’ Clearly nonplussed, Duncan Jukes stopped in his tracks. He shook his head. ‘But my cats. I had cats in there. Expensive cats…’

Emilia stepped forward. ‘Oh, good gracious alive. I think I did see a cat or two. Yes, maybe three or four cats now I can think of it. They ran into the forest after the tree came down. We did not realise they were yours.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘This is terrible tragedy. Ja?’

‘There were a lot more than three bloody cats. You let all of my cats run into the forest. You didn’t catch any of them.’ He shot her a furious glare. Lady Holt’s presence clearly didn’t faze him anywhere near as much as Lord Holt’s had done.

But other people were now speaking too.

‘I saw a cat. It went that way.’ A woman in a yellow tee-shirt pointed into the forest.

‘No, it went that way,’ someone else contradicted. ‘It ran into the bushes. Those gorse bushes, I think.’

‘No, that was a rabbit. The cats all went that way.’ A tall guy in a deerstalker pointed in yet a different direction.

‘I think I saw a white cat in your neighbour’s garden. Did you have a white cat? It might have been fluffy.’

‘Did any of them have a red collar? I think I saw one in a red collar.’

‘I definitely saw a cat climb up a tree.’

‘We may need to get the fire brigade out.’ That was Maggie. ‘No. Hang on a minute.’ She shielded her eyes and glanced upwards. ‘There it is. Did you have a grey cat? It’s up there. Oh, no, sorry. I think that may be a squirrel.’

She laughed delightedly and Duncan Jukes must have suddenly recognised her because his face turned even redder.

‘You! You came to my house. This is your doing. You’re all in on this, aren’t you? The lot of you.’

‘I didn’t chop down the tree.’ Maggie gave him her best outraged look. ‘I’m just on a sponsored walk.’ She opened her coat, flasher style, to show him that her tee-shirt said ‘I’m a Fabulous Fundraiser’.

Other walkers began to follow suit. They all opened their coats to show off their tee-shirts in tandem. ‘Look, see. We’re all on a sponsored walk,’ came a chorus of voices. ‘We were just passing.’

‘We’re raising money for animals.’

‘Yeah. Homeless dogs and cats. It’s a very good cause.’

‘You’re going to wish you’d never messed with me. I’m going to make your lives hell. Every single one of you. I’m going to sue you from here to kingdom come.’

‘I don’t think you are.’ Rottweiler Ken strode across to Duncan, his hands in his pockets, his back very straight.

He wasn’t as tall as Duncan but what he lacked in height he made up for in solidness and sheer straight-backed demeanour.

He had an air of impressive authority which seemed to bristle into the air around him.

The slightly carnival atmosphere of a moment before changed and stilled as he squared up to the corrupt cat breeder.

‘You need evidence to sue and I think you’ll find there are dozens of witnesses who’ll testify that nothing more than an unfortunate tree-felling accident has occurred here today.’

‘And I think you’ll find the truth will come out when I check my CCTV.’ Duncan was still angry but now he looked smug too. His face was set in a sneer.

Rottweiler Ken gave the slightest of nods. If he’d looked scary before, he looked twice as intimidating now. ‘I’ll see you in court then. Believe me, I can’t wait.’

There was a fraught little silence as everyone around them seemed to take in the implications of there being CCTV and one or two of them started to disperse.

Phoebe saw Rufus and Emilia exchange glances and Emilia gave the slightest shake of her head.

Then, Rufus, who’d been watching the proceedings with interest, stepped forward.

‘I was going to offer to pay for the damage to the fence, but I’m quite happy to go to court if that’s the route you’d prefer to take.

’ He didn’t wait for a reply but turned on his heel.

Emilia and Archie and their dogs went with him.

Sam caught hold of Phoebe’s hand. ‘We should probably get back to our sponsored walk.’

She nodded and glanced at Maggie, who gave her a very obvious wink.

‘Yes, we won’t be able to collect our sponsorship if we don’t finish it, will we, love?’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Eddie, coming forward and rattling a collection box at Duncan. ‘It’s for all animals. Cats as well as dogs. You obviously love cats, sir.’ He coughed. ‘It’s not too late to donate!’