Page 40 of A New Family at Puddleduck Farm (Puddleduck Farm #6)

Phoebe and Sam found out a lot more as they finished the sponsored walk. Maggie and Eddie walked the last bit with them, and they slowly filled in the gaps about what had happened as they strolled along sandy paths through the early spring forest.

‘Carmel’s been brilliant,’ Maggie said. ‘We couldn’t have done it without her.

Emilia had a long chat with her about the kittens and about what we thought was going on and in the end she was able to confirm everything.

She knew Duncan had cats but she had no idea he had a full-scale breeding operation going on in the garden.

‘She didn’t realise he’d taken Emilia’s either.

She trusted him totally. She was mortified when she found out he had and that she’d inadvertently helped him by telling him about them.

Luckily Emilia had taken enough photos of both sets of kittens for Carmel to be able to identify them in the summerhouse. ’

‘Poor little things,’ Phoebe murmured. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘I know. They were being used for breeding, poor little beggars. But they’ll be safe now.’ Maggie shook her head. ‘They’ll all be safe now. We’ll find them all good homes.’

‘That was very brave of Carmel. Slimeball won’t be happy if he realises she helped us.’

‘She’s leaving him. So hopefully he won’t. She said she’ll leave it a few days so he doesn’t get suspicious before she tells him. They don’t live together or anything. In fact he won’t even know her address any more because Emilia’s offered her a live-in position at Beechbrook.’

‘That sounds sensible.’ Phoebe paused. ‘Do you think there will be any comeback on us? What if he turns up at Puddleduck Pets and recognises them?’

‘He’s hardly going to report cats as stolen when he stole most of them in the first place.

Besides which, my darling, we won’t have all of them at Puddleduck Pets.

That lovely Jade Foster has said she’ll take a few.

And the Cats Protection League will take some too.

We’re hoping that some of them might still have microchips which will prove who their original owners were. They can all be returned.’

‘Yes, that’s true. He wasn’t expecting any of them to ever be found, was he? Did we ever work out how Oscar had escaped?’

‘No, but Denise told me that Oscar used to go in and out of their tiny bathroom window if they left it open, and they must have opened the windows in that hellhole sometimes. Maybe that’s how he got out.’

‘I guess we’ll never know.’ Phoebe sighed. ‘I can’t, hand on my heart, say I totally approve of your unorthodox rescue methods, but I’m really glad you got them out.’

‘And that’s why I didn’t tell you all the details, my darling.’ Maggie winked. ‘Besides which, we’ll need you to do your part too. There are twenty-seven assorted cats and kittens currently waiting up at Beechbrook House for a vet check from our friendly local vet.’

‘I’ll get Max and Seth to help me out. We can go up straight after the walk.’

‘Duncan Jukes seemed pretty certain he’d got CCTV footage.’ Sam joined in with their conversation. ‘Is he likely to send the police up to Beechbrook House?’

‘He hasn’t got any footage,’ Phoebe reassured him. ‘Carmel turned it off apparently.’

‘She turned it off before she opened up the back gate and let us into the garden,’ Maggie confirmed.

‘Like I said, we couldn’t have done it without her.

And she certainly wasn’t going to incriminate herself, was she?

Anyway, I can’t see the police heading up to Beechbrook House with a search warrant on Duncan Jukes’s say-so, can you?

That’s a Sun headline if ever I heard one. ’

‘Good point,’ Sam said, smiling. ‘Harrison’s gone right up in my estimation too. How on earth did he get that tree to take out the fence without managing to touch any more than the end door of the summerhouse?’

‘Years of practice, I should think,’ Phoebe said, but she felt the same. Harrison had gone way up in her estimation too.

They arrived back at the cars about fifteen minutes later and Sam went home with Roxie to look after Lily and tell Louella and James what was going on. Phoebe, Seth and Max headed to Beechbrook House.

Fortunately, the three vets discovered none of the felines were in such bad shape that they’d needed to be put to sleep, although some would need ongoing medical treatment for a while.

Quite a few had the feline herpesvirus that Oscar had had.

Phoebe, Seth and Max examined each one in turn and prescribed the relevant treatment.

‘The only problem with Maggie’s slightly unorthodox method of rescue is that we don’t now have any evidence to prosecute the bastard,’ Seth said when they’d finally finished and were back at Puddleduck Vets, which Phoebe had opened up especially.

‘Even if we did, he’d probably just get a slap on the wrist,’ Max said, looking across at Seth. ‘Even when they are proved guilty the worst that happens is a slap on the wrist and a fine. They just wait for the dust to settle and start up again.’

‘I hate the thought of that happening,’ Phoebe said. ‘But I’m not sure what we can do about it.’

* * *

Another week of March had come and gone by the time Phoebe discovered the Mission Cat Rescue team had thought of this too.

It had been one of the reasons the timing of the rescue had been so critical.

Carmel had been waiting for Duncan Jukes to go away on a four-day business trip during which she’d offered to house sit.

Carmel hadn’t just switched off the CCTV on the occasion of the tree felling; she’d done it a couple of days earlier too.

She’d done it for just long enough to take some video footage of the whole cat-breeding operation under Rottweiler Ken’s instructions of exactly what they needed.

As she’d had legal and unrestricted access to the house and garden at the time, and she hadn’t broken any laws to get it, the footage should be valid as evidence.

They’d also now been able to establish which cat had been the mother of their kitten Freda and had the DNA evidence to prove it.

Rottweiler Ken hadn’t been joking when he’d told Duncan Jukes he couldn’t wait to see him in court.

Exploiting cats might not be too heinous a crime in the eyes of the law, but if you added in theft and fraud, things got a lot more interesting.

Particularly if you were a hotshot barrister with an axe to grind.

To Phoebe’s relief, Carmel had also given her erstwhile boyfriend his marching orders without any comeback and had moved in with Rufus and Emilia to be their live-in housekeeper. She’d offered to be a witness for Ken Wyatt too.

As Denise told Phoebe when she brought Oscar in for an appointment one Friday afternoon, revenge really was a dish best served cold. Duncan Jukes was going to regret the day he’d stolen the Wyatts’ cat and Emilia’s kittens very much.