Murder Most Fowl: A Saturday Morning Mystery

Four suspects. One victim. No witnesses. Breakfast served as normal.

I came downstairs this morning to a “murder scene”. Feathers everywhere. A dead starling in the middle of the hall. Four cats in the household, none at the scene, and nobody in the kitchen demanding breakfast.

Something was wrong.

Obviously, things had gone considerably worse for the starling than they had for me. But what immediately struck me as suspicious was the absence of the cats. Normally, a late breakfast attracts considerably more management attention.

To be fair, I’d broken routine first.

I’m usually downstairs by half five, with the cats gathering for breakfast around seven. But I’d been up at half one trying to help Ruth buy tickets for the Ghibli Museum in Japan, an undertaking that turned out to be considerably more complicated than either of us expected. I’d eventually gone back to bed and slept until eight.

Somewhere between international ticket procurement and my delayed return to domestic service, someone had brought a starling into the house.

And whoever it was had left the evidence lying in plain sight.

There were four suspects.

All had access to the premises. All had a history of predatory behaviour, to varying degrees. And all were behaving as though nothing had happened.

Suspect Number One: Cosmo, the Elder Statesman

Cosmo was the first to make contact.

He’d jumped onto the bed to wake me, followed me downstairs, and then coolly walked past the dead bird on his way to his breakfast bowl.

Not even a glance at the victim.

Now, Cosmo is the elder statesman of the group. He’s largely retired from hunting, and I honestly can’t remember the last time he brought a “gift” home.

In fact, he’s become so laid-back that Bob the pigeon, a regular visitor to our garden, happily lands on the ground a few feet from him while he’s sleeping out back.

When a pigeon feels comfortable enough to hang around a cat, that’s a fairly strong character reference.

But I couldn’t entirely clear Cosmo. Retirement doesn’t mean incapacity.

Perhaps he’d waited patiently for breakfast, discovered the service was unavailable, and decided to revisit an old skill. Then, having completed the operation, he’d come upstairs to fetch the person responsible for both feeding him and disposing of the evidence.

That would be quite an impressive sequence of events.

I hesitated to give him that much credit before coffee.

Suspect Number Two: Wanda, the Silent Assassin

Wanda was still upstairs, which is perfectly normal for her.

She’s shy and prefers the relative peace of the spare bedroom. While the others come and go, she generally keeps herself to herself.

When she heard breakfast being served, I heard her emerge onto the landing and scratch the cat post. I took her food upstairs.

Yes, she gets room service.

And here’s where things get interesting. Wanda is arguably the best hunter of the four, which immediately made her my leading suspect.

My working theory was that she’d been out during the night, caught the starling, brought it home, deposited it in the hallway, and then retired upstairs for a well-earned rest.

When breakfast failed to materialise at the usual hour, she simply waited until room service resumed. From her perspective, it would have been a perfectly satisfactory morning. A successful hunt, a comfortable bed, and breakfast delivered.

The perfect crime.

Suspect Number Three: Timmy, the Man of Leisure

I was just settling down with my coffee when Timmy came through the cat flap.

By this point, I’d removed the body, although feathers still stretched from the hallway into the kitchen. Timmy surveyed the situation briefly before proceeding directly to his breakfast bowl.

Now, Timmy does occasionally hunt, but he’s at the bottom of my suspect list for one simple reason.

He’s a lazy ass.

Timmy generally saunters in last, if he bothers coming home at all, from whichever of several neighbours’ houses he’s selected for his overnight accommodation.

He has arrangements. I don’t know exactly what these arrangements involve, or what services he’s providing in exchange for board and lodging, but they appear to suit him. He lives a somewhat mysterious life beyond our property boundaries, and I suspect he prefers it that way.

Could he have killed the starling?

Certainly.

Was he likely to have gone to the trouble of catching one, carrying it home, and leaving it in the hallway when there were probably three other households willing to provide him with breakfast?

I had my doubts. Still, in the interests of a thorough investigation, I couldn’t rule him out entirely.

Laziness, after all, is not an alibi.

Suspect Number Four: Rosa, the Impatient Opportunist

Rosa arrived while I was halfway through my coffee, announcing her presence with that familiar squeaky little voice of hers.

I want food.

Rosa is the youngest of the four and a capable hunter, with a particular interest in birds.

She’s also impatient.

Very impatient.

Her usual arrival time is around half six. If breakfast hasn’t appeared by seven, she’s gone. She doesn’t hang around waiting for management to get its act together. Which puts her firmly in contention.

Perhaps she’d come in earlier and discovered that the catering department had failed to open. Disgusted by this unacceptable decline in standards, she’d gone elsewhere, but not before depositing the dead starling in the hallway. A classic Mafia move. A warning to management: Next time, it could be you. Have my breakfast ready at seven.

Her eventual arrival while I was drinking my coffee might not have been her first visit of the morning at all.

It might have been her second.

Or third.

There was no way of knowing.

She ate her breakfast without offering any explanation for her earlier movements.

The Investigation Stalls

And this was the fundamental problem with my investigation. I knew the order in which the cats had appeared after I woke up. I knew absolutely nothing about their movements beforehand. All four had unrestricted access to the cat flap. All four were capable of committing the crime. None was willing to make a statement. And the chief witness had slept through the entire incident.

Wanda remained my prime suspect, with Rosa a close second.

Cosmo couldn’t be ruled out, although Bob the pigeon would undoubtedly testify on his behalf.

Timmy’s principal defence was my low opinion of his willingness to exert himself. Not particularly compelling evidence, I’ll admit.

Meanwhile, the suspects had all eaten breakfast and resumed their normal activities, apparently unconcerned that a murder investigation was taking place.

I was beginning to suspect they knew something I didn’t.

The Story I Nearly Missed

The funny thing is, none of this would have become a story if Hermes, my AI thinking companion, hadn’t asked me a question earlier:

What’s happening around you that you would normally edit out of the story of your day?

My answer was feeding the cats.

It’s something I’m involved in every morning, but because it’s routine, I rarely give it much thought. It happens, the cats eat, and life moves on.

Unless, of course, there’s a dead starling in the hallway.

That tends to get your attention.

But once Hermes and I started talking about the morning’s events, all these other details came tumbling out.

Wanda’s upstairs retreat. Rosa’s strict breakfast deadline. Timmy’s alternative accommodation arrangements. Cosmo’s retirement from active service. Bob the pigeon’s remarkable confidence in the peace treaty.

A whole little society operating around me, complete with its own personalities, routines, rivalries, and unwritten rules.

I knew all of this already. I just wouldn’t normally have thought to tell it.

And perhaps that’s the interesting thing about paying attention to ordinary life. There’s nearly always a story happening somewhere, even if it’s only a small domestic drama involving four cats, a missing breakfast, and an unfortunate starling who found himself in the wrong neighbourhood.

By the time I’d finished my coffee, the evidence had been cleared away, the suspects had been fed, and normal household operations had resumed. Which, I suppose, says something about the effectiveness of my investigation.

Four suspects. One dead bird. Not a single arrest.

Worse still, I’d provided breakfast to every suspect, regardless of their possible involvement. I can’t imagine that sort of thing happens at Scotland Yard. The case remains open.

And if Cosmo ever needs a character witness, I’ll have to see whether Bob is available.

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