The Purrfect Murder

youth. Mrs. Minor’s great love of history—of telling the stories of the past through the lives of people instead of dates and battles—had inspired him to study history, specializing in architectural history. Thus began the journey that was to culminate in his directorship at Poplar Forest.
    Harry and Susan had known it would be best if they got there before the doors opened to the public.
    The two women had risen at four-thirty and hit the road at five-fifteen. They were slowed by dense fog in the swales as well as over the Upper James River, but they made it on the button.
    Their footfalls echoed in the foyer.
    “It’s been trying,” Robert admitted.
    “Shocking.” Susan glanced at the smooth walls. “Why commit such a heinous act at the fund-raiser? Surely Carla could have been dispatched on another day. Not that I’m countenancing murder.”
    Robert, glad that he’d worn a good cotton sweater because of a chill that still permeated the air, nodded. “I know what you mean. It’s almost as though she wanted us to fail. After all her work.”
    “Tazio didn’t kill Carla Paulson.” Harry clasped her hands behind her back. “I know it looks like she did, but she didn’t. I think in her shock and confusion, she picked up the knife. But no matter, she didn’t kill Carla, and I don’t care how it looks. That’s why we’re here, as you know. If we could look around.” Harry spied a striped shape blurring past her. “How’d you get out?”
    Robert saw a gray shape behind him.
    Tucker walked in and sat down.
“Hello.”
    “I’m sorry. I’ll fetch them.” Harry sighed.
    “Don’t worry about it. We still have the pack rats living here. Maybe those two cats will give them a scare.”
    “Pack rats are big. Might be the other way around.”
Tucker giggled.
    They left the central room and entered the east bedroom.
    Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, rapt and standing on their hind legs, sniffed at the exposed pack-rat living quarters.
    “How’d you all get out?” Harry demanded, for Susan had parked under a tree, leaving the windows open only a crack.
    Pewter, without taking her eyes off the pack-rat home, replied,
“We have our ways.”
    Mrs. Murphy had learned to open doors by practicing in the old 1978 Ford truck. She’d press down on the indoor latch but not push the door all the way open, lest Harry discover the secret. She also stood on her hind legs on the aftermarket running board and yanked the door handle down. The door would then swing open and Mrs. Murphy would run away. When Harry would return to her truck or walk by, she worried that her memory was failing her, since she was sure she hadn’t opened the door.
    “We? You don’t do a thing. I’m the one who can open the car door,”
the tiger said with slight disgust.
    Robert walked over to where the cats stood. “Even the rats are architects here. It’s almost like a pink-chambered nautilus, isn’t it?” He pointed to successive chambers, each holding treasures. “When we started the restoration in this room, we found all these items. Generations after generations of rats lived here. We left their wealth.” He smiled.
    In each chamber, the forage of that generation of rats reposed—in some cases, glittered. An amethyst earring in one chamber dated to about 1821. Bits of paper, orange rind, a few apple seeds, all in neat piles, testified to the expert taste and thievery of the rats. They didn’t consider this thievery. If the humans were going to leave things lying around and those items might be useful or pretty, then a rat had every right to liberate it.
    “How pretty.” Harry pointed to a pearl stud.
    “1890 or thereabouts. Same family.” Robert looked closer. “The human ownership changed, but these fellows are descended from, dare I say, Jefferson’s rats.”
    “I can kill a rat with one big bite,”
Pewter bragged.
    “You can’t even catch the blue jay.”
Mrs. Murphy dropped back on all fours.
    “Who can? Birds fly. Rats run, and I can run faster than any rat.”
Pewter also dropped to all fours.
    A tittering from afar alerted the cats and dog that wild creatures still made Poplar Forest home. They sped off to locate the sound.
    “Were the doors locked?” Susan asked.
    “No.” Robert walked back to the central room and then into the western bedroom. “We had Melvin here. Melvin Rankin is on our staff. In retrospect, I should have placed two people here for each floor.”
    “There’s no way you could have