Cats Don't Smile

White-haired, piquant, slight and spry at seventy, Miss Rachel Murdock said, "I've had more fun since I got hep." To her shocked sister Jennifer getting "hep" was getting into trouble and certainly Miss Rachel needed all the "hep" she had to escape alive from the bad case of murder she encountered at her cousin Julia's. The letter from Julia asking them to take over her house and paying guests while she was away was plain enough, but Miss Rachel, with her nose for crime, sniffed something wrong. To begin with, the guests were an odd pair to find in Julia's home: a blowzy, blonde nurse, and a short, oleaginous gent with a Cheshire smile. Then the family in the big house next door was equally inexplicable and became more so when tears an tension turned into murder. Miss Rachel learned at her own peril why a burned cuff link inspired terror, why music at midnight was carefully calculated, and how the mangled corpse of a cat was a prelude to human death.