The King of Cats (audio story)

The King of Cats was the first audio story in the Baker's End series, itself being a vague continuation of The Nest Cottage Chronicles.

Chronologically, this story takes place after Mrs Frimbly's Festive Diary, The Thing from the Sea, and The Winged Coven.

However, by authorial intent, this series takes place in a world 90 degrees from the Whoniverse.

Publisher's summary
Peevish actors are descending mournfully upon the remote English village of Happenstance for the funeral of TV legend Tom Baker.

His one-time costar Suzy Goshawk is sucked into a parochial vortex of intrigue involving the quailsome local vicar, Tom's acidulous housekeeper Mrs Frimbly and various other fruminous scumblebums. None of them can agree upon how Tom met his disastrous end, and Suzy is starting to suspect that something murksome and swervish is going on.

The snow comes down, and Suzy finds herself trapped at Baker's End for Christmas, with all the village's creepy pensioners enslaved by a strange, dancing dragon...and a Sinister Presence lurking on the sidelines.

Why are old ladies twerking their bottoms outside the post office-cum-mini-mart? Why is the vicar creeping about in the bushes in the dead of night? And why, just when all looks hopeless, does a strange, scobberlotching creature spring into view? Who exactly is the King of Cats in his furry costume and his battered crown?

Plot
Seeing some vaguely familiar faces sitting among the commuters, Suzy Goshawk is on a train, which whizzes past fields and forests, heading for its destination, Happenstance Village. One large lady sits opposite her, who worked with Tom Baker back in 1977. She asks Suzy if she knows how he passed, but Suzy knows as little as she does. The woman tells Suzy of an event she attended last summer with Baker, where he was convinced that the fans were doppelgangers because they hadn’t seen every episode nor could they “quote huge swathes of dialogue at the drop of the hat". After the woman believing his behaviour was a mystery, and Suzy believing that he was just having her on, they sit in silence for a while until the woman offers to do tarot cards for Suzy. The large lady draws a card, “The Large, Dancing Cat", which Suzy has never seen before. Switching trains, Suzy meets a man who tells her that he knew Baker, and that Baker had told him that “when his time came, he wouldn’t go like anyone else, he’d be going into space”. Suzy says that Baker was always saying things like that.

Arriving at the halt at Happenstance Village, Suzy follows the sombre crowd into the village, heading to the church. Finding her place among the crowded pews, two actors talk to her, and the female actress tells Suzy of her experience with Baker, flashing back to his fun yet disastrous cooking show. After the male actor tells Suzy of his experience with Baker, Reverend Ailing climbs the rector, telling them of his final encounter with Baker, not even two days before, where the reverend had asked Baker if he had contemplated helping out with the village pantomime during the pouring rain. Baker had told him that he was leaving this mortal coil, leaving Happenstance for good. The reverend continues on, and Suzy asks the fellow actors what happened to Tom Baker, as she still doesn’t know. The male actor tells Suzy that he heard that Tom was run over by a TV Licence detector van, and the large lady from earlier claims that Tom had chased the van away as he had suspected it of containing X-ray beams that saw inside his house.

more to be added

Cast
(In order of appearance)
 * Suzy Goshawk - Katy Manning
 * Large lady - Lizzie Roper
 * Tom Baker - Tom Baker
 * Man - David Benson (uncredited)
 * Actress - ???
 * Actor - ???

Happenstance Village

 * Happenstance has a pond, a green, and a tumble down Norman church.
 * "Hokey Cokey" is playing in the church.

Tom Baker

 * Tom claims that his soufflés always come out perfectly.

Continuity
to be added