Pets in Detective Fiction

Agatha Christie's "Dumb Witness" is actually named after Bob, the fox terrier, owned by the murdered woman. He was fond of playing with a ball & once left it at the top of a staircase. His mistress stepped on it & took a tumble down the stairs but fortunately had only minor injuries, & recouped within a week. But later she succumbed to poisoning. Christie humanises the dog & transcribes his thoughts for the readers. At the end of the novel, Bob, playing with his ball again  is presented to Poirot, but his friend Hastings claims him, stating that Poirot cannot look after him.

In Ngaio Marsh's "Final Curtain", Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn, dramatically first encounters the cat Carabbas at his burying by a crying little girl Panty, who is singing a funeral dirge. Otherwise a spoiled brat, Panty is really grieving for her only friend & abusing her aunt, who accused Panty of transmitting ringworm to the cat. Actually Panty prophetically says she hates her aunt & wants to kill her, when at the end of the novel, the aunt is unveiled as the murderer.

In another Marsh novel, "Tied up in Tinsel", the reader comes across Slyboots & Smartypants, the two cats (Marsh was a cat-lover!), the pets of the cook. When they are found in the bed of Cressida Tottenham, guest & fiancee of the host, she raises a ruckus, as she hates cats. After the inevitable murder in the novel, Cressida has to dree her weird & is unmasked as the perpetrator.