by Nancy Warren
“Let’s finish this conversation down at the station.”
I wanted nice Ian back. I glanced around as though he might be hiding somewhere, but all I saw were staring faces. “Are you arresting me?”
“We’d like you to come down to the station and help us with our enquiries.”
What had I been doing for the last couple of hours? I felt coolness on the back of my neck and knew Rafe had moved closer to me. I’d never been gladder of his presence. “Lucy’s telling the truth,” he said. “She opened her bag when we left her shop, to show me her knitting. That clipping wasn’t in there.” He looked around the room. “Anyone could have dropped it in her bag.”
The same ‘anyone’ who’d poisoned the colonel.
WHEN I RETURNED home from the most eventful afternoon tea I’d ever attended, I badly wanted to see my grandmother. It was nearly six when I returned to the shop.
It had been so humiliating, being driven to the police station. There weren’t too many locals remaining in the church hall, but enough that I knew gossip would spread. I was escorted by the same cop who’d checked my bag. She wasn't a chatty type. Or maybe they aren’t allowed to be friendly with the poor saps in the back of the police cruiser. Thames Valley police headquarters was a non-descript complex in Kidlington, tucked away behind a big hedge.
After waiting for half an hour in an uncomfortable waiting room chair, I was taken to an interview room. Ian and Detective Sergeant Elizabeth Drei asked me more questions, but I couldn’t tell them what I didn’t know. I said the paper wasn’t mine, I’d never seen the colonel before or that newspaper. I think it helped that they were able to trace the clipping to an article in the London Times dated several months before. I’d been in Boston at the time.
After that, Ian asked me if I’d left my bag anywhere, or if anyone had sat particularly close to me. I was so tired of remembering details of the day. A man had been murdered before my eyes. Frankly, compared to that? Someone sitting beside me didn’t rate very high.
However, since whoever had the clipping had obviously needed to get rid of it before they were searched, I tried to remember. Rafe had walked with me, the Irish woman had joined us and we’d walked over from the tea shop, chatting. I told Ian that she’d flipped the dead man the bird as he went by and then turned her back. I’d sat beside Katie aka Katya but I was certain one of us would have noticed if she’d slipped anything in my bag.
“Oh,” I said, suddenly remembering. “I went to a corner to make a phone call and left my bag for, maybe, five minutes.” I hadn’t watched the bag. Anyone in the church hall could have slipped the clipping into it.
Ian tapped his fingertips together, making a soft slapping sound. He stared at the wall as though the beige paint fascinated him.
The article was about a review by the Ministry of Defense aimed at modernizing the British forces. Colonel Montague had been quoted, at length, as a retired colonel with strong views on how cutting numbers of personnel and reducing budgets had decimated the once proud British army. Could such opinions really have led to his death?
“That article has to be connected to his murder,” I said. “Could he have angered someone who supports military cuts so much they’d kill him?”
He shifted his gaze to mine and I could see he didn’t think much of my hypothesis. “Possibly. But it’s more likely he upset someone while he was in the army.”
He pointed to the few biographical facts supplied in the article, which he’d obviously studied before interviewing me. Now, he read, “Colonel Montague served in Germany in the 1960s, and as a young Lieutenant in Ireland in the 1970s.” He glanced at me and I scrambled to recall my modern history. “The troubles?” I guessed. “The IRA?”
He nodded. Tapped his fingers some more. Said to DS Drei, “Check into the colonel’s career. I’m especially interested in his term in Ireland.”
I looked at him. “You think the Irish woman who acted so hostile to his corpse might have held a grudge for that long?”
“There are many avenues of enquiry in our investigation.” Which I took to mean, ‘keep your nose out of this.’ But my nose had been shoved into a murder and, thanks to that planted paper, me and my nose had been dragged in for questioning. I thought I was entitled to speculate.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” he said. “If you’d like to wait out front, someone will drive you home.”
Someone? I wanted it to be Ian. There’d been so much flirty eye contact when we’d first met, I’d been certain he was going to ask me out. Now, I thought his murder case was more exciting to him than I was. Understandable, but hardly flattering.
I was standing outside in front of the station door, feeling pouty, wondering if they’d forgotten me and I’d have to get the bus back to Harrington Street, when a beat up old Mini Cooper pulled up. That was Ian’s car. Suddenly, I knew I was at least as interesting as Colonel Montague’s corpse.
My day was finally looking up.
So was Ian’s. Not only could he drive me home, but I’d found out something interesting about the recently-departed colonel.
CHAPTER 6
“I thought you were going to send me home with a constable,” I complained, as I slipped into the passenger seat beside Ian. The small car felt intimate and smelled of him, a subtle scent that was a combination of mint and rosemary. Unusual and very attractive.
He put the car into gear and we slid toward the exit. “Have to be careful, mixing business and pleasure,” he said, cutting me a glance that made it clear which side of that equation I landed on.
I felt flustered and girly and resisted the urge to play with my hair. I was never very good at the whole flirting thing, and since I didn’t know what to say, I said nothing.
Maybe he’d expected me to lob back the flirtation birdie, but, naturally, I dropped it onto soggy ground. There was silence for a few moments and then I remembered that even if I wasn’t very good at flirting, I could do an internet search with the best of them.
I’d already exhausted everything the internet had on Ian months ago, but Colonel Montague had proved quite interesting. “I found a more recent article on Colonel Montague,” I said, feeling quite proud of myself.
“And what did you find?” He sounded like he was humoring me rather than salivating over my information. Whatever.
“This is from an article in The Daily Express. From May. Here’s the headline: “‘Army chiefs FURIOUS as British soldiers hounded over Northern Ireland Troubles,’” I read. “And the word furious is in all caps.”
“The Express is a bit like that,” he explained.
My jaw dropped. “Aren’t you excited that your guess is probably right?”
He shrugged.
I waited. I might not be an Oxford detective, but I wasn’t stupid. Sure enough, after a silence of about thirty seconds, he said, “Well? Are you going to read the rest of the article?”
Ha!
“‘Former army chiefs are enraged at the government’s refusal to grant amnesty for British soldiers who, they say, are being hounded over Northern Ireland’s TROUBLES.’ And Troubles is capitalized.”
“Well, it was a big deal at the time. Still is.”
“‘Former soldiers in their sixties and seventies are facing prosecution over the killings in the 1970s.’ Colonel Montague is quoted as saying, ‘It’s ridiculous to try and prosecute soldiers for things that happened nearly forty years ago. The British government kept detailed records, but the IRA kept none. It’s simply unfair to prosecute us now. It’s time for an amnesty.’”
“That’s interesting.”
“There’s more. It says, ‘Colonel Montague was a platoon commander in Belfast. He was involved in an incident in which an unarmed protestor was killed and several others badly wounded, including a priest who tried to intervene.’” I’d been thinking. If the Irish woman was seventy, she’d have been in her early twenties. “Could the Irish woman have had a brother, or lover, who was killed or injured? Maybe
she held Colonel Montague responsible.”
“But why wait so long to go after him?”
I flipped my hair over my shoulder. “I’m only the researcher, here. You’re the detective.”
He laughed at that. Then asked me how I was getting on with running the yarn shop. I told him I was enjoying it more than I’d imagined, though I steered clear of explaining about Gran and the vampires, obviously. Also, me being a witch was not a subject I wanted to talk about.
I longed for the days when my biggest problem around guys was being shy.
I WAS EXPECTING Gran and the rest of her undead friends at the knitting club that evening, but I didn’t think I could wait that long to tell her what had happened.
“She’ll be pleased to know you cast a successful spell today,” Rafe said, having waited in the shop for my return.
“Pardon?” I’d had no thought of anything but the murder, but when I recollected the way I’d saved that tray from disaster, I realized he was right. Then I put my hands over my eyes and groaned. “What if that tray I saved from falling had the poisoned food on it? I may have helped the murderer!”
Rafe gave my horrible theory some thought and then said it was unlikely.
“I was supposed to practice with the grimoire this week but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had much time.” That was untrue. I was mostly just scared of the spell book.
“Knowing your grandmother she’ll be so caught up in the excitement and gossip that she’ll let you off lightly for not having completed your homework.”
“I hope you’re right.” I’d planned to practice this evening before the knitting club. But, of course, I couldn’t concentrate on casting spells or anything else until I had chatted over the murder in the tea shop with Gran.
He pushed away the carpet and opened the trap door in the back room. I went down the sturdy steps into the cavernous tunnels that crisscross underneath Oxford. We knocked in the correct pattern on the very undistinguished and barely visible ancient wooden door set into the stone. After observing us through the high-tech security system that Rafe had installed, Sylvia open the door.
Sylvia was one of the most elegant women I’d ever seen, alive or dead. She was a stage and film star in the 1920s. Not a household name, but she’d been successful. She had an air of glamor about her and always dressed beautifully. She’d been in her sixties when she was turned and her hair was a gorgeous silver that suited her large, gray-green eyes. Her figure was still stunning and she wore designer clothes that flattered her.
Considering she couldn’t see her reflection, I was always impressed at how well she managed to turn herself out.
“Why, Lucy,” she said. “What a surprise. We didn’t expect to see you until this evening.” She glanced at my companion and said, “And Rafe. Always a pleasure.”
“I didn’t plan to come, but something extraordinary happened today and I have to talk to Gran.”
Her finely pencilled brows rose in surprise, but she was either too well bred to pry or knew that I wouldn’t say anything until my grandmother was in the room. “I know she’s awake, I heard her moving around. Why don’t you have a seat in the living room? I’ll see if she’s ready for company.”
I’d have argued, since I’ve never had to use company matters with my grandmother, but now that Gran was a vampire, she had different routines. I thanked Sylvia and went to sit on one of the luxurious velvet settees.
Two vampires were sitting there, knitting, clearly trying to finish projects in time for tonight’s show and tell. One was Silence Buggins who was the least silent person I’d ever known. She’d been born and lived in Victorian times and no matter that fashions and attitudes had changed, she still wore corsets, never exposed her ankles, and pinned her hair up on her head before ever leaving her home. In most places she’d have seemed very eccentric, but Oxford is full of oddly dressed people so she rarely got a second look.
While her needles moved so quickly her work was a blur, her lips moved almost as fast. “And so I said to him, if you mean to suggest that I am not fully conversant with the ways of the road, you are mistaken, sir. My bicycle most certainly had the right of way.”
Alfred nodded and made sympathetic noises, but I don’t think he was listening to her. I was deprived of the end of her harrowing tale, however. At a glance from Rafe, they both mumbled excuses, stowed their knitting into their bags, and left the room.
“You didn’t need to throw them out,” I said, shocked as always at the power he wielded.
“Terrible gossips, the pair of them. You can speak more openly without their noses in your business.”
It was quite true, but he might have saved himself the trouble as my grandmother was a bit of a chatterbox herself.
I always felt mildly uncomfortable down here in their nest. The place was gorgeous, with antiques and art that had to be priceless. I suspected Sylvia had influenced the decorating. With the red velvet couches, the gilt and general air of opulence, it felt a bit like the setting for a silent movie. Still, being surrounded by so many vampires, especially in the early evening when they were just waking, made me a little nervous. Rafe, as though sensing my unease, said, “Can I get you something? A cup of tea?”
I shuddered. “I’m not sure I’ll ever drink tea again.”
“That’s understandable but we don’t know it was the tea that killed him. Depending on the poison and how quick-acting it is, the fatal dose could have been in the food he ate at the restaurant, something he ingested earlier in the day or even his medication.”
“You mean it could’ve been an accident?”
He shook his head. “I doubt it. No, I believe he was murdered.”
“How terrible for the poor Miss Watts.”
He settled himself across from me, deliberating before he spoke. “I’m not sure about that.”
He didn’t elaborate and I found myself saying, “But they could lose the tea shop over this.”
“They wouldn’t be the first people who ever deliberately destroyed their business so they could claim the insurance money.”
“You can’t be serious. Are you suggesting that those lovely old ladies might have killed a man in order to get money?”
He shrugged. “I’m suggesting that rather than assuming the Miss Watts are also victims, we do a little research. Check into their finances. Do they have a written agreement of what happens if one of them wants out of the shop?”
I had so little to do with murder in my life, apart from my own grandmother’s, of course, that it was almost inconceivable to me that one or both of those nice old ladies might have done something so despicable, but of course, there was evil in the world and only someone as naïve as I had once been would believe there wasn’t. And they had been open to selling to that horrible developer who wanted to buy up our whole block. Also, with a new man causing trouble between them, maybe they’d be happy to split the insurance money and go their separate ways. “Don’t most people who want to claim insurance burn down their businesses?”
“Arson’s a tried and true method, certainly, but it’s not the only one.”
I wanted to argue further but I supposed he was right. Better to prove they were innocent and then we could move on to other more likely suspects. Like whoever put the incriminating newspaper clipping into my bag. At least they’d taken the Irish woman’s name and had a copy of her ID. She shouldn’t be difficult to find.
At that moment my grandmother came into the room. Her white hair was coiled into a bun as usual. Her kindly, placid face filled me with the same pleasure her appearance always did. She wore black trousers with a black diaphanous cloak that I think was crocheted. I’d come a long way in even being able to tell the difference between knitting and crochet. Vampire or not, Agnes Bartlett was still my grandmother. Moreover, she was someone who knew this neighborhood and most of the people who lived here.
“Lucy, I’m so pleased to see you. Will you have a cup of tea?”
Once more, I repr
essed the shudder the word tea caused to go down my spine. “No, thank you. I had some next door.” And luckily Katya-AKA-Katie had managed to bring our correct order: One English Breakfast tea. Hold the poison.
Gran settled herself beside me and took my hand between her chilly ones. She looked into my face and I saw concern in her faded blue eyes. “But whatever’s happened? You look as though you’ve had a shock.”
“Oh I have.” And then I told my grandmother everything that had happened that afternoon from the moment Rafe and I walked into the tea shop to the moment we left. Apart from a few interjections such as, “Oh my poor dear.” And “Colonel Montague you say?” And “Whatever must Mary and Florence be going through?” She listened intently. Until she got to the part where the newspaper clipping was found in my bag. Then her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh, Lucy, how terrible for you. But who would do such a thing?”
CHAPTER 7
Rafe didn’t add anything to my recounting but he listened to every word carefully, almost as though he hadn’t been there and were trying to see the events through my eyes. Sylvia sat quietly beside him. She also said nothing, though I could feel the intensity of her gaze.
After I had told Gran about the murder and my trip to the police station, I felt somewhat better. My throat was dry. I asked for some water. Sylvia fetched me a bottle and I drank thirstily.
Gran had been sitting, thinking. She said, “Colonel Montague, poisoned in the tea shop. It sounds like one of those children’s board games, doesn’t it?”
“Did you know him?”
She brought her focus back to me. “Oh yes. Yes. I knew him. Both Edward Montague and his wife, Elspeth. She used to knit, but she gave it up, said it hurt her eyes. I don’t think that was the truth. I think he resented her spending the money.”
I thought back to the man I had seen. He’d been wearing a good tweed jacket, gray woollen trousers and loafers. “He gave the air of being quite affluent.”