by Nancy Warren
I worked on the pair of socks I had begun several weeks ago. I felt better at least attempting to fit in, but I sensed that we all rushed through the preliminaries in order to get to the best part of the evening’s entertainment.
The gossip.
All the vampires wanted to help solve the murder, not out of altruism, but for something to do.
I said, “I think I need to go back to yoga.” I patted my belly where indeed the flesh had grown a little slack of late. “I need to tighten my core. I’ll go to a lesson with Bessie and then try and chat with her afterwards. Find out if she knows or saw anything.”
My grandmother said, “Excellent. And we need to find a way to talk to Elspeth Montague, the colonel’s widow. I can’t do it because she will recognize me, and she’s already had enough of a shock, losing her husband. She doesn’t want to see an old friend come back from the dead.”
We all agreed that would be somewhat disconcerting. Sylvia said, “She doesn’t know me. I could pose as a florist, delivering flowers on her bereavement. You may safely leave it to me to talk my way into her confidence.”
“What about the doctor?” I asked. “Is there any point learning more about her?”
Silence Buggins was desperate to be involved. The poor woman wanted nothing more than to be the center of attention, but her incessant chatter, instead of giving Silence her wish, caused people to walk away when she was speaking to them or tune her out. She said, “I could go to the doctor. I could pretend I was suffering the vapors, or, perhaps, consumption.” She put her hand to her mouth and coughed in a most ladylike manner.
Sylvia and Gran exchanged a glance and both shook their heads infinitesimally. Sylvia said, “Silence, dear, consumption, now called tuberculosis, is very rare these days. And no one’s gone to a doctor with ‘the vapors’ in more than a century. Besides, what do you think will happen when the doctor examines you?”
Silence looked so disappointed that Alfred paused in his knitting and said, “Perhaps you could try and sell her something.”
“Like what?”
Hester, the eternal surly teenager, said, “Tickets to a fancy dress play, I should think. You look enough of a freak that she might believe that.”
Silence would’ve grown red in the face had she had enough blood in her body to do so. As it was, she stiffened whatever part of her wasn’t already stiffened by the whalebone in her corsets. “I will not be spoken to in such an insolent manner.”
“Actually,” I said, “That’s not a bad idea. Tell her that one of the colleges is putting on a play about… about…” I looked around me, “Female doctors in Victorian times?”
“There were a few,” Dr. Weaver said, nodding.
“She’s a female doctor, she’s bound to take an interest. You can get her talking about the terrible tragedy.”
Silence brightened up immediately. “Yes. That’s an excellent idea, Lucy. I’ll do it.”
Hester rolled her eyes and began stabbing her needles into her wool. My grandmother, always one to try and make people feel good about themselves, said, “That was an excellent suggestion, Hester. Perhaps you might befriend the young man. The chef, Jim.”
“I’m sixteen years old. Don’t be disgusting.”
“I didn’t mean like that. Tell him you’ve seen him working in the kitchen at the tea shop and that you’re hoping to become a chef yourself one day.”
“I suppose,” she said in her usual bored tone, but I noticed she stopped stabbing the wool as though she were trying to murder it and actually began to knit. It was a start.
By the time we ended the meeting, everyone who wanted to take part in our investigation had a job and those who didn’t had agreed to keep their ears and eyes open as they went around Oxford and report back any interesting tidbits of information. It was amazing what vampires, with their powerful hearing, overheard in pubs or on the street.
“What about you, Rafe?” I noticed he hadn’t taken a task. He looked at me with one of his cool smiles. “I’m going to look into Colonel Montague’s past. And, I think, into Gerald Pettigrew’s.”
“Do you think he could have killed the colonel or been the intended victim?”
“Either. But I like Florence and Mary Watt. If that man’s got secrets, I intend to find them before he can cause any trouble.”
“But Florence is so happy.”
“And we want her to stay that way.”
“What about you, Lucy?”
Before I could answer, Sylvia said, “Obviously, Lucy will be our liaison with DI Ian Chisholm, who cannot keep his eyes off her.”
I felt myself growing hot. “That’s not true.”
“Of course it is. Use his infatuation to get information.”
I felt Rafe’s cool gaze on me and blushed more hotly. “I’m not, he’s not—”
It was Alfred, the long-nosed vampire who rescued me. “Good heaven’s, girl, whatever have you done to that sock? It looks like something you’d use to scrub the pots.”
I glanced down and to my horror he was right.
“Try to untangle it with a spell,” Gran said, trying to turn my knitting disaster into a teaching moment.
What I really wished for was a disappearing spell.
CHAPTER 10
T he following day started out uneventful, at least in Cardinal Woolsey’s. Next door at Elderflower was a different matter. Police vehicles arrived, and forensics teams went in. Every once in a while, they’d leave with a box or a bag, looking very official and very mysterious.
Agatha and I pretended it was business as usual, but both of us spent more time than necessary at the front of the shop, tidying and rearranging the window display, which gave us an excellent view of the street.
While I was placing one of the hand-knit sweaters, along with a pattern and the wools and needles to make it, into the front window display, disturbing Nyx, who meowed at me in annoyance, a television news crew showed up. The death had been on the news last night, but I suppose they wanted fresh footage for this evening’s update.
I’d learned a bit about Colonel Montague, but nothing that would explain why he was murdered in the Miss Watts’ tea shop. According to last night’s news report, the colonel had been born in 1945, was educated at Eton and Sandhurst. He’d served in Germany and then been stationed in Ireland during ‘the troubles’ in the 1970s. After that, he’d worked in administrative roles until he retired. The report mentioned that he left a wife and two children.
Perhaps if I hadn’t been such a busybody, with so much of my attention on what was going on next door, I might have prevented the disaster that happened in my own shop.
There were no customers at the time.
I was staring out the front window when Nyx growled and looked behind me, her eyes as round as twin moons.
I turned and my grandmother was standing in the shop, looking around as though she didn’t know where she was. She was more than half asleep and, before I could gather my wits, she said to Agatha, “Hello. Can I help you?”
Agatha stared at Gran and then pointed a trembling finger at the lovely framed memorial photograph of her, including the date of her death. “Mon Dieu,” she croaked. “Vous êtes mortes!” Then she crossed herself. Still gabbling in French she dashed for the door.
Where a TV News crew was standing right outside.
Do something.
What? I looked at Gran but she was in some twilight world still.
I didn’t have time to run upstairs and get the grimoire. There was no time to think, so I acted. I got between Agatha and the door. “Agatha, wait. There’s a perfectly simple explanation.”
She stared at me and back at Gran and made the sign of the cross once more. “Non. Get out of my way.” She began to push past me.
Desperation lent sharpness to my memory. I managed to recall a page I’d read last night. A forgetting spell. I admit I was thinking of banishing all memories of Todd, aka The Toad, former boyfriend and betrayer. It was the last th
ing I’d read before I fell asleep.
I looked at Agatha, right into her startled, fearful eyes. We locked gazes and, as I felt her fear, I was filled with compassion for this poor woman who’d suffered such a shock. For her sake as well as ours, I drew all my concentration to the fore and banished doubts.
Nyx was a warm presence brushing against my legs and I drew energy from her as well.
In a low voice, I recited:
Forgetful of this time and place
Go on your way with peace and grace
This memory is nothing but dust
Blown away and the feelings lost
Here, I raised my hand, palm up and blew on it, picturing her recent memory wafting away.
As I will it, so mote it be
There was absolute silence. I held my breath. Agatha blinked and glanced around, looking confused, but no longer frightened. “Qu'est-ce qui ce passé?”
I fetched her handbag. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t help you find the wool you wanted,” I said, hoping I sounded professional. “Have a nice day.”
I opened the door for her and she walked out, looking around her as though unsure where she was. The reporter, standing idle as they waited for more happenings next door, walked over to her, mic at the ready. “Do you work here?”
Agatha glanced at him and then back to where I had the door already half closed. She had the look of someone arriving in an airport after a very long flight. “No. I’ve never been here before.” And then she walked away.
I found the ‘back in ten minutes’ sign and put it on the door. Then I turned to Gran, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. “Gran! What are you doing here?”
Gran looked as confused as Agatha. And sleepy. “I don’t know. I woke up and realized I was late to open the shop.” She spotted the photograph and walked over to study it. “Oh, that’s a nice photo of me. Usually, I look such a frump in photos. I’m very uncomfortable in front of the camera.” She read the dates of her birth and death and then put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, I remember now. I’m not supposed to be here, am I? It’s so difficult to remember I’m dead.”
“I know.” How could I stay mad when she looked so guilty?
“And I frightened that poor woman. Was she your new assistant?”
I shrugged. “She wasn’t very good, anyway. Very superior.”
“You did a nice job with that forgetting spell. Fudged the rhyme a little, but not so anyone would notice.” As though I’d played a wrong note at my piano class recital.
“Don’t the words have to be exact?”
“Not really. The rhyme helps you focus. Once you get practicing, my dear, you’ll be a very powerful witch.”
“Powerful enough to stop you coming into the shop at all hours?”
Her eyes twinkled when she looked at me. “Probably not. I was a witch long before you were born.”
And having put me in my place, she walked into the back room and I heard her open and close the trap door that would lead her back to her bed.
I was going to have to get cracking with my spell book. Either I was going to go through a lot of assistants, or I was going to find a powerful spell to keep that trap door closed. More powerful than Gran’s ability to break it.
I’d never imagined having a power struggle with my own grandmother.
Certainly not a magic one.
With no assistant, I didn’t get a lunch break. Since I didn’t have a half-crazed Frenchwoman telling people my dead grandmother was walking around the shop in the middle of the day, either, I decided it was a reasonable trade-off.
I placed an advertisement in my window saying I was looking for an assistant. It didn’t take long. I just put up the same notice I’d used a week ago.
At the end of the day, I went to the bank with a disappointingly small deposit and then popped into the grocer’s where I put another notice on the community board for a shop assistant.
The woman who ran the grocer’s regarded me over the top of her glasses. “What? Another assistant?” She looked at me as though perhaps I beat my employees or locked them in the basement between shifts.
I smiled, in what I hoped was a carefree manner. “It’s so hard to find good help these days.”
“Not if you pay them well and treat them right.” She was so smug. The only person she employed was her henpecked husband. He was hard of hearing, which was probably why they were still married.
After I pinned up my notice he wandered out of the stock room, carrying a box of breakfast bars. He began unloading them onto the shelf with the cakes and cookies. She saw him and shrieked. “No, Dennis. I said Digestive biscuits, not Weetabix! Go back and do it again, you silly fool.”
“Thank you for the excellent labor relations advice,” I said, as I left.
She wasn’t the only one who could do smug.
CHAPTER 11
T he next day, I put a spell on the trap door to protect me from evil coming in. It was all I could find in my grimoire, when what I really wanted was a spell to prevent embarrassment, in the form of my grandmother turning up in the shop.
If I were writing a spell book, I’d put anti-embarrassment spells at the top of the list.
It was another quiet day and there was no sign of activity next door at Elderflower. Maybe working on my knitting might help calm me. I don’t know why I thought that. It was what knitters said. To me, knitting was an ordeal, me versus a squishy ball of animal hair, and, of course, the squishy animal hair always triumphed.
Even though the sock pattern was meant to be easy, level-one-beginner, easy, I did not find it so. We all have different talents and I am sad to say that knitting was not one of mine.
Normally this wouldn't matter very much but since I had unfortunately inherited a knitting shop. I should at least learn how to knit a pair of socks.
When the door opened and the bell jingled, announcing a new customer. I was happy to put down my needles. This sock would only fit a pig or cow or something with a very tiny foot and a very long, skinny calf. I’d have to unpick it and start again.
I glanced up and was shocked to see Katie, formerly-known-as-Katya walk in. She looked a bit sheepish and blushed when she saw my obvious surprise. However, a shop is a public place. I couldn’t throw her out, so I asked, cool and professional, "Hello. Can I help you?"
She looked ill-at-ease and gave the impression that she'd rather be a thousand miles away. That would have suited me, too. She said, "I see you’re looking for a shop assistant."
There was a pause. Was she seriously suggesting herself as a candidate? This girl who couldn't carry a tray without dropping it, couldn't bring a pot of tea without getting the wrong table, and had pretended to be someone entirely different than she was. Oh, yes, and she was a suspect in a murder.
She could probably see those thoughts running across my face, and said quickly, before I could tell her she wasn't suitable, "I'm a very good knitter."
“Really?” It was all I could come up with.
She pulled her mouth to one side as though she’d eaten something sour. "Much better than I am a waitress."
Well, if she wanted to prove she could knit, I had the perfect project. I pushed the tangle of pig socks onto the counter. "If you can fix this mess and turn it into a pair of socks, suitable for a human, you're hired."
I admit, I hadn't really thought this through. Because, even if she was as good a knitter as my grandmother, she was a terrible choice as my shop assistant. First, I didn't trust her. Second, she was nothing like the assistant I wanted. In my mind, my ideal employee was someone very much like my grandmother, an older woman who was an excellent knitter and understood patterns as well as having some sales ability. Katie appeared to have none of these things.
However, she picked up the tangled mess and studied it. "What happened? Did the cat get hold of this?"
"No," I said. "It was me. The truth is I can’t knit to save my life, and, since I run a knitting shop, I felt like I should learn.
But it's not going very well.”
She didn’t run back into the street. And she didn’t laugh at me. She laid the mess out flat and studied it critically. “Your first problem is that you're pulling your wool too tight."
I began to get an inkling that this woman who lied about everything might actually know something about knitting.
She glanced at me uncertainly. "Do you mind if I unpick this and start again?"
I thought of all the hours and swearwords that had gone into the current mess. But, it was never going to be a pair of socks so we might as well reuse the wool. "Sure."
Very efficiently she unravelled the mess and pulled my stitches out. The wool snagged a few times and she had to stop and unknot some gnarly bits, but I could tell from the way her fingers moved that she had an affinity with wool. People are given different gifts. Some people can sit down at a piano keyboard and feel the music, others can paint or write or understand math, or waitressing.
Katie had no talent for waitressing, but I began to think she might be good with the needles.
When she finished rewinding the wool into a ball, she settled herself in my visitor's chair, picked up the pattern and studied it briefly and then she began to knit.
My fingers were actually aching from the effort I had put into the several rows I’d mangled today, but there was a fluidity to the way her fingers moved. It was rhythmic and soothing.
"Well, if you want to sit here and knit, I suppose I should interview you." In this I was being somewhat sneaky. I didn’t plan to hire her; I was doing some amateur sleuthing. Interviewing the suspect.
“Great.” She was more relaxed now she was knitting. I wanted her at her ease.
“Tell me about yourself?" Such a wonderful open question that everyone hates on a job interview.
She did a few more stitches and said, "I was born in Melbourne but we moved to Sydney when I was child. I learned to knit from my grandmother. She looked after me when Mum was at work." She glanced up at me and back at her work and she sounded like a much softer Katie than the one who'd been working next door. "It makes me feel close to her when I knit."