by Nancy Warren
“I feel that way about my grandmother, too. Being in this shop, I mean. Obviously. she failed at teaching me to knit.”
Katie smiled at that. "I was gutted when my granny died. But she was old and it was her time. I never really got over losing her. Anyway, after I finished school, I worked in a knitting and craft store in Melbourne. I could give you the email address of the owner. In fact, I'd be working there, still, if Jim hadn't talked me into this trip."
I was leaning my back against the cash desk. The way the knitting was flowing for her, made her words easier. "Tell me about you and Jim."
She stopped, checked the knitting pattern and then went back to her work. "Not much to tell," she said. "We met at Melbourne Academy of Dramatic Arts. MADA, though of course, we shortened it to MAD. I was never cut out for uni and I don't think Jim was either. We both loved acting and wound up in the same improv class.”
“Improv? I can’t imagine.”
“It was good fun. He's always been a joker and a good mimic. He’d pull stunts all the time pretending to be other people. He said it was good practice. When we finished the course, we got work here and there, but not enough to live on. He made his living as a cook and I worked in the knitting shop. When he suggested we should chuck it all and move to England for a year, I thought he was joking.”
“But he wasn't.”
She had the toe piece already finished and it looked like human toes would be quite comfy in there. I was impressed. “Australians love to travel. It's in our nature. Jim really wanted to get away. He said that while we’re young and don't have children that’s when we should be traveling. I suppose he's right.”
“And you chose Oxford?”
“We spent a few days in London, but he wanted to come to Oxford. Said once we got home we could always tell ‘we’d gone to Oxford.’" She rolled her eyes at Jim's foolishness. “Like I said, he’s a joker.”
Her fingers moved so quickly and surely it was a pleasure to watch them. "Well, when we got here, we had a bit of a holiday. One day, we walked up this street and he said he wanted to take me for a proper English tea. But we had to pretend we were Polish. Just for a joke, you know.”
“Why Polish?”
“No reason. The day before we’d pretended to be Italians for the day.”
“So, you went into Elderflower as pretend Poles.”
“Yes. It was Miss Mary Watt who sat us. Then her sister came in with her fellow. And there was clearly something going on. Florence said they were going out, miffy like. Mary said, "Who do you think is to do all the cooking? And take care of the customers?"
“They argued like that in front of their guests?”
“Oh, yes. You can imagine how the rest of the argument went, and then Florence went off with her man. Jim said that was our chance. We finished our tea and dashed back to the flat. He got me to take off all my makeup and dress in a simple skirt and a new top with a high neck and long sleeves. And he put on his best jeans and his nice shirt. He said we’d tell Miss Watt we were brother and sister and had to work together. I thought it was mad, but we went round there and the poor old lady was in a state. A large party of Germans arrived in front of us. She nearly wept.”
“Oh, poor Miss Watt.” I couldn’t believe how thoughtless Florence had turned out to be when blinded by infatuation.
“I don't think she would ever have hired us if she wasn't desperate. And, Jim being Jim, of course, he made her a deal. He said that if we didn't get her through that day without any complaints she could fire us on the spot. Wouldn’t owe us a penny. She was that desperate that she said yes."
"So that's how you never had to show her identification or provide any references."
"That's right. After the first day, when Jim turned out all the scones and the sandwiches and the quiches better than they can do themselves, she said she’d keep us on. He’s quick, you see. A lovely cook.”
“Bold, too.”
“I don't think she liked me, not right from the first, but Jim said we were a pair and so I s’pose she decided to lump it. She probably thought she could train me. But it was awful work. I'd never be a waitress. Never again."
Probably a blessing to every food establishment on the planet.
“It was fun at first, pretending to be Polish. Like being on stage all the time. The only time we spoke normally was in our flat. He insisted, even when we were on the street, we had to stay in character.”
"Well, I'm not as trusting as Miss Watt. I would like the name and email address and phone numbers of the craft shop where you worked. "
She glanced up, looking pleased. "You mean you’ll hire me?"
When she’d come in, I’d had no intention of doing so. But the way that woman knit was like watching someone sit down at the piano expecting chopsticks and they came out with a Beethoven concerto. Her knitting was poetry in motion. Already a sock was emerging.
“I assume you’ve got some kind of a work visa?"
She nodded.
She gave me her mobile number and the information I’d asked for and I said I'd be in touch.
She looked sorry to part from the partial sock. "Would you mind if I took this home with me? I haven't had a knitting project in such a long time and it calms me down. It's a bit stressful right now, as you can imagine.”
“Was it awful, with the police?”
She shuddered. “It wasn’t pleasant. If we hadn’t pretended to be Polish it would have been better. I’d never have agreed to be Katya if I’d imagined she’d see someone die.”
As bad as it had been for me, sitting in Elderflower Tea Shop as a customer, I could see it had been worse for her, the person who had presumably carried the poison that killed Colonel Montague.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course you can take the socks home.”
I suppose I was taking a chance that I might never see wool, pattern, socks, or Katie ever again but I didn’t think any of them would be a great loss.
She gathered up her things. “I hope you hire me. I don’t even care what the pay is. I need something to do. I keep seeing him you see.”
From the number of times I had relived that terrible scene in the tea shop I could only imagine what it was like for her. “Is there anything you can remember, anything you saw, that you maybe forgot to tell the police?”
“I’ve racked my brains, really I have, the only thing I can think of is the rat poison.”
CHAPTER 12
A shudder quite as dramatic as hers went over my whole body. “Rat poison?”
“I wasn’t to tell anyone. It’s a terrible deep, dark secret, but Jim saw a rat when he was tidying up the supplies.”
“A rat?” I know I shrieked like a girl, but I am a girl, and besides, the tea shop was only next door. I could only imagine how cozy rats might find a nice basket of wool to curl up into. And they could pop next door for the smorgasbord of food. What self-respecting rat wouldn’t want to live in our neighborhood?
I was so glad Nyx had adopted me.
“He said it was just a baby rat.” As though that made it better. Where there were baby rats there must be parents and brothers and sisters, cousins and aunts, second cousins three times removed.
I’d just about got used to living with a nest of vampires, I didn’t think I could take a nest of rats as well. I’m a tolerant woman but I can only go so far.
“Anyway, he told Miss Watt and, naturally, she had a fit. Next thing she came into the kitchen with rat poison and told him and me we mustn’t tell a soul. Jim said there are rats in every kitchen but Miss Watt claimed there’d never been one in hers.
If there was rat poison in the kitchen, it would be easy to slip some to a customer.
Who had access to the kitchen? Both Miss Watts obviously Jim and Katie, and who else? I didn’t know, so I asked Katie the question.
She wrinkled her brow. “Day before yesterday, you mean?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Well, all the people you said, of cou
rse. And Mr. Pettigrew. Florence Watt’s gentleman friend. He came in to ask about the quiche recipe. I didn’t really listen. One of the old ladies came in mistaking the kitchen for the toilet. That happens at least once a day. It’s not signed properly and people walk right into the kitchen instead of going up the stairs.”
“Old lady? What old lady?”
“I don’t know their names. There was a table of four of them. I didn’t serve them.”
Miss Everly and her friends. “But if you saw that lady come in, presumably you turned her around and directed her to the washroom.”
“Oh yes. But what if she came back when there was no one there?”
I felt my eyebrows draw together in a puzzled frown. “Why would there be no one there?”
She looked as though she wished she hadn’t spoken. “Look, I don’t want to get him in trouble, but Jim smokes.” She glanced up at me and then out the window. “In fact, we both do. We’d sneak outside for a smoke break when it wasn’t too busy.”
“I see. So there were times when there wasn’t anyone in the kitchen. And every person in the restaurant had access to rat poison.”
“I suppose so. Plus, someone could have come in the street door. The kitchen opens onto the back alley.”
It seemed the police had their work cut out for them. And speaking of work, this was supposed to be a job interview. “So, you smoke.”
“Only about three ciggies a day. One after breakfast, and then I have another one on my lunch hour, and another after dinner. Honestly, if I worked here, I wouldn’t sneak out. You could trust me.”
Nothing about her recent activities should fill me with trust but, oddly, I did trust her. Maybe I was a fool, but my instinct said that she was a good person at heart. Nyx, who’d been snoozing in the front window, where three tourists had taken her picture, suddenly stood and stretched. Then she stepped daintily out of the basket, hopped down, walked straight over to Katie and butted her nose against the Australian girl’s leg.
She said, “Well, look at you.” When she picked the cat up, Nyx curled into her arms, made a contented sound and then stared at me with her green eyes. Some people say cats aren’t good communicators but I can only say they should meet Nyx.
I felt certain the cat was confirming my judgement that Katie was someone I could trust. She certainly let herself be stroked under the chin and cooed to. She rewarded Katie by purring loudly. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Nyx likes you.”
Katie was laughing too. When she smiled her whole face lit up. “Does her opinion count?”
I looked at Nyx. We hadn’t been together long but she was already a very important part of my life. “Oh yes, Nyx’s opinion definitely counts.”
The minute Katie had left I got on my computer to search for the shop she’d worked in. Nyx jumped into the window and peered out the window, watching Katie walk away.
One of the nice things about having Nyx was being able to talk aloud to her without looking like a crazy person. "You liked her, didn't you?"
Nyx licked her front paw.
"You don't think we’re running a risk hiring someone who's a possible suspect in a murder?"
Nyx yawned.
I wasn't precisely sure how far ahead Melbourne time was from Oxford time, but I thought the sooner I sent my email, the sooner I’d get a reply. I was impressed by their website and at the breadth of offerings. They offered the usual knitting and crochet, but they’d added spinning, weaving and felt-making. An upcoming class on dyeing your own wool looked interesting.
Having sent off my email asking questions about Katie’s work history, attitude, punctuality and her honesty, I checked my incoming emails. There was one from my mother. I hoped she was setting a date to come back to England for visit, as she and my dad had been promising to do since I moved to Oxford.
However, they were incredibly busy at the archaeological dig in Egypt. “Mummies can be so demanding,” I said aloud, then giggled at my bad pun. She said the dig was going well and that they might come to Oxford to recruit some new students to work with them, but that probably wouldn’t be for a few months.
There was also an email from my friend Jennifer, back in Boston. She was full of news about our friends back home and was already making plans for Christmas. A bunch of my old pals were renting an apartment in New York for New Year’s. It sounded like so much fun.
I felt the pull of homesickness. I didn’t have any friends my own age here. Mostly, because I’d been too busy to go out and socialize. And the invitations I had received, like the witch pot luck dinner, weren’t exactly thrilling me. I spent most of my free time with a bunch of vampires who were centuries older than I was.
The bell jingled telling me I had customers so I closed my email and put away my momentary homesickness with it.
It was Saturday and I was fairly sure I’d be spending my Saturday night with Nyx and my spell book. I also knew I’d start going through my wardrobe trying to decide what to wear on my Sunday afternoon date with a vampire.
CHAPTER 13
Sunday was a dry day. Cloudy in the morning, but as the day advanced, the sun came out. I tried on pretty much everything in my closet before settling on my black skinny jeans, boots and the cranberry colored sweater pattered with falling leaves that Alfred had knit for me. I left my hair loose and put more than usual effort into my makeup, which is to say about five minutes instead of the usual two.
I was standing outside waiting when a sleek black car drew up soundlessly. Behind my sunglasses, I rolled my eyes. Of course he was driving a Tesla.
I got into the car and he pulled away. I realized I was excited and wondered how much of my pleasure was at getting away from the shop and the proximity to the murder scene next door.
“Nice car.”
“Thank you.”
“Very environmentally friendly.”
He smiled at that. “I have more reason than most to worry about the future of the planet.”
We drove out of the center of Oxford and into the leafy suburban streets with their brick Victorian homes, but he kept going and I realized we were heading out of town. “I have no idea where you live.”
“Near Woodstock.”
Woodstock was about fifteen minutes by car from Oxford and most famous for one thing. “You live in Blenheim Palace?” I’d toured it once. A huge palace built by the Duke of Marlborough and birthplace of Winston Churchill.
He shot me a look. “Too many tourists.”
I laughed. “Okay. Surprise me.”
I looked out the window, enjoying being out of the shop. As soon as we were out of Oxford we drove past green fields dotted with sheep, some of whose wool would no doubt end up in my shop. I could see the hills of the Cotswolds rising ahead and scatterings of houses made of gray Cotswold stone. We passed three tour buses headed for Blenheim, a group of Lycra-clad cyclists who appeared to be preparing for a race, and countless cars filled with families enjoying a Sunday afternoon drive, perhaps heading to one of the pubs for Sunday lunch.
We drove through the town of Woodstock, with its quaint stone houses, hotels and pubs and out the other side. The road grew much quieter and we turned off into a smaller road with ancient trees that arched overhead. It was so quiet here.
After another five minutes or so, Rafe picked up a key fob as we approached a pair of stone pillars topped with lions that held a black iron gate between them. He pushed a button and the iron gates opened with majestic slowness.
We passed through them and down a private avenue to a grand, stately home. The inner garden was walled and a gardener was at work trimming back the fading hydrangeas. On the velvet, green lawns that bordered the drive, three peacocks pecked at the ground.
Another watched from atop a wall, its green and blue feathers iridescent in the afternoon sunshine. I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Peacocks? You have peacocks?” It was somehow easier to focus on the birds than on the palace he called home.
“I do.”
A
s the car cruised past, one of the three pecking peacocks raised its head, looked at us and began to waddle along, trying to keep up. He was not the handsomest of the birds. He was a little on the chubby side and his tail was a sad thing. He was down to one feather, which dragged behind him in the grass as he ran, like a lone water skier behind an oversized speedboat.
When the car drew up in front of the wide steps leading to the house, the bird sped up so it was standing, waiting like a dog when its master returns, when Rafe opened his car door. I wasn’t missing this reunion, so I scrambled out and ran around the back of the car to watch.
“Well, Henri, I see you’re keeping healthy,” Rafe said, using a French accent for the bird’s name. He put a hand in his pocket and pulled out some kind of pellet, which he placed on the palm of his hand. When he squatted, the peacock turned a beady eye to me, and I stood absolutely still until he decided I was no threat and leaned forward to eat out of Rafe’s hand.
It was in the top ten of the cutest things I’d ever seen. “Why do you call him Henri?”
“He’s French. He was raised on a chateau near Toulouse, but his owners fell on hard times, and, when they sold up, they asked me to take him.”
I didn’t like to be rude, but the bird seemed unhealthily chubby. “Isn’t he a little overweight?”
“Oh, dreadfully. Henri has the body of a peacock and the soul of a pig. He’ll eat anything, but he’s partial to steak.” He looked up at me. “He’s molting at the moment, which is why he looks so unkempt. Would you like to feed him?”
“Will he let me?”
“I think so.” He gestured and I went closer and knelt beside Rafe. Henri sidled back a couple of steps, but when Rafe put the birdseed pellet in my hand, and I held it out flat, the bird’s greed quickly overcame his wariness and he waddled forward and quite daintily took the pellet from my palm.