Murder, She Knit

by Peggy Ehrhart

  Bettina waved from across the street as Pamela hurried along the sidewalk. Pamela reached Jean’s driveway first, just as Roland DeCamp’s Porsche rolled up to the curb. “Good evening,” he called cheerfully as the car door swung back and he bounced up out of the driver’s seat. He darted along the asphalt to join her, swinging the briefcase that contained his knitting supplies. “Ready for some hot needle action?”

  Somewhere nearby, a wood fire burned in someone’s fireplace. The tang of smoke in the chilly air made Pamela smile with pleasure. Roland smiled in return.

  “How are you doing with the cables?” Pamela asked, not wanting to disappoint him by admitting the smile was not actually for him.

  “Work has been hectic,” Roland said. “That’s why the club is good. At least once a week I get in a solid hour or two of knitting.” They paused at the end of the driveway to wait for Bettina. “Are you still feeding that cat?” Roland inquired.

  “When she comes around.”

  Bettina joined them, panting a bit from exertion.

  “A female?” Roland said. “She’ll be a mother before you know it. Too many strays in town as it is.”

  “They do go after the songbirds,” Bettina said. “But who could turn away a hungry little kitten?”

  “I could,” Roland said.

  “Well,” Bettina said, “it was very thoughtful of you to go to the funeral.”

  “We knitters have to stick together.” He flourished the briefcase. As they walked up the driveway, he scanned the bushes, his actions so exaggerated that it was clear he was joking. “Nothing lurking out here tonight, I hope.” He squatted as if to peer under the shrubs that skirted the edge of Jean’s front porch. “It’s the same street where it happened, after all. You haven’t recruited any more new members, have you, Pamela? I don’t have time for another one of those police interviews.”

  * * *

  A tasteful arrangement of cornstalks, pumpkins, and chrysanthemums greeted them on Jean’s large porch. Pamela had once complimented Jean on the transformation her porch and front yard underwent as the holiday season got going in early fall. It began with harvest themes in late September and culminated with swags of greenery, giant wreaths festooned with red velvet bows, and a galaxy of tiny white lights, a display that lasted until late January. Jean had confessed that her landscaping service was responsible and that she herself was hopelessly inartistic.

  Even Jean’s doorbell had an elegant sound, a few notes whose echoes formed a pleasant chord. “Come in, come in.” Jean greeted them with a warm smile and gestured them into her softly lit hallway. They stepped onto a narrow Persian runner whose colors were faded in a way that suggested great age and great value. Around the rug’s edges, well-tended parquet gleamed. Jean was dressed head to toe in creamy white: a heavy silk blouse tucked into slim wool trousers, with elegant, low-heeled shoes in smooth leather that exactly matched the outfit. Chin-length waves of pale gold hair flowed from a side part, not quite hiding the diamond studs in her earlobes.

  Coats handed over to Jean, the three of them turned toward the spacious living room, where a low fire burned in the fireplace. Leave it to Jean to create the perfect autumn ambiance, complete with wood smoke wafting through her yard. Nell had settled into a wing chair at one side of the hearth and was already at work. A fat skein of pink yarn was perched on the arm of the chair, and several rows of what Pamela suspected was to be yet another elephant hung from her needles.

  “Wait until you see the cookies Jean has for us,” Nell said as they entered. “What a treat—and so clever.”

  “Oh, I can’t really take credit,” Jean said from the hallway. “All I did was call the bakery.” One silk-clad arm reached toward Roland and the other toward Bettina. “Please make yourselves comfortable.”

  Roland and Bettina found spots on Jean’s sofa, one at each end. Between them stretched a row of needlepoint pillows featuring roses, pansies, daisies, hollyhocks, and more—a veritable garden, all rendered in delicate stiches. Roland rested his briefcase on the large coffee table in front of the sofa but made no move to open it. Bettina set to work on a tiny crocheted circle that would grow into another granny square for the baby blanket project.

  “Excuse me,” Jean murmured from the hall. “Kitchen duties.” Her pale shoes glided along the exotically patterned hall runner. Pamela hurried after until they reached Jean’s charming kitchen. Its soapstone counters, stainless-steel appliances, and finely crafted cabinets had been installed after Jean and Douglas bought the house, but the kitchen managed an artful compromise between modern convenience and tradition. Jean added a few cups and saucers to a small group on a silver tray. “They’re my Limoges,” she said. “I love having a chance to use them.”

  “Beautiful,” Pamela observed, quite sincerely. Aside from her wedding china, most of her pretty things were tag-sale finds or thrift-store treasures, but she cherished them just as much as if they were priceless.

  “This will be for the coffee.” Jean gestured toward a silver coffeepot.

  “I have a show-and-tell,” Pamela said, “some very interesting yarn I came across. Shall I bring it out when we take our break for refreshments?”

  “Yes, yes,” Jean said. “That would be perfect. I think people are already getting busy with their knitting.”

  The elegant chimes sounded again—a much louder sound when heard from inside the house. Jean hurried back down the hall, Pamela trailing behind. The chimes were still echoing as Jean pulled the door open. Her cordial “Come in, come in” rang out.

  Karen Dowling handed over her coat and headed for a third wing chair, the one next to Nell. Pamela moved a few needlepoint pillows aside to take a seat between Roland and Bettina. Jean retreated toward the kitchen.

  “Did you walk, dear?” Nell asked as Karen opened her knitting bag.

  “Hmm?” Karen looked up, puzzled. “It’s not far . . .” Then, as if Nell’s look of alarm had triggered something, she added hastily, “Oh, I see what you mean, of course. After what happened last week, being out after dark can feel a little creepy.”

  “They haven’t caught him,” Nell said. “I took the car tonight, even though I hate to use the gas when I could just as well walk. So wasteful, not to mention the pollution.”

  Karen pulled out the project she had launched the previous week. The navy blue scarf she was knitting for her husband had grown considerably. A swath at least ten inches long and eight inches wide hung from the plastic needles.

  From the dining room came the sounds of china and silverware being arranged, then Jean appeared in the doorway. “It looks like we’re all here,” she said. “I’ll make coffee and tea when the time comes,” she said. “And we have the special cookies, of course. And a show-and-tell.” She surveyed her attractive living room and busy guests with a contented smile and sank gracefully into the wing chair on the other side of the fireplace. The soft lighting from the strategically placed lamps smoothed out her already smooth complexion. She reached toward the large basket that contained her knitting supplies.

  “My goodness,” she said as she lifted the cover. “Nell, I really will have to learn how to make those elephants—or maybe something simpler, without so many appendages, like a seal. I have all these odds and ends of yarn left from various projects—each one just enough for a small animal.” She set the cover aside and tilted the basket to display its contents. Indeed, she had balls and skeins of yarn in every color of the rainbow: red, blue, gold, green, violet, and more.

  “I’ll be glad to show you,” Nell said. “The elephants aren’t that hard, really, but we could get started with a seal.”

  Roland pulled his knitting project out of his briefcase and smoothed it across his thigh. He was using expensive wool in a natural off-white shade, perfect for a classic cable-knit sweater. So far, though, the sweater consisted of a piece of knitting twenty inches wide and six inches long, with an erratic ridge of lumpy stitches meandering up the middle. He’d left off in mid-row, s
o half the knitting hung from one needle and half from the other. He reached back into the briefcase to retrieve his yarn.

  Bettina leaned across Pamela to finger the piece of work. “Nice even stitches here at the edge,” she commented, smiling encouragingly at Roland. “That takes skill.”

  “Nothing to it.” He got busy with his needles, looping a strand of yarn to form a stich.

  Bettina frowned. “I think you’re going the wrong direction,” she said. “You’re going back the way you came. That’s always a danger when you leave off in the middle of a row.”

  “It’s fine,” Roland said, clicking his needles defiantly. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Is that the front or the back?” Karen asked from across the room.

  “Does it matter?” Roland continued knitting.

  “Sometimes. Will it be a cardigan or a pullover?”

  “What?” He looked up, and the needles paused in mid-stitch.

  Nell joined the conversation. “Are you planning to button it up the front, or pull it over your head?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.” He’d nearly reached the end of the row, and only a few stitches remained on the left-hand needle.

  “Aren’t you using a pattern?” Bettina’s voice rose in amazement.

  “I started with one, but once I understood the basic principles, I put it away.” Roland finished off the row with a flourish and smoothed the piece of knitting out on his thigh once more. He looked over at Karen. “How about those metal needles you were going to give me? Did you find them yet?”

  “Pamela found one . . . at her house,” Karen stuttered, and her cheeks grew red. “It was in a sofa cushion. The other one is . . . somewhere. As soon as it turns up, I’ll give them to you.”

  “Just a few days till Thanksgiving,” Jean observed from her perch in the wing chair on the other side of the fireplace.

  The perfect hostess, Pamela noted to herself. Let poor Karen collect her wits in peace, though the fact that she got so flustered when the topic of the knitting needles came up was troublesome. Bettina had said that the police didn’t consider Karen a suspect, and probably there was nothing to worry about. But she hadn’t been scared to walk to Jean’s alone. If she was the murderer, of course she’d know there was nothing to fear.

  “And then it will be Christmas,” Nell commented.

  “The town already thinks it’s Christmas,” Roland snorted. “When did those garlands go up downtown? The day after Halloween?”

  “Just about,” Bettina said. “But I like the holidays.”

  “Does anyone know whether the Aardvark Alliance will be using the same lot for the Christmas trees this year?” Nell asked. The Aardvarks were the Arborville High School sports teams, and the Alliance sold Christmas trees in town every year to help fund the sports programs.

  “I certainly hope so,” Bettina said. “They moved it last year, and Wilfred had to drive all over the place looking for it.”

  “There was a notice in the Advocate,” Nell said. “Didn’t you see it?”

  “I guess not.”

  “But you work for the Advocate,” Nell observed mildly.

  Little side conversations popped up around the room. Bettina described to Pamela the menu planned for Thursday, when her two sons and their wives would be visiting, along with her two grandchildren. “And they’re bringing most of the food,” she added happily.

  Nell was leaning over the arm of her chair toward Karen, whose cheeks had lost their frantic blush. The conversation appeared lively, but only soft whispers reached Pamela’s ears.

  Jean was smiling tolerantly at Roland, who was holding forth on how little he got from the town in return for his “ruinous” property taxes.

  Nell turned away from Karen to remark, “You can afford it, Roland, so calm down.”

  As if she’d been waiting for a chance to escape, Jean gently laid her work on the edge of her knitting basket, where the pale pewter yarn of her current project contrasted with the brighter colors of the jumbled balls and skeins.

  “I’ll start the coffee,” she said rising. “And who would care for tea?”

  “I’ll take tea,” Karen and Nell said in unison.

  “Four people for coffee then?” The others nodded, and Jean left the room.

  Soon the smell of freshly brewed coffee signaled that yarn, needles, and crochet hook could be laid aside. Jean appeared in the arch between her living room and dining room. “Please come in and help yourselves,” she said.

  The table was spread with a starched white linen cloth. The Limoges cups and saucers were lined up in two neat rows, the pale, almost translucent china set off with bands of gold at cup and saucer rims. The silver tray that had held the cups in the kitchen now displayed a silver coffeepot and matching sugar and creamer. A teapot that matched the Limoges was centered on a smaller silver tray.

  But it was the cookies that provoked the most admiration. Arranged on two Limoges platters were tiny sweaters, at least two dozen of them. They were cookie-sweaters. No two were the same, and each had been frosted with great skill. A pale pink cardigan sported minuscule silver buttons, and a black-and-white-striped pullover featured bands of green at neck and cuff. A few sweaters had been inspired by Nordic designs, with reindeer the size of fleas dancing across the shoulders. Small Limoges plates sat nearby to receive each person’s chosen cookie-sweaters.

  “Look at this,” Bettina said. “You have outdone yourself, Jean. I know you said you didn’t make them, but you were so clever to think of sweaters.”

  Jean smiled modestly and rearranged a pile of small starched napkins. “Please do help yourselves,” she said. “I have a few dozen more in the kitchen.”

  Soon people were reseated in the living room, cookie plates and cups and saucers distributed around the edge of Jean’s grand coffee table, and laps protected by napkins whose starched folds made them resemble low tents.

  “I have a show-and-tell,” Pamela said after she’d taken a few sips of coffee and eaten the sleeves of a sweater whose dark-brown surface proved to be chocolate.

  “I’m just coming,” Jean called from the dining room. “Go ahead and start.”

  Pamela reached into her knitting bag and brought up the ball of golden yarn.

  Jean hurried past the fireplace, glancing toward Pamela with a grimace that suggested she was sorry to be interrupting. She set her coffee and cookies on the table, pushed her knitting basket hastily to the side of her chair and replaced the cover, and settled into place.

  “It came from a small shop in Brooklyn,” Pamela said, reaching into her bag again and pulling out the band of paper that had encircled the original skein. “‘That Bedford Shop,’” she read. “‘Purveyor of All Things Natural, Brooklyn, NY.’”

  “What took you over to Brooklyn?” Roland asked, gesturing with half of a striped cookie-sweater. “I haven’t been there in years.”

  “She has a college-age daughter,” Nell said. “College kids know about cool places.”

  Pamela let that explanation stand. There was no reason to connect the yarn with Amy and remind everyone of last week’s tragic event. “The color and texture are so amazing,” she said. “I have no idea what animal the wool came from or how it was dyed. I thought you’d all be interested in seeing it, and maybe someone can solve the mystery of its origins.” She held the ball of yarn out to Roland, who set it on his lap and continued eating his cookie. He patted at the yarn with his free hand, obviously not used to being in a group of yarn connoisseurs and uncertain how to react.

  After a few seconds, he said, “It makes me want to pet it.” Satisfied that he’d acquitted himself suitably, he passed it on to Jean.

  “Are you going to make something with it?” Nell asked as Jean placed the ball of yarn on the coffee table and sent it rolling in her direction. “I see you’ve made a ball.”

  “I have to figure out what I have enough for,” Pamela said. “There were only four skeins.”

  “Back
in the old days making a ball was always the first step in a knitting project,” Nell said. “You couldn’t just pull a strand out of a skein and start knitting. You’d end up with a big snarled clump. Now so much yarn comes needle-ready, you might say. But the fancy kinds, like the special wool from special sheep, still come in those traditional skeins.”

  Pamela remembered pictures in her grandmother’s knitting books—a docile husband with outstretched hands several inches apart and wreathed in yarn, linked by a strand of yarn to a woman with a 1940s hairstyle busily forming a ball.

  Nell studied the ball of yarn for a few seconds. “Could it be goat hair?” she said. “Aren’t some goats rather silky?” She passed the ball to Karen.

  “It’s so soft,” Karen murmured, “the way it feels, and the color, and everything. Could the color be from some plant?” She gave it one last fondle and stood up to hand it to Bettina.

  “Saffron, perhaps?” Nell said.

  “Saffron is expensive.” Roland frowned. “And it would take a great deal to dye even as much yarn as is in this ball. There are much cheaper ways to turn something yellow, I’m sure.”

  “But the color is so special,” Nell said. “Really magical.”

  Jean’s voice came from her spot near the fireplace. “Please help yourselves to more cookies—and there’s plenty of coffee and tea.”

  Bettina handed the ball of yarn back to Pamela and stood up. “Maybe one more cookie,” she said. “Anyone else? I can bring some.”

  “I’ll come too.” Roland stood up and edged past Pamela. “I could go for another one of those striped ones.”

  Soon everyone was hovering over the dining room table again. Jean darted into the kitchen with one of the cookie platters and returned with a new assortment, as colorful as the others had been.