by Nancy Warren
One of the charms of Cardinal Woolsey’s was that it never changed. I knew exactly where everything should be because it had always been there.
However, as I tidied up, I realized that the basket of Fair Isle knitting wool had somehow shifted to the area where mohair should be. I swapped the baskets back to the correct places.
Gran was always meticulous about keeping her shop clean as well as tidy so I grabbed a duster and went to work. When I finished the dusting I pulled out the vacuum cleaner and got to work on the old wooden plank floor. I was pushing the wand into a corner when I caught the gleam of gold. I dropped to my knees and reached under the bottom shelf and discovered Gran’s eyeglasses. She’d always kept them on a gold chain around her neck, but the chain was broken.
I held them in my hands feeling a shudder of sadness go through me and something else. The chain ran through my fingers again and again. As though in a dream, I had the feeling of fear and something terrible chasing me, but no sense of what the thing was. My heart was pounding when my vision cleared.
I searched the area and noticed a line of black splatters on the old hardwood floor. Could be paint, could be nail polish but, as the daughter of two archaeologists, I knew the importance of investigating small details. I dampened a tissue and rubbed carefully at the largest spot. A rusty brown came up on the tissue. I'm not much of an expert in forensics but I was fairly certain it was blood.
Here's the thing. My grandmother was close to blind without her glasses on, especially at night. So I had to ask myself, if she had died peacefully in her bed, as Miss Watt had told me, then why were her broken glasses downstairs in the shop? Along with recently spilled blood?
CHAPTER 2
I was crouched down, staring at the lenses of my grandmother’s glasses, my mind working furiously, when I felt a cold draft. The back of my neck prickled and I shivered. Gran would have said someone had just walked over my grave.
It wasn’t a noise that made me glance up, not even a movement. It felt more like a presence. The kind that would make me sometimes flip on a light when I woke in the night from one of my dreams, heart pounding as it was beginning to pound now.
Of course when I switched my light on at home, it was always to the reassuring sight of my own bedroom with no monsters, serial killers, or otherwise scary dudes in my space.
This time I wasn’t so lucky.
There was a man standing inside the door. I must have made a sound, though I’d have sworn I was too frightened even to breathe. He turned quickly, and I felt he was as startled to see me as I was to see him. But seen me he undoubtedly had, so I rose to my feet, trying to beat back the panic.
“Who are you?” I asked. I wanted to sound tough and controlled but even I could hear my voice waver.
“Where’s Agnes?” he retorted.
“Agnes?” I was surprised she’d know a man like this.
“Yes.” He sounded impatient and took a step forward. “Agnes Bartlett.”
I wasn’t about to tell him that my grandmother was dead, not when he’d appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the night, so I asked again, “Who are you?”
He stepped forward. He was tall, lean, and elegant. About thirty-five or so. He wore black slacks and a dark gray sweater, but the way he wore it, the outfit could have been a tuxedo. His hair was black, his eyes dark, and his face pale. He fascinated and repelled me at once.
“My name is Rafe Crosyer.”
I followed up with a second, more important question, “How did you get in?”
He hesitated. “I saw the light. I was passing and thought Agnes might need something.”
If he knew my grandmother, how did he not know she’d passed away? And why was he strolling past in the middle of the night? “Do you live in the neighborhood?”
He glanced behind me as though I might have my grandmother hidden somewhere. “Yes. But I’ve been out of town. Is she here?”
I licked dry lips. “Maybe you should come back tomorrow.”
His brow creased. “You’re holding her glasses, and the chain appears to be broken.”
The chain made a noise as my hands shook as much from grief as from fear. I wondered if I was in the middle of some elaborate dream. Maybe Gran wasn’t dead, and I wasn’t having a bizarre conversation with a strange man in the middle of the night holding my grandmother’s broken glasses. “Do you often visit her in the middle of the night?”
A flicker of something crossed his face. Irritation? Amusement? “I suffer from insomnia. Your grandmother is also a sufferer.” He smiled slightly at my obvious shock that he’d referred to her as my grandmother. “Lucy, I presume. Your grandmother often speaks of you. I’ve seen your photograph.”
Maybe she’d spoken of me to him but I was positive my grandmother had never mentioned tall-dark-and-snooty. I’d have remembered. Still, if he knew her so well, I was tempted to tell him what had happened. But I’d spent too much time in chaotic cities, warned by my parents never to talk to strangers, to unburden myself. Not at three in the morning when I was all alone.
He’d been watching me fiddle with the broken chain. “Your grandmother can’t see two feet in front of her without those glasses.” He took a step back and deliberately relaxed his pose. “I only want to know that she’s all right.”
“Please,” I said, “Come back tomorrow.”
He hesitated. “I’ll be in meetings all day. I’ll come tomorrow evening. After sunset.”
“Whatever.”
He smiled at that. “Until tomorrow evening then.” He reached into his pocket and I flinched thinking of all the things a scary guy could pull out of his pocket, but his hand emerged holding nothing more lethal than a business card. “If you need anything, call me at this number. Day or night.”
I reached for the card as he passed it forward, and our hands brushed. “Your hands are so cold,” I said. It’s a bit of a problem I have when I’m nervous. I blab whatever I’m thinking.
He drew back and flexed his fingers. “Poor circulation.” He walked back to the door. “Good night.”
“Wait, how did you get in?” He still hadn’t explained how he’d appeared inside the shop.
He paused. “The door was unlocked.”
I’m not sure of a lot of things in life, like what a guy means when he says, “I’ll call you,” or whether my hair looks better long or short, but I was damned sure I’d locked that door before I went up to bed.
Damned sure.
AFTER THE SCARY GUY LEFT, I made triple sure that outer door was locked, and the one that led to the flat, and then I went back upstairs. I carried Gran’s broken glasses with me, wishing they could talk. Something wasn’t right. Why were her glasses broken and in the shop if she’d died peacefully in bed? And since when was she pally with a strange man who walked into the shop in the wee hours, without so much as knocking?
Rafe Crosyer was seriously hot. I’d have suspected her late night caller had more than knitting in mind, but as far as I knew, she’d never had another man after my grandfather died. Plus, the age difference must be about fifty years, and he did not seem the toy boy type.
I went back to bed but I was so unnerved, I got up and turned on the bathroom light, leaving my bedroom door open so I wouldn’t be shut up in the dark. My room no longer felt like a safe, comfortable refuge. Every noise, whether inside or out, had me opening my eyes wide to search out any possible danger until exhaustion finally claimed me and I slept.
When I woke, the sun was shining and I looked out my window to the skyline that could be nowhere but Oxford. They may call the gathering of church steeples ‘dreaming spires’ but they’d interrupted my dreams throughout the night, chiming the hour. It always took me a couple of nights to get used to bells ringing every hour on the hour all night long.
I glanced at my phone and found it was after eleven. I felt thick and stupid and desperate for that first cup of coffee, but at least I’d slept.
I stumbled to the kitchen, put on cof
fee, and while it brewed, so did my thoughts. Gran’s glasses, blood on the floor, the strange visitor last night. Put those things together, and I came to any number of disturbing possibilities, none of which made any sense.
What I needed, and badly, was information.
The first thing I had to do was to phone the number on the sign on the door. I’d been too stunned to do it yesterday. Gran had never owned a mobile phone that I knew of. She had actual wall phones. One in the store and one in her apartment above. I’d snapped a photo of the sign on the door and, as soon as I’d drunk my first cup of strong coffee, I sucked in a breath and called the number.
“Mills, Tate and Elliot, how may I direct your call?” a pleasant female voice enquired.
“I found this number on a sign taped to Cardinal Woolsey’s, the knitting shop on Harrington Street. The owner was my grandmother.”
“Please hold,” she said, and the line clicked.
In a few seconds, an older male voice said, “George Tate speaking.”
Once more, I explained about the note and the number.
“And what is your name?” he asked.
“Lucy Agnes Swift.” Yes, Agnes for my grandmother.
“Miss Swift, I am very sorry to inform you that your grandmother passed away several weeks ago. I’d very much like to speak to you. When would it be convenient to come to our offices?”
Fortunately, my grandmother had employed an Oxford firm of lawyers within walking distance of the shop, so we agreed that I would stop by at two that afternoon.
“And please bring official identification with you,” he said before ringing off.
I took a shower in the old-fashioned bathroom, climbing into the big tub and banging my shin as I did every single time I returned to Gran’s place. It always took me a few bruises to get the bath climbing routine down.
I showered, left my long blonde hair to dry on its own, brushed my teeth, put on mascara and lipstick, and dressed in my best jeans and a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt. When I’d flown out of Cairo the temperature had been sweltering. Here it was approaching sweater weather.
Somehow, I needed to get hold of my mother and let her know that Gran was gone. But, I decided to see the lawyer first and find out as much as I could.
According to Miss Watt and the lawyer, my grandmother had died weeks ago. I must have missed her funeral. Somehow, missing the burial made everything more painful. I hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye. I would have to find out where she was buried and at least take some flowers. I needed closure.
I glanced at the glasses on their broken chain, which I seemed to keep carrying around with me as though Gran might suddenly appear and ask for them. I needed more than a gravesite to visit. I needed answers.
I’d placed the business card the strange man had given me last night on the kitchen counter and I picked it up now. The card stock was plain but expensive. Rafe William Crosyer. And a phone number, mobile phone, email address and a website.
According to his card, he was an antiquarian book and restoration expert. I would definitely be checking out his website before I saw him again. I’m good like that, checking up on strange men who walk in on me in the middle of the night.
THE OFFICES OF MILLS, Tate and Elliot occupied a Victorian brick storefront on New Inn Hall Street, only five minutes’ walk away. I opened the old oak door and expected to find a clerk writing with a quill pen, but to my relief the inside of the law office was quite modern. The receptionist might sit behind a counter older than some countries, but she punched my details into a slick computer and then asked me to take a seat. I’d barely picked up a copy of The Economist when a thin, elegant man in his sixties wearing a navy blue suit stepped toward me. “Miss Swift?”
“Yes.” I rose and shook his hand, and he led me to an office that looked like a professor’s lair. It was lined with books, and the heavy, ornate desk was covered in paper. There was no computer in this office. Only a phone. I could see why my grandmother had hired him.
I sat on one side of the desk and Mr. Tate sat on the other. He stared at me so long I had to force myself not to fidget. “Did you bring your identification?”
“Yes.” I tugged both my passports from my bag. I’m a dual citizen, having been born in Oxford to my British mother and American father, and having lived most of my life in the States. My father was an American lecturer in Oxford when he met my mother who was a student there. They moved to Massachusetts when I was still a baby, but worked on dig sites all over the world. I’d spent most of my summers with my grandmother in Oxford, and they’d been some of my happiest times.
“Excellent. I’ll have these copied.” He poked his head out the door and the woman at the front fetched them.
Then he sat back, shook his head, and sighed. “Well, my dear, I’m sorry for your loss. Your grandmother was a wonderful woman.”
“She was. Did you know her well?”
“We met now and again socially. We were both friends of the Bodleian Library. My firm did all her legal work, what there was of it.”
“Of course.”
He pulled a file forward and opened it. “Are you at all familiar with your grandmother’s will?”
“No. Not at all.”
“She never discussed it with you?”
I shook my head. “Why would she discuss her will with me? My mother must be her heir. She only had the one child.”
“Agnes did not leave her estate to her daughter. She left everything to you. She also left you a letter.”
He withdrew a sheaf of papers from the file, and a sealed envelope that he pushed across the desktop toward me. I recognized the loopy handwriting and felt a great sweep of sadness. I picked up the envelope, knowing I wouldn’t read it in the lawyer’s presence. I’d wait until I was alone.
He resettled his gold-rimmed glasses over his nose and scanned pages as though he were reminding himself of the contents. Then he began. “Your grandmother’s estate consists of the shop and the living quarters above it. In that part of town, the property is worth quite a pretty sum. Other than that she had some savings and, of course, the income from Cardinal Woolsey’s. All this is to go to you.”
“But what about my mother?” I was already struggling to accept my grandmother’s death, to think of inheriting her property—well, I didn’t have room in my brain for more shocks.
“I imagine your grandmother’s reasoning will be explained in that letter.”
I was certain my mother would not grudge me the shop. She and my father were much too busy with their research to be bothered with it, but I’d never considered that I might one day be asked to run a knitting shop. I was twenty-seven years old and not at all sure what I wanted to do with my life.
I was at a crossroads.
I’d worked for a couple of years in administration for a pharmaceutical firm, sitting in a cubicle for eight hours a day. The atmosphere was so dull, the cactus I brought into work died. I was certain it died of boredom. My entire department was made redundant, which was good as it meant I didn’t have to sit in that cubicle anymore, and bad as I had no income. I was still reeling from that shock when, a few days later, on a Friday evening, Todd pocket-dialed me. I answered, but instead of hearing him speak to me, I heard him panting and muttering something over and over again that sounded like, “Oh, yeah, baby.”
Todd had told me he was playing poker with the boys. It didn’t sound like poker was the game going on, so I got into my car and drove the short distance to his basement suite where I discovered Todd and a girl he worked with going at it on the kitchen table. I’ve often thought since that if Todd had taken off his jeans all the way, we might still be going out.
This trip had been partly a way to get over the humiliation of Todd’s betrayal, as well as an opportunity to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. I had no idea what a tidy sum might mean, but I was hopeful that if I sold the shop, I might have enough to live on for a while until I found my path.
Mr. Tate was speaking, and I was listening, even as these thoughts were going through my head. At last, he said, “And now we reach the conditions of your inheritance.”
“Conditions?”
“Yes. They aren’t very onerous, but your grandmother requested two things. One, that you run the shop yourself, for at least a year, and two, that you must keep it exactly as it is.”
“Or what?” I had to ask.
He took off his glasses and polished them. “Legally, you can do whatever you want with the property. These are requests from your grandmother.”
I’d come looking for a purpose in life, but I couldn’t see myself running a knitting shop. Mr. Tate looked at me, waiting for me to speak. I could only think of one thing that was relevant.
“But I don’t know how to knit.”
CHAPTER 3
I shook Mr. Tate’s hand and left his office feeling stunned. My brain was crowded with questions as his receptionist returned my passports and wished me a pleasant day.
I pushed open the large double doors that had Mills Tate & Elliot, Solicitors stenciled in gold letters. When I got back onto the street, a draft of cool air tousled my hair, refreshing my mind and helping to calm my thoughts. Why would Gran have specified that Cardinal Woolsey’s must remain a knitting shop? I knew the shop was important to her; Gran had inherited it from her mother, so it had been in the family for over a generation, but, at the end of the day, it was a knitting shop. She knew I couldn’t knit. Why would she care what I did with it?
Sure, I’d helped her out in the shop while my parents were scraping ancient dust off of priceless antiquities in the middle of the desert, and I did know my way around quite well. I was probably the only person other than Gran’s assistant, Rosemary, who knew how to run the place, but I was hardly a shopkeeper. And I didn’t even live in Oxford!