Stockings and Spells: A paranormal cozy mystery (Vampire Knitting Club Book 4)

by Nancy Warren

  I thanked William and poured my tea. He left and I settled in a comfortable upholstered club chair in the corner of the room. There was a high tech reading light at my back and a leather ottoman in front. I imagined Rafe spent many an evening sitting in this very chair researching. Or, maybe, reading for pleasure.

  "If what we believe is true, revealing it will destroy a man's life."

  He began to pace. But stopped to turn and look at me. "Not only a life. An entire industry. Think about the films, the comic books, the merchandising. The spinoffs from that series have been substantial."

  I looked at him, feeling troubled. "So, if we prove that Gemma's father was the real author, then Sanderson will have to pay back all the money he's ever earned from the books."

  Rafe laughed without any humor. "More than that. Any contract he signed was fraudulent. Martin Hodgins would be able to renegotiate every single contract, already knowing, as Sanderson didn’t, what the monetary value of that series is. This could keep entertainment lawyers busy for years."

  "Poor Sanderson." I didn’t love what he’d done, but he’d lose everything. Probably even his teaching gig. I didn’t imagine Cardinal College would want him when he’d been proven to be a fraud.

  "If we're right, Sanderson is the one who destroyed a life first."

  I sipped tea and nibbled a shortbread biscuit. "The trouble is, that Gemma's father has already been discredited. He was thrown out of Oxford as a plagiarist."

  Rafe paused and looked at an oil painting of a battle scene hanging on the wall. I felt he was looking into the past. "If you can wound your enemy before the battle, he's that much easier to defeat."

  No doubt he’d experienced that personally, maybe during the English Civil War, which I suspected was the subject of the painting he was still staring at. Still, I understood what he was getting at. "You're suggesting that Sanderson could have engineered the plagiarism charge against Martin Hodgins?"

  "A man who would steal his best friend's novel and pass it off as his own wouldn't hesitate to discredit that same friend first."

  I put my teacup down on the table that was perfectly placed beside the reading chair. "Rafe, what happens to an essay with plagiarized content? Would it still exist in some archive somewhere?"

  He looked at me, frowning. "I imagine it's on file at the college."

  "I'm just thinking, they were two students, in their early twenties. If Sanderson decided to do the dirty, he wouldn’t be able to hire anyone. He’d have had to do it himself. Besides, he wouldn't want anyone to know what he was up to. He would have presumably stolen Martin’s essay. Maybe he said, “Hey, I'm going to submit mine, I'll drop off yours as well at the same time. Martin had no reason to be suspicious. He was probably in the middle of writing a scene in his epic fantasy novel so he was grateful.”

  “Perfectly plausible.”

  I’d never gone to Oxford, but Rafe had gone to Cambridge, which was probably similar. “Then what would Sanderson do?"

  Rafe took a sip of his ice water. "He'd take the essay. He'd retype it on his own typewriter. Adding in sections plagiarized from other sources, or stripping out the footnotes that gave proper credit, and then he'd submit it as Martin Hodgins’ work."

  "You're sure they would be typewritten? The papers wouldn’t be handwritten and there was definitely no computer then?"

  He smiled at me. "Oh, you are so young. No, there was no personal computer in the late 1970s, or at least nothing accessible to undergrads. Their papers would have been typewritten."

  "Is it possible that Sanderson used the same typewriter to retype the essay and to copy his friend’s book?"

  He shrugged. "We’re speculating here, but, as you say, they were students without a lot of resources. I think the chances are quite good."

  I was warming to my theme, now.

  "If we found that essay, would you be able to prove that it came from the same typewriter as that manuscript there on the left?"

  "Yes.” He took my wrist and pulled me gently out of the chair and towards the computer. "Look at the sections here. You see the way the G and the M are darker than the other letters. He used a manual typewriter. The way he typed using extra force on those particular keys is as individual as a signature. Also, the M is slightly crooked. I think we could make a compelling argument, if we could find that the supposedly plagiarized essay contains that same style of typing." He narrowed his eyes as he continued staring at the screen.

  “You’ll notice that the typewriter that was used for the manuscript on the right had an M key that was slightly crooked.”

  "It's not much though, is it? And, first we have to find that essay. If it still exists and hasn't been destroyed."

  "Even if we could do all that, Sanderson could say his friend borrowed his typewriter. The weight of public opinion, history, and business is on Sanderson's side. We would need much more compelling evidence to launch a proper investigation into this."

  I thought of Gemma lying unconscious in a hospital bed. I wanted to have good news for her when she woke. "There must be people still here in Oxford who were in school with Sanderson and Hodgins. I could pose as a graduate student doing my thesis on the very beginnings of the trilogy. I could interview their fellow students. See if they remember anything. People love to gossip and it must've been a juicy scandal at the time."

  "Oh, it was. Oxford takes its reputation very seriously. And to have a former student claim to be the real author of the books, one who had been thrown out of Oxford for plagiarism, raised more than a few eyebrows."

  I picked up my tea and Rafe walked back to the counter where the rest of the manuscript was laid out. He slipped his linen gloves back on he said, "Pangnirtung. The word is from the Canadian Inuit of Baffin Island. In the same way that Tolkien drew on Norse legends and his knowledge of old and middle English for his novels, so the author of the Pangnirtung Chronicles drew on the Inuit language and legends. There are references in Gemma's father's manuscript to books and sources that he drew on."

  I stood up and walked over to stand beside him. "So, if he kept the manuscript, then he probably kept all those sources. Old books and maps and whatever he used for research."

  "Exactly." He glanced over at me. "Has Martin Hodgins been notified of Gemma’s condition?"

  "I have no idea."

  "Well, I think it would be worth our while to pay him a visit. Even if he's not at home."

  "You mean, if he's not there, we can do a spot of quiet sleuthing?"

  "That's exactly what I mean."

  Maybe we were on a hopeless quest, but at least we had action steps we could take. I couldn’t wait to get started.

  Chapter 12

  I was a little nervous when I dressed to go and visit Professor Jeffrey Naylor. For some reason, I felt as though I’d been sent to the principal's office for doing something wrong. I was misrepresenting myself, pretending to be a grad student. I chose a somewhat obscure New England College as my pretend Alma Mater, only because I had a friend who’d taken classes there and I'd at least seen the campus.

  I felt incredibly lucky that a guy who had known both Dominic Sanderson and Martin Hodgins now taught at New College. For probably the first time since I had opened Cardinal Woolsey’s, I wore not one hand-knitted item. I had a superstitious dread that he might see me in a sweater and say, "Aren't you the young lady who runs Cardinal Woolsey’s yarn shop?" Of course it was foolish, and I knew that, but anything I could do to settle my own nerves was a good thing.

  I wore a tailored black skirt, black shoes, a long-sleeved white shirt and a tweed jacket that had been my grandmother's. When I looked at myself critically in the mirror, I thought it was the sort of get up a grad student might wear to visit a professor.

  Rafe had brought me a digital recorder and showed me how to use it, and I also had a notebook and pen.

  Professor Naylor was an excellent choice, not only because he’d gone to school with Dominic Sanderson and Martin Hodgins, but because h
e now taught a course called Oxford, Origins of Fantasy. The course was an intensive investigation into the works of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Sanderson, all of whom had, supposedly, invented their fantastical worlds here in Oxford.

  I was ushered into the professor's office right on time, at two o'clock in the afternoon, and I smiled to myself seeing him wear a very similar tweed blazer to the one I'd found in Gran's closet. With it he wore gray slacks and a white shirt with a tie. He seemed very old school. He was very thin, with wispy gray hair and faded blue eyes behind thick-lensed glasses. I gave him a bright smile and walked forward to shake his hand. "Professor Naylor. Thank you so much for seeing me today."

  "Always delighted to help a colleague from across the pond." He motioned me to a hard-backed wooden chair on the other side of a battered wooden desk. As he settled himself behind his desk, I looked around the room. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were crammed with everything from obscure texts in Greek and Latin to the most modern fantasy novels. Among the pictures and posters on the wall was one of him standing with Professor Sanderson. From the age they both were, it looked as though the picture had been taken quite recently.

  "I hope you don't mind if I record our conversation?" I pulled the small recorder out of my handbag. "I don't take shorthand, you see, and I wouldn't want to miss anything."

  He chuckled, indulgently. "Of course not, my dear. I just hope your batteries don't run out. Once I get talking about my favorite subject, I do tend to go on a bit."

  The more he went on, the better I'd like it. Especially if he dropped interesting tidbits about the past into my lap. I smiled and said, "I find it fascinating, too."

  I’d taken a crash course in Sanderson's work from Rafe, read the first couple of chapters of the first book, and poked around the Internet. If Professor Naylor quizzed me more than superficially, I'd be revealed as the fraud I was. However, the professor had no reason to distrust me and, fortunately, didn't ask me any searching questions. I took a deep breath. I clicked on the recorder and pointed to the picture on the wall. "I see you and Professor Sanderson are still friends."

  He looked quite pleased at my initial comment. He puffed up with pride. "You've done your research. Yes, indeed. Dominic and I go back to our student days. We’re all very proud of him, of course. Although, I have to say, I always knew he’d go places."

  "Really? What were the early indications of genius?"

  He sat back and steepled his fingers. It was a gesture I was intimately familiar with, as my dad took that pose when he was about to lecture. "We studied old English together. Dominic ended up with the top mark in the class." He opened his mouth, shut it, and then shook his head. "Well, he had some competition, but…" He shook his head, again. "But that's another story."

  Oh, no, that was the story I wanted. "If you're talking about his friendship with a student named Martin Hodgins, I'm very interested in that. Part of my research is about influences, both good and bad, that shaped the writer." Rafe and I had come up with that line as a way for me to pry into old scandals.

  A gleam, almost like greed, glittered in his eyes. I thought, You old faker, you love a good gossip. And so I looked at him, as wide-eyed and innocent as I knew how.

  He took his time, gathering his thoughts. "It's not a nice story. But it has almost mythical elements to it. The man of genius, the friend torn apart by jealousy who tries to steal his fire. Really, it had all the makings of a Shakespearean tragedy, with a good dose of farce."

  Not so farcical to the girl currently lying in a coma.

  "You must've known them both very well. What was their relationship like?"

  "Sanders and Hodge? You couldn't have found two young men who were closer, I mean in a scholarly way, of course. That's what made it so sad. Martin Hodgins was intense, a dreamer. Half the time he seemed to be in his own world. Nowadays, I think we’d suspect he was somewhere on the spectrum. You’d pass him in a corridor, speak his name, and he'd walk on as though he hadn't noticed you. I used to wonder if I'd offended him, until I realized it was just his way. He really hadn’t noticed me. He was so engrossed in his own thoughts.”

  The image fit nicely with a genius who was so busy creating his fantastical world that he lived there in his head.

  “Dominic, on the other hand, was more genial, more gregarious. They roomed together, I believe, their first couple of years at Oxford. Then, they moved into their own lodgings, but still you'd see them together most of the time. There were students, and plenty of them, whose only goal in school was to get high marks. And then there were the ones who genuinely came to Oxford for the love of learning. I flatter myself as I was in the latter category, and certainly Dominic and Martin were. That's why it was such a shock, you see."

  He shook his head and stared intently at his steepled fingers. "None of us saw it coming. Martin wrote brilliant essays. They weren't always particularly well researched, and, if he had a flaw, it was to range away from his topic and bring in very obscure references, but one couldn't deny he was brilliant.”

  “Really? How so?”

  Professor Naylor took his time before answering. “He had some astonishing theories about Beowulf. Used to talk about this creature of Old English mythology as though he were a friend, a person whom he knew and understood. As I said, he was always slightly odd. Anyway, the end of term came, and we handed in our essays.

  “We went out for a drink, and I could see he was troubled about something. He seemed even more withdrawn than usual and muttered into his beer. He was never the life of the party but on that occasion he was an absolute drip.”

  "Do you have any idea what was troubling him?" I was getting a picture of an intense young man who was more interested in mythological creatures than living, breathing humans.

  He shook his head. "At the time, of course, I put it down to bad temper or lack of sleep. I’d have said girl trouble, but I don't think he ever had any girls. Now, of course, in retrospect I can see that he was troubled by his actions.”

  “And by that you mean…?”

  "Well, by the time we came back from the term break, it was over. Hodge’s essay was clearly plagiarized. The rumor was that it was actually quite brilliant, and he hadn't even needed the extra research that he'd lifted, verbatim. It was a sad affair."

  I felt anger burn in my belly. I didn't even know this man, but I was increasingly convinced that justice had not been done. "Did he try to defend himself at all?"

  He looked at me, and through the thick lenses of his glasses his eyes were magnified almost like insects. "Oh, yes. He claimed he hadn't done it. He claimed his essay had been tampered with. But, of course, there was no proof. He had no idea who would've done it. His defense didn't make any sense. And so he was sent down. As far as I know he never did finish his degree."

  "That's awful," I said.

  "Sadly, it was just the beginning. The following autumn Dominic Sanderson sold his trilogy. Well, rather, he acquired an agent who sold the novels to a very good publisher. He chose well. His agent was also young, and beginning his career. They've made each other, in some ways.”

  I remembered the man who’d set rules for Sanderson’s book signing. "So, he still has the same agent?"

  "Oh, yes.” He chuckled. “You don't fire the man who’s brought you lucrative film deals and merchandising and I know not what. He definitely still has the same agent."

  I thought to myself that poor agent also had some bumpy seas ahead. But then, Charles Beach must already have weathered those. I tapped my pen against my notebook. "When did his former friend, Martin, come forward and claim that he’d written the books?"

  He looked at the ceiling." Let me think. It must've been when the books were first published. They were modestly successful from the very beginning and then the fame grew and grew. I would say the books had been out about six months, when, all of a sudden, Hodge came forward and claimed that he, not Sanders, was the real author."

  "What did Dominic Sanderson do? His former fri
end claimed that that book was his? It must have been a terrible shock for him."

  "Oh, it was. He was dreadfully upset.”

  “Had they stayed in touch, after the plagiarism?”

  He looked and me and squinted his eyes, as though trying to remember. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Dominic was a stickler for following the rules. I believe he dropped Martin after he plagiarized that paper.”

  "Had you known," I asked, "when you were all studying Old English together, had you known at that time that Dominic Sanderson was writing novels?"

  "Oh, goodness, no. No. He kept it very quiet. I suspect Martin probably knew. Because, of course, they spent so much time together. Dominic told me, afterwards, that made it even harder for him, knowing his former friend with whom he’d shared so many of his ideas about the book would then try and claim he had some right to it.” He shook his head. “Dominic was devastated."

  I’ll bet he was.

  "Was there any kind of investigation? When Martin Hodgins came forward and claimed the books as his own?"

  "To be honest with you, I think he’d already begun to drink. Simply because of the success of the novels, Hodge got some air time. I saw him interviewed on television and heard him on the radio, but, truly, I was humiliated on his behalf. He rambled, kept quoting Beowulf for some odd reason. I'm afraid the media made rather a mockery of him. Naturally, Dominic Sanderson denied the claims. He said he had talked over some of his ideas while he was writing the books, as one does with a friend. His agent made the very first draft available to any journalist who cared to examine it."

  "What about Martin Hodgins? Did he have any evidence for his claim?"