Fair Isle and Fortunes

by Nancy Warren

  Rafe Crosyer was a five-hundred-year-old vampire with an uncanny ability to find me, especially when there was trouble afoot.

  I didn’t completely understand how the vampires managed to get about in daylight. Since I’d arrived in the winter and it was so frequently cloudy in Oxford, I’d often seen Rafe out walking the streets in the daytime, though usually it was early in the morning or in the afternoon and evening. But since the weather had turned bright and sunny, I was seeing much less of my vampires during the day. If they were out, they tended to wear large sun hats or carry umbrellas made of technical fabric that shielded them from UV rays.

  I tried to ignore the black vehicle, which was easy as I now heard the sound of sirens approaching. People around me began to stand up straighter and appear more serious or suddenly engage in some activity as though they’d been standing around and a stage director had called “action.”

  I didn’t move. I remained at my post beside the dead woman. I was soon joined by the man who ran the archery. His name was Hubert Drosselmeyer. He was enormous and blond and it was easy to imagine him as a medieval archer heading into battle with his longbow. He looked concerned, verging on panicked. When he looked down at the dead woman with the arrow in her, he shook his head. “I don’t understand. It’s impossible for such an accident to happen.”

  I was tempted to ask questions, but I knew I would be stepping on Ian’s toes and he wouldn’t appreciate it. However, by keeping quiet, I learned quite a bit. The man seemed desperate to talk about his dilemma, and, even without asking questions and merely looking silently sympathetic, he unburdened himself to me.

  “We’re very strict. We don’t just give the punters a bow and arrow and let them shoot at anything. The first thing we talk about is safety. The targets are set up against straw bales.” He looked genuinely puzzled, turning his head in the direction of the now-silent archery field and back to the dead woman. “You’d have to be an extremely good archer to hit that woman in the heart from that far away.”

  “Or extremely unlucky,” I said, accidentally breaking my temporary vow of silence. Though, in fairness, I hadn’t asked him a question.

  He looked as though he were the unlucky one.

  An ambulance arrived with a paramedic team and a doctor who, after a brief examination, pronounced her dead. They didn’t move her, though, and soon a guy who appeared to be in his mid-thirties and had the bearing and short hair of someone in the military walked up to join them. With him were two uniformed police officers.

  It wasn’t until he introduced himself as Detective Inspector Thomas that I realized Ian wasn’t coming. For some reason I thought that every time there was a homicide, Ian would attend, but that was nonsense, of course. There were other detectives in the area. He turned to the two of us on either side of Elizabeth Palmer’s body. “Did either of you see what happened?”

  Hubert Drosselmeyer shook his head. “I never saw anything. Someone said there was a woman killed by an arrow, but I didn’t believe it until I saw her for myself.”

  The detective turned to me with his eyebrows raised.

  “I was walking this way when I heard a scream. I must have arrived within a minute, but she was dead.”

  He nodded. “See who shot her?”

  I flinched. “It all happened so fast. There was a blond woman screaming when I arrived, but I think someone led her to the first aid van.”

  More cops arrived, and they put tenting around the body to shield it from public scrutiny. DI Thomas told the uniformed cops to interview everyone who was still at the fête and find out if they’d seen anything and to make sure they got every single person’s name, their phone number, their address and what they’d been doing at the time of the tragedy.

  Perhaps because we’d been beside the body when the police arrived, they didn’t move me and Hubert right away. It was as though we’d been grandfathered in to this tragedy. I looked once more at that round face, still wearing the look of shocked surprise. But Hubert squinted at her chest and the arrow still protruding. He said, with enormous relief in his tone, “Wait. That arrow’s not one of ours.”

  All of us stared at his face. DI Thomas said, “Are you sure?”

  He nodded emphatically. “Come to the archery area and I can show you. We use short bows similar to what they’d have used in medieval times. Our own in-house fletcher makes them, and the ones we use for practice and displays like this one all have a blue and red feather on the end of the shaft.” We could all see that the feather thing on this arrow was black.

  He was gaining confidence now. He moved to the side of the body, got to his hands and knees and squinted. “I’ve been an archer for twenty years. I’m sure your medical examiner will back me up on this, but that arrow could never have been fired from the archery pitch. Look at the angle of the arrow’s entry.”

  Now all of us squatted down on our haunches and bent our heads so that we could see what he was referring to. I understood what he meant. The arrow wasn’t sticking straight out. It was on an angle. I spoke my thoughts aloud. “It looks as though it came from above and hit her.”

  He nodded, looking at me in approval. “That’s exactly what happened. If it was deliberate, it was an excellent shot.”

  A shiver ran down my spine. “You’re saying this might not have been an accident?”

  He was getting some color back in his face. “What kind of fool would be up a tree or in one of the buildings overlooking the village green with a bow and arrow and shoot it into a crowd? No, it was murder. The only question in my mind is whether it was a random act or whether this woman was deliberately targeted for murder.”

  Chapter 6

  Nora and Violet came running up at that moment. I imagined they’d been so busy in the fortune-telling booth they hadn’t heard the commotion. Until now.

  Nora pushed passed the onlookers and cried out, “Elizabeth. No!”

  Violet looked at me and then at the stream, and as the color drained from her face, her makeup stood out like a bizarre mask.

  “How could this happen?” Nora cried.

  “There, there, love,” the woman from the white elephant said, taking her into her arms.

  Hubert Drosselmeyer said, “The arrow entered at about a forty-degree angle.” He looked down at Elizabeth Palmer, who was still staring up. I wished someone would close her eyes. “How tall was she?”

  Okay, I had to pull myself together and try to help. I’d stood talking to her. “I think she was about my height.”

  “Good.” The archer rose and turned me so my back was to him. He pulled me against him. “Place your wrist at the level of your heart, with your hand and fingers facing forward.”

  I did.

  He reached around and tilted my hand to the same angle as the arrow. I could feel everyone in the crowd watching us. He turned my body slightly. “There.” And then he pointed up—across the street to where a row of old houses stared back at us. Many of the second- and third-story windows were open on this warm day. He said in a hard voice, “That building in the middle is the village hall, and upstairs we have a museum.”

  I followed his gaze, and sure enough, the upstairs window was open. “You think the arrow was fired from there?”

  “The hall was unlocked for the day. It’s where we all stored extra equipment and coats and things. Anyone could have crept in when it was empty and stationed themselves upstairs with a bow and arrow.”

  I felt a cold chill as I looked up at that window. “But why?” I whispered.

  DI Thomas said, “Thank you, sir. You’ve been very helpful.” He made a motion with his chin, and two of the uniforms ran toward the village hall.

  Hubert stepped away from me. He said, “The person you’re looking for is an excellent shot.”

  “Such as yourself? Or one of the archers putting on this little display?”

  Hubert stood straighter. “I can vouch for everyone who was here today. The mission of the Wychwood Bowmen is to promote healthy
enjoyment of this ancient sport. We are not killers.”

  “I’ll ask all of you to remain behind to help us with our enquiries.” DI Thomas looked at the rest of us and raised his voice. “Now, if everyone would give their names and contact details to one of our officers and let them know if you saw anything that might help us with our enquiries, you can all go home.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was stay here. It was too sad. Besides, I needed to talk to Violet. What had she really seen?

  I turned to find her and to my consternation discovered that Margaret Twig had turned up. She wore a red and black flowing kaftan over black cotton trousers and a necklace of red beads. Her hair was its usual mass of salt and pepper corkscrew curls.

  When I joined her and Violet, she said, “Let’s get Violet’s belongings out of that tent and get out of here.”

  I nodded. We gave our names and contact information to one of the uniforms and then headed back to the fortune-teller’s tent. The silk banner seemed garish now and out of place on this day of death.

  When we were all inside the tent, I said, “But this is such a peaceful, lovely little village. Why would anyone want to murder Elizabeth Palmer?”

  Violet said, “Well, it could hardly have been an accident. Someone deliberately killed that woman.”

  Margaret Twig had no time for all this speculating. She looked seriously annoyed, as she often did when I was around. “There is no such thing as a quiet, peaceful village. Whenever more than two people gather together, there will always be secrets, intrigues, and scandal. The English village is like a microcosm of the whole world. On the outside you see the tumble of pretty cottages with their climbing roses and Union Jack bunting, but inside there’s as much darkness, rage and hate as you’ll find anywhere. You forget that at your peril.”

  “But the death happened at the village fair. A celebration of everything that’s good about small villages in England.”

  Margaret and my cousin exchanged a glance. Margaret continued, “There have been witches in Moreton-under-Wychwood for centuries. The locals have always known it in the way you can know that an underground river runs beneath your property without ever having to see it. So long as it doesn’t flood your house and destroy your land, you’re quite happy to let that river flow in peace. But the minute you get water up around your ankles, you will dam that river, reroute it or dry it up in any way you can.”

  I found this a rather confusing metaphor. “You’re saying that we witches are like an underground river?”

  “Exactly. So long as we stay out of sight and mind our own business, the people of Moreton-Under-Wychwood have always turned a blind eye. Most of them are clever enough to know that we do good here. We help with the harvest, and long before there were proper doctors and hospitals, it was the wise women who helped with the pains of childbirth, cured the sick and tried our best to keep out the forces of evil.”

  Violet nodded. “And now, it looks as though some kind of evil is at work.”

  My eyes widened. “You think that woman was killed by some malevolent supernatural being?”

  Margaret turned a pointed, bright-blue gaze my way. “You’re awfully friendly with that nest of vampires who live in the tunnels underneath your shop. Maybe you should ask them.”

  Anger began to burn in my belly. “Don’t you suggest for one minute that they had anything to do with this. You’re only doing to vampires what humans have been doing to witches for centuries. Blaming them for the inexplicable. You should know better.”

  Clearly she didn’t take kindly to my rebuking her, but I didn’t care. I stood glaring at her, feeling my chest rise and fall rapidly with anger.

  “Prove it was human killing human, and I’ll take your vampire friends off my most-wanted list.”

  “They weren’t even here. What self-respecting vampire goes to a village fête on a sunny day in early June?”

  Her thin eyebrows rose. “Are you truly that naïve? A Range Rover with tinted glass was parked on the other side of the green. You must know who that belongs to.”

  Crap. Why had Rafe followed me here? We seriously needed to have a conversation where I explained the difference between friend and stalker.

  I looked at the two of them. “You both live around here. Tell me what you know about the dead woman, Elizabeth Palmer. All I know is that she was excited about her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. She and her husband were planning a cruise. And then Violet told her if she crossed water, she would die.”

  Violet nodded her head vigorously. “And if she’d listened to me, she might still be alive. Not ten minutes after I warned her, she was walking over a flipping stream.” She threw up her hands. “It’s like I told her to stay away from fire and she walked straight into a burning building. What is the point of telling fortunes if people ignore you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think she even thought of crossing that little stream as going over water. I’m sure she thought that you meant an ocean voyage.”

  “I didn’t say ocean voyage, did I?”

  Well, she learned her lesson.

  Margaret Twig said, “Snapping at each other won’t get us anywhere. Here’s what I know about the dead woman. Her husband runs a car dealership. It used to be her father’s. Twenty-five years or, I suppose, twenty-six years ago now, he came to work for her father as a salesman. That’s how Elizabeth and Jason met. The gossip around the village was that her parents strongly disapproved of the match, but it was the mid-1990s, not the 1950s, so there wasn’t much they could do about it. Elizabeth got her way, and she and Jason were married. When her father died, he took over the family business. They lived in the big house with her mother until she, too, died, and that came to Elizabeth and Jason as well.”

  I said, “They must’ve been proven wrong. The marriage had clearly lasted, and the couple must have been happy if they were planning an anniversary cruise.”

  “I don’t come into town all that often, but I’m fairly certain that they were quite good friends with another couple about their own age. Nora and Tony Betts.”

  I nodded. “Nora Betts and she were in line together waiting to have their fortunes read. They seemed to be best friends.”

  I glanced at Violet. “Remember, Violet? After you told the woman she’d die if she crossed water, her friend came in. Do you remember what you told her?”

  Violet sniffed. “Was that after you gave me a lecture and told me I couldn’t tell my paying customers the truth? That I had to make up some nonsense about meeting handsome strangers and coming into money?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes. After I told you to stop terrifying the customers so they came running out of your tent in tears.”

  She seemed very pleased with herself. “I did exactly what you told me to. I told her she’d come into some money.”

  “But what did you really see?”

  “I told you I wasn’t going to lie, and I didn’t. She will come into money.”

  “A lot of money?”

  She closed her eyes as though casting herself back. “I saw a hand writing out a check. It was in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.”

  “I call that a lot of money. Any idea where it came from?”

  “I’m a fortune-teller, not a forensic accountant.”

  “Violet,” I reminded her, “you are a witch. Think carefully. Did you see anything else in your vision?”

  “It was a man’s hand signing the check. I could see the edge of a shirt cuff and the sleeve of a business-suit jacket. Then the screaming started, and I lost the vision.”

  “Well, it’s a lead. One of the most common motives for murder is financial gain. Is there some way Nora might come into money when Elizabeth died? Maybe her friend left her something in her will?” I thought back to the two women giggling together the way best friends do. “She’d have to be pretty cold-blooded to be joking around with her friend, knowing she was about to murder her.”

  “She couldn’t have done it without help, obv
iously, since she was with me when her friend was killed.”

  I was thinking. I said, “Violet, what if you and I went together to commiserate on her loss?”

  “But we don’t know her.”

  She was right. “Okay, what about this? You saw something else in your fortune that you didn’t tell her.”

  “But I didn’t see anything else.”

  “Sometimes, we have to stretch the truth in the name of justice. We won’t tell her anything that could change her life. Just something that would make her feel better on this very dark and sad day when she’s lost her friend.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked at Margaret Twig. “What kind of news would you like to get from a stranger?”

  “Finding out I was going to be several hundred thousand pounds richer would be all the news I needed.”

  I thought for a minute. “Why don’t we do what lots of fake fortune-tellers do? We’ll ask around, find out more about this woman. Everyone’s gossiping about the murder anyway. They’re bound to talk about these two friends. We’ll find out things about her, like what her job is, where her home is, if she has children and what they’re like. If her pride and joy is her family, we’ll tell her that her child is going to win a school prize or something. Or her prize dog is going to win a championship.”

  Margaret looked as though she were tasting something bitter. “Dogs. Nasty, smelly little beasts. If young enough, though, they’re very good in a potion to make sure a pregnant woman gives birth to a boy.”

  “Margaret!” I said, shocked.

  Her superior smile bloomed, wicked and taunting. “Where do you think that rhyme came from that says boys are made of slugs and snails and puppy dog tails?”

  “But that’s revolting. Please tell me you’ve never—”