Fair Isle and Fortunes

by Nancy Warren

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I feel like we’re missing something.”

  I didn’t want to break into Jason’s house. That seemed like yet another blow to a man who’d suffered plenty. So I told Rafe I really needed to get back to the shop and check on Violet.

  He didn’t argue with me, just pulled smoothly out into the road.

  Walking back into Cardinal Woolsey’s felt like slipping my arms into a well-worn and long-loved sweater, the kind you snuggle down in and watch TV when no one is coming over.

  It had snuck up on me, my little knitting shop in Oxford. From an unwanted burden, the shop now seemed like a place of warmth and comfort and, I supposed, safety. Not everyone would feel safe with a nest of vampires living beneath them, but I sure did.

  Rafe dropped me at the door and said he had a few things to do before his meeting at the Bodleian.

  Violet was alone, sitting behind the cash desk chatting on her phone. She glanced up and looked a bit guilty when she saw me and hastily said she had to go. She dropped her phone back in her purse, saying, “It’s been a really quiet morning.”

  Pointedly, I began to tidy the shelves. Guiltily, she grabbed the duster. Nyx jumped down from her usual spot in the window, strolled over and rubbed up against my legs, circling me until with a laugh I gave in and picked her up. She purred loudly, letting me know she’d missed me. “I missed you, too,” I said, putting my cheek against her sleek, black head.

  She then crawled up and over my shoulder to hang there, heavy, warm and comforting, leaving me with two hands free to continue tidying the shelves and the rumble of contented cat in my ears.

  We remained like that for about fifteen minutes, then all of a sudden Nyx went rigid, stopped purring and let out a low, warning growl. I turned to the door to see a woman fling open the shop door and burst in, so much anger sparking off her it was like a walking fireworks display.

  I recognized her at once. “Nora. What’s wrong?”

  She ignored me and pointed a shaking finger at Violet. “You!”

  Violet backed up until she hit the wall of cashmere yarns. She looked at me, beseeching.

  I put Nyx down on the floor and walked forward. “Nora,” I said quite firmly. Since we were in my shop, I wasn’t going to let her intimidate my assistant. “What’s wrong? Is it your knitting?”

  Though, from her fury, I doubted it was a knitting issue. She swung around to me, and I saw so much rage on her face, it crossed my mind that this was a woman who was capable of murder. “Your little assistant here is a witch. She killed Elizabeth, and now she’s letting my poor Jase take the blame. He’s been arrested!” Jase? Seriously?

  She turned back to Violet, who hadn’t moved and looked as though she might spend the rest of her life with her back against the cashmere. “You’d better go to the police and tell them that you did it, or you’ll be sorry.”

  I had planned to be appeasing, but at those words, I felt my own anger rise. I was a witch, too. Besides, Violet was my cousin, and nobody spoke to her that way, not on my turf.

  They do say the best defense is a good offense. I crossed my arms and stalked toward her. “Maybe you should go to the police and admit that you’ve been vandalizing Violet’s property and harassing her. What you’re doing is illegal.”

  She looked as though I had slapped her. And then she laughed, a very humorless laugh. “She must’ve put a spell on you. Didn’t you hear me? Your assistant is a witch.”

  I moved my hands to my hips. “There’s a word that rhymes with witch, and that is what you’re being right now.”

  She drew in her breath on a sharp gasp. “How dare you?” I felt anger crackling from me, Nyx and Violet. My fingertips were getting hot. If I wasn’t careful, I’d ignite.

  A male voice intruded. “Lucy? Is everything all right?”

  Ian Chisholm stepped in. I didn’t think I’d ever been so happy to see him. “Why, Detective Inspector Chisholm.” I enunciated the words very clearly for Nora’s benefit.

  Ian looked slightly startled that I was referring to him by his official title, but a quick glance at our tense trio must’ve clued him in.

  He said, “My auntie’s asked me to pick her up some wool. But I can wait, if you’re busy.”

  He hadn’t suggested coming back, for which I was grateful. Nora glared at both of us and said, “This isn’t over.” And then she swept out.

  Violet slumped into the chair behind the cash desk as though her legs wouldn’t hold her up anymore. “I’m so sick of this. I’m going to have to move.”

  Ian asked, “What’s going on? That woman’s from Moreton-Under-Wychwood, isn’t she?”

  I nodded, feeling a little shaken myself. I glanced at Violet, but she shook her head slightly. She did not want to get into the witch thing with Ian. I didn’t, either. Hopefully Nora would think better of going to the police with her crazy notion that witches had killed her friend.

  Hopefully.

  “She had a complaint about the knitting lessons I’m running there.”

  I didn’t think he believed me, but since two pairs of witch eyes were currently focused on him, he let it go.

  The second knitting lesson we ran in Moreton-Under-Wychwood was even better attended than the first one. The woman who’d blamed Violet when both her online dates had canceled on her showed up. She came up to my table and sighed. “Since it looks like I’ll be single for some time, I might as well take up knitting.” Her hair looked as though she’d styled it with a lawn mower, and she had what looked like dribbled egg yolk down the front of her shirt. “I should get a cat, too, for company.”

  Since I’d recently taken up knitting and now had a cat, I treated her comments as though they were meant to be funny. Hahaha.

  I still had a few kits left, and Sylvia was perfectly happy to take in some new students. She obviously thought word had spread about what a great teacher she was, and perhaps it had, but I suspected Jason’s arrest for murder had a lot to do with it. Here, anyone in the community who wanted to could sit in a circle, knitting and gossiping.

  And it was certainly juicy gossip. To my surprise, Nora showed up. Instead of apologizing for her dreadful behavior in my shop, she glanced around pointedly. “That witch isn’t here, is she?”

  “No.” I didn’t bother telling her she was being taught to knit by vampires.

  Her eyes were swollen and red, but I didn’t have much sympathy for her, knowing how unhappy she and Jase had made her own husband.

  News had spread faster than a flu bug that Jason had been about to lose his business and home and that his wife had carried life insurance worth a million pounds.

  A woman with a rather penetrating voice was currently regaling everyone with the details, though it was clear everyone present already knew. Her knitting needles rattled away at the same rate as her conversation.

  Her neighbor said, “But surely there are better ways to do away with a spouse than a bow and arrow. It’s so brutal, and he could easily have wounded her instead of killing her.”

  Rapidly, the first speaker counted her row of stitches before replying. “If my Bert had lost all our money, I’d bash his head in with a frying pan. I suppose that’s rather brutal, isn’t it?”

  Nora had been listening to the woman chattering away in gathering wrath and suddenly strode forward into the group. Instant, awkward silence fell over everyone, and half the needles stopped moving. The other half kept going so the clicking sounded like the needles had carried on gossiping without us. She glared at the woman who’d just threatened to bash her husband over the head. “Jason didn’t kill Elizabeth. He’d never kill her.” She turned a slow circle to take in every person in the knitting circle. “He’d never hurt anyone.”

  Chapter 21

  Nora looked quite wild. Her hair was a mess of tangles, her eyes wide and underlined with dark circles, and the bottoms of her jeans were crusty with dried mud. She glanced around. “I came here today to get some help from all of you. You�
��re supposed to be our friends. Jason’s a good man. How many of you have bought your cars from him? Enjoyed the excellent service that he gives?”

  This didn’t elicit an immediate response, and finally one of the women said, “But selling cars is his business. I never heard that he gave us any discounts or treated us special in any way because we were his neighbors.”

  She tried another tack. “What about all the things he’s done for this community? How many of your children has he coached?”

  “He coached my son and daughter in archery.”

  There was deathly silence. I thought we were all picturing poor Elizabeth dead, an arrow sticking out of her chest.

  “Just because a man is a good archer doesn’t mean he’s a killer.”

  Very gently, Hilary Beaumont said, “But it doesn’t look very good when his wife is killed with an arrow. We all know that Jason is an expert archer.” She looked at Nora with kindness but also a hint of steel. “I’m very sorry for you, Nora, but you must see the evidence against him is quite damning. His financial situation was precarious. He was close to losing everything, and Elizabeth’s death conveniently wipes out all his debts.”

  “But he loved Elizabeth.”

  Hilary Beaumont put her knitting aside. “But she wasn’t the only woman he loved, was she, Nora?”

  Nora threw up her hands. “I can’t believe you people. I can’t stand and listen to this. You go back to your gossiping and backstabbing. I know he didn’t do it, and I’m going to prove it.”

  She turned and began heading for the door, and her face was such a picture of tragedy that I felt some reluctant sympathy for her even though I thought that she and Jason had made their respective spouses very unhappy.

  “Wait.”

  At the commanding tone, Nora turned. It was Joanna who had put down her knitting and stood up. She walked over and put an arm around Nora’s shoulders, drawing her back to the group. “Nora’s right. Jason’s been our neighbor and our friend and a pillar of our community for twenty-five years. He and Elizabeth were planning a cruise for their silver wedding anniversary. The police evidence is only circumstantial. Lots of people get into financial trouble and don’t kill their spouses. I love Moreton-Under-Wychwood. I love this community, how safe it feels, and how much we all care about each other. Maybe it’s time for us to reach out and help one of our neighbors who is in trouble.”

  Around the circle, women glanced at one another, gauging what the other knitters were thinking.

  The woman who’d threatened to bash her own husband over the head if he ever lost her money paused with her knitting in her lap. “Well, what do you want us to do?”

  Joanna seemed at a loss.

  Sylvia looked significantly at me. I supposed I had the most experience of murder of anyone in this room, unfortunately. I stood up. “The police believe Jason murdered his wife because he had the means and the motive. But no one saw him do it. The best way to prove he didn’t kill Elizabeth is to find out what exactly he was doing at the moment she died.”

  I came out from behind my table and went to stand on the other side of Joanna. “Did anyone see Jason around the time that the murder took place?”

  Dierdre Gunn said, “I think I saw him earlier that day, but who keeps track of time at a village fête?”

  I thought if anyone had kept track of Jason’s movements, it would’ve been Nora. “Nora? Do you know where he was at that time?”

  She bit her lip and looked miserable. Also guilty. “He was home, packing.” She looked down at the floor, and her previously pale countenance took on a ruddy hue. “We were going on a golf trip.”

  “Do you have any proof that he was actually there?”

  Her head came up with that, and she glared at me. “I’ve already told you, Jason’s a good man. If he told me he was at home packing, then that’s where he was.”

  Of course she wasn’t helping his case at all. Merely underlining the fact that Jason had been a poor husband and likely an adulterous one too.

  Hilary said, “From Jason and Elizabeth’s house to the village hall, where the arrow was shot from, is an easy walk. He could have slipped down the back lane and got into the hall. No one would have seen him. We were all at the fair.”

  Nora made a sound like a shriek. “You’re supposed to be helping me prove that he didn’t do it, not tightening the noose around his neck.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry for you, Nora. I really am. But Joanna said it herself. We are a close-knit community, and we all love that we feel safe here. I’m sorry, but if Jason did this terrible thing, then he needs to go to jail. Not only to pay for Elizabeth’s death, but so the rest of us can sleep at night.”

  “But he didn’t do it, I tell you, he didn’t. He couldn’t.”

  There was a terrible silence, and then Joanna spoke again. “Here’s what I think we should do. Every one of us must go home and ask everybody in our household—that’s husbands, children, elderly parents who didn’t get out to the fête—did anyone see Jason? Did they see him pottering around in the garden? Perhaps he was carrying golf clubs out to his car?”

  Nora nodded, eagerly. “If we can prove that he was at home during that crucial few minutes, then we can prove that he’s innocent.” She looked around. “A man cannot be in two places at once.”

  Those words rattled in my head and echoed. Where had I heard them before? I remembered then that the former police officer, Harry Bloom, had said the very same thing about the cold-case murder.

  While everyone was gathered here and already tasked with trying to prove Jason innocent, I said, “I understand a man was murdered here thirty years ago and that case was never solved.”

  The woman who’d been gossiping so loudly when Nora came in nodded her head vigorously. “Yes. Grayson Timmins. It was a dreadful thing. I was frightened for weeks. We all were. He was bludgeoned to death by someone who was trying to steal his valuables.”

  I said, “I’m sure it was investigated thoroughly at the time, but those of you who were here then, did you see any strangers in the village that day?”

  “That’s what was so peculiar about it. No one could recall seeing anyone in the neighborhood who shouldn’t have been.” She chuckled, and I thought she was half laughing at herself. “And believe me, Lucy, in this village, everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

  “Can anyone think of any reason why these two murders might be related?”

  From the way they were glancing amongst themselves, I knew people had been debating this topic already in private.

  Nora said, “But Jason wasn’t even here then.”

  “Exactly,” I said. I didn’t like Jason much, but if he was innocent, he shouldn’t go to jail. No one said anything, and so I continued, “If we could find a connection between Grayson Timmins and Elizabeth Palmer, maybe we’d be able to find out if the same person killed them both.”

  Dierdre Gunn picked up her knitting again and stabbed the needles through her ball of wool before pushing the whole thing into her knitting bag. “Those witches were here thirty years ago. Maybe Jason didn’t do it. Maybe it was witchcraft.”

  Oh, this was not going in the direction I wanted it to. I was about to argue when fortunately Joanna spoke up. “I don’t think the police are going to be interested in our theories about witchcraft.”

  Joanna nodded in my direction. “Lucy thought up an excellent idea. Let’s work together to help Jason.” As the gossipy woman was about to argue with her, she put up her hand. “If he’s guilty, I’m the first one to believe he should be punished. But I believe, as Nora does, that Jason isn’t a killer. Let’s help our neighbor. If he’s innocent, let’s prove it. We’ll all go home and talk to our loved ones tonight. Let’s reconvene here on Friday. Is that convenient?”

  Everyone nodded.

  She glanced at me and Clara and Sylvia. “And would you three be available to come back? You seem like an integral part of our knitting circle now.”

  W
e were certainly an integral part of the sleuthing circle, and I for one wanted to make sure the right people were punished.

  I glanced at Sylvia, and she nodded, such a slight up and down of her chin that I knew she really didn’t want to come back, and I thought I understood why.

  If a community was going to go all hysterical about a few witches in their midst, what would they do if they discovered they were being taught knitting by vampires?

  When the vampires and I had wedged ourselves back into Gran’s car, and I’d managed to navigate to the route that led me back to Oxford, I asked the other two for their thoughts.

  Sylvia had been more engaged in teaching knitting, but Clara had had a perfect opportunity to observe quietly. However, Clara always deferred to Sylvia, and so she let the glamorous former actress speak first. Sylvia said, “Frankly, I find this whole affair quite puzzling. We’ve got a dead woman whose husband had all the reasons in the world to do away with her, so it seems as though the police must’ve arrested the correct person. I feel that bringing in this cold case from decades ago is simply muddying the waters.”

  “Clara?” I asked.

  Clara always liked to think the best of people, which could be surprisingly helpful. She didn’t disappoint me now. “It was nice of Joanna to support poor Nora. The woman is clearly distraught.”

  Sylvia asked, “But is she distraught because she’s beginning to suspect that the man she loves is a murderer?”

  I thought that was a really good point. And this was where Clara being so nice about everyone paid off. She said, “But Nora wasn’t the only one who believed in his innocence. These people have lived with each other for such a long time, and they all know Jason and knew Elizabeth. I felt there was quite a bit of support for him. Of course, ladies always gossip over their knitting, but I didn’t sense any fear when Jason’s name came up. And you’d expect people to be frightened, wouldn’t you? If they’d been living with a murderer?”