Knit of the Living Dead

by Peggy Ehrhart

  As if determined to focus the conversation away from what was probably on everyone’s mind, Nell spoke up once yarn was in play and needles were reliably clicking. “I’ve steamed and frozen my pumpkin,” she said. “All ready for Thanksgiving.”

  “Pumpkin spice!” Holly’s hands were busy with her knitting—another stocking for the children at the women’s shelter. Otherwise, Pamela was sure the exclamation would have been accompanied by an enthusiastic hand clap. “I know you make your own pumpkin pies and I hope you’ll teach me this year.”

  “Of course.” Nell aimed a smile toward where Holly sat on the sofa.

  “You don’t have to wait till Thanksgiving for pumpkin spice.” Pamela felt the love seat quiver as Bettina leaned forward. “The Co-Op has pumpkin-spice crumb cake now—and the other day they had pumpkin-spice doughnuts too.”

  “Pumpkin spice is one of the best things about fall,” Holly said. “It’s such a magical flavor.”

  Nell’s smile grew indulgent. “It’s just a blend of various spices, dear. You can mix it up yourself.”

  “Will you show me? When we make our pies together?” Holly’s dimple appeared as her smile revealed her perfect teeth. Her dark hair was pulled into a casual bun tonight. Bronze-colored earrings that resembled tiny abstract mobiles dangled from her earlobes.

  Before Nell could answer, a sound that was not exactly a word erupted from Roland. The sound apparently signaled displeasure, because Roland followed it up by saying, “I, for one, will be quite glad when Thanksgiving is finally over and we can stop hearing about pumpkin spice.” He paused to gaze first at Nell and then at Holly, who sat next to him on the sofa. Next to Holly, Karen raised a delicate hand to her mouth, risking a dropped stitch as she abandoned a needle.

  Ignoring Karen’s alarm, Roland went on. “Of course, then what will it be?” he said in a disapproving tone that implied he knew the answer. “Peppermint? And the Christmas music has started already.”

  Holly’s smile turned into a laugh. “No need to be grumpy,” she said. “Most people like Christmas. And we’re all thinking about it already, aren’t we? So why not have the music? Nell and I are making the stockings for the children at the shelter, and Pamela’s making the sweater for her mother, and Bettina’s making the sweater for Wilfred.”

  “And you’re making the sweater for Melanie,” Bettina chimed in with a pointed look in Roland’s direction. “So don’t be such a spoilsport.”

  Seeming chastened, Roland addressed himself to his knitting as if it required the focus he might give to studying a legal brief, and no one said anything for a time. But the silence wasn’t the meditative silence of knitters in thrall to the rhythm of their needles. It was an awkward silence, one in which perhaps a few knitters wished they had spoken a bit more gently.

  So Holly lowered her knitting to her lap, leaned toward Roland, and tipped her head to study the swath of knitting hanging from his needles. “I really do love that camel color,” she exclaimed. “You made a good choice.”

  “It wasn’t my choice.” Roland’s busy fingers didn’t pause. “Melanie picked it out.”

  Undeterred, Holly pressed on. “And you already finished the sleeve you were working on last week! What is that? The back?”

  “The front, actually.”

  “Are they different?” Holly raised her head to gaze earnestly at Roland.

  “Of course they’re different. It’s a V-neck sweater.”

  “Melanie is going to love it, I’m sure.” Holly resumed her previous posture and took up her knitting again. The stocking she was working on was bright red and she was just approaching the heel. “I’ve made up my mind,” she said suddenly. “My next project is going to be a Christmas present for Desmond. A sweater, but I just have to decide what color.” She leaned toward Roland again. “Maybe camel . . .”

  Roland did set his knitting down now. And then he raised his left wrist and gave his arm a twitch to expose his impressive watch. “Eight o’clock,” he announced. “I believe it’s time for our break.”

  Pamela and Bettina were on their feet even before Nell rose. And the three motioned to Holly and Karen to stay put. As they headed for the kitchen, Pamela could hear Holly asking Roland if he thought camel would be a good color for Desmond’s sweater. Or maybe navy-blue?

  When they reached the kitchen, Nell spooned coffee from the canister on her counter into the basket of her ancient aluminum percolator. She added water, set the percolator on the stove, and lit the burner under it. On a second burner, she started water boiling for tea and then measured tea leaves into the squat brown teapot that waited on the table.

  “You can serve the nibble,” she said as she worked. “Pamela or Bettina. Knives are in the drawer to the left of the sink.”

  Bettina fetched a knife from the drawer and bent over the Pyrex baking dish on the counter. “This looks—and smells—yummy,” she said. “But I’m not sure I know what it is.”

  “Bread pudding, of course,” Nell said. “I hate to waste perfectly good food—and when leftovers of that nice bread the Co-Op calls country white go stale, bread pudding is the perfect thing to do with it.”

  “What else is in here?” Bettina was still bent over the baking dish.

  The surface of the bread pudding was rippled. On looking closer, Pamela realized the effect was created by torn bits of bread. But the bits of bread had been bathed in a pale golden liquid which, on being baked, had shaded to a toasty brown around the edges of the baking dish. Here and there, raisins punctuated the ripples.

  “Eggs and milk, vanilla and raisins.” Nell stepped toward the table and bestowed a fond look on her creation. “A tiny bit of sugar, though it’s hardly necessary with the raisins.”

  The teakettle’s whistle summoned her to the stove then. She seized the kettle and edged back to the table, where she lifted the lid from the teapot and tipped the kettle over it. A cloud of steam rose as boiling water submerged the waiting tea leaves.

  Bettina studied the bread pudding for a moment and tapped the knife blade along the edge of the baking dish, as if mentally dividing the bread pudding’s length into six sections. Then she cut, and cut again crosswise, making twelve pieces. Pamela, meanwhile, had found a spatula in the drawer the knife came from.

  The coffee had been perking for a few minutes at this point, contributing both a cheerful gurgle and a bracing aroma to the kitchen’s atmosphere.

  As Bettina held out the plates one by one, Pamela eased a square of bread pudding onto each one. Nell had set out seven plates, suggesting Harold would join the group for the nibble portion of the evening.

  “Shall we serve them just like this?” Bettina asked, sounding a bit skeptical—though to Pamela, the bread pudding squares looked perfectly appealing, with the strata of bread layers interspersed with raisins visible on the cut sides.

  “The bread pudding is still warm.” Nell turned away from the stove, where she had just replaced the teakettle, and faced Bettina. “Maybe warm enough to melt ice cream”—a tiny closemouthed smile teased her lips—“but I don’t know if anyone would be interested.”

  “I’ll ask them!” Bettina exclaimed, and she set off down the hallway.

  Meanwhile, Nell was filling coffee cups as Pamela checked the sugar bowl, with its stylized wheat-and-wildflower trim. It was nearly full, and Nell directed her to the refrigerator for cream to fill the matching cream pitcher.

  Bettina returned with Harold in tow. She announced that everyone wanted ice cream with their bread pudding, and Harold fetched a carton of vanilla ice cream from the freezer. He and Bettina set to work adding scoops of ice cream to the squares of bread pudding and delivering the plates to the living room. Pamela made sure that everyone had napkins and silverware.

  After many trips back and forth, Nell, Harold, Pamela, and Bettina took their places with the other Knit and Nibblers around Nell’s large coffee table, which offered ample room for cups and saucers and plates of bread pudding. The sugar bowl and
cream pitcher passed from hand to hand and soon everyone was settled, ready to sample Nell’s frugal creation and with coffee or tea sugared and creamed to perfection.

  “This is just awesome,” Holly cooed. For her first bite, she’d carved off a forkful of the bread pudding and scooped up a bit of ice cream as well. “I honestly and truly have never tasted bread pudding before and now I’ve learned another amazing thing about cooking from Nell.” She beamed at Nell, who had resumed her place on the love seat to the left of the fireplace. “Using stale bread! Who would think of such a thing?”

  “Lots of people had to, dear,” Nell said. “They had no choice.” But she tempered the admonition with a smile.

  Pamela had eaten bread pudding, but she suspected it was one of those dishes for which hardly any cook consulted a cookbook. Her grandmother had mixed up batches using a recipe known only to herself and which had perhaps been learned at the side of her own grandmother, who learned it from her grandmother before her.

  So, she tasted Nell’s bread pudding wondering if, like handwriting, it would bear the mark of its creator’s personality. The texture, thanks to the egg and milk, was rich and smooth—as if the stale bread had been transformed into a dense cake. Sugar had been added, but not so much as to overpower the raisins, which were themselves sweet, and plump with moisture they’d absorbed from the milk. The flavor hinted at cinnamon too, and the vanilla Nell had mentioned.

  “Very good,” Pamela commented to no one in particular, because Bettina was perched on the very edge of the love seat and was leaning precipitously forward, the better to converse across the coffee table with Nell and Harold. The three were deep in a discussion of a topic Bettina was researching for the Advocate: Arborville’s ongoing attempts to ban people seeking a shortcut to the George Washington Bridge from the town’s residential streets.

  Pamela followed her taste of the bread pudding with a sip of coffee. The perked coffee was stronger and a little more acidic than the drip coffee she had come to prefer. But knowing it was the product of Nell’s ancient aluminum percolator and drinking it in tandem with such a homey treat as bread pudding made it taste just right.

  Snatches of the conversation about the bridge traffic drifted her way, but she was happy simply to listen as she alternated eating and sipping, enjoying the way the vanilla ice cream smoothed out the aggressive flavor of the coffee.

  On the sofa, Roland seemed content—perhaps even relieved—to be left to his own thoughts too. Dark head bent toward blond as Holly and Karen conferred earnestly about Karen’s search for the perfect dining room table. Karen and Dave Dowling had furnished their fixer-upper house with Ikea and hand-me-downs initially and were gradually upgrading.

  As Pamela added her empty plate to the others already on the coffee table, Nell half rose and surveyed the group. “Would anyone like more of anything?” she asked. “There’s plenty in the kitchen.”

  “No, thanks . . . quite satisfied . . . delicious but full” came the responses, but Harold popped to his feet anyway. He hurried toward the entry and vanished down the hallway that led to the kitchen. In a moment he was back, bearing a large wooden bowl. As he approached the group and lowered it, Pamela could see that it was full of tantalizing foil-and cellophane-wrapped tidbits.

  “Oh, Harold!” Nell exclaimed, half annoyed and half laughing. “You told me the trick-or-treaters took it all.”

  “All that we had out”—Harold tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile—“but I had some in reserve—in case we ran short.” He tipped the bowl toward Roland and said, “Care for a piece?”

  Roland dipped in a hand and took a foil-wrapped truffle. Harold continued along, offering candy to Holly and Karen and then edging between the end of the sofa and the love seat to extend the bowl to Bettina and Pamela. At last, he retreated toward the other love seat, where he’d been sitting with Nell, and lowered the bowl to the coffee table right in front of his wife.

  But before it even made contact with the table’s surface, Nell was on her feet. “We’ve all had quite enough sugar for one evening,” she said, no longer only half-annoyed. “And you know perfectly well I don’t want any candy. Please take that back to the kitchen.”

  “But our guests . . .” Harold waved a hand around the little cluster of knitters.

  “Maybe just one more,” Bettina murmured, reaching across the table for a mini candy bar.

  “I’ll collect a few plates then,” Harold said, and Pamela leaned forward to help stack plates and consolidate silverware.

  He headed for the kitchen with a small pile of plates, and Pamela followed with the rest. But as they passed back through the entry on their way to collect cups and saucers, they both stopped at once.

  Harold stepped closer to the front door and cocked his head, as if listening. Pamela listened too. From somewhere outside came the muffled sound of someone shrieking. Harold opened the door, and the shrieking was suddenly much more audible.

  Pamela glanced toward the living room to see if the sound now carried far enough to have piqued the curiosity of the other Knit and Nibblers. But no heads were turned in the direction of the entry, and the cheerful hum of conversation suggested that no one had noticed anything.

  Harold stepped out onto the porch and Pamela followed. The shrieking was definitely coming from a woman, a hysterical woman. And from the direction of the sound, the confrontation—assuming she was shrieking at someone—was taking place in Brainard Covington’s driveway. Brainard’s porch light was on, but the light didn’t reach that far. Besides, his car was parked at the end of the driveway, and it hid the figure—or more likely, figures—from view.

  Pamela caught a word here and there. The diatribe seemed to be about love, love denied, and Brainard’s ambitions for his son, coupled with resentment of both Brainard and his late wife. The voice strained and faltered, rising and falling in pitch. Pamela felt her own throat tighten in response.

  Harold and Pamela looked at each other. In his gentle face, Pamela saw a mirror of her own feelings. How miserable this poor woman must be! Then, from behind them, came another voice—a practical no-nonsense voice.

  “What are you two doing out there?” the voice said. It was Nell. She joined them on the porch, but before she could say anything else, a final, desperate shriek reached their ears. It resolved into words: “Your son should have had a different—” Father? Mother? The end of the sentence was muffled by sobbing.

  “Oh my,” Nell said. She clutched Harold’s hand. “We should call 911. It was just last week that—”

  But it seemed another murder was not in the offing. A shadowy figure emerged from behind Brainard’s car and made its way to the passenger-side door. It opened the door, and a light went on in the car. It retreated into the deeper darkness and reemerged escorting a smaller figure, bundled in a coat and knit hat, sobbing more quietly now and with face buried in mittened hands.

  The figure was docile as Brainard seated her—it was a her—in the car. A few moments later, he had taken his place behind the steering wheel, and the car was on its way down the street.

  “No need to involve ourselves in our neighbors’ business.” Nell was her sensible self again. She went on, “We have knitting to tend to.” She’d left the door slightly ajar, and now she seized the knob as she prepared to follow her own directive.

  The door swung back a few inches, then stopped with a thump. From behind the door came a startled squeal. Nell peered around the edge of the door. After a moment, she eased it back to reveal Bettina and Holly, with Karen hovering a few paces behind Holly.

  “We have knitting to tend to,” Nell repeated, stepping over the threshold. Harold stood aside and waved Pamela through the doorway with a courtly gesture, then he followed her into the house. With Nell leading the way, the small group proceeded back to the living room, where Roland waited on the sofa.

  Bettina fell in step beside Pamela and gave her a wide-eyed look that combined curiosity and alarm. I heard most of it, she mouthed s
oundlessly.

  But Nell’s manner made it plain that whatever had just happened across the street was not to become fodder for conversation. “I believe you were about to clear away the cups and saucers, Harold,” she said as she lowered herself onto the love seat where she’d been sitting.

  Pamela and Bettina had reached their seats as well, but Pamela stooped toward the coffee table for her own cup and saucer.

  “No need, no need,” Harold said cheerfully. He bustled about, attending to his chore as knitting resumed, though with a bit of discreet whispering between Holly and Karen.

  Chapter 17

  Pamela and Bettina saved their discussion for later. As soon as they’d climbed into Pamela’s car, though, and even before Pamela had inserted her key in the ignition, Bettina spoke. “I could barely concentrate and I’m sure I dropped at least a dozen stitches,” she said as she grabbed Pamela’s arm. “Do you think that could have been Felicity? You saw things. I just heard them.”

  Pamela took a sharp breath, like a backward sigh. “She was muffled up in a coat and knitted hat—and mittens—and she was hiding her face in her hands . . .” She shook her head sadly. “So there was no way to identify . . . her.”

  “The voice was definitely a woman’s,” Bettina agreed. “But when you’re shrieking like that, you don’t sound like yourself.”

  “Who else could it be, though?” Pamela murmured. “The things she was talking about—shrieking about, really. Love being denied and it’s Brainard’s fault and Brainard’s son should have had a different . . . it sounded like ‘father.’ ”

  “Or ‘mother’?” It was too dark to see Bettina’s face, but her voice conveyed the uncertainty that Pamela was sure her expression revealed.

  “Why ‘mother’?” Pamela thought for a minute, trying out the idea, even though Bettina hadn’t sounded very certain about what she’d heard. “Maybe Felicity blamed them both,” she said suddenly. “If Felicity is the killer, maybe Mary’s murder wasn’t a case of mistaken identity.”