Stitches and Witches: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Vampire Knitting Club Book 2)

by Nancy Warren

  There were a couple of coffee shop chain stores on High Street, as I’m sure they knew, but I directed them there and the four of them left.

  Once they were gone, Sylvia fetched a chair from the back and sat beside the overwhelmed mother. The pair of them sat side-by-side knitting contentedly. I settled into my chair behind my desk holding the baby against me, his warm breath against my neck and his tiny hands clutching my blouse. It was a very pleasant half hour.

  The mother looked at her cell phone. “I must go. But thank you. I don’t think I could have coped for one more minute.”

  I had no worldly advice to give her. All I could offer was the chance to bring her baby anytime she needed a break.

  When she left, Sylvia said, “You’ve been practising your magic I see. Your grandmother will be pleased.”

  “I’ve had this ability forever. I never knew it was special.”

  She smiled. “A great deal of magic is simply drawing from the natural world, and communicating at a deeper level. That’s what you were doing with that child, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, I think it was.”

  “I’m enjoying watching your powers strengthen. I wonder where you’ll end up?”

  I wondered that myself, some days it all seemed overwhelming.

  CHAPTER 15

  I was reading the surprisingly glowing report on Katie from Australia when Rafe appeared like a puff of black smoke at my elbow. He didn't actually materialize, but he was so soft-footed and untroubled by doors and locks that it always appeared that way to me. He said, "You're looking serious."

  "Not serious, puzzled. Katie, aka Katya, is a terrible waitress but an excellent knitter."

  "It's good to have a hobby in jail. Helps pass the time."

  That’s probably why I was looking serious. “I don't think she is a killer. And, furthermore, Nyx likes her."

  Nyx was currently rubbing herself against his legs and he looked down. "Nyx is a very poor judge of character." Then he picked the cat up. She crawled up and over his shoulder and hung there like a sack of grain, if grain could purr.

  "I'm thinking about hiring Katie."

  "Why?"

  "Because she can knit, and she has an excellent reference from a previous knitting shop. She took that tangle I’d made and turned it into an actual sock. It was magic."

  He looked unimpressed. "Perhaps it was magic. Maybe she's one of your sisters?"

  I stared at him. "There are spells to untangle knitting?" Why had that never occurred to me? That heavy, ornate grimoire was full of love spells and forgetfulness spells, spells for finding lost items and many ways to curse your enemies, but I didn’t recall seeing anything about untangling botched knitting. If I'd known I could've used magic I would have done.

  "Ask your grandmother, I'm sure it's possible."

  I felt my mouth take on the shape of a pout. "Gran never told me about such a spell."

  "I suspect it's because she wants you to learn how to knit."

  "She was much nicer when she was alive." It wasn't true, but I was enjoying my pout.

  "We know so little about Katie, Lucy, she could well turn out to be a murderer."

  I didn't think she had any reason to murder me, but then she didn’t seem to have a reason to kill the colonel, either. "She did let drop a very interesting piece of information. There was rat poison in the kitchen."

  “I’m no expert, but I don't think that will turn out to be the poison. First it’s got a very strong flavor. Tea wouldn’t be enough to mask it. And the victim would take longer to die."

  I really didn’t want to dwell on that mental picture. "I keep wondering who would want Colonel Montague dead."

  "I’ve been asking around. The old boy’d been acting irrationally. Possibly from dementia. Until the autopsy’s completed it will be impossible to say what disease he suffered from. It could be Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, even bipolar, but he’d taken to spending vast sums of money on extremely peculiar purchases. He bought a racehorse with no background in racing. Then a vintage Aston Martin and he was talking about buying property in Ibiza. The man didn’t even like travel.”

  “Could he have mixed up his medication somehow and poisoned himself?”

  “No. Sorry, Lucy. I wish, for your sake, I could spin this as an accident, but he was definitely murdered. I had a look at his sons. Neither of them are well-to-do. Perhaps they were protecting their inheritance."

  "What about the wife?"

  “She'd have the same motive. But her grief and shock seemed so genuine, I'm not sure anyone's that good an actress."

  I had to agree. She’d seemed ill with grief.

  I told him about Miss Everly and her visit to my shop. "I don't know why she wants to stay. Does she really want to comfort the widow? The woman who married the man she loved?"

  "Who can say?"

  "But did she kill him? Finally getting her revenge after all these years. Maybe she can't leave the scene of the crime. She's never murdered anyone before and she’s fascinated by the aftermath. Too much so to resume her dull life.”

  “Killing a man isn’t as exciting as you seem to think it is,” he said drily. No doubt he knew from experience, and I did not want the details.

  “Do you think it's impossible?"

  He treated me to his truly charming smile. "I think your theory is a little far-fetched. But if Miss Everly invites you for tea, I suggest you decline the invitation."

  My half hour of rocking the child have given me time to think and I decided to give Katie a job. Sure, she might be a murderer, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Just as I hoped she’d give me the benefit of the doubt if she ever discovered I was a witch.

  And our downstairs neighbors were all vampires.

  I was watching as yet another young woman, walking by the shop, stopped and did a double-take, then pulled out her cell phone and snapped a picture of Nyx, lounging in the bowl of colored wool. Since I could never sell the stuff she’d slept in, I’d taken to putting stray wool in the bowl. As the woman posted the picture, I decided to put our shop brochures in the window beside the bowl so anyone posting photos of the cat in the shop window would be advertising Cardinal Woolsey’s. “I should put you on payroll,” I told Nyx as I positioned the brochures strategically around her. She opened one eye, and then rolled over, exposing her belly and looking even cuter. As I was patting her, I noticed Florence Watt and Gerald Pettigrew stroll by arm in arm. That romance hadn’t faltered, in spite of Mary Watt’s hostility and the murder.

  They saw me and waved, cheerily. I waved back, thinking how nice it was to see them so happy together.

  Between customers, I put together a few sweater kits, something Gran had taught me to do. I took a pattern and collected all the supplies necessary, then packaged the set. It saved the customer time and trouble.

  I also checked for special orders. We shipped worldwide and I noticed there was an order from Scotland and another from Canada. I was collecting the wools when another order came in. This one local, with delivery requested. We delivered within Oxford if the customer was unable to come to the store for some reason, mainly as a courtesy. We didn’t charge much and I would either run the order over on my bicycle, or brave the traffic in Gran’s little car.

  Fortunately, this order was near enough that I could bike, but when I read it through carefully, my eyes widened. It was from Elspeth Montague. I doubted there were many Elspeth Montagues in Oxford, and Gran had said she’d been a customer in earlier times. Was it possible the colonel’s wife was taking up knitting, once again?

  After all our stratagems for gaining entry to her home, here she was asking me to go to her.

  I filled all three orders, and, as soon as the shop closed, I put on my coat and took Elspeth Montague’s parcel. The others I’d put in the post tomorrow.

  It was chilly outside as I got on my bike and headed to St. John Street. The homes there were terraced, Georgian gentility. Many had been broken up into student hous
ing, but the house I found myself in front of still looked to be intact. I rang the bell, wondering what I should say or do, when the door opened and Elspeth Montague stood there.

  The worst of her grief seemed to have passed, but she still looked pale and shaken. When she saw the Cardinal Woolsey’s bag, she smiled at me in what looked like relief. “Oh, thank you, dear. I’ve been beside myself for the past few days and suddenly thought how nice it would be to have a project. I can’t concentrate on anything, you see. Not the television, not a book. But knitting is so soothing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. For some people it really is.” I was not one of them, but this was neither the time nor the place for such a disclosure.

  I’d planned to ask subtle questions about the murder, but I found I couldn’t. All that came out of my mouth was, “How are you?”

  She seemed startled by the question and looked at me more closely. Then she nodded. “You were there. Weren't you?”

  “Yes. I’m so very sorry.”

  “He was never an easy man, my husband, but one is suddenly so lost without him.”

  I was nearly convinced that we could cross Elspeth off the list of possible murderers, but what of the rest of the family? “How are your children taking the tragedy?”

  Once more, she looked startled, and I supposed most people were too delicate to ask such direct questions. Especially strange delivery people who’d arrived by bicycle. “As well as can be expected.” Then she pressed her lips together as though trying not to cry. “The truth is, I think they’re relieved. It’s an awful thing to say, I know, but he wasn’t a very nice father.” She gasped, then, and almost grabbed the bag out of my hands. “Perhaps he wasn’t a very nice man.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t agree with her, but I wasn’t going to contradict her, as everything I’d heard about the man suggested he was a nasty old codger.

  “You charged my credit card, I think.”

  “Yes. Thank you. It’s all taken care of. I hope you enjoy knitting that sweater.”

  “I think it will soothe me. Thank you for bringing it to me. I can’t quite face going out, yet. People stare at one so.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”

  She nodded, thanked me again, and shut the door. I wheeled my bike around and then nearly fell off it when I saw the Irish woman who’d been in the tea shop when the colonel was murdered walking toward me. She might not have noticed me if I hadn’t nearly fallen, but when she glanced at my face, she jumped like a scared rabbit, and turned around and began briskly walking back the way she’d come.

  Did she think I hadn’t recognized her? Or that I didn’t want to talk to the woman who’d nearly had me arrested? I took after her on my bike. It wasn’t much of a contest. No matter how fast she walked, I was clearly going to overtake her. We had a ridiculous kind of race, where she walked faster and faster and I kept pace with her on my bike. We roared up St. John Street to Wellington Square, which was one of those hidden green spaces that were usually a delight to come upon.

  We speed-walked and cycled around the wrought iron fence surrounding the green space until there was an opening and she darted into the fenced garden. Since she was as good as entering a cage, I assumed she planned to stop running. I got off my bike and wheeled it into the gated park. There was no one else there on a chilly October evening at dusk. She walked ahead, catching her breath and I followed her to a wooden bench beneath a tree. I settled my bike against the bench and faced her, with my hands on my hips. I remembered the humiliation of being carted off in the back of a police car and was not feeling warm and fuzzy toward this woman.

  “You slipped that newspaper article into my bag, didn’t you?”

  She didn’t answer. She was breathing hard and had a hand to her chest.

  I didn’t even think about how she might have killed a man and tried to frame me, and that, perhaps, telling her off here in a deserted park wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done. I was too mad to think clearly. “You’d better tell me exactly what you were doing in that tea shop and why you had that newspaper cutting. And it better be the truth.”

  She sat on the bench, quite suddenly. “I was planning to confront him,” she said, panting. “The colonel.”

  I was not impressed. “Confront? Or kill?”

  She shook her head. Then dug into the pocket of her camel coat. I flinched, wondering if she had something lethal in there, but she pulled out a pack of tissues and then blew her nose. Her cheeks were pink with the cold, or the exercise, maybe both. “I’d planned to confront him in public, in front of his wife. I swear to you, that’s all I was going to do. I was watching him, trying to get up my courage, when he fell ill.”

  I thought of the articles I’d read about the colonel. “Did he kill someone you loved?”

  She gave an unpleasant, jeering laugh. “Quite the opposite.”

  I’d been on my feet most of the day, I was tired, it was cold, and I didn’t feel like playing games. “What?”

  She put the tissues away and rested her hands in her lap. She had on gloves. I wished I’d thought to bring some. “He caused someone I love very much to be born.”

  I felt my eyes pop open; now, even my eyeballs were getting cold. “You had an affair with Colonel Montague?”

  “Not me. My sister.” She shook her head. “Foolish, romantic, Eileen. She came in daily to cook for him, you see. I think she really believed he’d be delighted when she found out she was expecting. Quite the opposite, of course. He was furious. Accused her of trying to trap him and acted like she was the one who’d done wrong. He fired her on the spot and wouldn’t have anything to do with her, or the babe.”

  I was sorry anyone had died the way the colonel had, but he really did seem like he’d been a bad man.

  She shook her head, sadly. “Those were different times. Our da said she’d betrayed her own people, going with an Englishman. Her friends weren’t much better. In the end, she left and moved to England. She kept the baby, to her credit. My niece, Sharon, is a wonderful woman. I’ve had her with me often, to give her mum a rest. But now my sister’s ill. Overwork and worry, never having enough money, have worn her out. I wanted to tell that awful man what he’d done, and demand he support the woman whose life he so nearly ruined.”

  It was a glib story, but I wasn’t convinced. A woman who would frame an innocent woman, like me, wasn’t completely trustworthy.

  No doubt she could read my doubts, even in the fading light, for she stood and faced me squarely. “I panicked when he died like that. I’d planned to push that article in his face, and tell him what I thought of him. I had photographs of the child to show his wife. But, I didn’t kill him, and when they said we had to go across the road, and turn out our pockets and handbags, I slipped the newspaper into your bag when no one was looking. You’d gone to make a phone call and it was done in the twinkle of an eye.”

  Maybe a twinkle of her eye. “They took me to the police station and questioned me.”

  Her gaze sank, so she was looking somewhere near my knees. “I’m sorry for that. It was wrong of me. And cowardly.” She took a deep breath. “Shall I tell the police? Get you out of trouble?”

  I was tempted, but I shook my head. “They believed me that it wasn’t mine. I think they may be looking for you, though, to help with their enquiries. You might be wise to tell them what you’ve told me.”

  She bit her lip, then nodded. “I must see the colonel’s wife, first. Then, when I’ve done that, I’ll go to the police.”

  “You’re not going to tell that poor, grieving widow that her husband was unfaithful, are you?”

  Her head came up at that and her eyes burned into mine. “Indeed, I am. She’s a right to know, and his daughter has a right to an inheritance. Her life has been so poor, you see. She’s had none of the advantages he should have provided her. Now, she’s a woman in her forties and she’s looking after her mother. They deserve that he should provide for them
, even if it’s from the grave.”

  “Oh, poor Elspeth,” I said.

  “Better it come from me, quietly, than from a solicitor.”

  “Can you prove he’s the father?”

  She gave another of those jeering laughs. “He wrote her letters, including one where he accuses her of trying to trap him into marriage. But we must demand a DNA test, before he’s buried, so you see it’s quite urgent.”

  “Well, try not to upset her too much.”

  Poor Elspeth.

  And poor Eileen and her daughter.

  I thought Elspeth was going to need her soothing knitting more than she’d imagined.

  CHAPTER 16

  When Katie arrived for her first shift the next day, she impressed me immediately by showing up ten minutes early. She carried a brown paper bag, which I had assumed was her lunch until she presented it to me. “Surprise.”

  I looked in the bag and there were my socks. Well, not my socks. Nothing resembling the mess I’d made. This was a pair of perfect socks.

  “I can’t believe you knit those so fast.” I immediately pulled off my shoes and slipped the socks on my feet. “And they fit perfectly,” I said, wiggling my toes in the warm, woolly socks.

  “I measured them against my own feet, thinking we were about the same size.” She looked as pleased as I felt and I hoped this meant we were off to a good start.

  Katie needed very little training, since she knew a lot more about knitting than I did, and seemed very conversant with the various wools and supplies. She didn’t even need much training on the cash register as she’d used a similar one at her last job.

  When we had a quiet lull with no customers, I said, “How is Jim doing?”

  “Great,” was the surprising reply. “He got a part in a play. Of course, it’s only community, and it doesn’t pay, but he’s stoked because it gives him something to do. Even though our names haven’t been in the papers, everybody in the food trade knows everybody else in Oxford. He’s got no hope of being hired anywhere, and, of course, we couldn’t leave if we wanted to until this is all cleared up.”