by Nancy Warren
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” And very glad I was doing my bit by giving her this job.
“Miss Watt came by with some money and told us how sorry she was things had turned out this way. We thought it was very decent of her.”
It was indeed decent. Could she be feeling guilty? I shook my head. I had to stop seeing guilty motives everywhere. Mary Watt was a lovely woman. She’d only wanted to help two employees who’d become embroiled in a very unfortunate event. Of course she hadn’t killed Colonel Montague. But then, who had? It seemed like loads of people had reason to hate the man and none had harmed him. Except, of course, that someone had.
CHAPTER 17
By lunch time, I was feeling quite pleased with my decision to hire Katie. She had a knack for selling. She wasn’t pushy at all, but, because she was such a good knitter herself, she was a lot more help to customers than I was. She could reassure them that they could indeed manage whatever project they were mulling over and, unlike Agatha, she didn’t despise our customers, which was a good thing.
She seemed to take a keen interest in their projects and helped answer tricky questions like whether this woman’s grandson, who was about her age, would prefer green or blue, chunky textured wool or smooth. Naturally, the customers felt more confident when she had approved their instincts or guided them gently to better choices. I wondered if our visitors thought it was odd that this quintessentially English shop was being run by an American and an Australian, but no one said a word, at least not to our faces.
Any fears I’d had that the tea shop next door being closed would affect business were soon discarded. In fact, after the first couple of days, we were as busy as ever.
More than one person came up to me looking hopeful. “Isn’t it a terrible shame about the tragedy next door?”
I muttered soothingly and noncommittally. I didn’t wish to gossip about the tragedy and I was keenly aware that Katie was, as far as I knew, a suspect. My bland politeness discouraged most of the nosy parkers. Katie was even more blunt. The couple of people who asked her searching questions got a blank stare and, “I’m Australian. I only started working here today.”
I had to hand it to her. She hadn’t lied, she’d just left out the part where she’d been working at Elderflower the day the colonel died.
I was thinking about telling Katie she could go for lunch when a woman in her late thirties came in. She had dark hair cropped short, and was wearing khaki trousers, a T-shirt, and a sweater that had come from a department store and certainly never been hand-knit. She glanced around the shop, and I went forward. I gave my standard greeting. “Good morning. Let us know if we can help you.”
“Thank you. I’ll just have a wander.”
She seemed to me not to be shopping so much as killing time and I was proved correct when the two customers in the shop had paid up and left. Now there was only Katie, me and the stranger. The woman made her way over to me. “Do you have anything for a beginner?”
I suggested a simple scarf. We even had some patterns we gave away for free, full of instructions. “Oh yes. Very nice.” Then she said, “I heard about the death next door at the tea shop. Isn’t it terrible?”
I agreed that it was terrible and then tried to bring the conversation back to knitting, but she was having none of it. “I understand you were there. My aunt and uncle were in the tea shop when it happened, you see, and they’re very shaken up about it. My aunt recognized you from the shop. They live not too far from here.” She made a vague gesture with her hand. “My aunt is so frightened that there’s a murderer on the loose that she can’t sleep. It must be terrible for you, being right next door.”
Was this woman simply a ghoul? Was she trying to pump me for information? What did she think I knew? “I’m very sorry for your aunt and uncle. Yes, it was terrible.”
“I think what makes it worse is that she really didn’t see anything. She said that you had a very good view of the death.”
Her words brought vivid memories back again and I felt as though I were once more watching Colonel Montague in his death throes. I must’ve shuddered. “Your aunt could have had my seat and welcome. I don’t have any idea who killed him, if that’s what your aunt wants to know. If I had I would’ve told the police right away.”
“Of course you would. It’s just that it’s funny. Sometimes we don’t realize everything we’ve seen. My aunt said that there were people walking back and forth and I wondered if you might’ve seen more than you’re aware of. Perhaps it would help you to talk it through?”
I didn’t like the way the woman was looking at me. This wasn’t an idle conversation—she was grilling me. I said, “Really, I’m trying to forget what happened, as much as I can.”
That wasn’t true of course. I couldn’t stop thinking about the poisoning and what I’d seen. I had as much interest in getting a murderer off the streets as anyone else, especially as they had done their terrible deed right next door to my shop and home. I certainly didn’t need some strange woman coming off the street and trying to interrogate me.
Obviously realizing she wasn’t going to get me to talk, she said, “There was a young couple working there, a chef and waitress. I heard they were brother and sister. You don’t know what happened to them, do you?”
From the corner of my eye I saw Katie go rigid, but I studiously kept my gaze on the woman’s face. “Why would I know?”
She was all smiles. “Oh, no reason, except that my aunt tells me Cardinal Woolsey’s is the heart of Harrington Street. She says everyone comes through here. I thought perhaps you might’ve heard.”
I hadn’t run the shop long shop long enough to know how to get rid of people. I wanted to send this dreadful woman out with a flea in her ear. I thought of that ridiculous phrase, the customer is always right, and how in this case the customer was rude, intrusive, and completely inappropriate. Also, it was very clear she had no intention of buying anything.
I tried to think of something to say that would get rid of her without sounding too rude when, fortunately, an older couple walked into the shop. Even more fortuitously, I recognized them. It was a nice lady I had helped the week before while her patient husband had sat in the visitor’s chair gently dozing. I even remembered their names. “Mr. and Mrs. Fotheringham. How are you today? Have you started work on that sweater for your granddaughter?”
You’d have thought I had a memory like a genius, remembering their names and what they’d bought, but I was beginning to recognize my customers, especially nice people like these.
Mrs. Fotheringham beamed at me. She was clearly pleased that I had remembered her. She said, “Bless you, my dear. I think it’s going to be lovely. The pale pink was a perfect choice. And can’t you just see the puff sleeves with her baby pudgy arms? I showed my daughter and she wants me to knit a matching sweater. So I thought I’d better come in while you’ve still got lots of wool.”
“Of course,” I said. “Let me help you.” The woman didn’t need my help, she knew exactly where the wool was and had a better idea of how many balls of the stuff she needed than I would, but I didn’t want to give the rude woman an excuse to stand there chatting to me and, to my absolute delight, I heard the door chime and when I turned, she was leaving.
Later, I recounted the story to my grandmother and Sylvia. They both stared at me as though I was particularly stupid. Gran said, “You have magic, dear. Use it.”
“You mean, there’s a spell for making people go away?”
“Hundreds of them I should think. You can make them go away permanently, fill their minds with the idea that they left a pot on the stove so they’ll run home and check. You could put an invisibility spell on the entire shop so that the woman can never find it again. Unless, of course, you’d like to do away with her permanently? Those spells are a little trickier.”
“No. No,” I said. “Not permanently. We’ve had enough of getting rid of people permanently around here. I wonder who she was?” I described her to the tw
o vampires, but neither seemed to recognize the description. I told them about the story of the aunt and uncle but they both agreed with me that it sounded like nonsense.
“Perhaps she’s a journalist?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “But wouldn’t she have told me? For all she knows, I’m one of those people who love to see their names in the paper or their pictures on TV.”
They both shook their heads. “Rafe might know.”
I found it constantly irritating that these two referred everything to Rafe. If our local vampires had a mayor, it was him. He seemed to be consulted on everything. His opinion held more weight than anyone else’s and whatever he decreed, they all rushed around to do his bidding. I found it thoroughly irritating.
I was even irritated that I’d asked him to go with me to Elderflower that day of the murder. He’d ended up being right on the spot of the crime. Which was foolish of me, because he was someone I could talk it through endlessly and he’d noticed things I hadn’t. Not that any of this putting our heads together had helped us solve the murder.
After the rude woman left, taking her story about her aunt and uncle with her, and Katie and I were alone in the shop again, I could see that her jaw was clenched and her shoulders up around her ears. I said, “Why don’t you go for lunch, now. Get something to eat, maybe take a walk, have a few cigarettes if you need them, but eat a peppermint or something before you come back, would you?” I did not want the place smelling of cigarette smoke.
She hadn’t been gone long, when Mary Watt came in the shop. My surprise must have shown on my face. I don’t think I’d ever seen her in Cardinal Woolsey’s before. “Miss Watt. How nice to see you.” I was naturally tempted to ask her how she was doing or how the investigation was coming along, but, having been grilled myself so unpleasantly, I decided to refrain from asking my neighbor impertinent questions. If she wanted to talk about the murder, she would.
It turned out my reticence was unnecessary. She did want to talk about the murder, and she did. At length.
First she ranted at the general unfairness of it all. “If someone wanted that dreadful man dead, couldn’t they have found somewhere else to do it? Why pick our tea shop? It’s always been a lovely, happy place, and now will be forever associated with murder. I’m not sure we can ever open again. That’s assuming that Florence and I manage to stay out of jail.”
I tried to think of something soothing to say, but all I could manage was, “I’m so sorry.”
She paced up and down, rubbing her work-roughened hands up and down her arms, from elbow to shoulder, over and over. “I haven’t knitted in years. Who has time, when running a busy tea shop six days a week? Elderflower’s been my life, mine and Flo’s. And now, all I can think about is that terrible murder that happened right under our noses.
She paced some more. “Without the shop to run, the days are so long. What do people do who don’t have businesses to run? You know what they say, ‘the devil makes work for idle hands.’ Well I’ve got no intention of letting my hands be idle.” She stopped and turned to me. “I’ve decided I’ll take up knitting again. At least it will give me something to do.”
“Do you have any idea when the police will finish their investigation?” Being beside Elderflower I knew that official-looking types were still turning up regularly. I’d seen Ian Chisholm a couple of times and once he saw me watching and waved to me. He hadn’t come next door to see how I was, though.
Mary began to wander around the shop but it was more like military pacing than a customer browsing. “I can’t even read a book. I can’t concentrate. My mind’s a complete mess. And television? I can’t watch the news. I dread to see our poor tea shop shown on television as the site of a murder. And other than the news, all I ever seem to find is a mystery program on television. Do you think I want to watch a murder mystery? I want someone to solve this one.”
I made soothing noises and fairly useless comments of the, ‘I’m so sorry’ variety, but I don’t think she heard them. She was really here to pour out her troubles.
I let her go on for a bit and when there was a pause I told her, not wanting her to find out any other way, that I had hired Katie as my shop assistant. She seemed a little startled. “Is that wise, dear? You know she could be a murderer.”
“I know she could be, but somehow I don’t think so. And she’s an excellent knitter.” I pointed to my feet. “She knit me these lovely socks.”
Mary looked critically at my feet and nodded. “She’s certainly a better knitter than a waitress.”
“I think that goes without saying.”
Then I said, keeping my eyes on the window so I could see Katie before she came in, “I keep thinking about that day and how poor Katie kept getting all the orders mixed up. She couldn’t seem to tell the tables apart. Do you think it’s possible that the colonel wasn’t the intended victim?”
Mary picked up a ball of fishermen’s yarn and then put it back down again. “I don’t know. I suppose anything is possible. But if what you’re saying is true then the poison had to be on the tray when Katie delivered it to the wrong table. Already in the tea or in the jam or baked into the scone or wherever it was.”
I was thinking. “Did a very odd young woman come and visit you today? I described the woman who had asked me all those searching questions. Mary said, “The private investigator, you mean?”
My eyes widened. “She’s a private investigator?”
“Well that’s what she told us. Colonel Montague’s widow hired her.”
My first thought was that Mrs. Montague had wasted her money. I had never seen a less subtle investigator or one to whom I was less likely to tell my secrets. “Why would she do that? Doesn’t she think the police will find the killer?”
“If you ask me, she’s making sure they don’t arrest her.”
“Why would anyone arrest Mrs. Montague?” I remembered her terrible keening sound when it was clear her husband was dead. I’d caught a glimpse of her face and it had looked less lifelike than her dead husband’s. She was like a statue of grief. And even yesterday, when I’d taken her the knitting, she’d seemed so lost and sad.
“Because the colonel wanted to divorce her.”
“What?”
For the first time since she’d entered Cardinal Woolsey’s, Mary Watt looked slightly cheerful. Imparting a juicy bit of gossip to someone who’s not expecting it can do that to a woman. “Oh yes.”
“They’d both looked so old. I was always shocked when old people got divorced, but, Gran always said, youthful human passions outlived youth.
“But why?”
She raised her eyebrows. “The usual reason why a silly old fool leaves a wife of half a century.”
“He had another woman.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “That was the rumor.”
“But can anyone confirm this? Do we know who the other woman was?”
“A biochemist. She was an old flame of his, in fact. A Miss Everly?”
It was one thing for a silly old man to dump his wife for a younger model, but he’d chosen woman of the same age. That made him slightly less despicable. “To think of rekindling a romance from half a lifetime ago.”
Miss Watt’s lips thinned into an angry line. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
Only then did I realize how tactless I’d been. Of course, her own sister was currently indulging in a similar late life romance with a man she had met in her youth.
“It’s so good to be able to talk to you, Lucy. There’s no point trying to talk to Florence. My foolish sister has her head in the clouds. Oh, I can’t tell you how much I miss your grandmother. I used to pop into the shop and tell her my problems, and she could always pop next door to the tea shop and tell me hers. I miss her dreadfully.”
I couldn’t agree, of course, because I saw my grandmother daily. Instead, I said, “I’m not Gran, but as soon Katie gets back, why don’t we go upstairs and, for a change, I’ll make you a cup
of tea.”
She brightened immediately. “Oh, if you’re sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble. I’d love that.”
Since I thought it might be slightly awkward for her and Katie to have a conversation, I suggested she go on upstairs and wait for me, and as soon as Katie was back, I’d follow her.
Katie, clearly on her best behavior, returned from lunch before her hour was up. I was pleased to see that she smelled of peppermint, not cigarette smoke. She seemed calmer. She’d gone home for lunch, she told me, and Jim had been there. He’d cooked her lunch and made her laugh and I could see the break had done her the world of good.
I told her I had a friend upstairs and that I was going to take my own lunch hour. “Just bang on the connecting door if you need me.”
When I arrived upstairs, Mary Watt was standing, looking listlessly out the window. She couldn’t keep her hands still but kept rubbing them together and playing with her rings.
Gran’s knitting basket was sitting beside the couch. It was an old one, from before she died, as these days she carried her current project around in a tapestry bag. I retrieved the basket and told Mary to take whatever she wanted. I didn’t think Gran had many patterns up here but I could easily slip downstairs and find one.
“Oh no, don’t bother with a pattern. I couldn’t follow it. I’ll just make something simple. A scarf, I think. She turned over some of the random balls of wool in the basket and nodded. “I can use up some of these bits and pieces to make a nice striped scarf. It’s a thrifty way to use up old wool.” She seemed relieved to have a project, even if it was just using up old scraps of wool.
“Well, I’ll get the tea on then.”
