Popcorn and Poltergeists

by Nancy Warren

  She made a face. “Course I do. She’s my tutor for Victorian literature.”

  “Really? You don’t look like she’s your favorite teacher.”

  “She called my essay on Wuthering Heights boring. In front of everyone.”

  “Ouch.” I could imagine how humiliating that must’ve been. Was that the essay you were working on when you had the strange experience in the library?”

  She looked at me with admiration. “That’s right, it was. How clever of you to guess.”

  “Wuthering Heights has a ghost in it, right?”

  “Yes. I was looking at some of Emily Brontë’s poetry, trying to make a connection, when I had the experience. Like I said, Professor McAdam called the essay I worked so hard on ‘boring.’” She slowed her steps and now stopped completely, looking down at her shoes. “It’s bad enough that every day I feel like I’m not good enough or smart enough, but to have my tutor say that in front of the whole class, I nearly quit that very day. I’m telling you now. I nearly packed my bags and left.”

  “Have you tried talking to Professor McAdam?”

  Judith looked at me as though I were crazy. “She’s what all these girls will be when they finish school. They’re all clever clogs. I don’t think she understands that not everybody grew up reading the classics or went to famous art galleries on their holidays. My mum and stepdad tried their best, but they couldn’t afford public school. I was just lucky my local grammar school was quite good and I had a teacher who inspired me and gave me extra help.”

  I didn’t know Fiona McAdam very well, but I doubted she’d meant to humiliate a student. “I think you should go and talk to her. Tell her what you’ve told me. Maybe she can find you some resources. At the very least, you’ll get this resentment off your chest.”

  “I suppose you’re right. I should talk to her.” She said it in the kind of tone that told me clearly she never would. I was sorry she had lost someone she could talk to. Since I was also an outsider here and knew exactly what it was like to feel out of your depth, I invited her to come and talk to me anytime she liked. I told her where she could find my knitting shop.

  I also had a nest of vampires living beneath the shop who, between them, knew a lot. I bet they could help her if she got stuck with research. Then, I had an idea. “Fiona McAdam is in my popcorn knitting class. What if you came to class? It would be a great way for you to get to know her in a more relaxed setting. Maybe she’d see you in a different light and you might become more comfortable with her.”

  She brightened up a bit. “Knitting? My grandmother taught me to knit. I still love it.” Then her face clouded. “I’m not sure if I’ve got time.”

  “I have quite a few students who come to my knitting classes. They find it relaxing. Anyway, you’re always welcome. And I wouldn’t charge you. We outsiders have to stick together. You’ve only missed one class, you know. Come next Monday if you like.”

  “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”

  “Do. You can check out my website and call and let me know if you want to come.”

  I hoped she didn’t think I was trying to drum up business. I had plenty of people who wanted to take my classes. I genuinely did want to help her and Fiona McAdam find a better relationship. As an outsider myself, I could imagine how difficult it must be for Judith to fit in when she had such a different background than most of the other students. In my time in Oxford, I’d learned that anyone who got into one of the colleges was incredibly smart, very hard-working and focused. Parents who could afford to send their kids to the kinds of schools that prepared them for Oxford and Cambridge gave them a huge advantage. But a girl like Judith had to work doubly hard to get there. I really wanted to see her succeed. But then I always rooted for the scrappy underdog.

  Oxford was trying to become more accessible to a diverse student body, or so I’d read and seen in the media, but I suspected they had a way to go and plenty of challenges along the way.

  Fiona McAdam was also a bit of a scrappy underdog. Who else would keep going to the library alone, knowing there was an angry ghost in residence? It would be nice if she and Judith could get along better. Not that it was any of my business, but that never stopped me from interfering.

  Chapter 7

  Sometimes when I was stuck or troubled, I needed to consult experts. In my case, this nearly always meant I shared my problem with the vampire knitting club. Between them, they probably had ten thousand years of experience, and what they didn’t know, they could find out from their network, the undead version of the Darknet.

  The group met that night, as usual. And, as we did at every meeting, we began with a show and tell. It was amazing what a group of vampires with a lot of time on their hands and superhuman knitting speed could turn out in a week. They pretended they weren’t competitive, but I wasn’t fooled. The ones with an eye for design turned out fashion-runway-suitable garments, blankets and cushions that could sell in a high-end boutique, and their hand-knitted toys made me long to be a child again. Those with no eye for fashion concentrated on perfect craftsmanship.

  Since I ended up gifted with a lot of sweaters, shawls, hats, coats and even cloaks, and I tried to honor each of these gifts by wearing them, it was sometimes an act of will to put on a garment knitted by Mabel. She’d been turned during WWII and was very frugal with wool, as well as not realizing that styles had changed.

  When I turned up at the meeting that evening wearing a sweater the color of Pepto-Bismol, decorated with perfectly crocheted overblown roses, and a matching hat, Sylvia took one look at me and said, “Oh, my poor darling. Mabel, I suppose?” I nodded, fervently hoping that Sylvia would be the next one to knit me something. I envied her the cashmere lounging trousers and long sweater she was wearing. However, I had my reward when Mabel arrived, climbing up through the trap door that led into the back room of my shop.

  Her delighted smile made up for me looking like a war bride with no taste.

  That particular evening, Silence Buggins, whose parents must have been joking when they named her Silence, wanted to go first. She showed off a knitted coat that was so beautiful it could hang in a museum. Since she hadn’t changed her style since she’d been turned in Victorian times, it would have fit right in in a museum.

  My grandmother, Agnes Bartlett, went next. Since Gran used to own Cardinal Woolsey’s, she still remembered a lot of the customers, and when I’d told her that Eileen had a new grandbaby, she’d decided she wanted to knit a baby blanket. Of course, no new mother wanted a baby gift from a vampire, so we had to come up with a cover story. “What if Lucy claimed to have knitted it?” Gran asked.

  Twenty vampires either burst out laughing, shook their heads or said no. Even Mabel chuckled softly. So I wasn’t the world’s greatest knitter—wouldn’t you think they might have picked up some tact in the hundreds of years they’d all been around?

  Finally, Sylvia hit on a solution. Sylvia was the most glamorous vampire I’d ever seen. She was a film star in the 1920s and had a real sense of style and glamour. Whenever I saw the actress Helen Mirren I was reminded of her.

  Sylvia suggested we tell Eileen the blanket was a gift from Cardinal Woolsey’s. If pressed, I could tell her Violet, my cousin, shop assistant and excellent knitter, had crafted the blanket. Somehow, making it from the shop sounded more authentic. Besides, Eileen would be too busy cooing over the exquisite blanket to worry overly about who’d actually made it. At least, I hoped so.

  I didn’t bother trying to compete during show and tell. I was still trying to learn basic knitting. I’d managed to knit Gran a red sweater for Christmas, with only a little help from Violet. Gran wore it often, for sentimental reasons.

  But I’d finished it. I was working on a scarf now. Scarves were straight, at least theoretically. I found them to be tricky beasts and had to pay close attention so as not to find I had vastly different numbers of stitches from row to row, making the theoretically straight lines wobbly and uneven.

  Wh
ile we worked, I explained about the mysterious deaths, the attack, and the poltergeist in the college library and asked if anyone had any ideas.

  Silence Buggins had ideas about everything. That woman had made droning on an art form. Listening to her was an act of will as I forced my attention not to drift.

  But all she said this time was, “We don’t have much to do with ghosts.” Her mouth turned down in distaste. “Not really our sort.” And I realized that there was as much snobbery and discrimination in the undead world as the living one.

  I told them about the experiences of the college students and the mysterious words Fabrizia had seen on the wall. “She could only make out two words,” I told them. “‘Secret’ and ‘help.’”

  There was a short silence. “Not wonderfully helpful, is it?” Sylvia said. “Shame the girl didn’t manage to grasp the rest of the message.”

  “She was terrified,” I reminded Sylvia.

  “These young people don’t have the backbone we did,” Silence chimed in. Since Silence’s backbone was held in place by her whalebone corset, I wasn’t super impressed. Sure, they were fearless now, but I bet in their day, any of these vampires would have been frightened if they’d seen a ghost.

  Well, maybe not Rafe. I suspected he’d never been afraid of much. He sat quietly, not speaking, his needles moving swiftly. I’d already told him the story, so I suspected he was wondering, as I was, whether any of the other vampires could help interpret that partial message.

  “Does this ghost have a secret and want help with something?” I asked.

  “Perhaps,” Sylvia answered. “Or it knows this young woman has a secret and is offering help?”

  “By throwing her books on the floor?”

  “It’s a mystery. Was she asking for help or offering it? And what was the secret?”

  Theodore, the baby-faced former policeman, asked whether the coroner’s report was in.

  Rafe reported that Wilfred Eels had died from injuries that were consistent with the fall down the stairs. Rafe had such good connections that he sometimes knew the results of an autopsy before the Oxford CID did.

  Theodore was always interested in police business. “No pre-death injuries, then. Still, a fall and a broken neck doesn’t rule out murder, does it?”

  Rafe nodded at him approvingly. “I believe you’re correct, Theodore. The fact that Georgiana Quales died in the same spot and in the same manner does seem suspicious, as does the fact that a young professor was injured the same night the caretaker died.”

  I wasn’t convinced. I’d walked up those stairs, and I thought they were a death trap. I was surprised there’d been only two deaths in the last decade. “Doesn’t that seem far apart for the deaths to be related? I mean, there were ten years between them.”

  A dozen vampires stared at me in puzzlement. Of course, in vampire time, ten years is the blink of an eye. I tried again, “Why would the deaths be related? A principal of the college and the guy who mowed the grass? They couldn’t have known each other. One of the students told me that Wilfred Eels had only worked for the college for a few months.”

  Now it was my turn to get the approving nod from Rafe. “Lucy’s right. If these deaths are related, there must be some link between Wilfred Eels and Georgiana Quales. Something we don’t yet know about.”

  “That’s assuming they were killed and didn’t both accidentally fall down the stairs.”

  Rafe nodded. “There is also the matter of those missing manuscripts. Given their intrinsic value, I don’t believe these two deaths were accidental or coincidental.”

  Theodore said, “Then we will need to learn more about the deceased Wilfred Eels and the former headmistress Georgiana Quales.”

  Gran spoke up then. “And what about this woman who was hurt?” She looked at me. “She’s one of our customers, isn’t she, Lucy? What was her name?”

  “Fiona McAdam. And you’re right, Gran. She wasn’t killed, but she was hurt. She’s another victim in all of this.”

  Gran nodded decisively. “Then we should find out more about her, too.” As the most recent of the vampires and the former owner of Cardinal Woolsey’s, my grandmother was more connected to those of us who still had a pulse. Since she’d become undead and spent so much time with Sylvia, Gran’s style had really improved. Instead of sensible cardigans over black skirt or slacks and support hose, as she’d worn in life, today she sported a maroon dress in a complicated chevron pattern. Over it, she’d slipped a black and maroon Chanel-style jacket. On her feet were chunky shoes I was pretty sure were Fluevog. Naturally, she no longer needed support hose, so her legs had the discreet sheen of expensive stockings.

  Without the benefit of mirrors, Gran and Sylvia did each other’s makeup. This meant that Gran’s was more expertly applied than that of the woman who’d been a film star, although naturally I never said anything. And Gran’s abilities as a makeup artist were improving every day.

  My grandmother crossed one designer-shod foot over the other. “Didn’t you say she was from Edinburgh?”

  “Fiona McAdam? I didn’t say. I don’t think I knew.”

  Gran looked slightly abashed, said, “Oh,” and went back to her knitting.

  I wasn’t fooled. “Gran? What have you been doing?”

  She tried to look innocent but failed. “I was only trying to help. I looked up her customer profile on the shop computer. Where it asks about knitting history, she mentioned a wool store that I happen to know is in Edinburgh.”

  Most of the other vampires kept knitting but not Sylvia. She sat up straight, the alpaca mittens she was knitting abandoned in her lap, watching Gran and me. Maybe I didn’t have super vampire powers, but between my witchy senses and good old human intuition, I sensed something was up with these two. What was it?

  “Okay,” I said cautiously. “So she might be from Edinburgh.” Later, I’d have a word with Gran about snooping.

  She nodded, looking quite pleased with me, as though I’d guessed the answer to a complicated quiz question. “Perhaps Sylvia and I should take a trip up to Edinburgh and see what we can find out about Fiona McAdam.” She looked graciously toward Theodore, who ran his own practice as a private investigator. “Theodore could come with us.”

  She did a lousy job of acting as though this idea was spontaneous, but I didn’t call her on it because it was a great idea.

  Theodore looked delighted to have been asked. And I felt a lot better thinking of him going along with my grandmother and Sylvia. He’d stop them doing anything too impulsive or foolish, or at least try.

  For someone who’d made a living as an actress, Sylvia did an equally lousy job of pretending to be surprised by Gran’s suggestion. It was so obvious the pair had cooked up this plan. Her face registered exaggerated surprise. “What a wonderful idea, Agnes,” she said. “The Bentley needs a good run. We’ll drive up. We can leave tonight.”

  If they were going on this road trip, they should have as much information as possible. “What else do we know about Fiona McAdam?” I glanced at Rafe. “You’ve spoken with her. Any ideas?”

  He took a moment, and I imagined him scanning back through all his interactions with Fiona McAdam. “She’s a very good Victorian scholar. I believe she taught at the University of Edinburgh before coming here. I’ll ask around and see what else I can find out.” He looked from Theodore to Gran and to Sylvia. “Keep your mobiles charged.”

  “What about me?” Silence Buggins asked in a complaining tone. “I might like to go to Edinburgh. A change of scene would do me a great deal of good.”

  Sylvia and Gran exchanged a glance while they tried to come up with a tactful way of saying they didn’t want to be stuck in a car on a long road trip with a know-it-all chatterbox whose idea of relaxing was to read Victorian sermons. Aloud.

  I had an inspired idea and so stepped in and saved the day. “Silence, you can’t go to Edinburgh. We need you here. Rafe found manuscripts about Victorian knitting and handicrafts. He’s been
telling people at the college that I’m an expert, when you know as well as I do that I’m a rank beginner. Do you think you could do me a huge favor? Could you study these manuscripts and give your opinion on their authenticity?”

  Gran sent me a grateful look as Silence brightened up and immediately agreed to help us. She then launched into a very long and detailed explanation about knitting in Victorian times. She described in intimate detail the doilies she’d knitted for her mother’s parlor and the compliments she’d received on her shawls and muffs. The more she talked, the faster all the other vampires began to knit, until the clicking of needles almost drowned out her monologue.

  When she finally paused, Rafe said, “I’ll get you copies of the manuscripts. I’d be grateful if you could give your opinion.”

  I made a mental note to be out of earshot when she did.

  Hester, the eternally moody, hormonally challenged teenager, heaved a great, moaning sign. “Typical. You’re going to let Queen Victoria over there help while I sit here day after day bored out of my head. Hello! Has it occurred to you that I could fit in at college?”

  I looked at her, all pouty-mouthed and sullen, long black hair, pale as any goth, and I had to admit she had a point. Hester had been about sixteen when she’d been turned, but she could pass for a young-looking seventeen or eighteen, the age of most first-year students. Even if I could simply stop her whining for a few minutes, it was worth the effort. Once more, I offered my support. “Hester, that’s a great idea.” I looked at Rafe, who knew a lot more about how Oxford worked than I did. “While school’s in session, is there any way we could get Hester mingling with the other students?”

  Hester was so used to her constant complaints being ignored that she seemed almost stunned at this turn of events. I did feel sorry for her. She tried to make friends and to act like a normal teenager, but for obvious reasons, it wasn’t easy. Rafe and the others kept a pretty close eye on her, which made her more rebellious. If she actually had something useful to do, maybe she’d improve. Even better, she should enroll in college. She had a lot of years ahead of her. She might as well learn something.