Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_03

by A Stitch in Time

  “What?” asked Betsy.

  Patricia continued, “He wasn’t here long, and retired from Trinity all of a sudden, saying he hadn’t felt well for awhile, and he had a massive stroke a week later at home. His wife Lucy found him and apparently tried to help him up off the floor and had a heart attack. She was found dead beside him by their daughter Mandy. It was dreadful, just dreadful. Mandy went to live with an aunt, and Father Keane has been in a nursing home ever since. Can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t feed himself.” Real tears glittered on her eyelashes.

  “It was awful for her to come home to that, just awful,” agreed Martha. “So sad.”

  Patricia said, “Father John agrees that if we restore this tapestry and persuade the rest of the vestry, he will not object to it hanging in the officially renamed Reverend Keane Abrams Library.”

  There was a gleam in the woman’s eyes that shone through the tears. Betsy exchanged a smile with Jill and Martha, who actually winked. They all knew Patricia. Even if Father John objected, the deed was all but done.

  When Betsy walked out of the church hall after the meeting, snow was coming down again, blowing sideways in a stiff wind. It stung her cheeks, flapped the skirt of her long coat around her legs, and made her walk crabwise. She staggered down to the corner of Second and Water, where it blew even harder. Her hat lifted itself, and she barely grabbed it before it went sailing out into the street. She’d seen snowstorms like this on television, after an afternoon at the beach. She unwrapped her scarf from her neck and tied it over her head.

  It was a struggle, those few blocks down Water, then a lesser one up Lake to her shop and home. Once safely inside, climbing the stairs to her apartment, she was suddenly overcome with a feeling of elation, as if she’d climbed a mountain. She remembered blizzards in her youth in Milwaukee, and she found it even more exciting now in her maturity to discover they still couldn’t over-match her.

  The snow stopped by bedtime, and plows must have worked all night, because by Saturday morning the streets were clear. Snow was piled along the curbs, in mountain ranges so high that from inside the shop, Betsy could see only the roofs of cars as they went by. She cleared the sidewalk yet again, adding her own peaks to the Himalayas. Then she cut a narrow passage through to the street so customers wouldn’t need ropes and pitons to get to her shop.

  A few minutes later, a shadow passed the front window. Betsy looked to see a woman in a wine-colored, fur-trimmed coat holding her gloved hand to her face—the wind was cutting sharply this morning. She ducked into the slightly recessed door of the shop, the hand came down, and it was Martha Winters.

  “Hello, Betsy, Godwin,” she said as she entered. “I’ve come to pick up that bellpull. Is it back yet?”

  “I believe so,” said Betsy. “The finisher brought a whole box of things in just before closing yesterday.”

  She stooped behind the big desk that served as her checkout counter and brought up a large cardboard box with a sheet of paper attached to it. She looked down the list and drew a line through a name. “It says something of yours is in here.”

  Inside the box, rolled up like a fire hose, was a long, narrow piece of canvas covered with eggshell stitching. The finisher had sewn on a back of eggshell linen. Betsy unrolled the piece to reveal a scattering of chickadees and cardinals sitting on branches of holly and evergreen. “Very pretty,” said Betsy.

  “You think so?” said Martha with a little sniff. “My daughter-in-law hinted and hinted that this was what she wanted for her dining room.”

  “Don’t you like it?” asked Godwin, coming for a look.

  “Oh, it’s all right,” grudged Martha. “But no beads, no fancy stitches, no zing.”

  “Well, right now we’re in an era of rococo needlework,” said Godwin. “Someday people will find this very restrained and therefore particularly lovely.”

  Martha smiled. “So says the maker of the Christmas Stocking That Clatters When Touched.”

  Godwin laughed. “The pot pleads guilty, Mrs. Kettle! Still, I can’t see a false stitch in this piece. Even the tassel at the bottom is perfect.”

  Martha had opted for that authentic finishing touch and had made it herself from red velveteen yarn. “How much?” she asked Betsy.

  Betsy consulted the order sheet in a file folder. “Sixtyfive dollars, including hardware.” Which meant the stiffening dowel and string, and the hook and screws so it could be fastened to a wall.

  Martha got out her checkbook. Signing with a flourish, she handed a check to Betsy and at the same moment her eye was caught by a sampling of tan, buff, neutral, and cream wools. “Are these for the Trinity project?” she asked.

  “Yes,” nodded Betsy.

  “I’ve told some other Monday Bunch members, and they’re thrilled at a chance to do something in honor of Father Keane. Even nonmembers.”

  Betsy said, “I thought I’d go over on Monday and see if any of these matched.”

  Martha said, “I’m glad you want to get right to it. There are volunteers in the church hall today, you know.”

  “There are? Doing what?”

  “Taking down the old kitchen and making sure nothing’s left behind in the rest of the downstairs. The contractor finished another job early and will be starting our renovation on Tuesday.”

  “Thanks for telling me. I’ll go over on my lunch break today.”

  Mrs. Winters left, and the one other customer said she wanted to browse, so Betsy joined Godwin at the library table in the middle of the room. He had a project of his own back from the finisher, a magnificent Christmas stocking. It was the one Martha Winters had teased him about, stiff with beading and tiny bangles, ornate with fancy stitching. The design was of two children coming down a stairway to see Santa hiding behind a Christmas tree. Santa’s beard was curled into French knots, the children’s pajamas were of brushed satin stitching, the wallpaper was two-color gingham stitch, and the tinsel on the tree was made of microscopic glass beads. Across the top of the stocking JOHN was worked with silver metallic thread.

  Godwin was arranging it in a shallow box draped with silver tissue paper.

  “You’re not going to hang it?” asked Betsy.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” said Godwin. “John and I exchange gifts on Christmas eve morning, because he goes home Christmas eve and stays till late Christmas day. I suppose we could hang it after he opens it, but then I’d be tempted to put something in it, and I don’t want to stretch it out.”

  “Do you have someplace to go to celebrate Christmas?” asked Betsy.

  “I just told you about my Christmas.” Godwin saw the start of compassion in Betsy’s eyes and said crisply, “We have our own private and very happy Christmas, and then we do something truly brilliant for New Year’s Eve. So please, don’t feel sorry for me.”

  “Don’t you have parents or a brother or sister?” persisted Betsy.

  “My father and mother are—well, never mind. I don’t think my darkening their doorstep would brighten the holidays for any of us.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Godwin shrugged. “Their loss.”

  Indeed, thought Betsy, still miffed on his behalf. She reached under the table for the counted cross stitch Christmas tree ornament she was working on. It was a hippopotamus wearing a Santa Claus hat, fifth in a series of a dozen animals she’d ordered from a catalog. Betsy had nearly decided she didn’t like counted cross stitch. Those customers who claimed it relaxed them were a breed apart; for Betsy, doing counted cross stitch was aggravating, frustrating, and full of traps for the unwary.

  Still, it’s very attractive when it comes out right, she thought, looking complacently at the grinning hippo.

  In a while she sold one skein of DMC 725 perle cotton floss to the browser and eight hanks of bright pink knitting wool to a man who had signed up for the January knitting class and was needlessly afraid someone else would buy his choice of color. His purchase reminded Betsy, and she added her own name to the class lis
t. Rosemary had brought a finished example of the sweater she was going to teach her class to knit, and Betsy had always wondered how knitters got that twist of cable into their patterns.

  Soon after the knitter left, a woman came in with a child about twelve years old and bought a yard of sixteen count canvas, two needles and a threader, a dozen DMC perle cotton colors, six needlepoint wool colors, and a copy of The Needlepoint Book. Betsy thought the child was the woman’s daughter until the child addressed her as Aunt Jay.

  “This is half your Christmas present,” Aunt Jay said, handing the weighty blue plastic bag with Crewel World printed on it in little Xs to the beaming child. “The other half is me teaching you how to do the stitches in the book. Your present to me is your first sampler, which I will hold in trust for whichever of your daughters gets the needlework gene.”

  Two more customers came in to pick up finished projects, and then it was noon. Betsy put on her long, dark gray coat and the bright red scarf and hat she’d knitted herself. The hat fit a little loosely because she’d figured the gauge—how many stitches to the inch—on size six needles and then knit it on seven, but that was all right, because now she didn’t get hat hair. She put the wool samples in her purse and set off for the church.

  The wind had let up, the sun was shining, and it didn’t feel all that cold out. No challenge to the walk today. She went into the darkened arcade, heard distant voices, and followed them down the stairs and into the hall.

  A half dozen volunteers were carrying huge cooking pots and boxes of utensils, what looked like parts of an early-model gas stove, and—proverbially—an old, stained, porcelain kitchen sink. Three others carried boxes of books, coat hangers, and unidentifiable junk.

  Father John Rettger was standing by the tapestry, still spread across the old table.

  “Hi, Father John,” said Betsy coming up from behind. He’d been concentrating so hard on the movers that her voice startled him. He shied, then laughed at himself.

  “Oh, hello, Betsy! I was wondering if you’d come over today. I’ve been standing guard over the tapestry, because I’m afraid someone will pack it up and take it away and it’ll be lost for another decade.” His voice was mild, like his eyes, as if he were used to going unheard or overruled.

  “Are there people who would like that to happen?” asked Betsy, surprised.

  “No, no, or at least I’m pretty sure not. It’s just that the contractors are coming early, for a wonder, and we’re not finished moving out yet. And I don’t know about you, but every time I’ve moved, I’ve lost things. Once it was volume twenty-four of our Britannica, Metaphysics to Norway, though all the rest of the volumes were in the box, even the annuals.”

  Betsy nodded. “I once lost a hamster in a move across the street. But I think maybe our cat got him. She’d had her eye on him for months.”

  Father John laughed, then turned to the tapestry. “Well, what do you think?”

  Betsy said, “Oh, I’ve already told Patricia I’ll supply the materials. I brought some samples of wool with me to see if anything I already have matches.” Betsy opened her purse and began laying out the wool in various places on the tapestry. Just having sat in the open overnight had diminished the mildew smell significantly.

  “That’s funny,” she said after a bit.

  “What?” said Father John.

  “Well, Cool Buff matches up here, but Cafe Latte matches over here. I think they must have used different dye lots. Interesting.”

  “What do you mean by dye lots?”

  “Manufacturers stir up a big batch of dye using various ingredients. That’s a dye lot. And for some reason, even though they use the same recipe, the next batch doesn’t quite match the first. The label will give it the same name, but stitchers know when they are buying wool or floss to make sure the dye lot number is also the same.”

  “But that didn’t happen with this tapestry, you say. Is that good or bad?”

  “Good. It gives me more chances to match colors.” Betsy continued checking, tossing the samples that matched into a little heap on Christ’s mantle. Finished, she reached for them. “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh what?” asked Father John.

  “Look at this.” Betsy pointed to a small area of the dark orange mantle. It was next to a gray sheep, and the mostly horizontal slice looked at first like a part of the sheep’s back. But moth larvae had eaten a small section down to the canvas.

  Father John said, “So you’ll need to give us a few inches of that orange color, too, won’t you?”

  Betsy, grabbing for her sinking heart, couldn’t say anything at first. As she’d already noted, color was a variable thing. It was impossible that the orange colors currently in her shop came from the same dye lot as this twelve-year-old yarn. She could feel the priest waiting for her to reply. “Sometimes it’s hard to match colors,” she said at last. “And if I can’t match that one, we’ll have to redo the entire mantle.” The mantle took up a large area. It was one thing to donate a skein or even a couple skeins of needlepoint wool; it was quite another to donate enough to cover a quarter of this large tapestry. Especially done in basket weave, which by design used a lot of wool, since it was meant to stiffen the fabric on which it was stitched.

  “Don’t despair before you find it can’t be matched,” said Father John. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised a few times in my life.”

  Betsy looked to see if he was speaking ironically, but his eyes were kind and his smile genuine. She smiled back and repeated something her father used to say to her: “Never trouble trouble, till trouble troubles you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is there a phone down here I can use?”

  “Back over here.”

  It was early issue Ma Bell, made of heavy metal with an old-fashioned dial instead of buttons. Betsy called her shop.

  “Godwin? We’ve run into a little complication over here. Can you bring me samples of all our orange wools? I’m looking for a color I’d call burnt orange, but bring anything from russet to red. Needlepoint, yes. What? Well, don’t we have a sign that says Back in Five Minutes? Then write it on something and get over here. Fast.”

  While they waited, Betsy looked again at the tapestry. She knew she was still a novice at needlework, but she’d seen expert work, and this seemed very well done. The stitching had a satisfying evenness. There were no beads or metallics.

  Well, except in the halo. Betsy came closer. The mildew odor was still enough to wrinkle her nose, through which she took tiny sips of air.

  Between the double gold lines of halo was a blue gray, slightly sparkly area. No, it wasn’t the blue-gray that was sparkly, there was a tiny design stitched over it, or in between the stitches or something. Betsy frowned and leaned over the table, holding her breath.

  “Is there another problem?” asked Father John.

  She straightened. “No, I’m just wondering what that is.”

  “I know stitches have various names, but I couldn’t tell you the name of even one.”

  “It’s not a stitch,” said Betsy. “See, there are little pictures in the halo. You have to get close to see them, they’re—oh, they were done separately, then stitched to the gray stitching. Appliqué, it’s called. They’re like little line drawings, see them? There’s a clover leaf, and then some kind of animal, and then a heart or something …”

  “Where?” asked Father John, bending beside her. “Oh, I see them. How very clever. They’re attributes, I believe. See? That heart is supposed to be on fire. It’s for Saint Theresa. And here, this is Saint Olaf.” He was pointing to a tiny double-bladed ax.

  “I don’t understand,” said Betsy, straightening again. “I mean, how is an ax St. Olaf?”

  “Come, come, you know what I mean. For instance, that first one. If I tell you it’s not a clover but a shamrock, who does it make you think of?”

  “Oh!” said Betsy. “Saint Patrick.”

  “Of course. And the lamb is Saint Agnes, and if tha
t’s a chain, it’s probably Saint Ignatius. Back before literacy was common—but also because no one knew what almost any of the saints actually looked like—when a statue or painting of a saint was commissioned, the artist could put whatever face he found inspiring on it. But then, to tell the viewer who it was supposed to be, he would add some of the symbols attributed to that saint. That’s what they’re called: attributes.”

  Betsy said, “Well, yes, of course! I remember learning about that in Sunday school. Saint Lucy was a pair of eyes on a plate, ugh! And the four evangelists were an angel, an eagle, a lion, and—what?”

  “An ox. And the Trinity was a triangle or three interlocking circles. We use both here at Trinity, one overlaying the other. Not all of the attributes are for saints. Some symbolize various aspects of God or of Christian virtues. The horse means war, unless he’s ridden, in which case horse and rider stand for our Lord Christ.”

  “So what was the idea of using attributes in this tapestry?”

  “Perhaps to give it an all-saints theme as well as Good Shepherd? Hmm, this looks like a rowboat. I wonder who that symbolizes. Mrs. Abrams seems to have been something of an expert on Christian symbology—unless, unless!”

  “Unless what?”

  “There’s an old book up in my office on Christian symbols. Can you watch over this for just two minutes?”

  “Of course.”

  Father John hustled out of the room. Betsy traced another of the attributes with a finger. A boar? Maybe Lucy was saying something about husbands. Betsy normally referred to her ex-husband Hal as the Pig.

  Hey, here was a cat, and over here was another, one sitting and the other crouching. Was that significant? Perhaps more than one person worked on this, and they forgot who was doing the cat. Here were three crowns in a tight pattern; she remembered that three crowns meant Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. Her Sunday school teacher’s name was Elizabeth, and so made a point about this Saint Elizabeth’s attribute. And Betsy remembered because that was her name, too. But the other emblems were hieroglyphics to her. She hoped Father John could find the book about these symbols. She rummaged in her purse for a notebook and couldn’t find one, so she pulled her checkbook out of its folder and started to copy the symbols onto the cardboard back.