Six Merry Little Murders

by Lee Strauss et al.

  Clara glanced up from her knitting, and her nostrils twitched, but she didn’t say anything. She and Mabel had gone back to stitching. Unlike everyone else in the room, death wasn’t unfamiliar to them.

  “That’s impossible,” Eileen said. “Lucy hasn’t called them yet.”

  She had a point. The knock at my door was either a very late addition to the knitting circle or an ill-timed visitor. There was a third option. The way Clara and Mabel were looking pleased, I suspected I knew who was at the door.

  “I’ll see who’s there, and I’ll call the police,” I said.

  When I got to the front door, I wasn’t a bit surprised to find Rafe Crosyer standing on the other side. He was tall, dark and pale. He looked like a combination of Mr. Rochester, Mr. Darcy, and Lord Byron with a hefty dose of Heathcliff thrown in. If he wasn’t a vampire, Rafe would probably be the love of my life. Of course, if he wasn’t a vampire, we’d never have met. When he’d been alive, Elizabeth was on the throne. The first one.

  He didn’t need me to open the door, locked or not. He was following social convention since he knew I had a knitting circle on tonight. When I’d opened the door, he stepped in and looked intently at my face. “What’s going on? I was downstairs visiting your grandmother. I heard strange noises, and then I’m sure I smelled death.” He touched my cheek. “You look pale.”

  I felt like snapping, “You should talk,” but I knew he was being kind.

  “One of the knitting circle died tonight.” I gulped, voicing the unpleasant truth. “I think it was murder.”

  Rafe had pretty much seen, heard, and probably done everything in his half a millennium of existence, but even he looked confused. “A murder? What, you mean during the knitting circle?”

  “It’s ridiculous, I know.” I was trying to keep my voice down, but I think my whisper was beginning to sound hysterical. “We had a power outage. One minute everyone was peacefully knitting, and the next—well, come and see for yourself.”

  He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “You mean you didn’t see the perpetrator?”

  “No. As I said, the lights went out. When they came back on, Priscilla Carstairs was dead.”

  “Priscilla Carstairs. Was she a very old woman?”

  “Relatively old, I suppose. She was over eighty, I think.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t natural causes?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  His dark eyebrows rose at the sarcasm in my tone. “I’d better take a look.”

  While I was out there, I put in a call to Oxford CID. This wasn’t the first time I’d ever called them about a murder, so I knew the drill. They asked the usual questions and said they would dispatch officers immediately. And, of course, no one was to leave or touch anything.

  I entered the back room first, with Rafe following. He was an antiquarian book and manuscript expert who often advised the Bodleian Library and sometimes lectured at Cardinal College. I suspected he’d had a client meeting, as he was wearing dark slacks, a black cashmere sweater and a houndstooth sports jacket. He looked like a very sexy university professor, except better dressed than most of them.

  He had a commanding air about him, and as he walked in, everyone stopped talking and looked at him. I wasn’t sure who knew him, so I said, “This is my friend Rafe Crosyer.”

  Eileen nodded to him. “Good evening, Rafe. You may not remember me, but you appraised my father’s book collection a few years ago.”

  He smiled at her. “Of course I remember. He had some very fine volumes of Elizabethan poetry. But I believe the jewel in the collection was the first edition of Dr. Johnson’s Rasselas.”

  She looked delighted. “You do remember.”

  Joan Fawcett snapped, “We’re not here for poetry. I don’t know what he’s doing in here, Lucy. A woman was killed, and this man just contaminated the scene.”

  I understood her irritation. She was busily dabbing at her sweater and skirt where the hot tea had spilled on her. “I must get home and get this burn seen to. My clothes have grown wet and clammy.”

  I really felt for her, but I reminded her that no one must leave before the police got there.

  Hudson glanced at me, looking suddenly panicked. “How long will that be, then? I’ve got a paper to finish tonight.”

  I put my hands out. “Sorry. I have no idea. I called them, and they’re on their way.”

  Rafe, meanwhile, had moved close to the dead woman. As I had done, he squatted on his haunches and looked up at her. “What a very odd way to kill someone,” he said softly, almost to himself.

  I stared at him, repressing the urge to giggle.

  I understood what he meant, though. “Perhaps it was the closest thing to hand? And it was the right shape. Santa, with his big, round belly…” I didn’t finish the sentence, but it was pretty clear where I was going. Santa had done the job of choking poor Priscilla Carstairs.

  He nodded, and his gaze went to the ornaments still sitting on Priscilla Carstairs’s lap from our show and tell. “I wonder why they chose the Santa.”

  6

  “But it was pitch-dark,” I reminded Rafe. “Someone grabbed for a bauble. They wouldn’t necessarily know which one they had hold of.”

  He rose and turned slowly, staring at each person in turn. I thought they each stopped breathing as he settled his cold gaze on them. If I’d killed someone, I was sure I’d tell everything if that chilly, commanding gaze fell on me. He’d have my confession out of me faster than a crochet hook can catch a stitch.

  However, no one else in the room was as easily thrown off balance as I was, it seemed. Other than Sarah asking him if she had food on her blouse, all the crafters stayed silent as he surveyed them.

  Rafe turned back to me. “Was it symbolic? Was there a message behind the use of Santa Claus as a murder weapon?”

  Hudson nodded. He seemed to be treating this like an academic exercise in philosophy. “But Santa brings gifts. He doesn’t kill people.”

  I voiced the thought I’d had earlier. “Priscilla Carstairs was the only person here who was knitting things only for herself. Was that the message? That Christmas is a time for giving and thinking of others?”

  “Pretty harsh way to deliver a message,” Hudson said.

  Eileen Crosby looked at Rafe as though considering his words. “Santa’s fat.”

  Hudson stared at her. “Is this really the time to go into the dietary habits of Santa? Are you suggesting the jolly old elf should go on Weight Watchers? Quit sitting around all day making toys? Maybe start pumping some iron?” He pulled his fists up, demonstrating bicep curls.

  “No. But Priscilla Carstairs was very rude to Sarah Lawson earlier.” She turned her attention back to Rafe. “She made insensitive comments about her weight when Sarah ate a hamburger in front of us. I told her she was fat-shaming.”

  Clara nodded. “That’s true. She did. It was most unkind.”

  Eileen looked at the victim of the fat-shaming. “Sarah? Did you make Priscilla Carstairs eat her words?”

  There was a gasp. Then I realized it came from me. Talk about making the punishment fit the crime. Had Sarah made Priscilla choke on the rotund little Santa in the same way Priscilla had made her choke down that hamburger?

  Sarah Lawson went bright red and then pale and started to rise from her chair and then sat back down again as though her legs wouldn’t work. “Of course not. I would never. I don’t even know how. I mean, why would someone die just from having a toy pushed in their mouth?”

  I didn’t know if she realized it, but she was making herself sound more guilty by the second. Perhaps she hadn’t intended to kill Priscilla Carstairs; she’d only intended to teach her a lesson, and it had gone horribly wrong.

  Rafe nodded. “The young lady’s correct. Whoever did this held the nose as well. For an elderly woman, about two minutes without oxygen would likely cause death.”

  “How horrible,” Eileen said. “But couldn’t she have died of a heart attack?
”

  Rafe looked down at her where she was seated on the chair, little Henry’s pale blue sweater forgotten on her lap. “If heart failure was caused by the attack, it’s still murder. But that’s for the police to determine.”

  He looked around. “I understand it was dark in here, but didn’t you hear choking sounds?”

  Joan made a sound like a snort. “No. What we heard was the crashing of crockery. Someone banged into that table and spilled boiling hot tea all over me. What everyone probably heard was my screams of agony.”

  “I’m so sorry that happened to you,” I said soothingly. “Do you want me to take a look at your burns? I’ve got a first-aid kit in the shop.”

  In fact I had a very nice tea upstairs that I could make her. It was a witch’s brew that would take away the pain and heal the burn quickly. However, I didn’t really want to bring in supernatural medicine until the police had finished their very scientific investigation.

  Based on the number of times I had been involved in murder investigations, I thought the police were already looking at me askance. Not that I’d ever committed any of the murders, but I felt I was already on thin ice with the local law enforcement authorities. The last thing I needed was for them to find out I was a witch.

  I felt sorry for Joan Fawcett, but she was going to have to wait until the police were finished with us. Then I could make her my medicinal tea. In the meantime, all I could offer her was sympathy and drugstore remedies. Of course, if I had reason to want to avoid the police, Rafe and Clara and Mabel had even more. Witches at least were kind of trendy and could live openly in society. Why, my local coven organized events around our special days, like the recent Samhain potluck. Vampires, not so much.

  There were broken dishes all over the floor, and the now-cold tea had soaked into the area rug that I’d placed strategically over the trapdoor that led down to the tunnels. I itched to get my broom and mop and clean up the mess, but I knew I couldn’t. Not until the police had finished their investigation.

  So we sat there. One by one, the crafters resumed their knitting or crochet. At least it gave them something to do. I couldn’t concentrate though.

  Nyx, naturally, had to go and investigate. She didn’t go near Priscilla Carstairs. I think that she could also smell something off. But she made her way over to the broken dishes. The milk jug had smashed, and there was a puddle of spilled milk on the floor that had mingled with the spilled sugar and made a sticky mess. Nyx looked at it for a long moment, and I thought she might lap it up, but she wasn’t much for milk. She preferred her high-end tuna out of her own special dish upstairs.

  When she’d finished investigating, she looked at me, I thought, with pity that I was in yet another murderous pickle and then pushed her way through the curtained doorway.

  Rafe made a slight motion with his chin toward the front of the shop, and I assumed that meant he wanted to talk to me away from the knitting circle. I excused myself, saying I thought I heard the police at the door, even though I’d heard no such thing. I glanced back as I left and saw everyone knitting or crocheting busily. Were it not that Priscilla Carstairs’s hands were unnaturally still and her acid tongue unnaturally silent, it would’ve just been another typical night in my knitting circle.

  In fact, it was so much like a regular knitting circle that I thought Clara had forgotten once again that she was among humans. Her knitting speed had increased to the point that anyone attempting to watch her would grow dizzy. As we passed her, I gave her a warning squeeze on the shoulder. She looked up at me puzzled, and so I leaned down and whispered as softly as I could, “Slow down with the needles.”

  She looked stricken. “Oh, I forgot. Sorry.”

  I could only hope that she would remember to knit at human speed and that the mortals were so rattled at being in the company of the dead woman that they’d believe their eyes were playing tricks on them.

  7

  Rafe followed me out into the shop. Nyx was about to jump up into her usual spot in the window, but when she saw me she instead made her way to the connecting door that led upstairs to our flat. I completely understood her desire to get away from this and only wished I could follow her. I opened the door for her, and she wasted no time getting out of Dodge.

  I asked Rafe the question that had been bothering me ever since the lights came on after the blackout and I realized that one of our number was dead. “Rafe, I locked the trapdoor, but is there any way one of the vampires could have come up when the lights were out?”

  He looked down his nose at me as though offended I would think his vampires had so little power. “Your flimsy lock wouldn’t keep one of us out. But we all knew it was your knitting circle night, so I can assure you that none of us even attempted to come up that way.”

  Well, that was what I’d thought, but it was still a relief. “Then I don’t understand. I locked the front door, and I’d have heard if anyone had come in. That means that someone in that contented little knitting circle is a killer.”

  “Yes, I think that is the obvious conclusion.”

  “But who? And why?” Two excellent questions, if I did say so myself.

  “Can you think of any reason why anyone in that knitting circle would’ve wanted that woman dead?”

  “No. Sarah Lawson really did look mortified when Priscilla fat-shamed her for eating a hamburger and french fries, but that’s about it.”

  Rafe’s sensitive nostrils flared. “Fast food is an abomination to the senses.”

  I thought someone who drank blood for breakfast, lunch and dinner wasn’t really in a position to judge. “And Eileen was offended when she said her beloved grandson had a brain the size of a tadpole.”

  Rafe looked quite interested. “Does he?”

  “He’s about a month old. Probably.”

  I thought of them all in there, still knitting. “Would it take much strength to kill her?”

  He considered my question. “I shouldn’t think so. She was old, not expecting an attack. I should think anyone in that room could’ve done it.”

  I was surprised. “Even Joan Fawcett?”

  “Which one is she?”

  “She’s the other old lady. The one who was burned by the tea.”

  “Yes, if she was motivated enough, I should think she could.”

  “But the strongest one in the room had to be Hudson.”

  “Any reason he might want her dead?”

  “He seems nice enough. He and Sarah Lawson are quite friendly. Could it have been a chivalrous act?”

  One of Rafe’s eyebrows went up. “If so, then that young man needs lessons on chivalry.”

  I leaned back against a wall of wool, which had a comforting feeling, as though the wall was giving me a hug. “Could the murder have been premeditated?”

  He shook his head. “The power went out on the whole block. It was caused by the windstorm. No one could have planned that.”

  “So it was definitely a crime of opportunity.”

  “I would say so. Possibly the murderer had planned to take Priscilla Carstairs’s life this evening and had another method in mind.” He began to pace. “But then why not use it? Why take such a risk? The lights could’ve gone on at any moment. No, I believe it was done on impulse. Think, Lucy. Priscilla Carstairs must’ve said or done something this evening that caused her murderer to rise up.”

  I felt helpless. “It was only the usual chitchat that relative strangers share with each other.”

  “I don’t like to leave you, but Clara and Mabel will keep you safe. Unfortunately, they’ll be forced to stay for the police investigation.”

  I hadn’t thought about how awkward it could be if Clara pulled out her birth certificate that said she was more than a hundred and fifty years old. “Will they pass?”

  “Oh yes. All of us have valid identification. However, since I wasn’t part of the knitting circle, I should leave before the police arrive. But do call me if I can do anything.”

  “You ca
n put your exceedingly large brain to work on trying to figure out who killed Priscilla Carstairs and why.”

  He nodded. “I’ll find out everything I can about her. What do you know?”

  “What do I know about Priscilla Carstairs?” I thought about the dead woman. “She was an excellent knitter. She’d been a prima ballerina, or so she said. She was very proud of her dance career. She’d been coming to the knitting circle because she was widowed.”

  “Any children?”

  “No. She said it wasn’t compatible with a dancing career. She was the only person who was knitting things for herself. Everyone else was knitting holiday gifts.” It suddenly struck me how sad that was. “Imagine having no one who would want your beautiful knitted garments.”

  He made a rude noise. “There are plenty of charities that would be only too happy to have warm items to give to the homeless and the destitute.”

  I knew he was right. The vampire knitting club turned out enough knitted hats and socks and sweaters and blankets to keep most of Oxfordshire warm throughout the winter. They donated a lot of their hand-knitted goods to charity.

  “So we know she wasn’t charitable. She was thoughtless of other people’s feelings, and she seemed very selfish. She even admitted to having a ruthless streak back when she was a ballerina.”

  “That’s quite a bit to go on. I’ll start doing some research. Meanwhile, I’ll keep my phone on. If you need me to check anything else or you just need me—” He looked me intently. “You can call me anytime.”

  He wasn’t just saying those words. I knew he meant them. And as much as I wanted him to stay, I also knew he was right to leave before the police arrived. He and Detective Inspector Ian Chisholm didn’t always see eye to eye. I suspected the fact that I’d briefly dated Ian had something to do with it.

  Rafe tilted his head to one side. “I can hear the police cars. They’re on their way.” He touched my shoulder. “I’ll come and see you when they’ve left.”

  He slipped out the front door, and I locked it behind him. Not that I was too worried about dangers from outside, not when it seemed I had a murderer on the inside.