by Nancy Warren
Her mouth was also open, and I could see a pair of black felt Santa boots just at the edge of her lower lip as though Santa had mistaken her throat for a chimney and dived down headfirst to deliver presents. I cried out, loudly this time, “Priscilla?”
Nothing.
I glanced around, and everyone in the room was staring at me now, looking as shocked as I felt. I didn’t know what to do.
“What’s happened?” Joan asked. “Has she fallen asleep? Has she had a fit?” She leaned forward. “Perhaps a stroke? Ask her to lift her arms above her head. That’s a good way to tell if someone’s had a stroke. Also, we must get her to speak and see if her speech is slurred.” She paused. “There are other signs, but I can’t remember them.”
Hudson, who probably had an IQ in the millions, said, “That’s right. FAST is the acronym. F for face. Is their face drooping on one side? A is for arms. Can the person lift both arms over their head? S is for speech. Is it slurred? And T is for Time. Which means, if those symptoms are present, it’s time to call an ambulance.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s a stroke.” I glanced around, looking up at them all from my crouched position. “She’s got Santa stuck in her throat.”
“What?” Hudson put down his knitting and came closer, as though having trouble believing me. And who could blame him? He bent his tall body way over to have a look, bending like a coat hanger. Eileen came and crouched beside me. The spilled tea had pooled around the chair legs, and a broken piece of china had landed in the middle of it, floating like a tiny boat.
“She’s choking,” Eileen said. “We must help her. Pull it out.”
No one seemed anxious to put their hands into Priscilla Carstairs’s mouth. Including me. However, it was my shop and my knitting circle, so apparently this was my problem.
Honestly, I’d rather have picked up live tarantulas, danced the tango with a cobra, kissed a toad …
I reached forward. Gently, I tugged on Santa’s boot, but nothing happened. The jolly red elf was completely stuck. I didn’t think Priscilla was choking. I suspected we were already in the past tense, but I couldn’t step away and not try to save this woman. I thought back to the first-aid course I’d taken in college. “Heimlich maneuver.”
I barely remembered how to do it, but I should try. Hudson looked a lot stronger, and his height would help. Maybe he could do it. Then I saw Clara and Mabel exchange glances. Clara said, “I think it’s a bit late for the Heimlich maneuver, dear.” She shook her head. “There’s no heartbeat. Her blood is not pumping.”
Vampires have an incredible ability to smell out humans. Some of them are like sommeliers with fine wine—they can identify a human’s blood type if they’re close enough, so I wasn’t surprised to discover that they could also sense whether the blood was pumping as it did in life or if the blood had stilled.
As it did in death.
Chapter 5
Still, I wanted to be sure. “Are you saying she’s…?”
Clara nodded. “Dead.” Then, as everyone was looking at her, obviously wondering how she could tell that from across the room, she said, “I was a nurse.” Please don’t say in WWI. “In—” Then, seeing my face, she said, “In a hospital. Death has an expression that is unmistakable.” Then she said, in a funereal tone, “I’m so sorry.” As though we were grieving family members.
“But that’s impossible,” Sarah said. “She was crocheting a beautiful white snowflake just minutes ago. Who dies in the middle of crocheting a snowflake?”
I had to agree. It didn’t make sense.
Even though I believed Clara, I still reached for Priscilla’s wrist and felt for a pulse. As I had feared, there wasn’t one. It was creepy that her skin was still warm. A shudder went over me as I realized that this woman hadn’t forced that Santa down her own throat. She’d been murdered right in front of me. Right in front of all of us.
Nyx was standing on the ground looking at the dead woman. Eileen said, “I bet it was that cat. She probably thought those ornaments were cat toys.”
Nyx looked at me, her golden eyes glowing. I knew how she felt. We always thought of witches being the only victims in witch trials, but their familiars had also been persecuted. I didn’t like the way this conversation was going. “Nyx would never hurt anyone,” I said. “Besides, are you suggesting that my cat forced a knitted toy down this woman’s throat?” Okay, my cat was extremely special, but not that special.
“Well, Priscilla Carstairs didn’t mistake her stuffed Santa for plum pudding, now, did she?” Eileen said.
Sarah’s forehead crinkled. “If she’d choked on a knitted candy cane, it would’ve made more sense.”
I straightened up to standing. “I’d better call the police.”
“The police?” Eileen sounded alarmed. “But surely you should call an ambulance. A doctor. The woman was fine not ten minutes ago.”
“The police will send an ambulance. But it’s too late to revive her. I’m afraid Clara’s right. Priscilla Carstairs is dead.”
“But it was an accident. Must have been.” She looked around at everyone in the room. “We were all here. It’s not like anyone could sneak in and kill the woman. The lights were only out for a few minutes. We’d have heard the front door and known if a stranger had come among us. There’s only one way in, through that curtain, and we would’ve known if anyone came in.”
I didn’t dare look at Clara and Mabel. There was another way in. And if a vampire had wanted to come among us, none of us humans would’ve been able to hear him. Or her.
But I didn’t think a vampire had done this. Why would they?
And as I looked around from face to face, I realized that one of the people I was looking at was a killer.
There was a knock at the front door of the shop. We all startled and looked at each other. “That must be the police,” Hudson said.
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 sai
d, 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.”
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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.
