Cat's Paws and Curses Read online

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  A Note from Nancy

  Also by Nancy Warren

  About the Author

  Introduction

  When someone is murdered at a holiday knitting circle at Cardinal Woolsey’s knitting shop in Oxford, it’s soon clear to amateur sleuth Lucy that the culprit is one of the knitters. This is a fun take on a classic closed room mystery. If you enjoy it, the best way to keep up with new releases and special offers is to join Nancy’s newsletter at nancywarren.net.

  Praise for the Vampire Knitting Club series

  "THE VAMPIRE KNITTING CLUB is a delightful paranormal cozy mystery perfectly set in a knitting shop in Oxford, England. With intrepid, late blooming, amateur sleuth, Lucy Swift, and a cast of truly unforgettable characters, this mystery delivers all the goods. It's clever and funny, with plot twists galore and one very savvy cat! I highly recommend this sparkling addition to the cozy mystery genre."

  Jenn McKinlay, NYT Bestselling Author

  This was such a well written, fun story that I couldn’t put down.

  Diana

  Fun and fantastic read

  Deborah

  Chapter 1

  There is a phenomenon that occurs all over the British Isles toward the end of December. It turns grown men into virtual toddlers and seems to bring out the fool in even the most serious people. I refer, of course, to the Christmas jumper. This is what we Americans would call a Christmas sweater, but for some reason in the UK, the uglier the sweater is, the better. Don’t ask me.

  It was one of the stranger of the British customs I was trying to understand.

  I’d become used to living in Oxford now that I’d been in that beautiful city for more than a year, but I didn’t think I’d ever become entirely comfortable with the Christmas jumper, even though I owned a knitting shop. There was plenty of business to be had in providing wool and patterns for those garish, cartoonish sweaters featuring things like Christmas puddings, reindeer, snowmen and elves.

  Even places where you would hope your business would be taken seriously, like banks or dentist’s offices, looked more like daycare centers when in the grip of Christmas jumper fever. There was something particularly disconcerting about having someone come at you with a dental drill while wearing a lumpy, bumpy bright red sweater with a badly knitted reindeer in the middle of it.

  However, I was never one to turn down business and, at my grandmother’s suggestion, I’d put together a few kits specifically for those who wanted to try making their own Christmas jumpers. My gran might be one of the undead members of the vampire knitting club that met twice a week in my shop, but she’d owned the shop before I inherited, and she liked to keep her hand in.

  Since I was a novice shopkeeper as well as a novice knitter, I happily listened to her advice. She’d suggested we’d get more business if I offered classes on knitting such a jumper, but I decided to institute a Christmas knitting and crochet circle instead. This way, anyone could come along and bring whatever project they were working on without expecting me to teach them anything.

  The knitting circle was immediately popular with customers who were knitting or crocheting presents for loved ones who lived at the same address. It was also a good chance to sit busily working away for a few hours on a project while chatting with other, like-minded craftspeople.

  And so, every Tuesday night between seven and nine, I invited any of my customers who wished to come and join me in the back room of my Oxford knitting and yarn shop, Cardinal Woolsey’s.

  There was a core group who came every week, and it was augmented by those who dropped in sporadically.

  I had been slightly unnerved the first time Mabel and Clara had shown up for the knitting circle. They were both vampires who lived underneath my shop. There was a trapdoor that led from the back room down into the tunnels that wind beneath Oxford. My downstairs neighbor vampires were all excellent knitters, having had years—and in some cases centuries—of practice. The vampire knitting club met after ten o’clock, supposedly two nights a week but in reality whenever they felt like it.

  There had always been an unwritten rule that the vampires had to stay out of my shop when humans were about. Not that any of them were great rule followers, but I tried to separate the daywalkers from the nightwalkers as much as possible. Fortunately, my vampires weren’t hunters any longer. They didn’t have to be. They had their own blood bank to meet their nutritional needs, and they’d had a lot of years to perfect their way of life. They were sleek, well fed, and rich. Their biggest problem wasn’t hunger. It was boredom. Knitting helped while away the hours of an existence that would last for a very long time.

  However, Clara and Mabel had the same problem as knitters who lived aboveground. They were working on holiday gifts for other vampires and wanted them to be a surprise. At least, that was the reason they gave me for wanting to join the human knitting circle. I liked Mabel and Clara, and in theory they’d be a great addition to the circle, mainly because they were much better knitters than I and could answer any questions or untangle any knitting disasters. Probably mine.

  However, I had to have a few rules before I’d let them knit with humans. First, they couldn’t knit at their normal speed, which was so fast I couldn’t watch them without going cross-eyed. Also, they had to be careful what they said. Like most older people, Clara and Mabel liked to reminisce about their experiences. In the vampire knitting club, it didn’t matter if Mabel talked about knitting stockings for wounded soldiers in World War I. Or if Clara talked about the chilblains she used to get on her feet from walking to school in the winters before central heating. I warned them that if they made so much as one slip, I would have to ban them from my Christmas knitting circle. They assured me that they understood, and so I allowed them to come.

  That particular Tuesday, I had six customers who’d signed up for my knitting circle, plus Clara and Mabel.

  In the run-up to the holidays, I’d had fun decorating the front of my shop. There were twinkle lights around the front window, and I’d hung stockings and absurd Christmas jumpers, as well as gift ideas for all the family, from knitted tea cozies to children’s toys. Naturally, I left the basket of wools that my black cat familiar, Nyx, used as a cat bed when she felt like snoozing. Oh, yes, my familiar. I was also a witch. Not the smartest or most experienced witch in Oxford, not by a long shot, but I was learning.

  I made sure, as usual, that I had locked the trapdoor leading down to the tunnels. It wouldn’t stop a determined vampire; it was just a reminder that I had people in my back room who would be more than a little shocked if pale-looking creatures with cold hands came up through the floor.

  It was quite cozy in the back room, where I ran my knitting circle. I hadn’t decorated it as much as the front of the shop, but Theodore, a vampire who was also a very good scene painter, had painted me a trompe-l’oeil fireplace complete with flames and a fireplace mantel from which I hung four hand-knitted stockings, which I’d filled with crumpled newspaper to plump them out. That morning, I’d come down to find that he’d added a Dickens-style village on the other wall, complete with carolers in the street. When I looked closer, I saw Scrooge being frightened by Marley’s ghost and dancing and feasting at Mr. Fezziwig’s ball.

  Theodore had promised to paint over the fireplace when the holidays were over, but I suspected I’d keep the Dickens painting, as it made me smile all day.

  I�
�d added twinkle lights around the scene, adding another festive note to the normally dull space. I always served tea and cookies around eight o’clock, halfway through the knitting circle. Usually they were cookies from a packet purchased from the small grocery store at the top of the street, but tonight I decided to really get into the spirit of the season and offer my knitters home-baked cookies.

  Since I lived above the shop, it was easy enough to leave my cousin Violet, who was also my shop assistant, in charge for an hour or so, slip upstairs and whip up some holiday treats. I decided to bake white chocolate chip and cranberry cookies. It was a recipe that my mom used to make back when we lived in Boston. Even though I was in my late twenties now, I still got homesick around the holidays. Mom and Dad were archaeologists working on a dig in Egypt, so it wasn’t often that I saw them for Christmas. I’d made quite a few friends, though, since coming to Oxford and knew I wouldn’t be alone for the holidays. Still, the cookies were a happy reminder of home.

  I had to walk to the store to get the ingredients, and as I did I noticed that the wind was blowing so hard, I had to push the edges of my hand-knitted woolen scarf into the front of my coat to stop it from blowing away.

  “It’s a blustery day out there,” the cheerful grocer remarked as he rang up the butter, white chocolate chips and dried cranberries.

  Blustery was an understatement. When I walked the block back to my shop, I had to push against the wind as though it were a heavy door.

  Chapter 2

  I was cheerfully whipping the butter and sugar together in the electric mixer when the mixer suddenly stopped mixing. Had I blown a fuse?

  I looked around and realized that my computer had also turned off and the lamp in the corner was out. I went to the window and peered down on Harrington Street and noticed that all the lights in my block were out. That was weird. A power outage? I couldn’t remember having one before. Just as I was wondering how long it would last, the lights came back on again and the mixer burped back to life.

  I finished the cookies, then put them into the oven to bake and sat knitting as the aroma of baking began to fill the air. Nyx settled herself beside me on the couch, her black furry body warm against my side. It was a very pleasant moment. I wasn’t much of a knitter, but there were moments when it felt very peaceful, with my hands making something beautiful (with luck) and my thoughts free to wander.

  When the timer went off, I carefully took the cookies off the baking sheet and transferred them onto cooling racks and then put the second batch into the oven. The recipe made four dozen cookies. I’d take two dozen down to serve for our tea break during the knitting circle. I’d keep the rest in case anyone came to visit for tea and cookies. That’s what I told myself, anyway, but I was pretty sure I’d eat most of them all by myself.

  I found a red and green tin in the back of Gran’s cupboard and put my freshly baked cookies into it once they’d cooled.

  Cardinal Woolsey’s closed at five o’clock as usual, but I was back down just before seven to get ready for the evening event. I closed the blinds in my front window so that people walking by on the street wouldn’t think I was open for late-night shopping. I also closed the curtain that led into the back, making the back room seem even more cozy. It was a habit I had from the vampire knitting club, but I liked the sense of intimacy.

  I greeted each of the knitters as they came in from the cold, sending them straight to the back room to get settled.

  The first to arrive was Hudson Caine. Hudson was one of the youngest knitters who took advantage of my circle. He was a student at Christchurch studying some kind of complicated philosophy that I didn’t even understand. He was intense and very, very tall, with spiky black hair. I guessed him to be a little younger than me, probably in his mid-twenties.

  Hudson was from Liverpool and sounded like the Beatles. I didn’t care if he did talk about complicated philosophical subjects I didn’t understand; I could listen to him all day. He was knitting slippers for his whole family, each in a different color, and was trying to get them all done before he went home for his winter break.

  Tonight he was going to start work on a pair of slippers for his grandmother. I thought that was a nice role reversal. He wanted some pretty pink wool, he told me, and I helped him choose it. We went for a vibrant color. Not the pale pink of a baby sweater but the deep color of a healthy rose or a peony. “She’ll like those,” he said, “they’re proper antwacky.”

  I laughed. “Antwacky?”

  “You know, old-fashioned like.”

  It wasn’t a very big sale, as his grandmother didn’t have large feet and he already owned the pattern, but I always made a few extra sales on the nights of the knitting circle.

  Hudson took his wool and headed into the back room just as Joan Fawcett arrived. Joan leaned heavily on her cane, and her eyes looked shadowed with pain. I thought the cold weather might be affecting her. Joan was the same age my grandmother would be if she were still alive and had kept aging. That put her at eighty-two. She looked older, though, and careworn. She wore a green and black plaid skirt, thick black stockings and black orthopedic shoes. She’d knitted her black cardigan herself, and under it was a white blouse pinned at the throat with a cameo broach. Her white hair was cut short, more for convenience, I thought, than style. She didn’t come to the knitting circle to keep her projects a secret from her family. She was a widow who lived alone. I suspected she came in order to get out and see people. I smiled at her warmly and invited her to go through. I knew she didn’t need more wool, as she’d bought a quantity the week before. Joan was crocheting a blanket for her great-granddaughter in Ireland.

  Eileen Crosby came in next. The wind was blowing so hard it grabbed the door out of her hand, and it banged against the wall. She looked as though she had come straight from work. She was a solicitor in her mid-sixties with blond hair going gray that was beautifully styled. Beneath her heavy coat, she wore a red and black dress with a heavy chain of a gold necklace and shiny low-heeled black pumps. She looked tired. “Busy day?” I asked her.

  Her mouth turned down in a grimace. “I’d have been there till midnight if I didn’t have the excuse of your knitting circle to get me away from the office. Besides, I’m completely out of the pale blue cashmere.” Eileen was knitting a sweater for her tiny grandson. He was her first grandchild, and she was so proud, she glowed. As I brought her the wool, I asked, “Any new pictures?”

  I wasn’t in much suspense about the answer. There were always new pictures of darling young Henry. Sure enough, she pulled out her phone, and I dutifully admired tiny Henry as he drooled, slept, and watched the black and white mobile dancing above his crib.

  I was just ringing up her wool order when Priscilla Carstairs came in. Priscilla was over eighty and seemed to be the embodiment of healthy senior living.

  Where everyone else had bundled up against the weather, she seemed energized. “What an invigorating breeze. It’ll put the roses in your cheeks.” She was as loose-limbed as a teenager and held herself so straight and with such fine posture that whenever she walked into my shop, I felt as though I must be slouching and pulled my shoulders up and back.

  She was long and lean, and her thick silver hair was pulled back into a bun. She was dressed all in black from her cashmere turtleneck to the bottom of her wide-legged jersey trousers. She wore ballet flats as though she’d lived in ballet slippers for so many years of her life, she couldn’t break the habit.

  “Lucy, dear,” she said, bringing a rush of cold air in with her, “wait until you see my latest creation. Oh, and I’ll need some more of the gold embroidery thread for my little drummer’s drum.”

  She and Eileen greeted each other, and then Eileen headed with her new wool into the back room while I found the gold embroidery thread.

  Mabel and Clara came in together. Clara rubbed her eyes. They’d obviously just woken up from their day’s sleep.

  Apart from being slightly pale, which everyone was this time
of year in England, they could pass for two average little old ladies. So long as they remembered not to talk about things that no living human could possibly remember, I was perfectly happy to have them in my knitting circle.

  It was ten after seven and I was just about to lock up and head into the back room myself when Sarah Lawson rushed in. “I’m so sorry I’m late, Lucy. I hope you weren’t waiting?”

  “No, of course not. You’re just in time.”

  Sarah Lawson was in her late thirties and, in her white down coat, she looked like a snowman. She was round everywhere, from her face to her belly. She often sounded short of breath and was usually the last one to arrive at knitting circle. “I hope you don’t mind—I brought my dinner with me.”

  There wasn’t much I could say, but I didn’t think that eating a greasy burger from a fast-food place was entirely conducive to knitting.

  “Do you need wools or patterns or notions before we go in?”

  She shook her head and patted her bulging tapestry bag. “I have everything right here. Including my dins.”

  “Go on in, then, and I’ll be right there.”

  I poked my head out of the door and looked up and down Harrington Street, but I didn’t see any likely-looking knitters scurrying toward Cardinal Woolsey’s knitting shop. In fact, it was so windy and cold, there wasn’t a soul on the street. I shut and locked the door. I left the Christmas lights on, though, as they looked so pretty from the street and would be festive when my knitting circle left. After they were gone, I’d have to remember to turn out all the lights.