I glanced up and caught Rafe’s gaze. He’d been there too but obviously was quite happy for me to tell the story as I knew it. So I did. As I had told the police, I went through everything I remembered from the time I got there until the time I left.
Even as they knitted with incredible speed, I knew that every one of them was listening intently. Even Silence Buggins, the notoriously chatty Victorian, managed to keep her mouth shut while I got through the whole story.
She was, however, the first one to have an opinion when I’d finished. “Obviously, it was Lochlan Balfour who murdered that girl.”
It was such an odd thing to say that eighteen vampires stopped knitting and stared at her. And one human did the same.
Chapter 10
It was Rafe who answered her. “Lochlan Balfour? Why on earth would he kill a girl he didn’t even know?”
Silence was wearing a high-necked cotton blouse with a cameo brooch at her throat. A spray of flowers was pinned to the lapel of her jacket. I recognized them as human hair flowers. It was a new hobby that she’d recently taken up. Her long, brown skirt hung to the ground, and her boots were touching at the ankles, as no doubt her knees were touching. Her hair was done in the same updo she’d been wearing probably since she was fifteen years old, about a hundred and fifty years ago. So when Silence looked prim, she didn’t have to work at it very hard. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Lucy described that girl as being laid out like the emblem of the Knights of the Garter. They’re a chivalric order. And Lochlan Balfour was a Knight of the Garter in life. Therefore, it must have been him.”
“But why?” Rafe pressed.
“To protect someone,” she said as though it were blindingly obvious.
I said, “But isn’t chivalry about protecting women?”
Dr. Christopher Weaver, who’d been as stunned as anyone else, picked up his knitting again. “I wonder if you could be right, Silence.”
Now it was Silence’s turn to be surprised. Those weren’t words that were said to her very often. “Well thank you, Dr. Weaver. It’s nice to know that someone listens to what I have to say. Of course, back when Mr. Tennyson was alive—”
Christopher Weaver interrupted her without ceremony. “Yes, but to answer Lucy’s question, chivalry is an order. It’s only in recent years that the term has been more about men being polite to women. Originally it was about fighting for all that was right.”
The others were listening, and all had resumed their knitting. Except for Rafe. “Lochlan Balfour isn’t a murderer. He’s currently a guest in my home. The only reason he’s not here with me tonight is that he doesn’t care for knitting. I’m not in the habit of harboring murderers under my roof.”
“Not knowingly,” Silence said.
“All right,” Dr. Weaver said quickly to keep the peace. “It was just a theory.”
I wondered why Rafe was quite so certain his friend had nothing to do with it.
There was a slightly awkward silence, and then Sylvia broke it. “Tell us more about the victim, Lucy. I understand you knew her.”
And how I wished I hadn’t. As briefly as I could, I once more told the story about Pamela. Of how she’d stolen my boyfriend in high school. A humiliation that I really didn’t like having to relive again and again. “And then we lost touch.” I vividly recalled the moment that she had burst back into my life again. “Until a few days ago.” I told them how she’d come in just before William, and how he’d ended up inviting her to be a server along with me.
“Are you sure that was a coincidence?” Sylvia asked me.
“How could it not be?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know at all. But clearly, she was known there. She’d claimed to the housekeeper that she was Alex Percival Brown’s girlfriend.”
“Yes. Which he flatly denied,” Rafe said. He’d been with the other Gargoyles, old and young, while the police were interviewing everyone, so he’d heard Alex loudly insist she wasn’t his girlfriend and hadn’t known she’d be there.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know,” Rafe said.
I told them that Shannon Briggs had seen Pamela smoking with Jeremy Pantages and she’d believed they were arguing.
Theodore raised his eyes from his knitting. “I wonder if she had intended to go to that dinner all along.”
I’d been wondering that too. “But how could she have known about the dinner? It was kept secret, and she couldn’t have known William would be catering. She came into Cardinal Woolsey’s before William got there. It really looked like a coincidence.”
Sylvia said, “Every good actress knows that timing is everything. One enters the scene at the precise moment so that the tension rises.” She looked at all of us. “I’m always wary of coincidence.”
Rafe looked at me. “Didn’t Pamela say she wanted to invite you to a party for her art history professor?”
I nodded. “But I think she made it up. I’m positive she only came to my shop to try and wangle an invitation to the dinner party at the Percival Browns’. But I still don’t understand how she pulled it off.”
Rafe turned to Theodore. “Can you find out who her art history tutor was? I think it would be worth finding out whether the don in question actually does have a book release coming out.”
I could see he was following a train of thought of his own. I gave him a moment and then said, “Why?”
Now he turned his attention to me. “There had to be a reason why Pamela wanted to get inside that house. We already know it wasn’t the first time she had attempted it. According to her, she was there because she was Alexander’s girlfriend.
