Score one for me. “Probably best you don’t know everything because I’m pretty scared I’m going to screw up. Here’s what I want you to do for me. Can you call Hugo and arrange for everyone from the Gargoyles who was there the night Pamela died to return tomorrow night at seven p.m.?”
“That’s exactly when we met the last time. What are you planning? Another dinner?”
“Not exactly. But I want to do a walk-through of what happened. When. Who was where and what they were doing.”
“Lucy, we’ve been through this a hundred times.” He pointed to the back room. “There’s a whiteboard in there at this moment with people and times and comings and goings. You know the police have been doing something similar. And they have training and resources that we don’t.”
“I know. But I have an idea. A hunch, if you like. But I can’t find any proof. So—”
“You’re going on a fishing expedition?” He didn’t sound accusatory so much as intrigued. That was exactly what I was doing. I nodded.
“You know, you’ll only get one chance. If that. It won’t be easy for me to talk Hugo into letting us all back into his home.” He made a wry face. “Even worse, his wife won’t be in London this weekend. She’s even more protective of their privacy than her husband is.”
Good. I was really glad the wife was going to be there. She didn’t know it yet, but she would be playing a pivotal role.
“I want her to be there.”
His eyebrows rose at that. “She was in London the night of the murder. You don’t think she had something to do with this, do you?”
“I think she does, yes.” It was too complicated and very much like a sweater I was attempting to knit. I had the whole design in my mind, and I could see it laid out perfectly, every stitch neatly executed, me in control of the whole design, when I knew perfectly well that anything I tried to knit usually ended up a tangled mess. However, my vampire knitters always helped me straighten out my knitting messes, and I was confident that they could also help me make sense of this tangle of clues and lies. Because I was absolutely certain of one thing. The reason that nothing was making sense was because someone was lying. And I suspected that someone had murdered Pamela.
“Why gargoyles?” I asked him.
He appeared startled. “I beg your pardon?”
I’d been thinking about this for a while now. “Why do you call yourselves gargoyles? It’s a dinner club. It seems like an odd choice of a title.”
He appeared to be looking back in time and enjoying some sort of private joke. “Ah, well, you have to remember that the dining club was set up in Victorian times. There was a gothic revival going on. I suspect the name was meant partly in jest.”
“Because gargoyles are really just a fancy name for gutters?” I’d done a bit of researching on the internet.
“Yes. You’re correct, Lucy. Gargoyles do serve a useful purpose. They take rainwater off the roof and keep it off the masonry so that the walls last longer. There have been gargoyles since Greek times. I believe the Temple of Zeus featured lion-headed gargoyles. And, as you’ve no doubt seen, they’re all over Oxford. Humorous ones, terrifying ones, just plain peculiar faces leer at you from all sorts of colleges and buildings. There’s also the idea that their ugly faces are meant to frighten away evil. Keeping those inside safe.”
“So it sort of goes back to chivalry again?”
“In a way, yes. But I doubt the name was ever meant to be taken too seriously. People at a dining club tend to get a little carried away with gluttony and perhaps imbibing a little too much wine. It can lead to the best of men putting their worst faces forward.”
Which we had certainly seen recently. “Well, I need you to get all the Gargoyles together. Can you do that?”
“I think I can manage it.”
“I need Lochlan Balfour there as well.”
“He’s still here. That won’t be a problem.”
Maybe in naming the club the Gargoyles, it encouraged people to act like monsters. They’d have been better to call the dining club the Little Lambs. The Delicate Blossoms. Something less dangerous to society, in any case.
Saturday came and, even though I was busy at the shop all day, I never forgot what was waiting for me that evening. Was it possible I was wrong? Even worse, was it possible I was right? I had a theory, and my instinct told me that I was on the right track, but if I was wrong, I was going to make a phenomenal fool of myself and, by association, everyone who had helped me.
However, everything was arranged. Rafe had managed to get all the players to agree to return to the scene of the crime. Ian Chisholm had agreed to be part of it. I couldn’t pull back now if I wanted to.
I closed the store at five as usual. Well, I tried to close the store at five as usual, but there was an older woman who just couldn’t decide between the yellow wool and the green for her unborn grandchild. I appreciated that this was an important moment for her, and she was so excited to be a new grandmother. But really, yellow? Green? Finally, I suggested that she buy both and make two blankets. This satisfied her, and at ten after five, I was able to shut the shop. I went straight upstairs. Nyx was more strict about store hours than I was, and she had already retreated upstairs and was sound asleep on the couch. “I’m glad you’re still here,” I said to her. “I need you.”
She opened one eye, regarded me sleepily, then closed it again. My familiar is nothing if not obedient.
I went ahead anyway, preparing myself. I brought out the candles and put them in a circle. I showered and
