Chapter 1

By Tuesday morning, Emerald Harbour had developed three official theories, seven unofficial theories, and one version involving pirates that Nora Bell claimed she had repeated only to demonstrate its foolishness. The Wool Room remained closed, its cheerful window display of baby yarn and novelty buttons dim behind police tape. Someone had placed flowers under the door. Someone else had placed a handwritten sign reading REST EASY, GERALD, which was touching except Mr Hargreaves's first name had been Graham.

Mabel Finch stood outside the shop with a shopping basket over one arm and the charity blanket in a tote bag pressed against her hip. She had slept badly, which annoyed her because murderers, in her opinion, should be required to observe office hours. The two notes lay inside a biscuit tin at home beneath Bert's old driving gloves. She had spent breakfast deciding to take them to Siobhán. Then she had spent the walk into town deciding she ought to look once more at the wool shop first. Good intentions, like scones, often collapsed in the middle.

Candlewick Lane curved down toward the harbour, narrow enough that gossip could cross it without raising its voice. The bakery steamed at one end. The chemist displayed compression socks with missionary zeal. Outside the post office, Eileen O'Dowd pretended to read a parcel notice while watching Mabel with both eyes and half her soul.

'Morning,' Mabel said.

'Is it?' Eileen replied. 'Hard to tell, what with homicide.'

'One must not let murder ruin posture.'

Eileen's mouth twitched. 'Siobhán Byrne was in there till near midnight. They took boxes out.'

'What sort of boxes?'

'Brown ones.'

'Helpful as ever.'

'I am not a detective.'

'No, but you have the surveillance instincts of a barn owl.'

Eileen accepted this as tribute. She leaned closer, lowering her voice though the entire lane was listening through walls. 'Maureen Daly went in yesterday afternoon. Before Poppy found him.'

Mabel kept her face calm. 'Maureen buys wool.'

'Maureen sells judgement. Wool is merely the packaging.'

That was unfair and not entirely wrong. Mabel adjusted her tote bag. Inside, the blanket shifted, soft and accusing. 'Did anyone else go in?'

'Alfie Gant's nephew. The handsome one with the unfortunate tattoo.'

'Declan?'

'If that is what he is calling himself this week.'

Mabel looked through the shop window. The interior was a cosy clutter of colour: cubbies stacked with yarn, pattern books fanned near the till, a basket of bargain remnants by the door. Nothing visible screamed murder. That was the trouble with crime. It seldom had the decency to arrange itself dramatically. Mostly it hid among receipts.

A reflection appeared behind hers. Garda Siobhán Byrne, arms folded, expression arranged somewhere between affection and indictment. 'Mrs Finch.'

'Garda Byrne.'

'You are standing outside a sealed crime scene with a face on you like a woman about to do something educational.'

'I was admiring the window display.'

'The window display is police tape.'

'Very modern.'

Siobhán sighed. She had known Mabel since childhood, which was a disadvantage for both of them. Mabel remembered her with jam on her school jumper; Siobhán remembered Mabel organising a petition against potholes with the moral force of a papal decree.

'Did you bring me everything you should have brought me?' Siobhán asked.

Mabel disliked the question because it assumed, accurately, that she had not. 'I brought my civic concern.'

'That is not evidence.'

'In this town, it often precedes evidence.'

Siobhán's gaze dropped to the tote bag. 'Is that the blanket?'

'The appeal blanket, yes.'

'Why do you have it?'

'Because Vera would put it through a hot wash in a panic and Nora would declare it ruined by democracy.'

'Mabel.'

There it was: not Mrs Finch, but Mabel. The personal warning. Mabel felt old irritation rise, bright and sustaining. Younger people thought age made one soft. Age made one efficient. She had limited time left on earth and no patience for being managed by anyone who still owned trainers with reflective strips.

'I found something in it,' she said.

Siobhán went still. 'When?'

'Last night.'

'And you are telling me now?'

'I am telling you before lunch.'

'Saints preserve me.'

Mabel opened the tote and showed the damaged moss-green square but not the notes. Not yet. Cowardice? Strategy? She could not have said. The stitch had run farther overnight, loosening a narrow ladder through the square. It looked less like an accident each time she saw it and more like a little door.

Siobhán examined it without touching. 'This was Maureen Daly's section.'

'You noticed.'

'I do police work occasionally, between preventing pensioners from contaminating evidence.'

'How is Mr Hargreaves believed to have died?'

'That is not your concern.'

'Was he struck?'

'Mabel.'

'Poisoned?'

'No.'

'Then he was struck.'

Siobhán closed her eyes briefly. 'You are a menace in sensible shoes.'

'Thank you.'

A delivery lorry groaned at the top of the lane. The driver, realising he had chosen the wrong road for subtle manoeuvres, began reversing with the beeping despair of modern civilisation. Everyone looked except Siobhán, which impressed Mabel. Discipline was a fine thing when not directed at oneself.

'Bring the blanket to the station,' Siobhán said. 'Now.'

'With you?'

'That is usually what now means.'

Mabel nearly obeyed. She truly did. But at that moment Poppy Lennox came out of the bakery carrying a tray of iced buns, saw the two of them by The Wool Room, and dropped every bun onto the pavement. Pink icing splattered like cheerful evidence. Poppy stared not at the shop, nor at Siobhán, but at Mabel's tote bag.

'You shouldn't have that,' Poppy whispered.

Siobhán turned. 'Why?'

Poppy's face emptied. 'No reason.'

Mabel, who had never respected 'no reason' as a phrase, stepped closer. 'Poppy, yesterday in the hall you looked at the blanket as if you knew it.'

'Everyone knows the blanket.'

'Not like that.'

The girl's chin wobbled. Behind the bakery window, Mrs Reilly had stopped arranging soda bread and was watching with the frank delight of a woman receiving free theatre. Eileen had abandoned all pretence and moved nearer. Emerald Harbour did not need social media; it had pavements.

Poppy said, 'Mr Hargreaves told me to keep away from green wool.'

Siobhán's voice sharpened. 'When?'

'Yesterday morning. He was joking, I thought. He said green was unlucky if you knew where to look.'

Mabel felt the tote bag grow heavier. Maureen's moss-green square. The hidden note. Alfie Gant. Hargreaves. A dropped stitch as confession, warning, invitation, trap.

Siobhán took Poppy by the elbow with surprising gentleness. 'Come with me.'

'I have work.'

'Your buns are deceased and your statement is alive. Come.'

Poppy gave a wet laugh, then looked at Mabel. 'He said if anything happened, the old ladies would know what to do.'

'Old ladies?' Nora Bell's voice snapped from the chemist doorway. 'Who is old?'

'Not now, Nora,' Mabel said.

Nora sniffed. 'Murder is no excuse for ageism.'

Despite herself, Mabel smiled. That was the charm of Emerald Harbour: even fear arrived wearing a cardigan and carrying an objection. But underneath the charm, something had begun to shift. A town that laughed together could lie together. A circle that knitted blankets could knot secrets. And Mabel, who had planned to age into respectable irrelevance, found herself at the centre of a pattern someone else had cast on months before.

At the Garda station, which occupied two rooms behind the library and smelled of paper, polish, and institutional tea, Mabel surrendered the blanket. She also surrendered the first note. She meant to surrender the second. She had it in her handbag, inside the zipped pocket where she kept emergency mints and stamps. Yet when Siobhán held out her hand, Mabel gave over only the paper that said I SAW HIM FALL. NOT AN ACCIDENT.

Siobhán read it once. Twice. Her face hardened into the look she had inherited from her mother, who had once silenced a school assembly by clearing her throat. 'Where is the rest?'

Mabel's mouth went dry. 'The rest?'

'Notes like this do not arrive alone in stories, and you have the guilty posture of a woman standing on a second biscuit.'

'I resent the accuracy.'

'Mabel.'

Mabel looked toward the library window. Across the square, children in yellow raincoats trooped past with a teacher, bright as ducklings, utterly unconcerned with adult ruin. She thought of handing over the HARGREAVES note. She thought of Maureen's warning. She thought of Poppy saying the old ladies would know what to do. Most of all, she thought of Alfie Gant, who had fallen and been tidied away by consensus.

'I need to speak to Maureen first,' Mabel said.

'No, you need to let me investigate.'

'Those are not mutually exclusive.'

'They are when one of us has a badge and one of us has a tote bag full of obstruction.'

Mabel stood. 'Then arrest me.'

Siobhán stared. Constable Roche, who had been pretending not to listen, dropped his pen.

'Do not tempt me,' Siobhán said softly.

Mabel's knees shook. She hoped her skirt concealed it. Agency was a noble word until it required one to walk out of a Garda station while withholding evidence from a woman one liked. But courage, she had learned, was sometimes less about charging forward and more about choosing which person to disappoint first.

She left the station with her handbag clutched under her arm and the second note burning inside it. By the time she reached Candlewick Lane again, the rain had stopped. In The Wool Room window, a single skein of moss-green merino had rolled from its cubby and rested against the glass, bright and soft and indecently alive. Tucked beneath its label, just visible through the reflection of the harbour, was a tiny silver charm shaped like a pair of scissors.

Mabel did not touch the door. She did not cross the tape. She simply stood there, looking at the charm, while the town moved around her pretending not to stare. In knitting, scissors meant finishing. Cutting. Release. In murder, Mabel suspected, they meant someone had decided the next thread was hers.

By the time Mabel reached the station steps, she had collected three more pieces of information without asking for them. Mrs Reilly had sold Maureen two iced fingers yesterday, though Maureen disliked icing. The chemist's assistant had seen Declan Gant buying plasters with shaking hands. Reverend Tom's bicycle had been outside The Wool Room at noon, which meant nothing unless one believed clergymen were incapable of errands or sin. Mabel believed in errands. She reserved judgement on the rest.

Inside the station, Siobhán had pinned a map of Candlewick Lane to the wall. It looked ridiculous and ominous, the way familiar places do when reduced to boxes and arrows. There was the bakery, the post office, the wool shop, the alley to the harbour steps where Alfie had died. Distance, on paper, became accusation. Mabel saw at once that anyone leaving The Wool Room by the back could reach the old steps in less than two minutes.

Poppy gave her statement in bursts. Graham had been nervous. Graham had argued with a woman on the phone. Graham had told Poppy to take her lunch early and not come back through the rear workroom. Graham had been alive at twelve-ten and dead before one. Poppy cried whenever she reached the part where the shop bell had tinkled as she entered, cheerful as a nursery rhyme, while his shoe lay visible behind the counter.

Mabel listened from the corridor because Siobhán had forgotten how sound travelled in old buildings. Or perhaps Siobhán had not forgotten and wanted Mabel to hear just enough to become useful. That possibility pleased Mabel more than it should have. Being managed was offensive. Being recruited by accident was invigorating.

When Mabel finally left, Nora caught up with her outside the library, cheeks flushed from speed and indignation. 'They questioned me about my whereabouts,' Nora said. 'As if I would murder a man on a Monday. I have aqua-fit.' Mabel told her that alibis came in many forms. Nora said chlorine was a witness and should be respected.

The humour helped for almost thirty seconds. Then Mabel saw Maureen across the square, standing under the awning of the closed florist. Maureen was not watching the Garda station. She was watching the upstairs window of the empty rooms above The Wool Room. Someone had pulled the curtain back there. Just an inch. Just enough for a face to have looked out and vanished.

Mabel crossed before caution could catch her. By the time she reached the shop, the curtain was still. Police tape barred the front door, but the side passage was open to the lane, damp and narrow, smelling of bins and wet stone. A sensible woman would fetch Siobhán. Mabel told herself she was merely confirming whether fetching was necessary. This is how foolishness dresses for church.

At the end of the passage, near the back step, lay a button. Not an ordinary button. A tiny mother-of-pearl thing carved with a rose. Mabel recognised it because she had admired a row of them the previous week in Graham's display case, priced far too high for anyone with sense. One was missing from the card then. One lay here now, shining in the dirty water like a tooth.

She did not pick it up. She was learning. Instead she took a photograph, then another with her reading glasses on, then backed out of the alley as if the shadows had teeth. Across the square, the upstairs curtain moved again. This time Mabel saw a hand. Not a face. A hand with a plaster wrapped around the thumb.

The day had begun as a matter of notes and wool. By noon it had acquired ledgers, keys, green warnings, expensive buttons, and a watcher above a murder scene. Mabel thought of the charity blanket's cream border, her own neat stitches holding together everyone else's uneven squares. For years, she had believed that was community: making the mismatched pieces bearable. Now she wondered whether she had been binding the wrong things shut.