Stockings and Spells_A paranormal cozy mystery by Nancy Warren

Author:Nancy Warren [Warren, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781928145561
Publisher: Ambleside Publishing
Published: 2018-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

I was a little nervous when I dressed to go and visit Professor Jeffrey Naylor. For some reason, I felt as though I’d been sent to the principal's office for doing something wrong. I was misrepresenting myself, pretending to be a grad student. I chose a somewhat obscure New England College as my pretend Alma Mater, only because I had a friend who’d taken classes there and I'd at least seen the campus.

I felt incredibly lucky that a guy who had known both Dominic Sanderson and Martin Hodgins now taught at New College. For probably the first time since I had opened Cardinal Woolsey’s, I wore not one hand-knitted item. I had a superstitious dread that he might see me in a sweater and say, "Aren't you the young lady who runs Cardinal Woolsey’s yarn shop?" Of course it was foolish, and I knew that, but anything I could do to settle my own nerves was a good thing.

I wore a tailored black skirt, black shoes, a long-sleeved white shirt and a tweed jacket that had been my grandmother's. When I looked at myself critically in the mirror, I thought it was the sort of get up a grad student might wear to visit a professor.

Rafe had brought me a digital recorder and showed me how to use it, and I also had a notebook and pen.

Professor Naylor was an excellent choice, not only because he’d gone to school with Dominic Sanderson and Martin Hodgins, but because he now taught a course called Oxford, Origins of Fantasy. The course was an intensive investigation into the works of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Sanderson, all of whom had, supposedly, invented their fantastical worlds here in Oxford.

I was ushered into the professor's office right on time, at two o'clock in the afternoon, and I smiled to myself seeing him wear a very similar tweed blazer to the one I'd found in Gran's closet. With it he wore gray slacks and a white shirt with a tie. He seemed very old school. He was very thin, with wispy gray hair and faded blue eyes behind thick-lensed glasses. I gave him a bright smile and walked forward to shake his hand. "Professor Naylor. Thank you so much for seeing me today."

"Always delighted to help a colleague from across the pond." He motioned me to a hard-backed wooden chair on the other side of a battered wooden desk. As he settled himself behind his desk, I looked around the room. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were crammed with everything from obscure texts in Greek and Latin to the most modern fantasy novels. Among the pictures and posters on the wall was one of him standing with Professor Sanderson. From the age they both were, it looked as though the picture had been taken quite recently.

"I hope you don't mind if I record our conversation?" I pulled the small recorder out of my handbag. "I don't take shorthand, you see, and I wouldn't want to miss anything."

He chuckled, indulgently. "Of course not, my dear.

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