Death by Competitive Knitting

How it begins

Agnes had completed eleven rows when the sponsor died.

She was pleased with the rows.

The death complicated that.

Around her, the village hall continued making the soft, determined sound of people who had promised to knit for twelve hours and were beginning to regret the wording.

At table three, Mrs. Peake counted under her breath.

At table five, someone had dropped a stitch and acquired the expression Agnes remembered from losing a boat race by half a length.

The sponsor lay beneath a green scarf long enough to reach the kitchen.

Priya stood beside him, holding the trophy.

"Please don't touch anything," she said.

Agnes set down her needles.

She had spent forty years telling people to stop moving at the wrong moment. She recognized the particular stillness that followed a command nobody had expected to hear.

"Has anyone called an ambulance?"

"Yes."

"And the police?"

Priya nodded.

Agnes looked at the scarf.

"Who made that?"

Nobody answered.

The rules required each contestant to record their starting stitch count at six in the evening. Photographs were displayed on the noticeboard. Agnes's contribution occupied a modest square of yellow wool that could, with encouragement, become a pocket.

The green scarf was wider than her shoulders.

And finished.

She knew very little about knitting. But she knew what speed looked like when people lied about it.

"How many rows?" she asked.

Mrs. Peake stopped counting.

"At least a thousand."

"In six hours?"

"Not unless he was paying them by the finger."

Agnes went to the noticeboard.

In the sponsor's photograph, the scarf ended at his waist.

On the floor, it curled twice around the trophy table.

One of the contestants began to put her knitting away.

Agnes smiled at her.

"Best leave that out," she said. "I think we're about to need everyone's times."

For the first time all evening, the room became properly competitive.