Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose [Stories]

Murder in Store

“Hey, miss.”

“What is it now?”

“Something’s up with Santa.”

“That’s quite enough from you, young lady,” Pauline said sharply — unseasonably sharply for Christmas week in an Oxford Street department store. The Toy Fair was a bedlam of electric trains, robots, talking dolls and whining infants, but the counter staff — however hard-pressed — weren’t expected to threaten the kids. The day had got off to a trying start when a boy with mischief in mind had pulled a panda off a shelf and started an avalanche of soft toys. Pauline had found herself knee-deep in teddies, rabbits and hippos. Now she was trying to reassemble the display, between attending to customers and coping with little nuisances like this one, dumped in the department while their parents shopped elsewhere in the store.

“Take a butcher’s in the grotto, miss.”

Pauline glared at the girl, a six-year-old by the size of her, with gaps between her teeth and a dark fringe like a helmet. A green anorak, white corduroy trousers and red wellies. She’d been a regular visitor ever since the school term ended. Her quick, sticky hands were a threat to every toy within reach. But she had shining brown eyes and a way with words that could be amusing at times less stressful than this.

“I think Santa’s stiffed it, miss.”

“For the last time...”

A man held out a green felt crocodile, and Pauline rolled her eyes upwards and exchanged a smile. She rang up the sale, locked her till and stepped around the counter to look for Mark Daventry, the head of the toy department. The child had a point. It was 10.05 and Santa’s Grotto should have opened at 10.00. A queue had started to form. There was no sign of Zena, the “gnome” who sold the tickets.

It was shamefully unfair. Mark hadn’t been near the department this morning. No doubt he was treating Zena to coffee in the staff canteen. When blonde Zena had first appeared three weeks ago in her pointed hat, short tunic and red tights, Mark had lingered around the grotto entrance like a six-foot kid lining up for his Christmas present. Soon he’d persuaded her to join him for coffee-breaks: the Mark Daventry routine familiar to Pauline and sundry other ex-girlfriends in the store. However, Zena wasn’t merely the latest temp in the toy department. She wasn’t merely an attractive blonde. She happened to be the wife of Santa Claus.

Big Ben, as he was known outside the grotto, was a ready-made Santa, a mountainous man who needed no padding under the crimson suit, and whose beard was his own, requiring only a dusting of talc. On Saturday nights, he could be seen in a pair of silver trunks, in the wrestling-ring at Streatham. This time, Mark was flirting dangerously.

“Coming, miss?”

Pauline felt her fingers clutched by a small, warm hand. She allowed herself to be led to the far end of the grotto, the curtain that covered the exit.

“Have you been sneaking round the back, you little menace?”

The child dived through the curtain and Pauline followed. Surprisingly, the interior was unlit. The winking lights hadn’t been switched on and the mechanical figures of Santa’s helpers were immobile. There was no sign of Ben and Zena. They generally came up by the service lift that was cunningly enclosed in the grotto, behind Santa’s workshop. They used the workshop as a changing-room.

“See what I mean, miss?”

Pauline saw where the child was pointing, and caught her breath. In the gloom, the motionless figure of Santa Claus was slumped on the throne where he usually sat to receive the children. The head and shoulders hung ominously over one side.

It was difficult not to scream. Only the presence of the child kept Pauline from panicking.

“Stay here. Don’t come any closer.”

She knew what she had to do: check whether his pulse was beating. He might have suffered a heart attack. Ben was not much over thirty, but anyone so obviously overweight was at risk. She took a deep breath and stepped forward.

She discovered that he wasn’t actually wearing the costume. It was draped over him. Somehow, she had to find the courage to look. She reached out for the furry trim of the hood, took it between finger and thumb and lifted it. She gave a start. She was looking into a pair of eyes without a flicker of life. But it wasn’t Ben.

It was Mark Daventry. And there was something embedded in his chest — a bolt from a crossbow.

Pauline rushed the child out of the grotto and dashed to the phone.

She called Mr Beckington, the store manager, but got through to Sylvia, his secretary. Even suave Sylvia, supposed to be equal to every emergency, gave a cry of horror at the news. “Mark? Oh my God! Are you sure?”

“Is Mr Beckington there?”

“Mr Beckington? Yes.”

“Ask him to come down at once. I’ll make sure no one goes in.”

When she came off the phone, Pauline looked around for the small girl. She’d wandered off, probably to spread the news. Soon the whole store would know that Santa was dead in his grotto. Pauline shook her head and went to stand guard.

She told the queue that Santa was going to be late, and someone made a joke about reindeer in the rush-hour. This is totally bizarre, Pauline thought, standing here under the glitter with these smiling people and their children, and “Jingle Bells” belting out from the public address, while a man lies murdered a few yards away. Her nerves were stretched to snapping-point.

Fully ten minutes went by before Mr Beckington appeared, smoking his usual cigar, giving a convincing impression of the unflappable executive in a crisis. He liked customers to be aware that he managed the store, so he always wore a rosebud on his pinstripe lapel. He nodded sociably to the queue and murmured to Pauline, “What’s all this, Miss Fothergill?” as if she were the cause of it.

She took him into the grotto.

They stopped and stared.

The winking lights were on. The model figures were in motion, wielding their little hammers. Santa was alive and on his throne, dressed for work. Zena the gnome was powdering his beard.

“Ho-ho,” Ben greeted them in his jocular voice, “and what do you want in your Christmas stockings?”

Mr Beckington turned to Pauline, his eyes blazing behind his glasses. “If this is some kind of joke, it’s in lamentably bad taste.”

She reddened and repeated what she’d seen. Ben and Zena insisted that everything had been in its usual place when they’d arrived in the lift a few minutes late. They certainly hadn’t seen a dead body. The Santa costume had been on its hanger in the workshop.

She gaped at them in disbelief.

Mr Beckington said, “We’re all under stress at this time of the year, Miss Fothergill. The best construction I can put upon this incident is that you had some kind of hallucination brought on by overwork. You’d better go home and rest.”

She said, trying to stay calm, “I’m perfectly well, thank you. I don’t need to go home.”

Ben said in the voice he used to his infant visitors when they burst into tears, “Now, now, be a sensible girl.”

“If it’s all my imagination, where’s Mark Daventry?” Pauline demanded.

Mr Beckington told her, “He’s down with ’flu. We had a message.”

“Darling, I think some meany played a trick on you,” Zena suggested. “That kid with the teeth missing is a right little scamp. Some practical joker must have put her up to it.”

Pauline shook her head and frowned, unwilling to accept the explanation, but trying to fathom how it could have been done.

“If you’re not going home, you’d better get back to your position,” Mr Beckington told her. “And let’s get this blasted grotto open.”

She spent the rest of the morning in a stunned state, going through the motions of selling toys and answering enquiries while her mind tried to account for what had happened. If only the small girl had returned, she’d have got the truth from her by some means, but, just when the kid was wanted, she’d vanished.

About 12.30, there was a quiet period. Pauline asked Zena to keep an eye on her counter for five minutes. “I want to check the stock-lists in the sports department.”

“Whatever for?”

“To see if a crossbow is missing.”

“You still believe this happened?”

“I’m certain.”

The sports department was located next to the toys on the same floor. Disappointingly, Pauline found that every crossbow was accounted for. She told herself that if the murderer was on the staff, he could easily have borrowed the weapon and replaced it later. But what about the bolt?

She examined the crossbow kits. Six bolts were supplied with each. She checked the boxes and found one with only five. She hadn’t been hallucinating.

“What are you going to do about it?” Zena asked, when Pauline told her.

“I’ve got some more checking to do.”

“Proper Miss Marple, aren’t you? You’re wasting your time, darling.”

“Coming from you, that’s good.”

Zena said without a hint of embarrassment, “Jealous of my coffee breaks, are you? That’s all water under the bridge. Look, I still say this is someone playing silly games. It could even be Mark himself.”

Pauline shook her head. “Zena, he’s dead, and I’m going to find out why. Tell me, did you and Ben arrive together this morning?”

Zena smiled. “You bet we did.”

“What’s funny?”

“He guards me like a harem-girl since he found out Mark was chatting me up. We had a monumental row last week, and I told Ben straight out that he shouldn’t take me for granted. Now he watches me all the time.” She adjusted her pointed hat. “I find it rather a turn-on.”

“But you definitely finished with Mark last week?”

“Absolutely. I wouldn’t say he was heartbroken. You know how he is. Adaptable.”

“That isn’t the word I’d use,” said Pauline, thinking of all the women Mark had “chatted up.”

In her lunch-hour, she went downstairs and talked to the security man on the staff entrance, a solemn Scot who’d made himself unpopular with everyone but the management by noting daily who was in, and at what time. Pauline asked if by any chance Mr Mark Daventry was in.

“Yes, he’s here. He arrived early this morning, just after 8.15.”

She said, “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Someone told me he was down with ’flu.”

To prove his point, the security man showed her Mark’s overcoat in the staff locker-room. She knew Mark’s camel-hair coat with the leather buttons and the shoulder-flaps. There was no question now that what she had seen was true.

She asked the security man about Ben and Zena. They’d arrived together at their usual time, 9.50 — which was odd, not to say suspicious, considering how late the grotto had opened.

She decided to have it out with them. The grotto closed between 1.00 and 2.00, so she found them out of costume in the staff canteen. They’d finished lunch and Ben had his arm protectively around Zena’s chair. They looked up like two choirboys on a Christmas card, innocence personified.

She warned them that she’d been checking downstairs. “I want a straight answer. Why weren’t you ready to open the grotto at ten this morning?”

“There’s no mystery, darling,” answered Zena. “We had to wait ages for the lift.”

A reasonable explanation. The lift was their only means of access to the grotto. Pauline had to accept it for the moment. She said, “I’m going to make a search of the grotto.”

Ben said affably, “Fine. Let’s all make a search.”

They had twenty minutes. Pauline had hoped to find bloodstains on Santa’s throne, but it was painted red. She went behind the scenery, where it was supported on wood and chicken-wire. “There’s something under here.”

It was a wooden packing-case. Ben dragged it out and pulled off the lid. There was a layer of the small white chips of polystyrene used in packing. Ben dug into them with his large hands.

Zena screamed as a tuft of dark hair was revealed. It didn’t take much more digging to confirm that Mark’s body had been crammed into the packing-case.

“I suppose all three of us are imagining this!” Pauline said pointedly.

“We’d better report it,” said Ben in a shocked voice. Reassuringly, he and Zena gave every sign of being genuinely surprised at the discovery.

“Before we do,” said Pauline, “would you mind looking in his pockets?”

“Why?” asked Zena, but Ben was already starting a search. In one of the inside pockets was the note that Pauline hoped to find. Something must have lured Mark to his death in the grotto early that morning.

It was a short, typed message: See what Santa has for you, darling. Tuesday morning, 8.45.

“I’ve seen that typestyle recently,” said Ben.

“On our letter of appointment,” said Zena.

“Sylvia?” said Ben, frowning. “Mr Beckington’s secretary?”

Pauline and Zena exchanged a long, uncomprehending look.

They covered the body and took the lift to the management floor above. On the way up, Pauline said, “I’ve thought of something terribly important. Did you find out why you had to wait so long for the lift this morning?”

“Not for certain,” Ben answered. “The usual cause is a storeman delivering goods.”

Pauline said, “I believe it was the murderer, jamming the lift-door open at our floor so that no one would interrupt the killing. When it finally arrived, did you see a storeman?”

“No,” said Zena, “it was empty.” She hesitated. “But we smelt cigar smoke.”

There wasn’t time to reflect on that, because the lift-doors opened at the top floor and Mr Beckington was waiting there, a cigar jutting from his mouth. At the sight of the three of them together, his features twisted in alarm. He turned and made a dash for the emer-gency stairs.

“Ben!” shouted Zena.

Ben set off in chase.

The commotion brought people from their offices, among them Sylvia. Pauline grabbed her arm and drew her into the lift. Zena pressed the button for the ground floor and the three women started downwards.

“Mr Beckington,” Zena blurted out. “He murdered Mark.”

Sylvia’s hand went to her mouth.

“But why?” said Pauline.

Sylvia said in a small, shocked voice, “He was jealous. Silly man. He was forever trying to start something with me, but I wasn’t interested. I mean, he’s married, with a daughter my age. Then last week Mark started taking an interest in me. I always thought him dishy, and... well, on Friday evening we spent a little time together in the grotto.”

“By arrangement?”

Sylvia nodded. “When everyone else was gone.”

Pauline showed her the note they’d found in Mark’s pocket.

“I didn’t type this!” said Sylvia.

“Mr Beckington did,” Pauline explained, “on your typewriter, to make sure Mark turned up this morning. He killed Mark in the grotto and he must have still been in there when the child sneaked in. He must have been hiding behind the scenery when I came in. I raised the alarm, and while I was standing outside like a lulu, he hid the body in a packing-case. I just hope Ben catches him.”

“My man’s strong,” said Zena, “but fast he isn’t.”

The lift gave a shudder as they reached the ground floor. When the doors opened, a police sergeant was waiting. Two constables were nearby, standing at the foot of the stairs.

“All right, girls,” said the sergeant. “Just stand over there, well out of the way.”

In a moment, there was the clatter of footsteps on the stairs, then Mr Beckington ran straight into the arms of the waiting policemen. He offered no resistance.

Pauline felt a tug on her skirt and looked down at the small girl. “You?” she said. “You called the police?”

The child smiled smugly and nodded.

“And you believed her?” Pauline said to the sergeant.

“She’s my daughter, miss. The way I see it, if my little girl tells me Santa’s snuffed it, I’ve got to be very, very concerned.”