Murder Most Merry

INSPECTOR TIERCE AND THE CHRISTMAS VISITS – Jeffry Scott

Choppers are only human, Jill Tierce told herself, without much conviction, after Superintendent Haggard’s invitation to a quiet drink after work. Actually he’d passed outside the open door of her broom-closet office, making Jill start by booming, “Heads up. girlie! Pub call, I’m buying. Back in five...” before bustling away, rubbing his hands.

Taking acceptance for granted was very Lance Haggard, and so was the empty, outward show of bonhomie, but there you were.

Unless forced to behave otherwise, Superintendent Haggard generally did no more than nod to Inspector Tierce in passing. This hadn’t broken her heart. He had a reputation: it was whispered that he pulled strokes. Nothing criminal, he wasn’t bent, but he had a knack of pilfering credit for ideas or successes, coupled with deft evasive action if his own projects went wrong.

Refusing to waste time on Jill Tierce owed less to sexism than to the fact that she was of no present use to him. Leg mangled on duty, she was recovering slowly. Fighting against being invalided out of the Wessex-Coastal Force, lying like a politician about miracles of surgery and physiotherapy, and disguising her limp by willpower, she had won a partial victory. Restricted to light duties on a part-time basis, she was assigned to review dormant cases —and Lance Haggard, skimming along the fast track, wasn’t one to waste time on history.

It wasn’t professional, then, and she doubted a pass. Superintendent Haggard was a notoriously faithful husband. Moreover, Inspector Tierce was clearsighted about her looks: too sharp-featured for prettiness, and the sort of pale hair that may deserve the label but escapes being called blonde.

What was he up to? Then she’d glanced out of the smeary window at her elbow and seen strings of colored lights doubly blurred by the glass and another flurry of snow. There was the explanation, Christmas spirit. She smiled wryly. The superintendent probably kept a checklist of seasonal tasks, so many off-duty hours per December week devoted to stroking inferiors who might mature into rivals or allies. She supposed she ought to feel flattered.

A police cadet messenger tapped at the door and placed a file on Jill’s desk without leaving the corridor, by leaning in and reaching. He had a lipstick smudge in the lee of one earlobe. Mistletoe had been hung in the canteen at lunchtime, only five days to the twenty-fifth now.

Big deal, she thought sourly.

The new file was depressingly fat. She transferred it from the in tray to the bottom of the pending basket, noting that the covers were quite crisp though the buff cardboard jacket had begun to fade. More than a year old. Inspector Tierce estimated. Then Superintendent Haggard was back, jingling his car keys impatiently.

He drove a mile or so out of town, to a Dickensian pub by the river. The saloon bar evoked a sporting squire’s den. Victorian-vintage trophy fish in glass cases on the walls, no jukebox, and just token sprigs of non-plastic holly here and there. “Quiet and a bit classy,” Lance Haggard commented. “I stumbled on this place last summer, thought it would suit you.”

Sure you did, she jeered, not aloud. Apart from an older man and younger woman murmuring in a snug corner (boss courting a soon-to-be-even-more-personal assistant, Jill surmised cattily) they had the bar to themselves. “Done all your Christmas shopping?” Haggard inquired. “Going anywhere for the break, or spending it with Mum and Dad?”

Satisfied that small-talk obligations were discharged, he continued before she could match banality with banality, “I’ve had a file passed to you, luv. Before you drown in details, seemed a good idea to talk you through it.”

Despite a flick of irritation, Jill Tierce was vaguely relieved. It was upsetting when leopards changed their spots. Superintendent Haggard’s were still in place, he wasn’t dispensing Christmas cheer but attempting to spread blame; if she reviewed one of his setbacks, she assumed part of the responsibility.

“I’m listening,” she said flatly.

To her surprise, Haggard was... what? Not hangdog exactly. yet defensive. Obviously shelving a prepared presentation, he said, “Forget so-called perfect crimes—untraceable poisons, trick alibis, some bright spark who’s a master of disguise, Imperfect crimes are the bastards to deal with. Chap had a brainstorm, lashes out at a total stranger, and runs for his life. Unless he gets collared on the spot, blood still running, we’ve no chance. Or. say, this respectable housewife is getting messages from Mars, personal relay station in a flying saucer. Eh? Height of the rush hour, she’s in a crowd and shoves a child under a bus. Goes on home, like normal. No planning, no sane motive, they don’t even try that hard to get away, they just... go about their business. “It gets to me,” he admitted needlessly. “Well, this one instance does. Prostitute killed, and what’s a streetwalker but somebody in extra danger from crazies? Mitzi Field, twenty-four years old but looked younger. Mitzi was just her working name, mind.”

“There’s a surprise.”

He didn’t rise to the sarcasm. “Dorothy Field on the death certificate but we’ll stick to Mitzi, that’s what she was known as, to the few who did know her.”

“She was found in Grand Drive ten days before Christmas three years ago. Dead of repeated blows from something with sharp angles, most likely a brick. I see her getting into some curb crawler’s car, and he drove her to where she was attacked. Saw red—wanted what she wouldn’t provide, she tried ripping him off, plenty of possible reasons—snatched the nearest weapon, bashed her as she turned to run, kept bashing.” The theory was delivered with pointed lack of emotion, Superintendent Haggard back in full control.

“Drove her there... the car was seen?” Jill held up a hand. “Sorry, not thinking straight.” Mount Wolfe was one of the city’s best quarters, Grand Drive its best address.

“Exactly,” said Haggard. “Mitzi had started living rough, so she looked tatty. She’d had a mattress in a squat, that old factory on Victoria Quay, but the council demolished it the week before her death. The docks were her beat. She was wearing those big boots, like the movie—”

“Pretty Woman,” Jill suggested.

“Those’re the jokers, long boots and hot-pants and a ratty leather jacket with her chest hanging out—in December! The boots were borrowed from another girl, too tight, had to be sliced off her feet. Walking two miles from the docks to where she was found would have crippled her. And okay, it was dark, but a feller and a blatantly obvious hooker didn’t foot it all the way up the Mount and along to the end of Grand Drive without being noticed. Which they were not, house-to-house checks established that.”

Taking another, rationed sip of champagne—the pub sold it by the glass, else Haggard might not have stood for the drink of her choice, she suspected—Inspector Tierce frowned doubtfully.

“Grand Drive’s the last place a working girl would pick for business. It’s a private road, and they’re very territorial round there—sleeping policeman bumps every fifty yards to stop cars using it for a shortcut, and if a non-resident parks in the road, somebody rings us within minutes, wanting him shifted...”

“Stresses that the punter was a stranger here,” Haggard argued. “Businessman on an overnight, or he tired of motorway driving, detoured into town for a meal and a change of scene. Mitzi wasn’t a local, either. Londoner originally, family split up after she was sexually abused. Went on the game after absconding from a council home when she was fifteen. Summer before her death she worked the transport cafes. Reading. Bath, Bristol, drifted far as here and stayed.”

“For my money, the punter spotted her at the docks. Then they drove around. She had no crib, did the business in cars or alleys. Maybe this punter was scared of getting mugged if they stuck around the docks. Driving at random, they spot a quiet-looking street, plenty of deep shadow at the far end where the trees are. Must have seemed safe enough, and so it was—for him. Nobody saw them arrive or him leaving. Some pet lover daft enough to walk the dog in a hailstorm found Mitzi’s body that night, but she could have lain there till morning otherwise.”

“All known curb crawlers were interviewed and cleared. Ditto the Dodgy List.” Superintendent Haggard referred to the extensive register of sex offenders whose misdeeds ranged from assaults to stealing underwear off washing lines. “Copybook imperfect crime: guy blew a gasket and got the hell out. Ensuring the perfect result for him.”

“Thanks for hyping me up,” Inspector Tierce responded dryly. She’d been right, ambitious Haggard wanted to distance himself from defeat. Cutting corners to achieve it: in theory, if not always in practice, the assistant chief decreed what files she studied. Unless she made a stand, final disposition of the Dorothy “Mitzi” Field case would rest with her rather than the superintendent.

“I haven’t finished.” But he stayed silent for a moment before seeming to digress. “Know the old wives’ tale about a murderer having to return to the scene of the crime? Laughable! Only I’ve got a screwy notion that superstitions have a basis in fact. Anyway, a man has been hanging about in Grand Drive recently. Sitting in his car like he’s waiting for somebody... right where the kid’s body lay. He’s a local, which blows my passing stranger stuff out of the water—still, I’m not proud, I am happy to take any loose end offered.”

But that’s the point, Jill parried mentally, keeping a poker face, you’re not taking it. And a helpful colleague giving loose ends a little tug just might end up under the pile of rocks they release.

“This fellow,” Superintendent Haggard continued doggedly, “has been haunting Grand Drive. Uniformed branch looked into it after several complaints from residents. They’re a bit exclusive up there, not to mention paranoid about burglars, scared the bloke was casing their houses. What jumped out at me was one old girl being pretty certain the same chap, leastways somebody in an identical car. did the same thing at Christmastime last year. She was adamant that he was there for an hour or more every day for a week.”

He treated her to a phony’s smile. “Got to be interesting. Because whatever this man is, he’s no burglar. A pest and a pain in the arse, but no record and a steady job, good references. Uniforms didn’t have to trace him, they just waited, and sure enough, he rolled up and parked at the end of Grand Drive. Nowhere near his house, incidentally, and well off the route to it. He gave them a cock-and-bull yarn about birdwatching. They pressed him, and he mouthed off about police harassment, started teaching them the law.”

The smile turned into a sneer. “The man is Noel Sarum, you’ll have heard of him. Yes, the Noel Sarum. Spokesman for the Wessex chapter of Fight for Your Rights, does that disgraceful column in the local paper, born troublemaker. Very useful cover if he happens to have a down on hookers and let it get the better of him three years ago.”

Inspector Tierce set her flute of champagne aside. “You forgot your oven gloves. Ought to have them on, handing me a hot potato.”

Lance Haggard spoke a laugh. “You can deal with it. Routine review of the Field case, search for possible witnesses overlooked in the original trawl. Sarum can’t object to an approach on those terms—he’s always banging on about being ready to do his civic duty without knuckling under to mindless bullying.”

“You tell him that, then. It was your case.”

“Ah.” Superintendent Haggard took a long pull at his draught Guiness. “It wasn’t, you see. I’ve kept myself au fait, but... no, it’s not down to me.”

Shifting restively, he went off on another tangent. “My daughter... Beth was nearly eighteen back then, but her mental age is nearer six or seven. Lovely girl, couldn’t ask for a nicer, but never mind the current jargon, simpleminded. You knew about that,” he accused edgily.

Jill hadn’t, but she nodded and waited.

“Beth used to go to special school, homecraft and so forth.... She may have to look after herself when me and the wife have snuffed it. I couldn’t give Beth a lift every day. No problem, bus stop outside our house. Nell sees the girl aboard, three stops later, out she gets. But one night a water main burst, and the bus went a different way. Beth was set down two streets from us. It confused her.

“Nell phoned me, frantic, when the girl was an hour overdue. I pulled rank, had the area cars searching. What we hadn’t imagined was Beth getting on another bus, she thought they all went to our house. This one’s terminus was the docks, and the driver made her get out. She was crying but he didn’t want to know.”

“Of course I shot home, and damned if a taxi didn’t pull up behind me, with Nell and a young woman who’d found her: Mitzi Field. I recognized her from court, she was a regular. Cut a long story short, Beth was wandering the docks, running away if any male asked why she was crying; we’d drilled that into her, never talk to strange men. Mitzi twigged she needed help, looked us up in the phonebook, and flagged down a cab.”

Haggard fiddled with his empty glass. “Nell made her come in for some grub and a cup of tea. God forgive me, grateful or no, I was pleased to see the back of her, the girl was dirty under the paint and dead cheap. Nell, my wife, isn’t practical except round the house. Church on Sunday, says her prayers every night. She wanted to help Mitzi, give her a fresh start, once our girl was in bed and I’d explained what Mitzi was. I told Nell to forget it, the best help to her sort is leaving them alone. She’d still sleep rough and be on the game with a thousand quid in her purse.”

“Easy to say when you don’t want hassle—and how would it have looked, me taking a common prostitute, a dockside brass, under my wing? A month later she got herself killed.”

He put a hand atop Jill Tierce’s. “Comes back to me every Christmas, how we owed that girl and... we didn’t let her down but... you follow? It was Len Poole’s inquiry, I can’t involve myself. You can. Christmas, and I’m asking for a present. Something isn’t kosher about Noel Mr. Crusader Bloody Sarum; give him a spin, and help ease my blasted conscience.”

Taking his hand back, he blustered, “Any of that personal stuff leaks out, I’ll skin you alive.” But it was appeal rather than threat. Oh yes, Jill reflected, coppers were human all right—even devoutly ambitious ones.

Noel Sarum lived in one of the Monopoly-board houses of a new estate, Larkspur Crest. For no good reason Inspector Tierce had expected a student-type flat festooned in Death to Tories banners, fragrant with pot fumes and dirty socks.

Like most police officers, she was aware of Sarum. His know-your-rights column in the weekly paper kept sniping at law enforcers. Jill had acknowledged that the diatribes were justified in general terms, yet still she felt resentful, attacked while denied another right—of defense. Somehow she’d formed a picture of an acrid character with a straggly beard and John Lennon glasses, spitting venom via his word processor. He was a teacher, too. probably indoctrinating whole generations of copper-baiters. Not that they needed encouragement.

She was taken aback by the man opening the glossy front door of pin-neat Number 30. Fifty, she judged, but relatively unlined, face open under a shock of silver-gray hair. Track suit and trainers reinforced the youthful, vigorous impression. Before she could speak, he beamed and exclaimed, “Why, it’s the lame duck!”

Sensitive over her treacherous leg, she bristled, then recognized the face and decoded his remark. It was the Samaritan from that half-marathon in the happy time before she’d been hurt. Talked into running for charity, she’d not realized that the friendly fellow partnering her for the final miles was Sarum, scourge of the police.

Jill had been quite taken with him. He’d struck her as a man appreciating female company for its own sake. If he’d been ten years younger or she a decade older, she might have tried making something of it. As things were, when the event finished he’d wrapped her in a foil blanket and trotted away to help somebody else.

“You’re a police, um, person,” he said, returning Inspector Tierce’s warrant card. “I wondered what you did for a living, never thought of that. Come on in.”

The living room contrived to be homely and pristine, sealed woodblock floor reflecting carefully tended plants. “Passes inspection, huh? I lost my wife five years ago, but I try to maintain her standards. Must have known you were coming, that’s the coffee perking, not my tummy rumbling. Take a pew, I’ll get it—black, white, sugar, no sugar?”

He was just as he’d been on the charity run, chatting as if resuming a relationship after minutes instead of years. Some people did it naturally, and in her experience, the majority were as uncomplicated as their manner. He made reasonable coffee, as well... “What’s the problem? Can’t be anything too shattering, but you’re a senior rank.”

Disingenuous, Jill thought; he must have a shrewd idea what brought her.

“You’ve been seen in Grand Drive for extended periods over the last two years. Watching, hanging about. Spare me the stuff about a free country; you put the wind up the neighborhood, and no wonder. It’s no-hawkers-no-lurkers territory. Storm in a teacup is your comeback, but the snag is a woman was done to death at your favorite haunt three years ago.”

“Two and two makes me a murder suspect, is that it?” His tone was even. Sensing that Noel Sarum savored debate, she gained a better understanding of his newspaper column.

“No, you invited suspicion all on your own.” she replied calmly. “Gave my uniformed colleagues some guff about wanting to confirm the presence of a rare bird in Grand Drive, a... can’t read PC Harris’s writing, but he told me the name and I remembered it long enough to make a phone call.

“It’s your bad luck that a cousin of mine is an ornithologist—the bird you chose hasn’t touched England since 1911, and even that sighting was doubted. However, it’s something an intelligent amateur might pick to blind the cops with science. According to my expert.” And she smiled cheekily.

Noel Sarum’s mouth curved up at the corners, too. “Got me.” Then his jaw set. “As a matter of fact, that was my third Christmas of going to Grand Drive. Breaking no law, causing no nuisance. Which is all you need from me.”

“Believe it or not I’d agree if it weren’t for Mitzi Field. The dead girl. Worthless girl, some might say, squalid little life, good riddance. But we don’t agree, do we. I’ve got to account for loose ends, and you’re flapping about in the wind, Mr. Sarum.”

“Noel.” he corrected abstractedly. “The kids call me First Noel, this time of year. Every class thinks it’s being brilliantly original....” Stubborn streak resurfacing, he grumbled. “After your pals pounced on me, I went to the Gazaette office and researched the murder in the back numbers. That winter I was supply-teaching at Peterborough, didn’t get back to the city until the week after it happened. The night she was killed, I was chaperoning a Sixth Form dance more than a hundred miles away from Grand Drive.”

“Bloody hell,” Jill muttered. “What’s the matter with you, why not tell the uniforms that?”

Taken aback by her impatience and the subtext of disgust, he shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t think of it at the time.”

Fair enough, Inspector Tierce granted. People didn’t remember their whereabouts a week ago, let alone years later. Though Noel Sarum might be lying . . . .

Guessing the reaction, he brightened. “Hang on, I’m not escaping, just looking in the glory-hole.”

She watched him delve in a cupboard under the stairs. Soon he returned, waving a pamphlet. “Here you are, Beacon School newsletter, date at the top of every page.”

It was a slim, computer printed magazine. Sarum’s finger jabbed at a poorly reproduced photograph in which he was recognizable, arm round the shoulders of a jolly, overweight woman in owl spectacles.” ‘First Noel’ got the Christmas spirit. Mrs. May got the grope, and the Sixth ‘got down’ with a vengeance last Thursday night.” ran the disrespectful caption.

“Mrs. May’s the head teacher, the kids loved that snap,” he chuckled. Tuning him out, Jill found the first page of her notebook. Yes, the date was right, Mitzi Field had died at about nine p.m. that faraway Thursday night when Noel Sarum was hugging the head teacher. His tone hardened. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Oh, drop it,” she said crossly. “I liked you on that stupid run, I still like you, though what I’d really like is to shake you till your stupid teeth rattle.”

Taken aback, he fiddled with the school magazine.

“You’ve got a bee in your bonnet about the police, fine. But that’s no excuse for wasting two uniformed officers’ time, and mine. Heaven knows what it is with you and Grand Drive, I don’t care.”

She broke off, eyes narrowing. “Hey! I think this was a setup. You have an ironclad alibi, so why not encourage the dim coppers to hassle you? Weeks and weeks of columns to be wrung out of that. Cancel the liking-you bit, you’re sick. Feel free to complain about my attitude. I’ll be happy to defend it, on the record.”

Appalled, Noel Sarum protested. “It’s not like that... setup? It never crossed my mind!” Cracking his knuckles, he glowered at the carpet. “It’s strictly personal, can’t you people get that through your heads?” After which, perversely (not only coppers are human), he told her the whole story.

Fifteen minutes later, Inspector Tierce said, “Why the heck didn’t you press every bell and find her that way? Can’t be that many flats in half a dozen houses.”

“What would I say when each door opens?” Sarum demanded. “I don’t even know if she’s married, she was wearing gloves, I couldn’t see if she had a wedding ring. Supposing her husband answered, imagine the trouble I could cause.”

“I still can’t make out how you chatted her up and didn’t have the gumption to get her name, even a first name.”

Still high-colored from enthusiasm and embarrassment, Sarum sputtered, “I didn’t chat her up. It was... idyllic, a little miracle. We looked at each other and started talking as if we’d known each other forever. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to ask her name or give mine, it might have broken the spell.”

“Yes, you told me,” Jill butted in, lips tingling from the strain of keeping a straight line. The copper-bashing demon she had pictured snarling over his columns turned out to be a hopeless, helpless romantic. Noel Sarum, a widower well into middle age, patrolled Grand Drive once a year because he was suffering belated pangs of puppy love.

Having met his ideal woman one Christmas Eve, driven her home, and departed on air, he’d been unable to decide which house in Grand Drive was hers. Similar period and the same architect, and they looked different by daylight.

She could understand why he hadn’t confided in a couple of constables patently ready to take him for some kind of weirdo. After all, he was the Know Your Rights fanatic, worried that they’d turn his romantic vigil into a mocking anecdote to belittle him. Inevitably he’d been combative.

It was already dark when Jill Tierce left Larkspur Crest. Fresh snow crunched under the tires. She slowed as her lights picked up a group of children crossing the road, dragging a muffled-up baby on the improvised sledge of a tin tray. At the foot of the hill a Rotary Club float blared canned carols, a squad of executive Santas providing harness-bells sound effects with their collecting tins.

Everything went a little scatty in this season, though nicely so, Inspector Tierce mused. She’d bought no presents so far, that was scatty, dooming her to Christmas Eve panic.

Not the least of her scattiness, either. She thought: I can’t believe I’m doing this, but stayed on course towards Grand Drive.

By six that evening, bad leg nagging savagely—it disapproved of stairs, and she had climbed a number of flights—Jill was showing her warrant card and saying with the glibness of practice, “This may sound odd, but bear with me.... Two Christmases ago, if you remember that far back, did you go Christmas Eve shopping at the Hi-Save in City Center?”

“I expect so.” The woman’s voice was unexpectedly deep and hoarse from such a slim body. “I use Hi-Save for all but deli stuff, it’s loads cheaper.”

“I mustn’t lead you, put ideas in your head, but that Christmas Eve did you have help with your shopping, like your bags carried to the car?”

“I don’t take the c— Oh. him, the knight errant!” She opened the door wider and stood aside. “Come in, you look chilled.”

Constance—”Connie, please, the other’s so prissy”—French remembered Noel Sarum, all right.

“He picked me up in the checkout line that Christmas Eve. Well, I picked him up, had he but known.” Brown, almond eyes sparkled wickedly. “It was such a scrum, the line was endless, all the trolleys were taken so I was lugging three or four of those wretched baskets, and he did the polite, offered to share the load while we waited.”

“Single men who aren’t teenagers are so pathetic, aren’t they? And he was kind and clean and cuddly, I really took to him.” She’d insisted on making them mugs of hot chocolate (“with the teeniest spike of brandy to cheer it up”) after Jill Tierce refused a cocktail.

And I could take to a pad like this, Inspector Tierce reflected a shade drowsily. Connie French had two floors of one of Grand Drive’s former mansions. Her living room was spacious yet cosy, elegant antique pieces to dress it, costly modern furniture for wallowing.

Ms. French sat a little straighten “What’s this about, dear?”

“I’m glad you asked that.” Jill pulled a face. “Officially I’m eliminating a loose end, confirming somebody’s reason for... never mind, confirming a story. Don’t quote me, but I was curious. A witness was terribly impressed by you and...”

Connie waited, and Jill said, “It’s just that you knocked him for six, he hasn’t got over it—and call it the Christmas syndrome, or downright nosiness, but I wondered if you’d felt the same.”

“I have thought about him since.” Connie smiled weakly, blushing. “A lot, on and off. Look, there is always enough for two when it’s a casserole, and a glass of wine can’t put you over the limit for driving. Terrible thing to tell a woman, but you look exhausted. Stay for a meal.”

They got on famously. A long while later, table cleared, dishwasher loaded, they’d put the world to rights and compared Most Terrible Male Traits (nasal fur, aggressive driving, and pointless untruths topping the painstakingly compiled list).

Inspector Tierce was deciding that she’d better go home by cab and pick her car up tomorrow—should have known she was unable to drink one glass of wine—when Connie French became fretful.

“What is it with that chap, Jill? I could tell he fancied me. Oh, not the flared nostrils and ripping the thin silk from my creamy shoulders, he wasn’t that sort, but we really hit it off. Greek gods and toy boys are all very well, but what you need is a man who’s comfy as old shoes. I’ve only met two or three, one was my brother and the others were friends’ husbands....

“Tell me his name, I’ll ring him.” Connie reached for the phonebook on the end table at her side.

“I can’t do that, I shouldn’t be here anyway, certainly not gossiping. Christmas has a lot to answer for.” It struck Jill that they were talking animatedly but with a certain precision over trickier words; perhaps the Beaujolais Villages in easy reach on the coffee table between them was not the first bottle.

“Wouldn’t ring him anyway. My late husband, as in divorced, not RIP, said I had no pride but... is he gay? My supermarket chap, not the ex.”

“Sarum? Certainly not.” Frowning at the alliteration as much as the slip, Jill muttered, “I must make tracks.”

“Night’s young,” Connie said on a pleading note. “He drove me home, I nearly asked him up for a drink—but something stopped me. I wanted him to at least introduce himself first, and after all that, he just took himself off.”

“You’d stunned him,” Jill said.

“Bull,” Ms. French countered. But she was thoughtful. “Honest injun?”

“That’s the impression I got. The twit’s been keeping a vigil out there in the run-up to Christmas, ever since, hoping to pull the fancy-seeing-you-here bit.”

Connie went to the bay window. “Typical of my luck, I never saw him.”

“He stayed in his car, from up here he’d be an anonymous roof.” Joining her, Inspector Tierce asked, “Were you questioned in the house-to-house sweep after Mitzi Field’s body was found?”

“I was playing bridge that night, didn’t get home till it was all over.” Connie hugged herself. “Just as well. I couldn’t bear it if I’d been up here watching some silly TV show while... ugh!”

“Looks pretty now.” Snow crusted high walls and hedges, whiteness and moonlight giving Grand Drive a luminous quality.

“Christmas card,” Connie French suggested, making the comment bleak. “I spend hours at this window sometimes, it’s like a box seat for the seasonal stuff—carol singers from St. Stephen’s in full Dickens costume, crinolines and caped coats and candle-lanterns. Then there are the children returning to the nest, back from boarding school, or a bit older, very proud of The Car and their university scarves.”

“My daughter lives in California, she might ring on Christmas Day, probably will before New Year’s.... Mummy’s an afterthought.”

To Jill’s dismay, Connie French was crying silently, a single, fat tear sliding down the side of her elegant nose.

Inspector Tierce woke the next morning with the mildest of hangovers, little more than a nasty taste in the mouth, and a flinching sensation at the memory of her hostess.

The provoking thing was that she didn’t pity Connie French. The sorrow had been alcohol-based and transitory; minutes afterwards they’d played an old Dory Previn album, whooping approval of the bitchy lyrics. Connie might have been briefly maudlin, but she was too sparky for extensive self-pity.

No, this was not about Connie, but something she had said or done kept niggling and scratching in the subconscious. Every time Jill recollected the profile etched against the window, decorated by a crystal tear—and the image was persistent, like that pop tune you cannot stop humming—an alarm went off.

‘Think of something else,” Inspector Tierce advised out loud, competing against the hair dryer’s breathy roar. Nearly too late to post greetings cards, not that she’d bought them yet. She had bought some in good time one year. They were in A Safe Place to this day, waiting to be found.

Oh dear, she was better off thinking about the Mitzi Field case. Very well, Noel Sarum was in the clear. He could have printed that school magazine himself, or altered the date, but only in a Golden Age detective story. He’d been far away, and Connie French had confirmed his reason for haunting Grand Drive at a particular time of year. Further, while everyone was a potential life-taker, Noel Sarum belonged at the safest, last-resort end of the spectrum.

And that revived Superintendent Haggard’s imperfect crime. She could picture a man on perhaps his first and last sojourn in the city, stopping at a street woman’s signal and unrecognized, very likely unseen, driving away with her. To drive on, soon afterwards, taking care to stay away.

“Hopeless,” Jill mumbled and, skipping breakfast, went off to her broom closet, cardboard-flavored coffee, and the case file.

It assured her that everything needful had been done. A fruitless check for witnesses to the crime, an unrewarding search for tire tracks, footprints, any physical evidence apart from Mitzi Field’s body. Local and then regional sexual offenders interrogated. Other prostitutes questioned, fellow tenants of her last known address, the demolished squat, traced and interviewed.

Nothing to go on; conscientious Detective-Inspector Poole, exactly the breed of plodder who catches most criminals, had demonstrated that if nothing else. Or had he?

Inspector Tierce stood up awkwardly, massaging scar tissue through her skirt. She hadn’t thought the location significant, merely incongruous, when Superintendent Haggard told her of it. Previous reading of the file had left her cold. But now it was different because... because of Connie French. Something—what?—that she’d said last night.

She’d said so much, that was the snag. Squinting, lips moving silently, Jill talked herself through a lengthy and meandering conversation. Until reaching the point where Connie had lamented an uncaring daughter... bingo.

Children coming home for the holidays, of course. That’s what families did at Christmas, families and friends of the family. Driven by nostalgia, tradition, the chance to purge year-long offenses during the annual truce, or (if mercenary souls) simply to collect presents, they headed for hearth and home.

She leafed through to a terse section of the dossier, the London end. A few discreet sentences covered Mitzi’s life from just before her ninth birthday until she absconded from the council home six years later.

Lots of digging needed. Inspector Tierce felt sorry for Len Poole, and profoundly grateful that she did not have to follow up her idea.

Inspector Poole, a careworn, resigned character, took one look at the name on the file and groaned, “Haggard’s got you at it as well, has he? Wish he’d mind his own business.”

“Amen to that, but I’m stuck with it. Len, what was that girl doing on Grand Drive? Haggard thinks she took a client to a road full of snobs and busy-bodies because she didn’t know any better. Or the punter was ignorant and Mitzi Field didn’t care. Did you buy that?”

“No opinion—I’d need facts to form one, and the only certainty was that she was killed there.” He wasn’t being awkward, that was how his mind worked. “Long way to go for a quickie in a motor, right enough. Then again, Vice was chasing street prozzies at the time, she might have wanted to get well away from the redlight area.”

“Supposing,” said Jill, “she wasn’t taken to Grand Drive and killed? Supposing she was leaving there, heading back to her beat, when it happened?”

“I’m not quite with you.”

“She didn’t walk all the way, wasn’t dressed for it, therefore she went in a car, that’s the conventional wisdom. Doesn’t follow. A bus runs from dockland to a stop round the corner from Grand Drive every half hour. She could have taken herself there, right? Visited somebody, left again, and either her attacker was waiting, or he was the one she’d called on, and he chased her out of doors.”

“Try reading the file,” Inspector Poole urged. “No known sex offenders among the residents, remember. We grilled all Les Girls, whether or not they’d associated with Ms. Field, and none of them had a client in Grand Drive; far as they were aware, that is. Down-market hookers don’t keep names and addresses. Her mates were sure Mitzi had never been up there before.”

“Yes, but it was Christmas, Len. When we all get sudden urges to see Mum and Dad, look up Auntie Flo, send a card to that nice former neighbor who nursed us through whooping cough. Mitzi Field had a family of sorts, once upon a time.”

Digesting the implications, Inspector Poole said, “Crumbs.” He did not go in for bad language. “You do get ‘em. the wild hunches. All right, she was Mitzi Field, but her mother remarried, to a man called, don’t tell me... Edwardes. The stepfather who supposedly seduced the little girl. The mother died in 1984. Edwardes was never charged, lack of evidence, they just took the child away. He’d dropped off the radar screen by 1990, dead or gone abroad, certainly hasn’t paid tax or claimed unemployment benefits for a long time. All in the file. dear. I may be slow but I ain’t stupid.”

“Perish the thought. But that still leaves Auntie Flo and the kindly neighbor.”

“Crumbs,” he repeated, even more feelingly, “you don’t want much. We’re talking ten, fifteen years back, and in London.” Inspector Poole took possession of the file. “It’s a thought, I can’t deny it. More’s the pity.”

On Christmas Eve afternoon, Len Poole rapped jauntily at Jill’s office door. “London doesn’t get any better. I’ve had two days up there, and how those lads in the Met stand the life is beyond me. Noise, pollution, bad manners, homeless beggars everywhere. But I did find a helpful social worker, they do exist even if it’s an endangered species, and this chap had a good memory-

“Great idea of yours—but I’m afraid James Edwardes. Mitzi’s allegedly wicked stepfather, doesn’t live at Grand Drive. He works the fairs in the Republic of Ireland, hasn’t been in England for years.”

Hitching half his skinny rump onto the corner of the desk, Inspector Poole added innocently, “No trace of Auntie Flo. But I’ll tell you who did have a Grand Drive address until recently—Anthony Challis.”

Since he had to have worked hard and fast and was full of himself over it, Jill Tierce played along. “Challis?”

“He lodged with Mitzi’s family in the eighties. Freelance electrician, good earner, about to get married. But then Mitzi Field, only she was little Dorothy then, accused nice Mr. Challis of doing things to her. Her mother called the police, and then Dorothy admitted it wasn’t Challis after all, it was her stepfather who kept raping her.” Len Poole grimaced distastefully. “Ugly... my tame social worker said he’d never believed Challis had touched her. What it was, they discovered, Edwardes not only abused her, he practically brainwashed the poor kid, said she’d be struck down if she told on him. When it got too much for her, she accused Tony Challis—ironically enough, because he was kind, would never hurt her. She’d just wanted it out in the open, so the grownups would make it stop. Ruining Challis wasn’t on her agenda, if she had such a thing, but that was the effect.”

“After Dorothy-Mitzi was taken into council care, her mother threw Edwardes out, and Tony Challis went to other digs. No charges were brought in the end—the child was considered unreliable on account of changing her story. Rumors spread, mud stuck, Challis’s fiancée told him to get lost, his regular customers followed suit...”

“Ugly,” Jill agreed.

“Gets worse. Challis is a Wessex man, he talked a lot about this part of the world when he was lodging with Mitzi’s folks. Maybe that’s why she stuck around, having drifted here. Anyway, Challis took to drink, hit the gutter before he straightened up. Returned to his native heath, as posh books put it, found work as a janitor for Coastal Properties. They own several apartment houses on Grand Drive and gave him a basement flat in the end one on the left. Too dark and cramped for letting, and it gave them a good excuse to pay him peanuts.”

“Mitzi Field wasn’t looking for Challis—if she’d had a grain of sense she would have kept well clear—but she found him. Once a month he picked up supplies from a discount hardware store on her beat in dockland. He didn’t notice her, which is natural; the last time he’d seen Dorothy, she was a child. But she must have seen him going in and out of the hardware place and pumped somebody there, discovered where he worked.”

Len Poole sighed and shook his head. “Just as you said, it was Christmas. Tony Challis is watching TV in his basement one night, and suddenly this shabby little tart is at the side door, saying, I’m Dorothy, Mr. Challis, don’t you remember me? Wanted to say sorry, hoped he was doing all right now, she hadn’t wanted to make trouble for him. And so on.”

“Challis says, and I believe him, he was in a daze while she talked to him. ‘Noises, she was making noises,’ he told me. She was dead when the actual words came back to him. Mitzi left, and for a minute—the chap’s a drinker, mark you—he wondered whether he’d been hallucinating. Then he wished he had been. Challis hadn’t hated Dorothy, he understood she was a victim who dragged him down with her, no malice involved. But she’d become Mitzi... ruining him and still ending up like that, that was past bearing.”

“Next moment, it seemed to him. he was standing over her in the street, holding one of those little stone lions: half the big houses along the drive had them on either side of the porch. He had the lion by its head, the square base was allover blood.”

“He accepted that he must have killed her, but he didn’t feel like a murderer. All he felt was scared witless. He slipped back to his basement, washed the lion, and put it back in place. Then he prayed. Been praying ever since.”

“From Met Police records and that social worker. I got the names of five people linked to Field when she was a child. Only one was among the residents of Grand Drive at the time she was killed. No problem finding him, he didn’t move far, one of those new council flats near the marina. Soon as I said who I was. Challis goes. ‘Thank God, now I can tell somebody.’ ”

Jill Tierce addressed her folded hands, almost inaudibly. “She wanted to make amends for what happened all those years ago, and he killed her for trying?”

Inspector Poole slid off the desk, his expression mixing wonder and compassion over her naivete. “If you can make sense of the why and wherefore, be sure to tell Challis. He can’t sort it out. It’s people, Jill... she was one of them that gets sentimental at Christmas, never considered she’d be opening a wound. As for him, he wasn’t the kind man who’d lodged with her mum. Not anymore. She stirred up an embittered semialcoholic, temper overdue to snap.”

Len Poole hesitated, cleared his throat. “Nobody’s fault, luv. not even his. Though he’ll go away for it.”

“We got a result, which is all that matters.”

“Not what I meant—though there is always that, at the end of the day.”

Inspector Tierce’s day, apparently over, had a postscript.

She’d wanted to watch the black and white movie of Scrooge for the fifth Christmas Eve in a row but went to bed instead. Her father would be calling “fairly early” to collect her for Christmas lunch, meaning crack of dawn.

The phone woke her. The caller sounded drunk, though on nothing more than girlish high spirits, it emerged.

“We’ve just got back from midnight Mass, now we can be the first to wish you Merry Christmas.”

“Wha? Who is it?” Jill pulled the alarm clock radio round on the bedside table, sending paperbacks, a bottle of cough mixture, and her pain tablets cascading to the floor. “It’s twenty to two!” The voice’s identity registered belatedly. “Connie, I’ll kill you.”

“Don’t be like that. I rang him after all, you see. And I’m so happy.”

“Bully for you. What in the world are you on about?”

“Noel, of course. You let his name slip the other night—”

“Did I, by gum.” Fully awake and up on one elbow, Inspector Tierce rolled gummy eyes. “That was very unprofessional.”

“Sarum’s an unusual surname, only one in the local phonebook, and we talked for hours—” Following squeaks and a rattle, Noel Sarum came on the phone.

“And here I am! Well, I’ll be leaving in a minute,” he added sheepishly.

Another interlude of cryptic noises and then Connie French trilled, “He’s so stuffy, of course he’s not leaving at this time of the morning.”

She said something aside, answering Noel in the background. “He wants you to know we’re engaged and says I’m indiscreet, the idiot. I say. you must come to our wedding, it’ll be February or March. You have to, you’re the matchmaker.”

“Let’s talk about it next year. I’m pleased you are pleased. Connie. Tell Noel to go easy on the law in future: he owes me. ‘Bye.”

Lying back in the darkness, a phrase from the Bible popped into her head, a Sunday school fragment clear as if spoken for her benefit: “Out of the strong came forth sweetness. “Something about bees using the remains of a savage lion as their hive. Why think of that? Mitzi Field was battered with a stone lion. Nothing sweet there, that was not the connection.

Connie was gorgeously happy, and Noel worshipped her. It couldn’t last, euphoria didn’t, yet it was a promising prelude to something better. They might fight eventually, but they would not be lonely.

That was what had triggered the parable of bees and a beast of prey. Out of evil, good can come. “Merry Christmas,” Jill Tierce whispered to the pillow.