The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

The Flying Stars G. K. Chesterton

The second greatest english detective in all of literature, surpassed only by the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, is the gentle and kindly Father Brown. What separates him from most of his crime-fighting colleagues is his view that wrongdoers are souls in need of redemption rather than criminals to be brought to justice. Could there be a better detective to be at the center of a Christmas story? The rather ordinary-seeming Roman Catholic priest possesses a sharp, subtle, sensitive mind, with which he demonstrates a deep understanding of human nature in solving mysteries. “The Flying Stars” was first published in the May 20, 1911, issue of Saturday Evening Post, and subsequently published in the June 1911 issue of Cassell’s Magazine; it was first collected in The Innocence of Father Brown (London, Cassell, 1911).

“The most beautiful crime I ever committed,” Flambeau would say in his highly moral old age, “was also, by a singular coincidence, my last. It was committed at Christmas. As an artist I had always attempted to provide crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which I found myself, choosing this or that terrace or garden for a catastrophe, as if for a statuary group. Thus squires should be swindled in long rooms panelled with oak; while Jews, on the other hand, should rather find themselves unexpectedly penniless among the lights and screens of the Café Riche. Thus, in England, if I wished to relieve a dean of his riches (which is not so easy as you might suppose), I wished to frame him, if I make myself clear, in the green lawns and grey towers of some cathedral town. Similarly, in France, when I had got money out of a rich and wicked peasant (which is almost impossible), it gratified me to get his indignant head relieved against a grey line of clipped poplars, and those solemn plains of Gaul over which broods the mighty spirit of Millet.

“Well, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English middle-class crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good old middle-class house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree. Enough, you know the species. I really think my imitation of Dickens’s style was dexterous and literary. It seems almost a pity I repented the same evening.”

Flambeau would then proceed to tell the story from the inside; and even from the inside it was odd. Seen from the outside it was perfectly incomprehensible, and it is from the outside that the stranger must study it. From this standpoint the drama may be said to have begun when the front doors of the house with the stable opened on the garden with the monkey tree, and a young girl came out with bread to feed the birds on the afternoon of Boxing Day. She had a pretty face, with brave brown eyes; but her figure was beyond conjecture, for she was so wrapped up in brown furs that it was hard to say which was hair and which was fur. But for the attractive face she might have been a small toddling bear.

The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and already a ruby light was rolled over the bloomless beds, filling them, as it were, with the ghosts of the dead roses. On one side of the house stood the stable, on the other an alley or cloister of laurels led to the larger garden behind. The young lady, having scattered bread for the birds (for the fourth or fifth time that day, because the dog ate it), passed unobtrusively down the lane of laurels and into a glimmering plantation of evergreens behind. Here she gave an exclamation of wonder, real or ritual, and looking up at the high garden wall above her, beheld it fantastically bestridden by a somewhat fantastic figure.

“Oh, don’t jump, Mr. Crook,” she called out in some alarm; “it’s much too high.”

The individual riding the party wall like an aerial horse was a tall, angular young man, with dark hair sticking up like a hair brush, intelligent and even distinguished lineaments, but a sallow and almost alien complexion. This showed the more plainly because he wore an aggressive red tie, the only part of his costume of which he seemed to take any care. Perhaps it was a symbol. He took no notice of the girl’s alarmed adjuration, but leapt like a grasshopper to the ground beside her, where he might very well have broken his legs.

“I think I was meant to be a burglar,” he said placidly, “and I have no doubt I should have been if I hadn’t happened to be born in that nice house next door. I can’t see any harm in it, anyhow.”

“How can you say such things?” she remonstrated.

“Well,” said the young man, “if you’re born on the wrong side of the wall, I can’t see that it’s wrong to climb over it.”

“I never know what you will say or do next,” she said.

“I don’t often know myself,” replied Mr. Crook; “but then I am on the right side of the wall now.”

“And which is the right side of the wall?” asked the young lady, smiling.

“Whichever side you are on,” said the young man named Crook.

As they went together through the laurels towards the front garden a motor horn sounded thrice, coming nearer and nearer, and a car of splendid speed, great elegance, and a pale green colour swept up to the front doors like a bird and stood throbbing.

“Hullo, hullo!” said the young man with the red tie. “Here’s somebody born on the right side, anyhow. I didn’t know, Miss Adams, that your Santa Claus was so modern as this.”

“Oh, that’s my godfather, Sir Leopold Fischer. He always comes on Boxing Day.”

Then, after an innocent pause, which unconsciously betrayed some lack of enthusiasm, Ruby Adams added:

“He is very kind.”

John Crook, journalist, had heard of that eminent City magnate; and it was not his fault if the City magnate had not heard of him; for in certain articles in The Clarion or The New Age Sir Leopold had been dealt with austerely. But he said nothing and grimly watched the unloading of the motor-car, which was rather a long process. A large, neat chauffeur in green got out from the front, and a small, neat manservant in grey got out from the back, and between them they deposited Sir Leopold on the doorstep and began to unpack him, like some very carefully protected parcel. Rugs enough to stock a bazaar, furs of all the beasts of the forest, and scarves of all the colours of the rainbow were unwrapped one by one, till they revealed something resembling the human form; the form of a friendly, but foreign-looking old gentleman, with a grey goatlike beard and a beaming smile, who rubbed his big fur gloves together.

Long before this revelation was complete the two big doors of the porch had opened in the middle, and Colonel Adams (father of the furry young lady) had come out himself to invite his eminent guest inside. He was a tall, sunburnt, and very silent man, who wore a red smoking-cap like a fez, making him look like one of the English Sirdars or Pashas in Egypt. With him was his brother-in-law, lately come from Canada, a big and rather boisterous young gentleman-farmer, with a yellow beard, by name James Blount. With him also was the more insignificant figure of the priest from the neighbouring Roman Church; for the colonel’s late wife had been a Catholic, and the children, as is common in such cases, had been trained to follow her. Everything seemed undistinguished about the priest, even down to his name, which was Brown; yet the colonel had always found something companionable about him, and frequently asked him to such family gatherings.

In the large entrance hall of the house there was ample room even for Sir Leopold and the removal of his wraps. Porch and vestibule, indeed, were unduly large in proportion to the house, and formed, as it were, a big room with the front door at one end, and the bottom of the staircase at the other. In front of the large hall fire, over which hung the colonel’s sword, the process was completed and the company, including the saturnine Crook, presented to Sir Leopold Fischer. That venerable financier, however, still seemed struggling with portions of his well-lined attire, and at length produced from a very interior tail-coat pocket, a black oval case which he radiantly explained to be his Christmas present for his god-daughter. With an unaffected vain-glory that had something disarming about it he held out the case before them all; it flew open at a touch and half-blinded them. It was just as if a crystal fountain had spurted in their eyes. In a nest of orange velvet lay like three eggs, three white and vivid diamonds that seemed to set the very air on fire all round them. Fischer stood beaming benevolently and drinking deep of the astonishment and ecstasy of the girl, the grim admiration and gruff thanks of the colonel, the wonder of the whole group.

“I’ll put ’em back now, my dear,” said Fischer, returning the case to the tails of his coat. “I had to be careful of ’em coming down. They’re the three great African diamonds called ‘The Flying Stars,’ because they’ve been stolen so often. All the big criminals are on the track; but even the rough men about in the streets and hotels could hardly have kept their hands off them. I might have lost them on the road here. It was quite possible.”

“Quite natural, I should say,” growled the man in the red tie. “I shouldn’t blame ’em if they had taken ’em. When they ask for bread, and you don’t even give them a stone, I think they might take the stone for themselves.”

“I won’t have you talking like that,” cried the girl, who was in a curious glow. “You’ve only talked like that since you became a horrid what’s-his-name. You know what I mean. What do you call a man who wants to embrace the chimney-sweep?”

“A saint,” said Father Brown.

“I think,” said Sir Leopold, with a supercilious smile, “that Ruby means a Socialist.”

“A radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes,” remarked Crook, with some impatience; “and a Conservative does not mean a man who preserves jam. Neither, I assure you, does a Socialist mean a man who desires a social evening with the chimney-sweep. A Socialist means a man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid for it.”

“But who won’t allow you,” put in the priest in a low voice, “to own your own soot?”

Crook looked at him with an eye of interest and even respect. “Does one want to own soot?” he asked.

“One might,” answered Brown, with speculation in his eye. “I’ve heard that gardeners use it. And I once made six children happy at Christmas when the conjuror didn’t come, entirely with soot — applied externally.”

“Oh, splendid,” cried Ruby. “Oh, I wish you’d do it to this company.”

The boisterous Canadian, Mr. Blount, was lifting his loud voice in applause, and the astonished financier his (in some considerable deprecation), when a knock sounded at the double front doors. The priest opened them, and they showed again the front garden of evergreens, monkey tree and all, now gathering gloom against a gorgeous violet sunset. The scene thus framed was so coloured and quaint, like a back scene in a play, that they forgot a moment the insignificant figure standing in the door. He was dusty-looking and in a frayed coat, evidently a common messenger. “Any of you gentlemen Mr. Blount?” he asked, and held forward a letter doubtfully. Mr. Blount started, and stopped in his shout of assent. Ripping up the envelope with evident astonishment he read it; his face clouded a little, and then cleared, and he turned to his brother-in-law and host.

“I’m sick at being such a nuisance, colonel,” he said, with the cheery colonial conventions; “but would it upset you if an old acquaintance called on me here tonight on business? In point of fact it’s Florian, that famous French acrobat and comic actor; I knew him years ago out West (he was a French-Canadian by birth), and he seems to have business for me, though I hardly guess what.”

“Of course, of course,” replied the colonel carelessly. “My dear chap, any friend of yours. No doubt he will prove an acquisition.”

“He’ll black his face, if that’s what you mean,” cried Blount, laughing. “I don’t doubt he’d black everyone else’s eyes. I don’t care; I’m not refined. I like the jolly old pantomime where a man sits on his top hat.”

“Not on mine, please,” said Sir Leopold Fischer, with dignity.

“Well, well,” observed Crook, airily, “don’t let’s quarrel. There are lower jokes than sitting on a top hat.”

Dislike of the red-tied youth, born of his predatory opinions and evident intimacy with the pretty godchild, led Fischer to say, in his most sarcastic, magisterial manner: “No doubt you have found something much lower than sitting on a top hat. What is it, pray?”

“Letting a top hat sit on you, for instance,” said the Socialist.

“Now, now, now,” cried the Canadian farmer with his barbarian benevolence, “don’t let’s spoil a jolly evening. What I say is let’s do something for the company tonight. Not blacking faces or sitting on hats, if you don’t like those — but something of the sort. Why couldn’t we have a proper old English pantomime — clown, columbine, and so on. I saw one when I left England at twelve years old, and it’s blazed in my brain like a bonfire ever since. I came back to the old country only last year, and I find the thing’s extinct. Nothing but a lot of snivelling fairy plays. I want a hot poker and a policeman made into sausages, and they give me princesses moralising by moonlight, Blue Birds, or something. Blue Beard’s more in my line, and him I liked best when he turned into the pantaloon.”

“I’m all for making a policeman into sausages,” said John Crook. “It’s a better definition of Socialism than some recently given. But surely the get-up would be too big a business.”

“Not a scrap,” cried Blount, quite carried away. “A harlequinade’s the quickest thing we can do, for two reasons. First, one can gag to any degree; and, second, all the objects are household things — tables and trowel-horses and washing baskets, and things like that.”

“That’s true,” admitted Crook, nodding eagerly and walking about. “But I’m afraid I can’t have my policeman’s uniform? Haven’t killed a policeman lately.”

Blount frowned thoughtfully a space, and then smote his thigh. “Yes, we can!” he cried. “I’ve got Florian’s address here, and he knows every costumier in London. I’ll ’phone him to bring a police dress when he comes.” And he went bounding away to the telephone.

“Oh, it’s glorious, godfather,” cried Ruby, almost dancing. “I’ll be columbine and you shall be pantaloon.”

The millionaire held himself stiff with a sort of heathen solemnity. “I think, my dear,” he said, “you must get someone else for pantaloon.”

“I will be pantaloon, if you like,” said Colonel Adams, taking his cigar out of his mouth, and speaking for the first and last time.

“You ought to have a statue,” cried the Canadian, as he came back, radiant, from the telephone. “There, we are all fitted. Mr. Crook shall be clown; he’s a journalist and knows all the oldest jokes. I can be harlequin, that only wants long legs and jumping about. My friend Florian ’phones he’s bringing the police costume; he’s changing on the way. We can act it in this very hall, the audience sitting on those broad stairs opposite, one row above another. These front doors can be the back scene, either open or shut. Shut, you see an English interior. Open, a moonlit garden. It all goes by magic.” And snatching a chance piece of billiard chalk from his pocket, he ran it across the hall floor, half-way between the front door and the staircase, to mark the line of the footlights.

How even such a banquet of bosh was got ready in the time remained a riddle. But they went at it with that mixture of recklessness and industry that lives when youth is in a house; and youth was in that house that night, though not all may have isolated the two faces and hearts from which it flamed. As always happens, the invention grew wilder and wilder through the very tameness of the bourgeois conventions from which it had to create. The columbine looked charming in an outstanding skirt that strangely resembled the large lamp-shade in the drawing-room. The clown and pantaloon made themselves white with flour from the cook, and red with rouge from some other domestic, who remained (like all true Christian benefactors) anonymous. The harlequin, already clad in silver paper out of cigar boxes, was, with difficulty, prevented from smashing the old Victorian lustre chandeliers, that he might cover himself with resplendent crystals. In fact he would certainly have done so, had not Ruby unearthed some old pantomime paste jewels she had worn at a fancy dress party as the Queen of Diamonds. Indeed, her uncle, James Blount, was getting almost out of hand in his excitement; he was like a schoolboy. He put a paper donkey’s head unexpectedly on Father Brown, who bore it patiently, and even found some private manner of moving his ears. He even essayed to put the paper donkey’s tail to the coat-tails of Sir Leopold Fischer. This, however, was frowned down. “Uncle is too absurd,” cried Ruby to Crook, round whose shoulders she had seriously placed a string of sausages. “Why is he so wild?”

“He is harlequin to your columbine,” said Crook. “I am only the clown who makes the old jokes.”

“I wish you were the harlequin,” she said, and left the string of sausages swinging.

Father Brown, though he knew every detail done behind the scenes, and had even evoked applause by his transformation of a pillow into a pantomime baby, went round to the front and sat among the audience with all the solemn expectation of a child at his first matinée. The spectators were few, relations, one or two local friends, and the servants; Sir Leopold sat in the front seat, his full and still fur-collared figure largely obscuring the view of the little cleric behind him; but it has never been settled by artistic authorities whether the cleric lost much. The pantomime was utterly chaotic, yet not contemptible; there ran through it a rage of improvisation which came chiefly from Crook the clown. Commonly he was a clever man, and he was inspired tonight with a wild omniscience, a folly wiser than the world, that which comes to a young man who has seen for an instant a particular expression on a particular face. He was supposed to be the clown, but he was really almost everything else, the author (so far as there was an author), the prompter, the scene-painter, the scene-shifter, and, above all, the orchestra. At abrupt intervals in the outrageous performance he would hurl himself in full costume at the piano and bang out some popular music equally absurd and appropriate.

The climax of this, as of all else, was the moment when the two front doors at the back of the scene flew open, showing the lovely moonlit garden, but showing more prominently the famous professional guest; the great Florian, dressed up as a policeman. The clown at the piano played the constabulary chorus in the “Pirates of Penzance,” but it was drowned in the deafening applause, for every gesture of the great comic actor was an admirable though restrained version of the carriage and manner of the police. The harlequin leapt upon him and hit him over the helmet; the pianist playing “Where did you get that hat?” he faced about in admirably simulated astonishment, and then the leaping harlequin hit him again (the pianist suggesting a few bars of “Then we had another one”). Then the harlequin rushed right into the arms of the policeman and fell on top of him, amid a roar of applause. Then it was that the strange actor gave that celebrated imitation of a dead man, of which the fame still lingers round Putney. It was almost impossible to believe that a living person could appear so limp.

The athletic harlequin swung him about like a sack or twisted or tossed him like an Indian club; all the time to the most maddeningly ludicrous tunes from the piano. When the harlequin heaved the comic constable heavily off the floor the clown played “I arise from dreams of thee.” When he shuffled him across his back, “With my bundle on my shoulder,” and when the harlequin finally let fall the policeman with a most convincing thud, the lunatic at the instrument struck into a jingling measure with some words which are still believed to have been, “I sent a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it.”

At about this limit of mental anarchy Father Brown’s view was obscured altogether; for the City magnate in front of him rose to his full height and thrust his hands savagely into all his pockets. Then he sat down nervously, still fumbling, and then stood up again. For an instant it seemed seriously likely that he would stride across the footlights; then he turned a glare at the clown playing the piano; and then he burst in silence out of the room.

The priest had only watched for a few more minutes the absurd but not inelegant dance of the amateur harlequin over his splendidly unconscious foe. With real though rude art, the harlequin danced slowly backwards out of the door into the garden, which was full of moonlight and stillness. The vamped dress of silver paper and paste, which had been too glaring in the footlights, looked more and more magical and silvery as it danced away under a brilliant moon. The audience was closing in with a cataract of applause, when Brown felt his arm abruptly touched, and he was asked in a whisper to come into the colonel’s study.

He followed his summoner with increasing doubt, which was not dispelled by a solemn comicality in the scene of the study. There sat Colonel Adams, still unaffectedly dressed as a pantaloon, with the knobbed whalebone nodding above his brow, but with his poor old eyes sad enough to have sobered a Saturnalia. Sir Leopold Fischer was leaning against the mantelpiece and heaving with all the importance of panic.

“This is a very painful matter, Father Brown,” said Adams. “The truth is, those diamonds we all saw this afternoon seem to have vanished from my friend’s tail-coat pocket. And as you—”

“As I,” supplemented Father Brown, with a broad grin, “was sitting just behind him—”

“Nothing of the sort shall be suggested,” said Colonel Adams, with a firm look at Fischer, which rather implied that some such thing had been suggested. “I only ask you to give me the assistance that any gentleman might give.”

“Which is turning out his pockets,” said Father Brown, and proceeded to do so, displaying seven and sixpence, a return ticket, a small silver crucifix, a small breviary, and a stick of chocolate.

The colonel looked at him long, and then said, “Do you know, I should like to see the inside of your head more than the inside of your pockets. My daughter is one of your people, I know; well, she has lately—” and he stopped.

“She has lately,” cried out old Fischer, “opened her father’s house to a cut-throat Socialist, who says openly he would steal anything from a richer man. This is the end of it. Here is the richer man — and none the richer.”

“If you want the inside of my head you can have it,” said Brown rather wearily. “What it’s worth you can say afterwards. But the first thing I find in that disused pocket is this: that men who mean to steal diamonds don’t talk Socialism. They are more likely,” he added demurely, “to denounce it.”

Both the others shifted sharply and the priest went on:

“You see, we know these people, more or less. That Socialist would no more steal a diamond than a Pyramid. We ought to look at once to the one man we don’t know. The fellow acting the policeman — Florian. Where is he exactly at this minute, I wonder.”

The pantaloon sprang erect and strode out of the room. An interlude ensued, during which the millionaire stared at the priest, and the priest at his breviary; then the pantaloon returned and said, with staccato gravity, “The policeman is still lying on the stage. The curtain has gone up and down six times; he is still lying there.”

Father Brown dropped his book and stood staring with a look of blank mental ruin. Very slowly a light began to creep in his grey eyes, and then he made the scarcely obvious answer.

“Please forgive me, colonel, but when did your wife die?”

“Wife!” replied the staring soldier, “she died this year two months. Her brother James arrived just a week too late to see her.”

The little priest bounded like a rabbit shot. “Come on!” he cried in quite unusual excitement. “Come on! We’ve got to go and look at that policeman!”

They rushed on to the now curtained stage, breaking rudely past the columbine and clown (who seemed whispering quite contentedly), and Father Brown bent over the prostrate comic policeman.

“Chloroform,” he said as he rose; “I only guessed it just now.”

There was a startled stillness, and then the colonel said slowly, “Please say seriously what all this means.”

Father Brown suddenly shouted with laughter, then stopped, and only struggled with it for instants during the rest of his speech. “Gentlemen,” he gasped, “there’s not much time to talk. I must run after the criminal. But this great French actor who played the policeman — this clever corpse the harlequin waltzed with and dandled and threw about — he was—” His voice again failed him, and he turned his back to run.

“He was?” called Fischer inquiringly.

“A real policeman,” said Father Brown, and ran away into the dark.

There were hollows and bowers at the extreme end of that leafy garden, in which the laurels and other immortal shrubs showed against sapphire sky and silver moon, even in that midwinter, warm colours as of the south. The green gaiety of the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo of the night, the moon like a monstrous crystal, make an almost irresponsible romantic picture; and among the top branches of the garden trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so much romantic as impossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if clad in ten million moons; the real moon catches him at every movement and sets a new inch of him on fire. But he swings, flashing and successful, from the short tree in this garden to the tall, rambling tree in the other, and only stops there because a shade has slid under the smaller tree and has unmistakably called up to him.

“Well, Flambeau,” says the voice, “you really look like a Flying Star; but that always means a Falling Star at last.”

The silver, sparkling figure above seems to lean forward in the laurels and, confident of escape, listens to the little figure below.

“You never did anything better, Flambeau. It was clever to come from Canada (with a Paris ticket, I suppose) just a week after Mrs. Adams died, when no one was in a mood to ask questions. It was cleverer to have marked down the Flying Stars and the very day of Fischer’s coming. But there’s no cleverness, but mere genius, in what followed. Stealing the stones, I suppose, was nothing to you. You could have done it by sleight of hand in a hundred other ways besides that pretence of putting a paper donkey’s tail to Fischer’s coat. But in the rest you eclipsed yourself.”

The silvery figure among the green leaves seems to linger as if hypnotised, though his escape is easy behind him; he is staring at the man below.

“Oh, yes,” says the man below, “I know all about it. I know you not only forced the pantomime, but put it to a double use. You were going to steal the stones quietly; news came by an accomplice that you were already suspected, and a capable police officer was coming to rout you up that very night. A common thief would have been thankful for the warning and fled; but you are a poet. You already had the clever notion of hiding the jewels in a blaze of false stage jewellery. Now, you saw that if the dress were a harlequin’s the appearance of a policeman would be quite in keeping. The worthy officer started from Putney police station to find you, and walked into the queerest trap ever set in this world. When the front door opened he walked straight onto the stage of a Christmas pantomime, where he could be kicked, clubbed, stunned, and drugged by the dancing harlequin, amid roars of laughter from all the most respectable people in Putney. Oh, you will never do anything better. And now, by the way, you might give me back those diamonds.”

The green branch on which the glittering figure swung, rustled as if in astonishment; but the voice went on:

“I want you to give them back, Flambeau, and I want you to give up this life. There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don’t fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I’ve known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime. Maurice Blum started out as an anarchist of principle, a father of the poor; he ended a greasy spy and tale-bearer that both sides used and despised. Harry Burke started his free money movement sincerely enough; now he’s sponging on a half-starved sister for endless brandies and sodas. Lord Amber went into wild society in a sort of chivalry; now he’s paying blackmail to the lowest vultures in London. Captain Barillon was the great gentlemanapache before your time; he died in a madhouse, screaming with fear of the “narks” and receivers that had betrayed him and hunted him down. I know the woods look very free behind you, Flambeau; I know that in a flash you could melt into them like a monkey. But some day you will be an old grey monkey, Flambeau. You will sit up in your free forest cold at heart and close to death, and the tree-tops will be very bare.”

Everything continued still, as if the small man below held the other in the tree in some long invisible leash; and he went on:

“Your downward steps have begun. You used to boast of doing nothing mean, but you are doing something mean tonight. You are leaving suspicion on an honest boy with a good deal against him already; you are separating him from the woman he loves and who loves him. But you will do meaner things than that before you die.”

Three flashing diamonds fell from the tree to the turf. The small man stooped to pick them up, and when he looked up again the green cage of the tree was emptied of its silver bird.

The restoration of the gems (accidentally picked up by Father Brown, of all people) ended the evening in uproarious triumph; and Sir Leopold, in his height of good humour, even told the priest that though he himself had broader views, he could respect those whose creed required them to be cloistered and ignorant of this world.

Christmas Party Rex Stout

The Raffles Relics E. W. Hornung

The greatest gentleman jewel thief in all of mystery fiction is A. J. Raffles, the fearless burglar who mainly stole to help others who found themselves in desperate situations. He was accompanied in most cases by his utterly loyal sidekick, Bunny Manders. The stories are the mirror image of the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle, who was Hornung’s brother-in-law, and it has been noted in various sources that Hornung wrote about a crook and his faithful partner to tweak the humor-challenged Doyle. This is the next-to-last Raffles story that Hornung wrote and there is not much of Christmas in it, but the character is so iconic that he deserved a place in this (or any) collection. “The Raffles Relics” was first collected in A Thief in the Night (London, Chatto & Windus, 1905).

It was in one of the magazines for December, 1899, that an article appeared which afforded our minds a brief respite from the then consuming excitement of the war in South Africa. These were the days when Raffles really had white hair, and when he and I were nearing the end of our surreptitious second innings, as professional cracksmen of the deadliest dye. Piccadilly and the Albany knew us no more. But we still operated, as the spirit tempted us, from our latest and most idyllic base, on the borders of Ham Common. Recreation was our greatest want; and though we had both descended to the humble bicycle, a lot of reading was forced upon us in the winter evenings. Thus the war came as a boon to us both. It not only provided us with an honest interest in life, but gave point and zest to innumerable spins across Richmond Park, to the nearest paper-shop; and it was from such an expedition that I returned with inflammatory matter unconnected with the war. The magazine was one of those that are read (and sold) by the million; the article was rudely illustrated on every other page. Its subject was the so-called Black Museum at Scotland Yard; and from the catchpenny text we first learnt that the gruesome show was now enriched by a special and elaborate exhibit known as the Raffles Relics.

“Bunny,” said Raffles, “this is fame at last! It is no longer notoriety; it lifts one out of the ruck of robbers, into the society of the big brass gods, whose little delinquencies are written in water by the finger of time. The Napoleon Relics we know, the Nelson Relics we’ve heard about, and here are mine!”

“Which I wish to goodness we could see,” I added longingly. Next moment I was sorry I had spoken. Raffles was looking at me across the magazine. There was a smile on his lips that I knew too well, a light in his eyes that I had kindled.

“What an excellent idea!” he exclaimed quite softly, as though working it out already in his brain.

“I didn’t mean it for one,” I answered, “and no more do you.”

“Certainly I do,” said Raffles. “I was never more serious in my life.”

“You would march into Scotland Yard in broad daylight?”

“In broad limelight,” he answered, studying the magazine again, “to set eyes on my own once more. Why, here they all are, Bunny — you never told me there was an illustration. That’s the chest you took to your bank with me inside, and those must be my own rope-ladder and things on top. They reproduce so badly in the twopenny magazines that it’s impossible to swear to them. There’s nothing for it but a visit of inspection.”

“Then you can pay it alone,” said I grimly. “You may have altered, but they’d know me at a glance.”

“By all means, Bunny, if you’ll get me the pass.”

“A pass!” I cried triumphantly. “Of course we should have to get one, and of course that puts an end to the whole idea. Who on earth would give a pass for this show, of all others, to an old prisoner like me?”

Raffles addressed himself to the reading of the magazine with a shrug that showed some temper.

“The fellow who wrote this article got one,” said he shortly. “He got it from his editor, and you could get one from yours if you tried. But pray don’t try, Bunny: it would be too terrible for you to risk a moment’s embarrassment to gratify a mere whim of mine. And if I went instead of you, and got spotted, which is so likely with this head of hair, and the general belief in my demise, the consequences to you would be too awful to contemplate! Don’t contemplate them, my dear fellow. And do let me read my magazine.”

Need I add that I set about the rash endeavour without further expostulation? I was used to such ebullitions from the altered Raffles of these later days, and I could well understand them. All the inconvenience of the new conditions fell on him. I had purged my known offences by imprisonment, whereas Raffles was merely supposed to have escaped punishment in death. The result was that I could rush in where Raffles feared to tread, and was his plenipotentiary in all honest dealings with the outer world. It could not but gall him to be so dependent upon me, and it was for me to minimise the humiliation by scrupulously avoiding the least semblance of an abuse of that power which I now had over him. Accordingly, though with much misgiving, I did his ticklish behest in Fleet Street, where, despite my past, I was already making a certain lowly footing for myself. Success followed, as it will when one longs to fail; and one fine evening I returned to Ham Common with a card from the Convict Supervision Office, New Scotland Yard, which I treasure to this day. I am surprised to see that it was undated, and might still “Admit Bearer to see the Museum,” to say nothing of the bearer’s friends, since my editor’s name “and party” is scrawled beneath the legend.

“But he doesn’t want to come,” as I explained to Raffles. “And it means that we can both go, if we both like.”

Raffles looked at me with a wry smile; he was in good enough humour now.

“It would be rather dangerous, Bunny. If they spotted you, they might think of me.”

“But you say they’ll never know you now.”

“I don’t believe they will. I don’t believe there’s the slightest risk; but we shall soon see. I’ve set my heart on seeing, Bunny, but there’s no earthly reason why I should drag you into it.”

“You do that when you present this card,” I pointed out. “I shall hear of it fast enough, if anything happens.”

“Then you may as well be there to see the fun?”

“It will make no difference if the worst comes to the worst.”

“And the ticket is for a party, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“It might even look peculiar if only one person made use of it?”

“It might.”

“Then we’re both going, Bunny! And I give you my word,” cried Raffles, “that no real harm shall come of it. But you mustn’t ask to see the Relics, and you mustn’t take too much interest in them when you do see them. Leave the questioning to me: it really will be a chance of finding out whether they’ve any suspicion of one’s resurrection at Scotland Yard. And I think I can promise you a certain amount of fun, old fellow, as some little compensation for your pangs and fears.”

The early afternoon was mild and hazy, and unlike winter but for the prematurely low sun struggling through the haze, as Raffles and I emerged from the nether regions at Westminster Bridge, and stood for one moment to admire the infirm silhouettes of Abbey and Houses in flat grey against a golden mist. Raffles murmured of Whistler and of Arthur Severn, and threw away a good Sullivan because the smoke would curl between him and the picture. It is perhaps the picture that I can now see clearest of all the set scenes of our lawless life. But at the time I was filled with gloomy speculation as to whether Raffles would keep his promise of providing an entirely harmless entertainment for my benefit at the Black Museum.

We entered the forbidding precincts; we looked relentless officers in the face, and they almost yawned in ours as they directed us through swing-doors and up stone stairs. There was something even sinister in the casual character of our reception. We had an arctic landing to ourselves for several minutes, which Raffles spent in an instinctive survey of the premises, while I cooled my heels before the portrait of a late Commissioner.

“Dear old gentleman!” exclaimed Raffles, joining me. “I have met him at dinner, and discussed my own case with him, in the old days. But we can’t know too little about ourselves in the Black Museum, Bunny. I remember going to the old place in Whitehall, years ago, and being shown round by one of the tip-top ’tecs. And this may be another.”

But even I could see at a glance that there was nothing of the detective and everything of the clerk about the very young man who had joined us at last upon the landing. His collar was the tallest I have ever seen, and his face was as pallid as his collar. He carried a loose key, with which he unlocked a door a little way along the passage, and so ushered us into that dreadful repository which perhaps has fewer visitors than any other of equal interest in the world. The place was cold as the inviolate vault; blinds had to be drawn up, and glass cases uncovered, before we could see a thing except the row of murderers’ death-masks — the placid faces with the swollen necks — that stood out on their shelves to give us ghostly greeting.

“This fellow isn’t formidable,” whispered Raffles, as the blinds went up; “still, we can’t be too careful. My little lot are round the corner, in the sort of recess; don’t look till we come to them in their turn.”

So we began at the beginning, with the glass case nearest the door; and in a moment I discovered that I knew far more about its contents than our pallid guide. He had some enthusiasm, but the most inaccurate smattering of his subject. He mixed up the first murderer with quite the wrong murder, and capped his mistake in the next breath with an intolerable libel on the very pearl of our particular tribe.

“This revawlver,” he began, “belonged to the celebrited burgular, Chawles Peace. These are his spectacles, that’s his jemmy, and this here knife’s the one that Chawley killed the policeman with.”

Now, I like accuracy for its own sake, strive after it myself, and am sometimes guilty of forcing it upon others. So this was more than I could pass.

“That’s not quite right,” I put in, mildly. “He never made use of the knife.”

The young clerk twisted his head in its vase of starch.

“Chawley Peace killed two policemen,” said he.

“No, he didn’t; only one of them was a policeman; and he never killed anybody with a knife.”

The clerk took the correction like a lamb. I could not have refrained from making it, to save my skin. But Raffles rewarded me with as vicious a little kick as he could administer unobserved.

“Who was Charles Peace?” he inquired, with the bland effrontery of any judge upon the bench.

The clerk’s reply came pat and unexpected.

“The greatest burgular we ever had,” said he, “till good old Raffles knocked him out!”

“The greatest of the pre-Raffleites,” the master murmured, as we passed on to the safer memorials of mere murder. There were misshapen bullets and stained knives that had taken human life; there were lithe, lean ropes which had retaliated after the live letter of the Mosaic law. There was one bristling broadside of revolvers under the longest shelf of closed eyes and swollen throats. There were festoons of rope-ladders — none so ingenious as ours — and then at last there was something that the clerk knew all about. It was a small tin cigarette-box, and the name upon the gaudy wrapper was not the name of Sullivan. Yet Raffles and I knew even more about this exhibit than the clerk.

“There, now,” said our guide, “you’ll never guess the history of that! I’ll give you twenty guesses, and the twentieth will be no nearer than the first.”

“I’m sure of it, my good fellow,” rejoined Raffles, a discreet twinkle in his eye. “Tell us about it, to save time.”

And he opened, as he spoke, his own old twenty-five tin of purely popular cigarettes; there were a few in it still, but between the cigarettes were jammed lumps of sugar wadded with cotton-wool. I saw Raffles weighing the lot in his hand with subtle satisfaction. But the clerk saw merely the mystification which he desired to create.

“I thought that’d beat you, sir,” said he. “It was an American dodge. Two smart Yankees got a jeweller to take a lot of stuff to a private room at Kellner’s, where they were dining, for them to choose from. When it came to paying, there was some bother about a remittance; but they soon made that all right, for they were far too clever to suggest taking away what they’d chosen but couldn’t pay for. No; all they wanted was that what they’d chosen might be locked up in the safe and considered theirs until their money came for them to pay for it. All they asked was to seal the stuff up in something; the jeweller was to take it away and not meddle with it, nor yet break the seals, for a week or two. It seemed a fair enough thing, now, didn’t it, sir?”

“Eminently fair,” said Raffles, sententiously.

“So the jeweller thought,” crowed the clerk. “You see, it wasn’t as if the Yanks had chosen out the half of what he’d brought on appro; they’d gone slow on purpose, and they’d paid for all they could on the nail, just for a blind. Well, I suppose you can guess what happened in the end? The jeweller never heard of those Americans again; and these few cigarettes and lumps of sugar were all he found.”

“Duplicate boxes!” I cried, perhaps a thought too promptly.

“Duplicate boxes!” murmured Raffles, as profoundly impressed as a second Mr. Pickwick.

“Duplicate boxes!” echoed the triumphant clerk. “Artful beggars, these Americans, sir! You’ve got to crawss the ’erring Pond to learn a trick worth one o’ that!”

“I suppose so,” assented the grave gentleman with the silver hair. “Unless,” he added, as if suddenly inspired, “unless it was that man Raffles.”

“It couldn’t ’ve bin,” jerked the clerk from his conning-tower of a collar. “He’d gone to Davy Jones long before.”

“Are you sure?” asked Raffles. “Was his body ever found?”

“Found and buried,” replied our imaginative friend. “Maltar, I think it was; or it may have been Giberaltar. I forget which.”

“Besides,” I put in, rather annoyed at all this wilful work, yet not indisposed to make a late contribution — “besides, Raffles would never have smoked those cigarettes. There was only one brand for him. It was — let me see—”

“Sullivan!” cried the clerk, right for once. “It’s all a matter of ’abit,” he went on, as he replaced the twenty-five tin box with the vulgar wrapper. “I tried them once, and I didn’t like ’em myself. It’s all a question of taste. Now, if you want a good smoke, ana cheaper, give me a Golden Gem at quarter of the price.”

“What we really do want,” remarked Raffles mildly, “is to see something else as clever as that last.”

“Then come this way,” said the clerk, and led us into a recess almost monopolised by the iron-clamped chest of thrilling memory, now a mere platform for the collection of mysterious objects under a dust-sheet on the lid. “These,” he continued, unveiling them with an air, “are the Raffles Relics; taken from his rooms in the Albany after his death and burial, and the most complete set we’ve got. That’s his centre-bit, and this is the bottle of rock-oil he’s supposed to have kept dipping it in to prevent making a noise. Here’s the revawlver he used when he shot at the gentleman on the roof down Horsham way; it was afterwards taken from him on the P & O boat before he jumped overboard.”

I could not help saying I understood that Raffles had never shot at anybody. I was standing with my back to the nearest window, my hat jammed over my brows and my overcoat collar up to my ears.

“That’s the only time we know about,” the clerk admitted; “and it couldn’t be brought ’ome, or his precious pal would have got more than he did. This empty cawtridge is the one he ’id the Emperor’s pearl in, on the Peninsular and Orient. These gimlets and wedges were what he used for fixin’ doors. This is his rope-ladder, with the telescope walking-stick he used to hook it up with; he’s said to have ’ad it with him the night he dined with the Earl of Thornaby, and robbed the house before dinner. That’s his life-preserver; but no one can make out what this little thick velvet bag’s for, with the two holes and the elawstic round each. Perhaps you can give a guess, sir?”

Raffles had taken up the bag that he had invented for the noiseless filing of keys. Now he handled it as though it were a tobacco-pouch, putting in finger and thumb, and shrugging over the puzzle with a delicious face; nevertheless, he showed me a few grains of steel-filing as the result of his investigations, and murmured in my ear, “These sweet police!” I, for my part, could not but examine the life-preserver with which I had once smitten Raffles himself to the ground; actually there was his blood upon it still; and seeing my horror, the clerk plunged into a characteristically garbled version of that incident also. It happened to have come to light among others at the Old Bailey, and perhaps had its share in promoting the quality of mercy which had undoubtedly been exercised on my behalf. But the present recital was unduly trying, and Raffles created a noble diversion by calling attention to an early photograph of himself, which may still hang on the wall over the historic chest, but which I had carefully ignored. It shows him in flannels, after some great feat upon the tented field. I am afraid there is a Sullivan between his lips, a look of lazy insolence in the half-shut eyes. I have since possessed myself of a copy, and it is not Raffles at his best; but the features are clean-cut and regular; and I often wish that I had lent it to the artistic gentlemen who have battered the statue out of all likeness to the man.

“You wouldn’t think it of him, would you?” quoth the clerk. “It makes you understand how no one ever did think it of him at the time.”

The youth was looking full at Raffles, with the watery eyes of unsuspecting innocence. I itched to emulate the fine bravado of my friend.

“You said he had a pal,” I observed, sinking deeper into the collar of my coat. “Haven’t you got a photograph of him?”

The pale clerk gave such a sickly smile, I could have smacked some blood into his pasty face.

“You mean Bunny?” said the familiar fellow. “No, sir, he’d be out of place; we’ve only room for real criminals here. Bunny was neither one thing nor the other. He could follow Raffles, but that’s all he could do. He was no good on his own. Even when he put up the low-down job of robbing his old ’ome, it’s believed he hadn’t the ’eart to take the stuff away, and Raffles had to break in a second time for it. No, sir, we don’t bother our heads about Bunny; we shall never hear no more of ’im. He was a harmless sort of rotter, if you awsk me.”

I had not asked him, and I was almost foaming under the respirator that I was making of my overcoat collar. I only hoped that Raffles would say something — and he did.

“The only case I remember anything about,” he remarked, tapping the clamped chest with his umbrella, “was this; and that time, at all events, the man outside must have had quite as much to do as the one inside. May I ask what you keep in it?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“I imagined more relics inside. Hadn’t he some dodge of getting in and out without opening the lid?”

“Of putting his head out, you mean,” returned the clerk, whose knowledge of Raffles and his Relics was really most comprehensive on the whole. He moved some of the minor memorials, and with his penknife raised the trapdoor in the lid.

“Only a skylight,” remarked Raffles, deliciously unimpressed.

“Why, what else did you expect?” asked the clerk, letting the trapdoor down again, and looking sorry that he had taken so much trouble.

“A back door, at least!” replied Raffles, with such a sly look at me that I had to turn aside to smile. It was the last time I smiled that day.

The door had opened as I turned, and an unmistakable detective had entered with two more sightseers like ourselves. He wore the hard round hat and the dark thick overcoat which one knows at a glance as the uniform of his grade; and for one awful moment his steely eye was upon us in a flash of cold inquiry. Then the clerk emerged from the recess devoted to the Raffles Relics, and the alarming interloper conducted his party to the window opposite the door.

“Inspector Druce,” the clerk informed us in impressive whispers, “who had the Chalk Farm case in hand. He’d be the man for Raffles, if Raffles was alive today!”

“I’m sure he would,” was the grave reply. “I should be very sorry to have a man like that after me. But what a run there seems to be upon your Black Museum!”

“There isn’t really, sir,” whispered the clerk. “We sometimes go weeks on end without having regular visitors like you two gentlemen. I think those are friends of the Inspector’s, come to see the Chalk Farm photographs that helped to hang his man. We’ve a lot of interesting photographs, sir, if you like to have a look at them.”

“If it won’t take long,” said Raffles, pulling out his watch; and as the clerk left our side for an instant, he gripped my arm. “This is a bit too hot,” he whispered, “but we mustn’t cut and run like rabbits. That might be fatal. Hide your face in the photographs, and leave everything to me. I’ll have a train to catch as soon as ever I dare.”

I obeyed without a word, and with the less uneasiness as I had time to consider the situation. It even struck me that Raffles was for once inclined to exaggerate the undeniable risk that we ran by remaining in the same room with an officer whom both he and I knew only too well by name and repute. Raffles, after all, had aged and altered out of knowledge; but he had not lost the nerve that was equal to a far more direct encounter than was at all likely to be forced upon us. On the other hand, it was most improbable that a distinguished detective would know by sight an obscure delinquent like myself; besides, this one had come to the front since my day. Yet a risk it was, and I certainly did not smile as I bent over the album of horrors produced by our guide. I could still take an interest in the dreadful photographs of murderous and murdered men; they appealed to the morbid element in my nature; and it was doubtless with degenerate unction that I called Raffles’s attention to a certain scene of notorious slaughter. There was no response. I looked round. There was no Raffles to respond. We had all three been examining the photographs at one of the windows; at another the three newcomers were similarly engrossed; and without one word, or a single sound, Raffles had decamped behind all our backs.

Fortunately the clerk was himself very busy gloating over the horrors of the album; before he looked round I had hidden my astonishment, but not my wrath, of which I had the instinctive sense to make no secret.

“My friend’s the most impatient man on earth!” I exclaimed. “He said he was going to catch a train, and now he’s gone without a word!”

“I never heard him,” said the clerk, looking puzzled.

“No more did I; but he did touch me on the shoulder,” I lied, “and say something or other. I was too deep in this beastly book to pay much attention. He must have meant that he was off. Well, let him be off! I mean to see all that’s to be seen.”

And in my nervous anxiety to allay any suspicions aroused by my companion’s extraordinary behaviour, I outstayed even the eminent detective and his friends, saw them examine the Raffles Relics, heard them discuss me under my own nose, and at last was alone with the anaemic clerk. I put my hand in my pocket, and measured him with a sidelong eye. The tipping system is nothing less than a minor bane of my existence. Not that one is a grudging giver, but simply because in so many cases it is so hard to know whom to tip and what to tip him. I know what it is to be the parting guest who has not parted freely enough, and that not from stinginess but the want of a fine instinct on the point. I made no mistake, however, in the case of the clerk, who accepted my pieces of silver without demur, and expressed a hope of seeing the article which I had assured him I was about to write. He has had some years to wait for it, but I flatter myself that these belated pages will occasion more interest than offence if they ever do meet those watery eyes.

Twilight was falling when I reached the street; the sky behind St. Stephen’s had flushed and blackened like an angry face; the lamps were lit, and under every one I was unreasonable enough to look for Raffles. Then I made foolishly sure that I should find him hanging about the station, and hung thereabouts myself until one Richmond train had gone without me. In the end I walked over the bridge to Waterloo, and took the first train to Teddington instead. That made a shorter walk of it, but I had to grope my way through a white fog from the river to Ham Common, and it was the hour of our cosy dinner when I reached our place of retirement. There was only a flicker of firelight on the blinds: I was the first to return after all. It was nearly four hours since Raffles had stolen away from my side in the ominous precincts of Scotland Yard. Where could he be? Our landlady wrung her hands over him; she had cooked a dinner after her favourite’s heart, and I let it spoil before making one of the most melancholy meals of my life.

Up to midnight there was no sign of him; but long before this time I had reassured our landlady with a voice and face that must have given my words the lie. I told her that Mr. Ralph (as she used to call him) had said something about going to the theatre; that I thought he had given up the idea, but I must have been mistaken, and should certainly sit up for him. The attentive soul brought in a plate of sandwiches before she retired; and I prepared to make a night of it in a chair by the sitting-room fire. Darkness and bed I could not face in my anxiety. In a way I felt as though duty and loyalty called me out into the winter’s night: and yet whither should I turn to look for Raffles? I could think of but one place, and to seek him there would be to destroy myself without aiding him. It was my growing conviction that he had been recognised when leaving Scotland Yard, and either taken then and there, or else hunted into some new place of hiding. It would all be in the morning papers; and it was all his own fault. He had thrust his head into the lion’s mouth, and the lion’s jaws had snapped. Had he managed to withdraw his head in time?

There was a bottle at my elbow, and that night I say deliberately that it was not my enemy but my friend. It procured me at last some surcease from my suspense. I fell fast asleep in my chair before the fire. The lamp was still burning, and the fire red, when I awoke; but I sat very stiff in the iron clutch of a wintry morning. Suddenly I slewed round in my chair. And there was Raffles in a chair behind me, with the door open behind him, quietly taking off his boots.

“Sorry to wake you, Bunny,” said he. “I thought I was behaving like a mouse; but after a three hours’ tramp one’s feet are all heels.”

I did not get up and fall upon his neck. I sat back in my chair and blinked with bitterness upon his selfish insensibility. He should not know what I had been through on his account.

“Walk out from town?” I inquired, as indifferently as though he were in the habit of doing so.

“From Scotland Yard,” he answered, stretching himself before the fire in his stocking soles.

“Scotland Yard!” I echoed. “Then I was right; that’s where you were all the time. And yet you managed to escape!”

I had risen excitedly in my turn.

“Of course I did,” replied Raffles. “I never thought there would be much difficulty about that, but there was even less than I anticipated. I did once find myself on one side of a sort of counter, and an officer dozing at his desk at the other side. I thought it safest to wake him up and make inquiries about a mythical purse left in a phantom hansom outside the Carlton. And the way the fellow fired me out of that was another credit to the Metropolitan Police: it’s only in the savage countries that they would have troubled to ask how one had got in.”

“And how did you?” I asked. “And in the Lord’s name, Raffles, when and why?”

Raffles looked down on me under raised eyebrows, as he stood with his coat-tails to the dying fire.

“How and when, Bunny, you know as well as I do,” said he, cryptically. “And at last you shall hear the honest why and wherefore. I had more reasons for going to Scotland Yard, my dear fellow, than I had the face to tell you at the time.”

“I don’t care why you went there,” I cried. “I want to know why you stayed, or went back, or whatever it was you may have done. I thought they had got you, and you had given them the slip?”

Raffles smiled as he shook his head.

“No, no, Bunny, I prolonged the visit, as I paid it, of my own accord. As for my reasons, they are far too many for me to tell you them all; they rather weighed upon me as I walked out; but you’ll see them for yourself if you turn round.”

I was standing with my back to the chair in which I had been asleep; behind the chair was the round lodging-house table; and there, reposing on the cloth with the whisky and sandwiches, was the whole collection of Raffles Relics which had occupied the lid of the silver-chest in the Black Museum at Scotland Yard! The chest alone was missing. There was the revolver that I had only once heard fired, and there the blood-stained life-preserver, brace-and-bit, bottle of rock-oil, velvet bag, rope-ladder, walking-stick, gimlets, wedges, and even the empty cartridge-case which had once concealed the gift of a civilised monarch to a potentate of colour.

“I was a real Father Christmas,” said Raffles, “when I arrived. It’s a pity you weren’t awake to appreciate the scene. It was more edifying than the one I found. You never caught me asleep in my chair, Bunny!”

He thought I had merely fallen asleep in my chair. He could not see that I had been sitting up for him all night long. The hint of a temperance homily, on top of all I had borne, and from Raffles of all mortal men, tried my temper to its last limit; but a flash of late enlightenment enabled me just to keep it.

“Where did you hide?” I asked grimly.

“At the Yard itself.”

“So I gather; but whereabouts at the Yard?”

“Can you ask, Bunny?”

“I am asking.”

“It’s where I once hid before.”

“You don’t mean in the chest?”

“I do.”

Our eyes met for a minute.

“You may have ended up there,” I conceded. “But where did you go first, when you slipped out behind my back, and how the devil did you know where to go?”

“I never did slip out,” said Raffles, “behind your back. I slipped in.”

“Into the chest?”

“Exactly.”

I burst out laughing in his face.

“My dear fellow, I saw all these things on the lid just afterwards. Not one of them was moved. I watched that detective show them to his friends.”

“And I heard him.”

“But not from the inside of the chest!”

“From the inside of the chest, Bunny. Don’t look like that — it’s foolish. Try to recall a few words that went before, between the idiot in the collar and me. Don’t you remember my asking him if there was anything in the chest?”

“Yes.”

“One had to be sure it was empty, you see. Then I asked if there was a back door to the chest as well as a skylight.”

“I remember.”

“I suppose you thought all that meant nothing?”

“I didn’t look for a meaning.”

“You wouldn’t; it would never occur to you that I might want to find out whether anybody at the Yard had found out that there was something precisely in the nature of a side door — it isn’t a back door — to that chest. Well, there is one; there was one soon after I took the chest back from your rooms to mine, in the good old days. You push one of the handles down — which no one ever does — and the whole of that end opens like the front of a doll’s house. I saw that was what I ought to have done at first; it’s so much simpler than the trap at the top, and one likes to get a thing perfect for its own sake. Besides, the trick had not been spotted at the bank, and I thought I might bring it off again some day; meanwhile, in one’s bedroom, with lots of things on top, what a port in a sudden squall!”

I asked why I had never heard of the improvement before, not so much at the time it was made, but in these later days, when there were fewer secrets between us, and this one could avail him no more. But I did not put the question out of pique. I put it out of sheer obstinate incredulity. And Raffles looked at me without replying, until I read the explanation in his look.

“I see,” I said. “You used to get into it to hide from me!”

“My dear Bunny, I am not always a very genial man,” he answered; “but when you let me have a key of your rooms, I could not very well refuse you one of mine, although I picked your pocket of it in the end. I will only say that when I had no wish to see you, Bunny, I must have been quite unfit for human society, and it was the act of a friend to deny you mine. I don’t think it happened more than once or twice. You can afford to forgive a fellow after all these years!”

“That, yes,” I replied, bitterly; “but not this, Raffles.”

“Why not? I really hadn’t made up my mind to do what I did. I had merely thought of it. It was that smart officer in the same room that made me do it without thinking twice.”

“And we never even heard you!” I murmured, in a voice of involuntary admiration which vexed me with myself. “But we might just as well!” I was as quick to add in my former tone.

“Why, Bunny?”

“We shall be traced in no time through our ticket of admission.”

“Did they collect it?”

“No; but you heard how very few are issued.”

“Exactly. They sometimes go weeks on end without a regular visitor. It was I who extracted that piece of information, Bunny, and I did nothing rash until I had. Don’t you see that with any luck it will be two or three weeks before they are likely to discover their loss?”

I was beginning to see.

“And then, pray, how are they going to bring it home to us? Why should they even suspect us, Bunny? I left early; that’s all I did. You took my departure admirably; you couldn’t have said more or less if I had coached you myself. I relied on you, Bunny, and you never more completely justified my confidence. The sad thing is that you have ceased to rely on me. Do you really think that I would leave the place in such a state that the first person who came in with a duster would see that there had been a robbery?”

I denied the thought with all energy, though it perished only as I spoke.

“Have you forgotten the duster that was over these things, Bunny? Have you forgotten all the other revolvers and life-preservers that there were to choose from? I chose most carefully, and I replaced my relics with a mixed assortment of other people’s which really look just as well. The rope-ladder that now supplants mine is, of course, no patch upon it, but coiled up on the chest it really looks much the same. To be sure, there was no second velvet bag; but I replaced my stick with another quite like it, and I even found an empty cartridge to understudy the setting of the Polynesian pearl. You see the sort of fellow they have to show people round: do you think he’s the kind to see the difference next time, or to connect it with us if he does? One left much the same things lying much as he left them, under a dust-sheet which is only taken off for the benefit of the curious, who often don’t turn up for weeks on end.”

I admitted that we might be safe for three or four weeks. Raffles held out his hand.

“Then let us be friends about it, Bunny, and smoke the cigarette of Sullivan and peace! A lot may happen in three or four weeks; and what should you say if this turned out to be the last as well as the least of all my crimes? I must own that it seems to me their natural and fitting end, though I might have stopped more characteristically than with a mere crime of sentiment. No, I make no promises, Bunny; now I have got these things, I may be unable to resist using them once more. But with this war one gets all the excitement one requires — and rather more than usual may happen in three or four weeks!”

Was he thinking even then of volunteering for the Front? Had he already set his heart on the one chance of some atonement for his life — nay, on the very death he was to die? I never knew, and shall never know. Yet his words were strangely prophetic, even to the three or four weeks in which those events happened that imperilled the fabric of our Empire, and rallied her sons from the four winds to fight beneath her banner on the veldt. It all seems very ancient history now. But I remember nothing better or more vividly than the last words of Raffles upon his last crime, unless it be the pressure of his hand as he said them, or the rather sad twinkle in his tired eyes.

The Price of Light Ellis Peters

The versatile edith Mary Pargeter, under the name Ellis Peters, had been writing historical novels, general fiction, and translating works from Czech to English for more than four decades before she created her most famous and beloved protagonist, Brother Cadfael, a Benedictine monk who worked in twelfth-century Shropshire. Pargeter first tried her hand at writing a mystery in 1951, when she published Fallen Into the Pit under her pseudonym. As she had been publishing straight fiction under her real name for so many years, she decided to use a pseudonym for her mysteries and chose Ellis Peters, retaining her initials and using her brother’s first name. That novel, and many others, featured the adventures of the Felse family, in which various members took center stage in different books. The first Brother Cadfael novel, A Morbid Taste for Bones, appeared twenty-six years after her debut as a mystery writer. “The Price of Light” was first published in Winter’s Crimes #11 (London, Gollancz, 1979).

Hamo Fitzhamon of Lidyate held two fat manors in the north-eastern corner of the county, towards the border of Cheshire. Though a gross feeder, a heavy drinker, a self-indulgent lecher, a harsh landlord and a brutal master, he had reached the age of sixty in the best of health, and it came as a salutary shock to him when he was at last taken with a mild seizure, and for the first time in his life saw the next world yawning before him, and woke to the uneasy consciousness that it might see fit to treat him somewhat more austerely than this world had done. Though he repented none of them, he was aware of a whole register of acts in his past which heaven might construe as heavy sins. It began to seem to him a prudent precaution to acquire merit for his soul as quickly as possible. Also as cheaply, for he was a grasping and possessive man. A judicious gift to some holy house should secure the welfare of his soul. There was no need to go so far as endowing an abbey, or a new church of his own. The Benedictine abbey of Shrewsbury could put up a powerful assault of prayers on his behalf in return for a much more modest gift.

The thought of alms to the poor, however ostentatiously bestowed in the first place, did not recommend itself. Whatever was given would be soon consumed and forgotten, and a rag-tag of beggarly blessings from the indigent could carry very little weight, besides failing to confer a lasting lustre upon himself. No, he wanted something that would continue in daily use and daily respectful notice, a permanent reminder of his munificence and piety. He took his time about making his decision, and when he was satisfied of the best value he could get for the least expenditure, he sent his law-man to Shrewsbury to confer with abbot and prior, and conclude with due ceremony and many witnesses the charter that conveyed to the custodian of the altar of St. Mary, within the abbey church, one of his free tenant farmers, the rent to provide light for Our Lady’s altar throughout the year. He promised also, for the proper displaying of his charity, the gift of a pair of fine silver candlesticks, which he himself would bring and see installed on the altar at the coming Christmas feast.

Abbot Heribert, who after a long life of repeated disillusionments still contrived to think the best of everybody, was moved to tears by this penitential generosity. Prior Robert, himself an aristocrat, refrained, out of Norman solidarity, from casting doubt upon Hamo’s motive, but he elevated his eyebrows, all the same. Brother Cadfael, who knew only the public reputation of the donor, and was sceptical enough to suspend judgement until he encountered the source, said nothing, and waited to observe and decide for himself. Not that he expected much; he had been in the world fifty-five years, and learned to temper all his expectations, bad or good.

It was with mild and detached interest that he observed the arrival of the party from Lidyate, on the morning of Christmas Eve. A hard, cold Christmas it was proving to be, that year of 1135, all bitter black frost and grudging snow, thin and sharp as whips before a withering east wind. The weather had been vicious all the year, and the harvest a disaster. In the villages people shivered and starved, and Brother Oswald the almoner fretted and grieved the more that the alms he had to distribute were not enough to keep all those bodies and souls together. The sight of a cavalcade of three good riding horses, ridden by travellers richly wrapped up from the cold, and followed by two pack-ponies, brought all the wretched petitioners crowding and crying, holding out hands blue with frost. All they got out of it was a single perfunctory handful of small coin, and when they hampered his movements FitzHamon used his whip as a matter of course to clear the way. Rumour, thought Brother Cadfael, pausing on his way to the infirmary with his daily medicines for the sick, had probably not done Hamo FitzHamon any injustice.

Dismounting in the great court, the knight of Lidyate was seen to be a big, over-fleshed, top-heavy man with bushy hair and beard and eyebrows, all grey-streaked from their former black, and stiff and bristling as wire. He might well have been a very handsome man before indulgence purpled his face and pocked his skin and sank his sharp black eyes deep into flabby sacks of flesh. He looked more than his age, but still a man to be reckoned with.

The second horse carried his lady, pillion behind a groom. A small figure she made, even swathed almost to invisibility in her woollens and furs, and she rode snuggled comfortably against the groom’s broad back, her arms hugging him round the waist. And a very well-looking young fellow he was, this groom, a strapping lad barely twenty years old, with round, ruddy cheeks and merry, guileless eyes, long in the legs, wide in the shoulders, everything a country youth should be, and attentive to his duties into the bargain, for he was down from the saddle in one lithe leap, and reaching up to take the lady by the waist, every bit as heartily as she had been clasping him a moment before, and lift her lightly down. Small, gloved hands rested on his shoulders a brief moment longer than was necessary. His respectful support of her continued until she was safe on the ground and sure of her footing; perhaps a few seconds more. Hamo FitzHamon was occupied with Prior Robert’s ceremonious welcome, and the attentions of the hospitaller, who had made the best rooms of the guest-hall ready for him.

The third horse also carried two people, but the woman on the pillion did not wait for anyone to help her down, but slid quickly to the ground and hurried to help her mistress off with the great outer cloak in which she had travelled. A quiet, submissive young woman, perhaps in her middle twenties, perhaps older, in drab homespun, her hair hidden away under a coarse linen wimple. Her face was thin and pale, her skin dazzlingly fair, and her eyes, reserved and weary, were of a pale, clear blue, a fierce colour that ill suited their humility and resignation.

Lifting the heavy folds from her lady’s shoulders, the maid showed a head the taller of the two, but drab indeed beside the bright little bird that emerged from the cloak. Lady FitzHamon came forth graciously smiling on the world in scarlet and brown, like a robin; and just as confidently. She had dark hair braided about a small, shapely head, soft, full cheeks flushed rosy by the chill air, and large dark eyes assured of their charm and power. She could not possibly have been more than thirty, probably not so much. FitzHamon had a grown son somewhere, with children of his own, and waiting, some said with little patience, for his inheritance. This girl must be a second or a third wife, a good deal younger than her stepson, and a beauty, at that. Hamo was secure enough and important enough to keep himself supplied with wives as he wore them out. This one must have cost him dear, for she had not the air of a poor but pretty relative sold for a profitable alliance, rather she looked as if she knew her own status very well indeed, and meant to have it acknowledged. She would look well presiding over the high table at Lidyate, certainly, which was probably the main consideration.

The groom behind whom the maid had ridden was an older man, lean and wiry, with a face like the bole of a knotty oak. By the sardonic patience of his eyes he had been in close and relatively favoured attendance on FitzHamon for many years, knew the best and the worst his moods could do, and was sure of his own ability to ride the storms. Without a word he set about unloading the pack-horses, and followed his lord to the guest-hall, while the young man took FitzHamon’s bridle, and led the horses away to the stables.

Cadfael watched the two women cross to the doorway, the lady springy as a young hind, with bright eyes taking in everything around her, the tall maid keeping always a pace behind, with long steps curbed to keep her distance. Even thus, frustrated like a mewed hawk, she had a graceful gait. Almost certainly of villein stock, like the two grooms. Cadfael had long practice in distinguishing the free from the unfree. Not that the free had any easy life, often they were worse off than the villeins of their neighbourhood; there were plenty of free men, this Christmas, gaunt and hungry, forced to hold out begging hands among the throng round the gatehouse. Freedom, the first ambition of every man, still could not fill the bellies of wives and children in a bad season.

FitzHamon and his party appeared at Vespers in full glory, to see the candlesticks reverently installed upon the altar in the Lady Chapel. Abbot, prior and brothers had no difficulty in sufficiently admiring the gift, for they were indeed things of beauty, two fluted stems ending in the twin cups of flowering lilies. Even the veins of the leaves showed delicate and perfect as in the living plant. Brother Oswald the almoner, himself a skilled silversmith when he had time to exercise his craft, stood gazing at the new embellishments of the altar with a face and mind curiously torn between rapture and regret, and ventured to delay the donor for a moment, as he was being ushered away to sup with Abbot Heribert in his lodging.

“My lord, these are of truly noble workmanship. I have some knowledge of precious metals, and of the most notable craftsmen in these parts, but I never saw any work so true to the plant as this. A country-man’s eye is here, but the hand of a court craftsman. May we know who made them?”

FitzHamon’s marred face curdled into deeper purple, as if an unpardonable shadow had been cast upon his hour of self-congratulation. He said brusquely: “I commissioned them from a fellow in my own service. You would not know his name — a villein born, but he had some skill.” And with that he swept on, avoiding further question, and wife and men-servants and maid trailed after him. Only the older groom, who seemed less in awe of his lord than anyone, perhaps by reason of having so often presided over the ceremony of carrying him dead-drunk to his bed, turned back for a moment to pluck at Brother Oswald’s sleeve, and advise him in a confidential whisper: “You’ll find him short to question on that head. The silversmith — Alard, his name was — cut and ran from his service last Christmas, and for all they hunted him as far as London, where the signs pointed, he’s never been found. I’d let that matter lie, if I were you.”

And with that he trotted away after his master, and left several thoughtful faces staring after him.

“Not a man to part willingly with any property of his,” mused Brother Cadfael, “metal or man, but for a price, and a steep price at that.”

“Brother, be ashamed!” reproved Brother Jerome at his elbow. “Has he not parted with these very treasures from pure charity?”

Cadfael refrained from elaborating on the profit FitzHamon expected for his benevolence. It was never worth arguing with Jerome, who in any case knew as well as anyone that the silver lilies and the rent of one farm were no free gift. But Brother Oswald said grievingly: “I wish he had directed his charity better. Surely these are beautiful things, a delight to the eyes, but well sold, they could have provided money enough to buy the means of keeping my poorest petitioners alive through the winter, some of whom will surely die for the want of them.”

Brother Jerome was scandalised. “Has he not given them to Our Lady herself?” he lamented indignantly. “Beware of the sin of those apostles who cried out with the same complaint against the woman who brought the pot of spikenard, and poured it over the Saviour’s feet. Remember Our Lord’s reproof to them, that they should let her alone, for she had done well!”

“Our Lord was acknowledging a well-meant impulse of devotion,” said Brother Oswald with spirit. “He did not say it was well advised! ‘She hath done what she could’ is what he said. He never said that with a little thought she might not have done better. What use would it have been to wound the giver, after the thing was done? Spilled oil of spikenard could hardly be recovered.”

His eyes dwelt with love and compunction upon the silver lilies, with their tall stems of wax and flame. For these remained, and to divert them to other use was still possible, or would have been possible if the donor had been a more approachable man. He had, after all, a right to dispose as he wished of his own property.

“It is sin,” admonished Jerome sanctimoniously, “even to covet for other use, however worthy, that which has been given to Our Lady. The very thought is sin.”

“If Our Lady could make her own will known,” said Brother Cadfael drily, “we might learn which is the graver sin, and which the more acceptable sacrifice.”

“Could any price be too high for the lighting of this holy altar?” demanded Jerome.

It was a good question, Cadfael thought, as they went to supper in the refectory. Ask Brother Jordan, for instance, the value of light. Jordan was old and frail, and gradually going blind. As yet he could distinguish shapes, but like shadows in a dream, though he knew his way about cloisters and precincts so well that his gathering darkness was no hindrance to his freedom of movement. But as every day the twilight closed in on him by a shade, so did his profound love of light grow daily more devoted, until he had forsaken other duties, and taken upon himself to tend all the lamps and candles on both altars, for the sake of being always irradiated by light, and sacred light, at that. As soon as Compline was over, this evening, he would be busy devoutly trimming the wicks of candle and lamp, to have the steady flames smokeless and immaculate for the Matins of Christmas Day. Doubtful if he would go to his bed at all until Matins and Lauds were over. The very old need little sleep, and sleep is itself a kind of darkness. But what Jordan treasured was the flame of light, and not the vessel holding it; and would not those splendid two-pound candles shine upon him just as well from plain wooden sconces?

Cadfael was in the warming-house with the rest of the brothers, about a quarter of an hour before Compline, when a lay brother from the guest-hall came enquiring for him.

“The lady asks if you’ll speak with her. She’s complaining of a bad head, and that she’ll never be able to sleep. Brother Hospitaller recommended her to you for a remedy.”

Cadfael went with him without comment, but with some curiosity, for at Vespers the Lady FitzHamon had looked in blooming health and sparkling spirits. Nor did she seem greatly changed when he met her in the hall, though she was still swathed in the cloak she had worn to cross the great court to and from the abbot’s house, and had the hood so drawn that it shadowed her face. The silent maid hovered at her shoulder.

“You are Brother Cadfael? They tell me you are expert in herbs and medicines, and can certainly help me. I came early back from the lord abbot’s supper, with such a headache, and have told my lord that I shall go early to bed. But I have such disturbed sleep, and with this pain how shall I be able to rest? Can you give me some draught that will ease me? They say you have a perfect apothecarium in your herb garden, and all your own work, growing, gathering, drying, brewing and all. There must be something there that can soothe pain and bring deep sleep.”

Well, thought Cadfael, small blame to her if she sometimes sought a means to ward off her old husband’s rough attentions for a night, especially for a festival night when he was likely to have drunk heavily. Nor was it Cadfael’s business to question whether the petitioner really needed his remedies. A guest might ask for whatever the house afforded.

“I have a syrup of my own making,” he said, “which may do you good service. I’ll bring you a vial of it from my workshop store.”

“May I come with you? I should like to see your workshop.” She had forgotten to sound frail and tired, the voice could have been a curious child’s. “As I already am cloaked and shod,” she said winningly. “We just returned from the lord abbot’s table.”

“But should you not go in from the cold, madam? Though the snow’s swept here in the court, it lies on some of the garden paths.”

“A few minutes in the fresh air will help me,” she said, “before trying to sleep. And it cannot be far.”

It was not far. Once away from the subdued lights of the buildings they were aware of the stars, snapping like sparks from a cold fire, in a clear black sky just engendering a few tattered snow-clouds in the east. In the garden, between the pleached hedges, it seemed almost warm, as though the sleeping trees breathed tempered air as well as cutting off the bleak wind. The silence was profound. The herb garden was walled, and the wooden hut where Cadfael brewed and stored his medicines was sheltered from the worst of the cold. Once inside, and a small lamp kindled, Lady FitzHamon forgot her invalid role in wonder and delight, looking round her with bright, inquisitive eyes. The maid, submissive and still, scarcely turned her head, but her eyes ranged from left to right, and a faint colour touched life into her cheeks. The many faint, sweet scents made her nostrils quiver, and her lips curve just perceptibly with pleasure.

Curious as a cat, the lady probed into every sack and jar and box, peered at mortars and bottles, and asked a hundred questions in a breath.

“And this is rosemary, these little dried needles? And in this great sack — is it grain?” She plunged her hands wrist-deep inside the neck of it, and the hut was filled with sweetness. “Lavender? Such a great harvest of it? Do you, then, prepare perfumes for us women?”

“Lavender has other good properties,” said Cadfael. He was filling a small vial with a clear syrup he made from eastern poppies, a legacy of his crusading years. “It is helpful for all disorders that trouble the head and spirit, and its scent is calming. I’ll give you a little pillow filled with that and other herbs, that shall help to bring you sleep. But this draught will ensure it. You may take all that I give you here, and get no harm, only a good night’s rest.”

She had been playing inquisitively with a pile of small clay dishes he kept by his work-bench, rough dishes in which the fine seeds sifted from fruiting plants could be spread to dry out; but she came at once to gaze eagerly at the modest vial he presented to her. “Is it enough? It takes much to give me sleep.”

“This,” he assured her patiently, “would bring sleep to a strong man. But it will not harm even a delicate lady like you.”

She took it in her hand with a small, sleek smile of satisfaction. “Then I thank you indeed! I will make a gift — shall I? — to your almoner in requital. Elfgiva, you bring the little pillow. I shall breathe it all night long. It should sweeten dreams.”

So her name was Elfgiva. A Norse name. She had Norse eyes, as he had already noted, blue as ice, and pale, fine skin worn finer and whiter by weariness. All this time she had noted everything that passed, motionless, and never said word. Was she older, or younger, than her lady? There was no guessing. The one was so clamant, and the other so still.

He put out his lamp and closed the door, and led them back to the great court just in time to take leave of them and still be prompt for Compline. Clearly the lady had no intention of attending. As for the lord, he was just being helped away from the abbot’s lodging, his grooms supporting him one on either side, though as yet he was not gravely drunk. They headed for the guest-hall at an easy roll. No doubt only the hour of Compline had concluded the drawn-out supper, probably to the abbot’s considerable relief. He was no drinker, and could have very little in common with Hamo FitzHamon. Apart, of course, from a deep devotion to the altar of St. Mary.

The lady and her maid had already vanished within the guest-hall. The younger groom carried in his free hand a large jug, full, to judge by the way he held it. The young wife could drain her draught and clutch her herbal pillow with confidence; the drinking was not yet at an end, and her sleep would be solitary and untroubled. Brother Cadfael went to Compline mildly sad, and obscurely comforted.

Only when service was ended, and the brothers on the way to their beds, did he remember that he had left his flask of poppy syrup unstoppered. Not that it would come to any harm in the frosty night, but his sense of fitness drove him to go and remedy the omission before he slept.

His sandalled feet, muffled in strips of woollen cloth for warmth and safety on the frozen paths, made his coming quite silent, and he was already reaching out a hand to the latch of the door, but not yet touching, when he was brought up short and still by the murmur of voices within. Soft, whispering, dreamy voices that made sounds less and more than speech, caresses rather than words, though once at least words surfaced for a moment. A man’s voice, young, wary, saying: “But how if he does...?” And a woman’s soft, suppressed laughter: “He’ll sleep till morning, never fear!” And her words were suddenly hushed with kissing, and her laughter became huge, ecstatic sighs; the young man’s breath heaving triumphantly, but still, a moment later, the note of fear again, half-enjoyed: “Still, you know him, he may...” And she, soothing: “Not for an hour, at least... then we’ll go... it will grow cold here...”

That, at any rate, was true; small fear of them wishing to sleep out the night here, even two close-wrapped in one cloak on the bench-bed against the wooden wall. Brother Cadfael withdrew very circumspectly from the herb garden, and made his way back in chastened thought towards the dortoir. Now he knew who had swallowed that draught of his, and it was not the lady. In the pitcher of wine the young groom had been carrying? Enough for a strong man, even if he had not been drunk already. Meantime, no doubt, the body-servant was left to put his lord to bed, somewhere apart from the chamber where the lady lay supposedly nursing her indisposition and sleeping the sleep of the innocent. Ah, well, it was no business of Cadfael’s, nor had he any intention of getting involved. He did not feel particularly censorious. Doubtful if she ever had any choice about marrying Hamo; and with this handsome boy for ever about them, to point the contrast... A brief experience of genuine passion, echoing old loves, pricked sharply through the years of his vocation. At least he knew what he was condoning. And who could help feeling some admiration for her opportunist daring, the quick wit that had procured the means, the alert eye that had seized on the most remote and adequate shelter available?

Cadfael went to bed, and slept without dreams, and rose at the Matin bell, some minutes before midnight. The procession of the brothers wound its way down the night stairs into the church, and into the soft, full glow of the lights before St. Mary’s altar.

Withdrawn reverently some yards from the step of the altar, old Brother Jordan, who should long ago have been in his cell with the rest, kneeled upright with clasped hands and ecstatic face, in which the great, veiled eyes stared full into the light he loved. When Prior Robert exclaimed in concern at finding him there on the stones, and laid a hand on his shoulder, he started as if out of a trance, and lifted to them a countenance itself all light.

“Oh, brothers, I have been so blessed! I have lived through a wonder... Praise God that ever it was granted to me! But bear with me, for I am forbidden to speak of it to any, for three days. On the third day from today I may speak...!”

“Look, brothers!” wailed Jerome suddenly, pointing. “Look at the altar!”

Every man present, except Jordan, who still serenely prayed and smiled, turned to gape where Jerome pointed. The tall candles stood secured by drops of their own wax in two small clay dishes, such as Cadfael used for sorting seeds. The two silver lilies were gone from the place of honour.

Through loss, disorder, consternation, and suspicion, Prior Robert would still hold fast to the order of the day. Let Hamo FitzHamon sleep in happy ignorance till morning, still Matins and Lauds must be properly celebrated. Christmas was larger than all the giving and losing of silverware. Grimly he saw the services of the church observed, and despatched the brethren back to their beds until Prime, to sleep or lie wakeful and fearful, as they might. Nor would he allow any pestering of Brother Jerome by others, though possibly he did try in private to extort something more satisfactory from the old man. Clearly the theft, whether he knew anything about it or not, troubled Jordan not at all. To everything he said only: “I am enjoined to silence until midnight of the third day.” And when they asked by whom? he smiled seraphically, and was silent.

It was Robert himself who broke the news to Hamo FitzHamon, in the morning, before Mass. The uproar, though vicious, was somewhat tempered by the after-effects of Cadfael’s poppy draught, which dulled the edges of energy, if not of malice. His body-servant, the older groom Sweyn, was keeping well back out of reach, even with Robert still present, and the lady sat somewhat apart, too, as though still frail and possibly a little out of temper. She exclaimed dutifully, and apparently sincerely, at the outrage done to her husband, and echoed his demand that the thief should be hunted down, and the candlesticks recovered. Prior Robert was just as zealous in the matter. No effort should be spared to regain the princely gift, of that they could be sure. He had already made certain of various circumstances which should limit the hunt. There had been a brief fall of snow after Compline, just enough to lay down a clean film of white on the ground. No single footprint had as yet marked this pure layer. He had only to look for himself at the paths leading from both parish doors of the church to see that no one had left by that way. The porter would swear that no one had passed the gatehouse; and on the one side of the abbey grounds not walled, the Meole brook was full and frozen, but the snow on both sides of it was virgin. Within the enclave, of course, tracks and cross-tracks were trodden out everywhere; but no one had left the enclave since Compline, when the candlesticks were still in their place.

“So the miscreant is still within the walls?” said Hamo, glinting vengefully. “So much the better! Then his booty is still here within, too, and if we have to turn all your abode doors out of dortoirs, we’ll find it! It, and him!”

“We will search everywhere,” agreed Robert, “and question every man. We are as deeply offended as your lordship at this blasphemous crime. You may yourself oversee the search, if you will.”

So all that Christmas Day, alongside the solemn rejoicings in the church, an angry hunt raged about the precincts in full cry. It was not difficult for all the monks to account for their time to the last minute, their routine being so ordered that brother inevitably extricated brother from suspicion; and such as had special duties that took them out of the general view, like Cadfael in his visit to the herb garden, had all witnesses to vouch for them. The lay brothers ranged more freely, but tended to work in pairs, at least. The servants and the few guests protested their innocence, and if they had not, all of them, others willing to prove it, neither could Hamo prove the contrary. When it came to his own two grooms, there were several witnesses to testify that Sweyn had returned to his bed in the lofts of the stables as soon as he had put his lord to bed, and certainly empty-handed; and Sweyn, as Cadfael noted with interest, swore unblinkingly that young Madoc, who had come in an hour after him, had none the less returned with him, and spent that hour, at Sweyn’s order, tending one of the pack-ponies, which showed signs of a cough, and that otherwise they had been together throughout.

A villein instinctively closing ranks with his kind against his lord? wondered Cadfael. Or does Sweyn know very well where that young man was last night, or at least what he was about, and is he intent on protecting him from a worse vengeance? No wonder Madoc looked a shade less merry and ruddy than usual this morning, though on the whole he kept his countenance very well, and refrained from even looking at the lady, while her tone to him was cool, sharp, and distant.

Cadfael left them hard at it again after the miserable meal they made of dinner, and went into the church alone. While they were feverishly searching every corner for the candlesticks he had forborne from taking part, but now they were elsewhere he might find something of interest there. He would not be looking for anything so obvious as two large silver candlesticks. He made obeisance at the altar, and mounted the step to look closely at the burning candles. No one had paid any attention to the modest containers that had been substituted for Hamo’s gift, and just as well, in the circumstances, that Cadfael’s workshop was very little visited, or these little clay pots might have been recognised as coming from there. He moulded and baked them himself as he wanted them. He had no intention of condoning theft, but neither did he relish the idea of any creature, however sinful, falling into Hamo FitzHamon’s mercies.

Something long and fine, a thread of silver-gold, was caught and coiled in the wax at the base of one candle. Carefully he detached candle from holder, and unlaced from it a long, pale hair; to make sure of retaining it, he broke off the imprisoning disc of wax with it, and then hoisted and turned the candle to see if anything else was to be found under it. One tiny oval dot showed; with a fingernail he extracted a single seed of lavender. Left in the dish from beforetime? He thought not. The stacked pots were all empty. No, this had been brought here in the fold of a sleeve, most probably, and shaken out while the candle was being transferred.

The lady had plunged both hands with pleasure into the sack of lavender, and moved freely about his workshop investigating everything. It would have been easy to take two of these dishes unseen, and wrap them in a fold of her cloak. Even more plausible, she might have delegated the task to young Madoc, when they crept away from their assignation. Supposing, say, they had reached the desperate point of planning flight together, and needed funds to set them on their way to some safe refuge... yes, there were possibilities. In the meantime, the grain of lavender had given Cadfael another idea. And there was, of course, that long, fine hair, pale as flax, but brighter. The boy was fair. But so fair?

He went out through the frozen garden to his herbarium, shut himself securely into his workshop, and opened the sack of lavender, plunging both arms to the elbow and groping through the chill, smooth sweetness that parted and slid like grain. They were there, well down, his fingers traced the shape first of one, then a second. He sat down to consider what must be done.

Finding the lost valuables did not identify the thief. He could produce and restore them at once, but FitzHamon would certainly pursue the hunt vindictively until he found the culprit; and Cadfael had seen enough of him to know that it might cost life and all before this complainant was satisfied. He needed to know more before he would hand over any man to be done to death. Better not leave the things here, however. He doubted if they would ransack his hut, but they might. He rolled the candlesticks in a piece of sacking, and thrust them into the centre of the pleached hedge where it was thickest. The meagre, frozen snow had dropped with the brief sun. His arm went in to the shoulder, and when he withdrew it, the twigs sprang back and covered all, holding the package securely. Whoever had first hidden it would surely come by night to reclaim it, and show a human face at last.

It was well that he had moved it, for the searchers, driven by an increasingly angry Hamo, reached his hut before Vespers, examined everything within it, while he stood by to prevent actual damage to his medicines, and went away satisfied that what they were seeking was not there. They had not, in fact, been very thorough about the sack of lavender, the candlesticks might well have escaped notice even if he had left them there. It did not occur to anyone to tear the hedges apart, luckily. When they were gone, to probe all the fodder and grain in the barns, Cadfael restored the silver to its original place. Let the bait lie safe in the trap until the quarry came to claim it, as he surely would, once relieved of the fear that the hunters might find it first.

Cadfael kept watch that night. He had no difficulty in absenting himself from the dortoir, once everyone was in bed and asleep. His cell was by the night stairs, and the prior slept at the far end of the long room, and slept deeply. And bitter though the night air was, the sheltered hut was barely colder than his cell, and he kept blankets there for swathing some of his jars and bottles against frost. He took his little box with tinder and flint, and hid himself in the corner behind the door. It might be a wasted vigil; the thief, having survived one day, might think it politic to venture yet another before removing his spoils.

But it was not wasted. He reckoned it might be as late as ten o’clock when he heard a light hand at the door. Two hours before the bell would sound for Matins, almost two hours since the household had retired. Even the guest-hall should be silent and asleep by now; the hour was carefully chosen. Cadfael held his breath, and waited. The door swung open, a shadow stole past him, light steps felt their way unerringly to where the sack of lavender was propped against the wall. Equally silently Cadfael swung the door to again, and set his back against it. Only then did he strike a spark, and hold the blown flame to the wick of his little lamp.

She did not start or cry out, or try to rush past him and escape into the night. The attempt would not have succeeded, and she had had long practice in enduring what could not be cured. She stood facing him as the small flame steadied and burned taller, her face shadowed by the hood of her cloak, the candlesticks clasped possessively to her breast.

“Elfgiva!” said Brother Cadfael gently. And then: “Are you here for yourself, or for your mistress?” But he thought he knew the answer already. That frivolous young wife would never really leave her rich husband and easy life, however tedious and unpleasant Hamo’s attentions might be, to risk everything with her penniless villein lover. She would only keep him to enjoy in secret whenever she felt it safe. Even when the old man died she would submit to marriage at an overlord’s will to another equally distasteful. She was not the stuff of which heroines and adventurers are made. This was another kind of woman.

Cadfael went close, and lifted a hand gently to put back the hood from her head. She was tall, a hand’s-breadth taller than he, and erect as one of the lilies she clasped. The net that had covered her hair was drawn off with the hood, and a great flood of silver-gold streamed about her in the dim light, framing the pale face and startling blue eyes. Norse hair! The Danes had left their seed as far south as Cheshire, and planted this tall flower among them. She was no longer plain, tired and resigned. In this dim but loving light she shone in austere beauty. Just so must Brother Jordan’s veiled eyes have seen her.

“Now I see!” said Cadfael. “You came into the Lady Chapel, and shone upon our half-blind brother’s darkness as you shine here. You are the visitation that brought him awe and bliss, and enjoined silence upon him for three days.”

The voice he had scarcely heard speak a word until then, a voice level, low and beautiful, said: “I made no claim to be what I am not. It was he who mistook me. I did not refuse the gift.”

“I understand. You had not thought to find anyone there, he took you by surprise as you took him. He took you for Our Lady herself, disposing as she saw fit of what had been given her. And you made him promise you three days’ grace.” The lady had plunged her hands into the sack, yes, but Elfgiva had carried the pillow, and a grain or two had filtered through the muslin to betray her.

“Yes,” she said, watching him with unwavering blue eyes.

“So in the end you had nothing against him making known how the candlesticks were stolen.” It was not an accusation, he was pursuing his way to understanding.

But at once she said clearly: “I did not steal them. I took them. I will restore them — to their owner.”

“Then you don’t claim they are yours?”

“No,” she said, “they are not mine. But neither are they FitzHamon’s.”

“Do you tell me,” said Cadfael mildly, “that there has been no theft at all?”

“Oh, yes,” said Elfgiva, and her pallor burned into a fierce brightness, and her voice vibrated like a harp-string. “Yes, there has been a theft, and a vile, cruel theft, too, but not here, not now. The theft was a year ago, when FitzHamon received these candlesticks from Alard who made them, his villein, like me. Do you know what the promised price was for these? Manumission for Alard, and marriage with me, what we had begged of him three years and more. Even in villeinage we would have married and been thankful. But he promised freedom! Free man makes free wife, and I was promised, too. But when he got the fine works he wanted, then he refused the promised price. He laughed! I saw, I heard him! He kicked Alard away from him like a dog. So what was his due, and denied him, Alard took. He ran! On St. Stephen’s Day he ran!”

“And left you behind?” said Cadfael gently.

“What chance had he to take me? Or even to bid me farewell? He was thrust out to manual labour on FitzHamon’s other manor. When his chance came, he took it and fled. I was not sad! I rejoiced! Whether I live or die, whether he remembers or forgets me, he is free. No, but in two days more he will be free. For a year and a day he will have been working for his living in his own craft, in a charter borough, and after that he cannot be haled back into servitude, even if they find him.”

“I do not think,” said Brother Cadfael, “that he will have forgotten you! Now I see why our brother may speak after three days. It will be too late then to try to reclaim a runaway serf. And you hold that these exquisite things you are cradling belong by right to Alard who made them?”

“Surely,” she said, “seeing he never was paid for them, they are still his.”

“And you are setting out tonight to take them to him. Yes! As I heard it, they had some cause to pursue him towards London... indeed, into London, though they never found him. Have you had better word of him? From him?”

The pale face smiled. “Neither he nor I can read or write. And whom should he trust to carry word until his time is complete, and he is free? No, never any word.”

“But Shrewsbury is also a charter borough, where the unfree may work their way to freedom in a year and a day. And sensible boroughs encourage the coming of good craftsmen, and will go far to hide and protect them. I know! So you think he may be here. And the trail towards London a false trail. True, why should he run so far, when there’s help so near? But, daughter, what if you do not find him in Shrewsbury?”

“Then I will look for him elsewhere until I do. I can live as a runaway, too, I have skills, I can make my own way until I do get word of him. Shrewsbury can as well make room for a good seamstress as for a man’s gifts, and someone in the silversmith’s craft will know where to find a brother so talented as Alard. I shall find him!”

“And when you do? Oh, child, have you looked beyond that?”

“To the very end,” said Elfgiva firmly. “If I find him and he no longer wants me, no longer thinks of me, if he is married and has put me out of his mind, then I will deliver him these things that belong to him, to do with as he pleases, and go my own way and make my own life as best I may without him. And wish well to him as long as I live.”

Oh, no, small fear, she would not be easily forgotten, not in a year, not in many years. “And if he is utterly glad of you, and loves you still?”

“Then,” she said, gravely smiling, “if he is of the same mind as I, I have made a vow to Our Lady, who lent me her semblance in the old man’s eyes, that we will sell these candlesticks where they may fetch their proper price, and that price shall be delivered to your almoner to feed the hungry. And that will be our gift, Alard’s and mine, though no one will ever know it.”

“Our Lady will know it,” said Cadfael, “and so shall I. Now, how were you planning to get out of this enclave and into Shrewsbury? Both our gates and the town gates are closed until morning.”

She lifted eloquent shoulders. “The parish doors are not barred. And even if I leave tracks, will it matter, provided I find a safe hiding-place inside the town?”

“And wait in the cold of the night? You would freeze before morning. No, let me think. We can do better for you than that.”

Her lips shaped: “We?” in silence, wondering, but quick to understand. She did not question his decisions, as he had not questioned hers. He thought he would long remember the slow, deepening smile, the glow of warmth mantling her cheeks. “You believe me!” she said.

“Every word! Here, give me the candlesticks, let me wrap them, and do you put up your hair again in net and hood. We’ve had no fresh snow since morning, the path to the parish door is well trodden, no one will know your tracks among the many. And, girl, when you come to the town end of the bridge there’s a little house off to the left, under the wall, close to the town gate. Knock there and ask for shelter over the night till the gates open, and say that Brother Cadfael sent you. They know me, I doctored their son when he was sick. They’ll give you a warm corner and a place to lie, for kindness’ sake, and ask no questions, and answer none from others, either. And likely they’ll know where to find the silversmiths of the town, to set you on your way.”

She bound up her pale, bright hair and covered her head, wrapping the cloak about her, and was again the maidservant in homespun. She obeyed without question his every word, moved silently at his back round the great court by way of the shadows, halting when he halted, and so he brought her to the church, and let her out by the parish door into the public street, still a good hour before Matins. At the last moment she said, close at his shoulder within the half-open door. “I shall be grateful always. Some day I shall send you word.”

“No need for words,” said Brother Cadfael, “if you send me the sign I shall be waiting for. Go now, quickly, there’s not a soul stirring.”

She was gone, lightly and silently, flitting past the abbey gatehouse like a tall shadow, towards the bridge and the town. Cadfael closed the door softly, and went back up the night stairs to the dortoir, too late to sleep, but in good time to rise at the sound of the bell, and return in procession to celebrate Matins.

There was, of course, the resultant uproar to face next morning, and he could not afford to avoid it, there was too much at stake. Lady FitzHamon naturally expected her maid to be in attendance as soon as she opened her eyes, and raised a petulant outcry when there was no submissive shadow waiting to dress her and do her hair. Calling failed to summon and search to find Elfgiva, but it was an hour or more before it dawned on the lady that she had lost her accomplished maid for good. Furiously she made her own toilet, unassisted, and raged out to complain to her husband, who had risen before her, and was waiting for her to accompany him to Mass. At her angry declaration that Elfgiva was nowhere to be found, and must have run away during the night, he first scoffed, for why should a sane girl take herself off into a killing frost when she had warmth and shelter and enough to eat where she was? Then he made the inevitable connection, and let out a roar of rage.

“Gone, is she? And my candlesticks gone with her, I dare swear! So it was she! The foul little thief! But I’ll have her yet, I’ll drag her back, she shall not live to enjoy her ill-gotten gains...”

It seemed likely that the lady would heartily endorse all this; her mouth was already open to echo him when Brother Cadfael, brushing her sleeve close as the agitated brothers ringed the pair, contrived to shake a few grains of lavender on to her wrist. Her mouth closed abruptly. She gazed at the tiny things for the briefest instant before she shook them off, she flashed an even briefer glance at Brother Cadfael, caught his eye, and heard in a rapid whisper: “Madam, softly! — proof of the maid’s innocence is also proof of the mistress’s.”

She was by no means a stupid woman. A second quick glance confirmed what she had already grasped, that there was one man here who had a weapon to hold over her at least as deadly as any she could use against Elfgiva. She was also a woman of decision, and wasted no time in bitterness once her course was chosen. The tone in which she addressed her lord was almost as sharp as that in which she had complained of Elfgiva’s desertion.

“She your thief, indeed! That’s folly, as you should very well know. The girl is an ungrateful fool to leave me, but a thief she never has been, and certainly is not this time. She can’t possibly have taken the candlesticks, you know well enough when they vanished, and you know I was not well that night, and went early to bed. She was with me until long after Brother Prior discovered the theft. I asked her to stay with me until you came to bed. As you never did!” she ended tartly. “You may remember!”

Hamo probably remembered very little of that night; certainly he was in no position to gainsay what his wife so roundly declared. He took out a little of his ill-temper on her, but she was not so much in awe of him that she dared not reply in kind. Of course she was certain of what she said! She had not drunk herself stupid at the lord abbot’s table, she had been nursing a bad head of another kind, and even with Brother Cadfael’s remedies she had not slept until after midnight, and Elfgiva had then been still beside her. Let him hunt a runaway maidservant, by all means, the thankless hussy, but never call her a thief, for she was none.

Hunt her he did, though with less energy now it seemed clear he would not recapture his property with her. He sent his grooms and half the lay servants off in both directions to enquire if anyone had seen a solitary girl in a hurry; they were kept at it all day, but they returned empty-handed.

The party from Lidyate, less one member, left for home next day. Lady FitzHamon rode demurely behind young Madoc, her cheek against his broad shoulders; she even gave Brother Cadfael the flicker of a conspiratorial smile as the cavalcade rode out of the gates, and detached one arm from round Madoc’s waist to wave as they reached the roadway. So Hamo was not present to hear when Brother Jordan, at last released from his vow, told how Our Lady had appeared to him in a vision of light, fair as an angel, and taken away with her the candlesticks that were hers to take and do with as she would, and how she had spoken to him, and enjoined on him his three days of silence. And if there were some among the listeners who wondered whether the fair woman had not been a more corporeal being, no one had the heart to say so to Jordan, whose vision was comfort and consolation for the fading of the light.

That was at Matins, at midnight of the day of St. Stephen’s. Among the scattering of alms handed in at the gatehouse next morning for the beggars, there was a little basket that weighed surprisingly heavily. The porter could not remember who had brought it, taking it to be some offerings of food or old clothing, like all the rest; but when it was opened it sent Brother Oswald, almost incoherent with joy and wonder, running to Abbot Heribert to report what seemed to be a miracle. For the basket was full of gold coin, to the value of more than a hundred marks. Well used, it would ease all the worst needs of his poorest petitioners, until the weather relented.

“Surely,” said Brother Oswald devoutly, “Our Lady has made her own will known. Is not this the sign we have hoped for?”

Certainly it was for Cadfael, and earlier than he had dared to hope for it. He had the message that needed no words. She had found him, and been welcomed with joy. Since midnight Alard the silversmith had been a free man, and free man makes free wife. Presented with such a woman as Elfgiva, he could give as gladly as she, for what was gold, what was silver, by comparison?

A Present for Santa Sahib H. R. F. Keating

The most popular character created by H. R. F. Keating was Inspector Ganesh Ghote of the Bombay Criminal Investigation Division, a protagonist he invented in an effort to find an American publisher. It is the same type of convoluted notion that Keating brought to his humorous novels, in which strange events befall odd people in peculiar situations. In addition to winning numerous awards for mystery fiction, Keating was also acknowledged as a great scholar of crime fiction, being the reviewer for The Times (London) for fifteen years and the author of books about Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, and many others. “A Present for Santa Sahib” was first collected in Inspector Ghote, His Life and Crimes (London, Hutchinson, 1989).

Inspector Ghote put a hand to his hip pocket and made sure it was firmly buttoned up. Ahead of him, where he stood in the entrance doorway to one of Bombay’s biggest department stores, the crowds were dense just two days before the festival of Christmas. It was not only the Christians who celebrated the day by buying presents and good things to eat in the huge cosmopolitan city. People of every religion were always happy to share in the high days and holidays in each other’s calendars. When Hindus honoured Bombay’s favourite god, elephant-headed Ganesh, by taking huge statues of him to be immersed in the sea, Moslems, Parsis, and Christians delighted to join the enormous throngs watching them go by. Everyone had a day off too, and enjoyed it to the full for the Moslem Idd holiday.

But the crowds that gathered in the days before any such celebration brought always trouble as well as joy, Ghote thought to himself with a sigh. When people came in their thousands to buy sweets and fireworks for Diwali or to acquire stocks of coloured powders to throw and squirt in the springtime excitement of Holi, they made a very nice golden opportunity for the pickpockets.

He had, in fact, caught a glimpse just as he had entered the shop of a certain Ram Prasad, a well-known jackal stalking easy prey if ever there was. It equally had been the sight of the fellow, spotting him himself and turning rapidly back, that had made him check that his wallet was secure. It would look altogether bad if an Inspector of Crime Branch had to go back minus one wallet and empty-handed to the wife who had as usual commissioned him to buy a present for her Christian friend, Mrs. D’Cruz, in return for the one they had received at Diwali.

And he had another little obligation, too, on this trip to the store. Not only was there a gift to get for Mrs. D’Cruz but there was a visit to pay to Santa Claus as he sat — voluminously wrapped in shiny red coat, a silky red cap trimmed in fluffy white on his head, puffy cottonwool beard descending from his chin, sack of presents tucked away beside him — in his special place in the store.

Ghote was not actually going to line up with the children waiting to be given, in exchange for a rupee surreptitiously handed over by a hovering mother, a bar of chocolate or a packet of sweets from the big sack. Santa was an old friend who merited a word or two of greeting. Or, if not exactly a friend, he was at least someone known for a good long time.

In fact Santa — his actual name was Moti Popatkar — was a small-fry con-man. There was no getting past that. For all save the ten days each year leading up to Christmas, he made a dubious living from a variety of minor anti-social activities. There was the fine story he had for any British holidaymaker he happened upon — his English was unusually good, fruit of a mission school education long ago — about how he had been batman to an Army officer still living in retirement in India and how he needed just the rail fare to go back and look after Colonel Sahib again. Or he would offer himself as a guide to any lone European tourist he could spot, and sooner or later cajole them into buying him potent country liquor at some illicit drinking den.

It was at one such that Ghote had first met him. A visiting German businessman had complained to the police that, on top of being persuaded into handing over to his guide a much bigger tip than he had meant to give, he had also been induced to fork out some fifty rupees for drinks at a place tucked away inside a rabbit-warren building in Nagandas Master Road called the Beauty Bar.

There was not much that could be done about the complaint, but since the businessman had had a letter of introduction to a junior Minister in the State Government, Ghote had been detailed to investigate. He had dutifully gone along to the Beauty Bar, which proved to be very much as he had expected, a single room with a shabby counter in one corner, its walls painted blue and peeling, half a dozen plastic-topped tables set about. Where sat a handful of men, white-capped office messengers, a khaki-uniformed postman delaying on his round, a red-turbaned ear-cleaner with his little aluminium case beside him, an itinerant coldwaterman who had left his barrel pushcart outside. All hunched over smeary glasses of clear fluid.

But one of the drinkers seemed to answer to the description the German businessman had given of his guide. And, at the first sharp question, the fellow had cheerfully admitted that he was Moti Popatkar and that, yes, he had brought a German visitor to the place the day before.

“Exciting for him, no?” he had said. “Seeing one damn fine Indian den of vice?”

Ghote had looked at the peeling walls, at a boy lackadaisically swiping at one of the table tops with a sodden heap of darkly grey cloth, at the two pictures hanging askew opposite him, one of an English maiden from some time in the past showing most of her breasts, the other of the late Mrs. Gandhi looking severe.

“Well, do not let me be catching you bringing any visitor from foreign to such a fourth class place again,” he said.

“Oh, Inspectorji, I would not. In nine — ten days only I would be Santa Claus.”

So then it had come out what job Moti Popatkar had every year in the run-up to Christmas.

“And I am keeping same,” he had ended up. “When I was first beginning, too many years past, the son of Owner, who is himself Ownerji now, was very much liking me when his mother was bringing him to tell his wishings to old Santa. So now Manager Sahib cannot be giving me one boot, however much he is wanting.”

There had been then something in Moti Popatkar’s cheerful disregard of the proper respect due to a police inspector, even of the cringing most of his like would have adopted before any policewalla, that had appealed to a side of Ghote which he generally felt he ought to keep well hidden. He felt a trickle of liking for this fellow, however much he knew he should disapprove of anyone who led visitors to India into such disgraceful places, and however wrong it seemed that such a good-for-nothing should wear the robe, even for a short period, of a figure who was after all a Christian saint, to be revered equally with Hindu holy man or Muslim pir.

So, visiting Santa’s store a few days later to get Mrs. D’Cruz her present, he had gone out of his way to have a look at Moti Popatkar, happy-go-lucky specimen of Bombay’s riff-raffs, impersonating Santa Claus, Christian holy man of bygone days.

There had been a lull in the stream of children coming to collect chocolate bars and breathily whisper wishes into Santa’s spreading cottonwool beard at the time, so he had stayed to chat with the red-robed fellow for a few minutes. And every successive year since he had found himself doing the same thing, for all that he still felt he ought to disapprove of the man behind the soft white whiskers. The truth was he somehow liked his irresponsible impudent approach to life and to his present task in particular.

Only last year Father Christmas had had a particularly comical tale to tell.

“Oh, Inspectorji, you have nearly seen me in much, much trouble.”

“How is that, you Number One scallywag?”

Moti Popatkar grinned through his big white beard, already looking slightly grimy.

“Well, you know, Inspector, I am half the time making the baba log believe they will be getting what for they are wishing, and half the time also I am taking one damn fine good look at the mothers, if they are being in any way pretty. Well, just only ten minutes past, a real beauty was coming, Anglo-Indian, short skirt an’ all. Jolly spicy. And — oh, forgive, forgive God above — I was so much distracted I was giving her little girl not just only one bar of chocolate but a half-kilo cake of same. And then — then who should come jumping out from behind but Manager Sahib himself? What for are you giving away so much of Store property, he is demanding and denouncing. Then — oh, Inspector, I am a wicked, wicked fellow. You know what I am saying?”

“No?”

“I am saying, quick only as one flash of lightning, ‘But, Manager sahib, that little girl has come with her governess. She is grand-daughter of multi-millionaire Tata, you are knowing.’ ”

Ghote had laughed aloud. He could not help himself. Besides, the Manager, whom he had once had dealings with, was a very self-satisfied individual.

“But then, Inspectorji, what is Manager sahib saying to me?”

“Well, tell.”

“He is saying, ‘Damn fool, you should have given whole kilo cake.’ ”

And Ghote had felt then his Christmas was all the merrier. Mrs. D’Cruz had got a better present than usual, too.

So now he decided to pay his visit to Santa Claus before he went present-buying. But when he came to the raised platform on which Father Christmas was installed, his fat sack of little gifts on the floor beside him, he found the scene was by no means one of goodwill to all men.

Moti Popatkar was sitting in state as usual on his throne-like chair, his bright red shiny robe as ever gathered round him, his floppy red hat with the white trimming on his head. But he was not bending forward to catch the spit-laden whisperings of the children. Nor was he rocking back and issuing some Ho, ho, hos. Instead he was looking decidedly shifty under his cottonwool beard, and in front of him there was standing the Store Manager, both enraged and triumphant.

A lady dressed in a silk sari that must have cost several thousand rupees was standing just behind the Manager holding the hand of a little girl, evidently her daughter, plainly bewildered and on the verge of tears.

“You are hearing what this lady is stating,” the Manager was shouting as Ghote came up. “When she was bringing this sweet little girl to visit Santa Claus there was in her handbag one note-case containing many, many hundred-rupee notes. But, just after leaving you, she was noticing the handbag itself was wide open and she was shutting same — click — and then when she was wanting to pay for purchase made at Knick-knacks and Assorted counter, what was she finding? That note-case had gone.”

Instinctively, Ghote felt at his hip again. But thik hai, no pocket-maar had been light-fingered with his wallet.

“But, no, Manager sahib. No, no. I was not taking any note-case. Honest to God, no.”

Yet Moti Popatkar’s protestations had about them — there could be no doubting it — a ring of desperation.

“I am going to search you, here and now only,” the Manager stormed.

“No!”

“Yes, I am saying.”

And the Manager darted a hand into each of the big, sagging pockets of the shiny red robe one after the other. Only to withdraw from the second holding nothing more incriminating than a fluff-covered paan which Santa Claus had had no opportunity to pop into his mouth and chew.

“Open up robe,” the Manager demanded.

Ghote stood watching, a feeling of grey sadness creeping over him, as Moti Popatkar, now dulled into apathy, allowed Santa’s robe to be tugged open and eager fingers to dip into shirt pocket and trouser pockets beneath.

But they found nothing more in the way of evidence than the fluff-fuzzed paan already brought to light.

The Manager, furiously baffled, took a step back. Moti Popatkar behind his spreading white beard — distinctly pulled apart during the search — had still not regained anything of his customary good spirits.

The Manager turned to offer explanations to the complaining customer.

Ghote gave a deep sigh.

“Look into Santa’s sack, Manager sahib,” he said.

“Ah! Yes. Yes, yes.”

The big sack was jerked wide. The Manager plunged to his knees.

“Wait,” Ghote shouted suddenly.

The Manager turned and looked up.

“You should let a police officer handle this,” Ghote said.

He stepped up on to the platform and knelt in his turn beside the gaping sack. Then, very carefully, he felt about inside it, easing his fingers past bars of chocolate, little bags of sweets.

At last he rose to his feet.

Between the tip of the forefinger of his right hand and its thumb he was holding a crocodile-skin note-case frothed at the rim with big blue one-hundred rupee notes.

“Mine,” exclaimed the watching lady customer.

Beside her, her daughter burst into tears.

“Inspector,” the Manager said, “kindly charge-sheet this fellow.”

“Well, Manager sahib,” Ghote replied, “I am thinking I should not do that until I have evidences. Fingerprint evidences.”

“But... but we have caught him red-handed only.”

“Are you sure, Manager sahib? Were you actually observing this Santa placing the note-case inside his sack? And, more, did you not observe his manner when you were accusing? He was not at all his usual chirpy self. Now, if he was thinking that by hiding himself this note-case in his sack he would altogether trick you because you would not look there, I am believing he would have found something cheeky to be saying. It was because he was not that I was suddenly realising what must have happened.”

“And what was that, Inspector?” the rich customer demanded.

“Oh, madam, you could not be knowing, but just only as I was entering this store I was catching sight of one Ram Prasad, notorious pickpocket. And he also was catching sight of myself, and ek dum he was turning round and making his way more into the store. It was soon after, I am thinking, that he was dropping the note-case he had already lifted from your open handbag into this sack. This Santa must have spotted him doing that, but been unable to prevent, and Ram Prasad will have had the intention of removing his loot when he had seen that I myself had left the store. I do not have much of doubt that it will be his fingerprints, which we have had ten — twelve years upon the file, that will be found on his very nice shiny crocodile-skin surface.”

And it was then that, behind the bedraggled cottonwool of his beard, Santa sahib gave a wide, wide smile.

“Ho, ho, ho,” he chuckled.

The Christmas Train Will Scott

Largely forgotten today, Will Scott wrote more than two thousand stories in his career, beginning with short humorous tales for various British periodicals before turning to crime. Among his most interesting characters are the oddly named Giglamps, a combination hobo, detective, and rogue; Disher, an egregiously fat and pompous detective who once (and maybe more than once!) said, “It is the most boring thing in all the world, of course, but I am always right”; and Jeremiah Jones, also known as the Laughing Crook, who, in a long series of stories, consistently gets the better of Scotland Yard Inspector Beecham. “The Christmas Train” was first published in the December 23, 1933, issue of Passing Show.

“You’re sure of your facts, Maxwell?” Mr. Jeremiah Jones inquired.

“Positive, sir,” replied the sober Maxwell. “Mr. Hadlow Cribb landed this morning at Southampton. He has the jewels with him. Forty thousand pounds’ worth. The trouble is, you can’t get that lot through the Customs without somebody getting to know. And I got to know. It cost a bit!”

“Luxuries,” reflected Mr. Jones, with a grin, “are always expensive. But go on.”

“Mr. Hadlow Cribb leaves Liverpool Street tonight for his country home at Friars Topliss where he intends to spend Christmas,” Maxwell proceeded. “The jewels, of course, go with him. The train is due out at fourteen minutes past six.”

“Four hours,” murmured Mr. Jones, with a glance at his watch. “Busy train. It won’t be too easy. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I wish I’d had a little experience of this kind of work.”

“I ought to add,” Maxwell resumed, “that Mr. Hadlow Cribb was accompanied up from Southampton by Marks.”

“Marks?” Mr. Jeremiah Jones’s eyebrows lifted quickly. “The new fellow in Beecham’s office?”

“Exactly,” said Maxwell with a sigh.

“Scotland Yard protection! No, it isn’t going to be too easy,” Mr. Jones repeated. “Can you get word to Dawlish?” he added as he reached for the telephone.

“Dawlish?”

Mr. Jones nodded.

“You mean — as it were — put him wise?”

“Very wise, in a tactful way.”

“I might,” said Maxwell doubtfully.

“Aren’t you sure?”

“I’m positive,” said Maxwell.

“Right. Then go and do it. Meet me here at five-thirty. Have everything ready — most important — mind you’ve got a bag that’s as near as blow it to the one Mr. Hadlow Cribb will carry his jewels in.”

“It shall be done,” Maxwell promised. And away he went.

Mr. Jones unhooked the receiver.

“That Scotland Yard?” he was saying presently. “Inspector Beecham? Say Mr. Jones — an old friend!”

A minute passed and then a sly smile spread across Mr. Jones’s cheerful face.

“That you, Beecham? How are you? Merry Christmas! Well, why not? Peace on earth, goodwill to all men, and that kind of thing.

“Listen, Beecham, my own — I’ve a Christmas box for you. You remember I promised you, if I could get it, the — er — inside dope, as it’s called — crude expression, I know, but it is called that, isn’t it? I thought you’d know... My dear fellow, I am getting on with it; do let me finish...

“About that hold-up at Clapham the other week, when the girl was knocked out. You know how I hate brutality. I mean, he could have drugged her quite as easily, couldn’t he?... But I’m telling you! I’ve got your man, address and everything.

“Listen, I shall be in the Baltic at four... No, no, Beecham, dear, I’d much rather see you personally... It’s your face. It brightens my day. Baltic at four. Better write it down. You’re so forgetful!”

After which Mr. Jones, with a happy chuckle, hooked the receiver, went to Liverpool Street, bought a couple of first-class train tickets, and proceeded to his accustomed corner in the dim saloon of the Baltic Hotel, off Piccadilly.

Promptly at four o’clock the stolid face of Detective-Inspector Beecham of Scotland Yard appeared in sight, and the Scotland Yard man took a seat beside Mr. Jones without a word.

“Compliments of the season!” said the latter brightly.

Beecham grunted.

“Cheer up!” Mr. Jones beamed.

“You owe me some information,” Beecham reminded him.

“I have it here,” said Mr. Jones, producing a pocket-book, which he placed on the table.

“When I say owe I mean owe,” Beecham added. “Don’t imagine you’re paying off a debt. You’re merely paying off arrears. You’ve slipped through my fingers so often that I take this without hesitation. I’ve a right to it. But it wipes nothing off. If I can get you tomorrow, I’ll get you!”

“Why not tonight?” Mr. Jones smiled.

“The first chance I get,” Beecham growled.

Mr. Jones pulled a slip of paper from his pocket-book and began to unfold it. If he heard the suppressed gasp at his side he took no notice of it. He proceeded to unfold the little slip. But it wasn’t the slip that had caused the Scotland Yard man to gasp. It was the sight of the two railway tickets. First class. To Friars Topliss.

“Here’s the address,” said Mr. Jones, passing the slip to the detective. You’ll find your man there. You’ll find the evidence too. And he richly deserves what’s coming to him. You can tell him I said so, if you like, when you explain I obtained the information against him and so did your job for you.”

“Anything else?” asked Beecham.

“Nothing,” said Mr. Jones, “unless you’ll let me call the waiter again, so that we can toast each other in the true festive—”

“I’ll be going,” said Beecham curtly as he rose.

“You have a heart of stone, dear Beecham,” sighed Mr. Jones. “And yet, on Christmas Eve, when you see your stocking and the chimney shaft — who knows?”

But Detective-Inspector Beecham was already on his way to the door — and Scotland Yard.

Back in his office the big man rang a bell and summoned his new assistant Marks to his side.

“Ah, Marks,” he said crisply. “About Mr. Hadlow Cribb. He’s being accompanied tonight on the train?”

“I’m going myself, sir,” said Marks.

“You needn’t trouble,” Beecham grunted.

“Not trouble, sir?”

“I’m going, myself!”

And as Beecham pecked the end off a big cigar he almost smiled his self-satisfaction.

The six-fourteen out of Liverpool Street faced the snow before it started. The snow blew in through the open end of the great building, covering the front of the engine and the sides of the passengers and the friends who were seeing them off. It was agreed by the majority that the weather was seasonable, but the vote was unanimous that the journey was certain to be long and uncomfortable.

In the laughing, grumbling, cheerful, and anxious holiday crowds a small greyish man passed unnoticed. The cheerful ones were too cheerful to take the slightest interest in a figure so small and grey; the anxious ones too anxious. He passed through to the train as though he and the inconspicuous black bag he carried did not in fact exist, and when he sank wheezily into the corner of a first-class compartment that compartment still seemed empty.

Whereas everybody, cheerful or anxious, had at least one glance to spare for the tall and handsome Mr. Jeremiah Jones, who, with the grave and dignified Maxwell at his heels, strode along the platform with an assurance which implied that if he had not bought the station at least he had a ten-day option upon it.

But since nobody had noticed the first greyish man, nobody noticed now that the inconspicuous black bag which Maxwell carried in the wake of Mr. Jones was the very twin brother of the inconspicuous black bag which the greyish man had carried a few moments before.

Except, that is, just one eager watcher with a black half-moon moustache, who now moved out of the obscurity of a dark corner and passed through the barrier not twenty feet behind Mr. Jones and Maxwell.

Mr. Jones and Maxwell passed the first-class compartment in which the greyish Mr. Hadlow Cribb sat with his forty thousand pounds’ worth of jewels, walked on until they were beyond the dining car and then selected a first-class compartment of their own.

But the eagerly watchful Detective-Inspector Beecham had a few quiet words with the guard at the other end of the train and sank back into obscurity once more, this time in the shadows of the guard’s van.

The train moved out of the station and Detective-Inspector Beecham moved out of the guard’s van together. The train moved out into the unfriendliness of the winter night, but Beecham moved out into the comparative cosiness of the corridor. This he traversed as far as the second coach where, having satisfied himself that Mr. Hadlow Cribb was still alone and his shabby case unmolested, he took up his stand round the angle of the passage at the end of the coach and watched.

Mile succeeded mile, minute succeeded minute. Detective-Inspector Beecham began to grow restless. The corridor windows were coated with snow. There was nothing to see and as little to do. Cheerful Christmasy shouts reached his ears from the ends of the train. He began to feel out of it. He began to feel bored. He shook himself and set out to walk the length of the train.

He passed through the dining car. He passed through two coaches beyond the dining car — satisfied that neither Mr. Jones nor Maxwell had seen him do so — before he pulled up, again round the angle of a passage at the end of a coach.

Again he had perforce to play a waiting game. Again he began to feel out of it and bored. But at last, about an hour out of Liverpool Street he was pleased to hear a door slide down the corridor and thrilled to see that the two men who came out of the first-class compartment and made off in the direction of the rear of the train were Mr. Jones and Maxwell. And Maxwell carried the second shabby little bag.

“Ah!” said Beecham softly to himself.

He let them get round the angle at the end of the coach; then he followed. He followed them through the next coach. He gave them three-quarters of a minute, then he plunged into the dining car prepared for the interesting bit in the rear section of the train.

But there he stopped.

And there Mr. Jones stopped, too. Stopped ordering turkey and Christmas pudding to stare up at Detective-Inspector Beecham and exclaim:

“Why, look who’s here! Who could have thought it? Maxwell — wish the gentleman a Merry Christmas!”

“A Merry Christmas to you, sir,” said Maxwell, with a respectful dip of the head to the detective.

“Sit down and join us,” Mr. Jones invited. “After all, it only comes once a year and you can mutter ‘Without prejudice’ under your breath as you drink my beer. Or shall it be port?”

Beecham sank wearily into the comfortable chair opposite the pair of them.

“I—” He stopped.

“Yes, dear fellow?” Mr. Jones prompted.

“Nothing,” the detective mumbled.

“Don’t tell me you’re going away for Christmas,” said Mr. Jones. “I understand you don’t believe in such tosh. Or am I wrong? Does that hard face of yours hide a heart that weeps after three glasses of rum punch and the sight of a holly berry?”

“The point is where are you going?” Beecham demanded.

“I don’t see that’s the point at all,” Mr. Jones smiled. “Waiter — or should it be steward? I travel so little — bring my friend Detective-Inspector Beecham, of Scotland Yard, turkey and plum pudding and all things seasonable to eat and drink. Beecham, I don’t think you know the steward, do you? The steward — Detective-Inspector Beecham. Of Scotland Yard, you know. My very good friend.”

The attendant departed smiling, while the detective, with a neck going steadily pinker, attempted the futility of looking out of the window.

“When I want to advertise...” he said fiercely.

“You never will,” Mr. Jones assured him. “Too well known to need it. Too deeply established in the affections of the multitude to require such a cheap device. Advertise? You? When you have to civilization will have perished. What about the skating prospects for the holidays? I’d like your opinion.”

“What I’m never sure about,” said Beecham, turning a fierce glare on Mr. Jones, “is whether you’re a crafty fool or just a fool.”

“Shall we say a lucky fool?” suggested Mr. Jones.

“Luck, yes!” snapped Beecham.

“That shows,” said Mr. Jones, “how little you know me. You must get to know me better. Call round some time. Second Thursdays, you know. Tea. And cakes.”

To give the grim old man of Scotland Yard his due he almost enjoyed the turkey and plum pudding and the port that followed.

Despite his company he would have enjoyed the unusual even entirely had it not been for the business which found him there. As it was he said little. Nor did he do more than listen occasionally to the ceaseless flow of light-hearted chatter which poured from the lips of Mr. Jones.

He gave himself up to a waiting game and tried to calculate the number of miles that had pounded themselves out under the wheels of the train.

Mr. Jones glanced at his watch.

“Eight o’clock? The snow’s keeping us back. We were due in at Friars Topliss at five minutes to, surely?”

Beecham looked up at the mention of Friars Topliss, but still he said nothing. Mr. Jones offered a cigar, which was refused, and then lit one himself.

Ten minutes later the train began to slow down.

“Now where are we?” said Mr. Jones.

All down the dining car there was much rubbing of steamed windows, which answered no questions. An attendant, laden with Christmas fare on a tray passed quickly.

“Tell me, steward, where are we?” Mr. Jones inquired.

“Running into Etching Vale, sir,” replied the attendant. “Friars Topliss in twenty-five minutes.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Jones, and turned to Maxwell.

“This is where we get off,” he said. “Got everything, Maxwell?”

“Everything, sir,” Maxwell answered. “Don’t forget the bag.”

Maxwell stopped and picked up the shabby bag.

“Here it is, sir.”

Mr. Jones rose. Maxwell rose too. Beecham stared, dissatisfied with he knew not what.

Maxwell helped Mr. Jones into his big overcoat, pulled on his own and waited. Mr. Jones pulled his hat down over his ears and turned up the collar of his coat.

The train stopped.

“Well, good-bye, Beecham, dear fellow,” Mr. Jones said breezily. “And, if I don’t see you before, a Happy New Year.”

And out to the snow-covered platform he went, with Maxwell and the shabby little bag after him.

Beecham blinked. That little bag... Was it possible? Even before Hadlow Cribb reached the train? Or, by some trick, while he, Beecham, had been waiting his chance in the guard’s van?

“Crafty, but I wonder if he’s really a fool?” he thought solemnly.

The driving wind covered Mr. Jones and the faithful Maxwell with snow in the twinkling of an eye. They dashed across the bleak platform of Etching Vale to the shelter of the station wall. And under this shelter they hurried to the barriers. Here Mr. Jones offered two tickets.

The collector peered at the tickets in the doubtful lamplight.

“Pardon, sir,” he said, “but this is Etching Vale.”

“Remarkable how you can tell, with all this snow on it,” remarked Mr. Jones.

“These tickets are for Friars Topliss, sir,” said the collector.

“I know,” said Mr. Jones, “but I’ve changed my mind. I thought I’d get off here. It sort of called to me.”

“Not allowed to break the journey, sir,” the collector reminded him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to pay again.”

Mr. Jones thrust a note into the collector’s hand.

“Take it out of that,” he said, “and buy your wife something for Christmas out of the balance.”

“No wife, sir,” the collector grinned.

“Soon will have,” Mr. Jones assured him, “with such charm as yours.”

He passed out into the snow-covered station square of Little Etching Vale, the soft footfalls of Maxwell on his left and, as he soon realized, other soft footfalls on his right. He turned and there once more was the stolid figure of Detective-Inspector Beecham.

“Not again!” he exclaimed. “But, my dear Beecham, I thought you were going on?”

“I thought you might be, too,” said Beecham.

“I changed my mind,” Mr. Jones informed him.

“I changed my mind,” retorted Beecham. “A costly process, I found it,” said Mr. Jones.

“I didn’t!” said Beecham.

“Oh, well, of course, you’re known to the police,” said Mr. Jones, “which makes a difference!”

He smiled and waited, but Beecham waited too.

“Where now?” he asked.

“Where would you like to go?” said Beecham.

“You don’t mean, do you, that the drinks are now on you?” said Mr. Jones. “But Beecham, my own, this is too touching! Very well — there’s a decent-looking, old-fashioned hostel over there. Shall we?”

“Anywhere,” growled Beecham.

They crossed the square to the old-fashioned hostel where, to Mr. Jones’s surprise, the Scotland Yard man immediately booked a private room and ordered the drinks to be sent up there.

“If you’ll join me,” he said to Mr. Jones.

“Delighted,” Mr. Jones agreed. “Does Maxwell remain in the weather and hold the horses’ heads?”

“There’ll be room for the three of us upstairs,” said Beecham.

“What could be better?” said Mr. Jones.

And upstairs they went, with a waiter and tray to follow them.

“Cosy,” remarked Mr. Jones, when the waiter had left them and closed the door. “Shall you be staying here long?”

“About as long as it will take me to go through that little bag of yours,” Beecham answered.

“Beecham!” Mr. Jones gasped. “I don’t understand you.”

“You will,” said Beecham. “I always thought you’d be too clever. You let me see your train tickets this afternoon. After that, I just had to take this trip with you. Hand over the bag.”

“You know, Beecham, my sweet,” said Mr. Jones, “really I don’t think you have the right.”

“I can soon get that,” said Beecham. “Please yourself, if you want to waste time. You’ll waste it in my presence, that’s all.”

Mr. Jones sighed.

“Maxwell,” he said, “nobody trusts us. It’s a suspicious world. Pass the little bag to the gentleman.”

Maxwell passed the little bag to the gentleman, and the gentleman, frowning, promptly dragged it open. Out fell pyjamas, combs, and toothbrushes. Nothing else. Beecham clicked his teeth and looked up.

“Pockets, probably?” he said.

“No friendliness at all, observed Mr. Jones with a fresh sigh. “Your pockets, Maxwell.”

Maxwell emptied his pockets. Mr. Jones emptied his. The detective’s complexion darkened. He turned once more to the little bag, fumbled inside it, threw it on the floor. His hands passed swiftly, but certainly, down the attire of the other two men; then, with a muttered exclamation, he picked up a telephone that stood on a corner table.

“Friars Topliss police, quick!” he shouted.

“You might tell me, sweet Beecham,” Mr. Jones put in, “what is on your mind.”

But Beecham didn’t. He sat glaring at the instrument in front of his nose until there was a faint tinkle.

“Yes?” he roared. “This is Detective-Inspector Beecham of Scotland Yard. Is the six-fourteen from Liverpool Street — what? Good Lord! Battered up? But I saw him — the jewels? Gone! I’ll come along!”

He dropped the receiver and spun round.

“Without having the faintest idea as to what is on your mind,” said Mr. Jones, “I think you must admit that I never batter them up. I may have many failings, but never that.”

“I don’t exactly know where you come into this,” snapped Beecham, “but bear this in mind. I’ll land you.”

“I doubt it.” Mr. Jones smiled. “You’d like to, I fear, but it’s such a disappointing world.”

Beecham strode to the door.

“Say good-bye to the gentleman, Maxwell,” said Mr. Jones.

And Maxwell said good-bye to the gentleman.

“Dapper” Dawlish, expert but unlikeable, let himself into his Baker Street flat and snapped on the lights. He was satisfied with himself and the world in general. Or, at least, he was until he snapped on the lights.

Then he found himself looking down the barrel of an automatic, and he changed his opinion of the world at once.

“Good evening,” said Mr. Jones. “Or morning. Or what is it? Travelling about the world in a snowstorm makes one lose one’s sense of time.”

“Who are you?” snarled Dawlish.

“Doesn’t matter in the least,” said Mr. Jones.

“What do you want?”

“The jewels you stole from Mr. Hadlow Cribb on the Friars Topliss train,” said Mr. Jones. “And I want them now. I’ve been waiting two hours without a fire. I’m depressed. And when I’m depressed I’m nasty. That bulge in your right pocket, I believe. Come on! One — two—”

Which was where “Dapper” Dawlish threw in. “I’m hanged if I see how you knew,” he grumbled.

“But, of course, I knew,” said Mr. Jones. “It was I who had you put wise this afternoon that the stuff would be on the train.”

“You?”

“Mind, you wouldn’t have stood an earthly chance if I hadn’t been on the train to take their attention away,” Mr. Jones added. “They watched dear old Cribb and you’d never have got near him. Brains, my lad. That’s what gets you to the top.

“Mind, I couldn’t have got the things. I’m too popular with the C.I.D. They won’t let me out of their sight. Which is why I sometimes have to leave the labouring to others. Which reminds me.”

He opened the parcel of gems, separated one from the rest, and tossed it on the table.

“The labourer is worthy of his hire,” he said, with a smile. “You’d have got two — or even three — if you hadn’t battered him up. Battering-up is a thing I detest. Or, at least, I’ve always thought so. I may change my mind one day. Even this day. Try following me and see! Good-bye, Mr. — Dawlish the name is, I believe. Charmed to have met you. And a Merry Christmas.”

Markheim Robert Louis Stevenson

It may be difficult to remember that Robert Louis Stevenson, one of the greatest adventure story authors of all time with such classics as Treasure Island (1883), Prince Otto (1885), Kidnapped (1886), and The Black Arrow (1888) to his credit, also wrote the beloved volume of poems for young readers, A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885). He frequently wrote of mystery and crime, most famously The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), a macabre allegory once described as the only crime story in which the solution is more terrifying than the problem. The classic murder story “Markheim” was first published in The Broken Shaft (London, Unwin, 1885).

“Yes,” said the dealer, “our windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,” and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor; “and in that case,” he continued, “I profit by my virtue.”

Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.

The dealer chuckled. “You come to me on Christmas Day,” he resumed, “when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remark in you today very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has to pay for it.”

The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, “You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of the object?” he continued. “Still your uncle’s cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!”

And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a touch of horror.

“This time,” said he, “you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle’s cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady,” he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; “and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected.”

There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.

“Well, sir,” said the dealer, “be it so. You are an old customer after all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady now,” he went on, “this hand glass — fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector.”

The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had stopped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so, a shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the hand that now received the glass.

“A glass,” he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more clearly. “A glass? For Christmas? Surely not?”

“And why not?” cried the dealer. “Why not a glass?”

Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. “You ask me why not?” he said. “Why, look here — look in it — look at yourself! Do you like to see it? No! nor — nor any man.”

The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on hand, he chuckled. “Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard-favoured,” said he.

“I ask you,” said Markheim, “for a Christmas present, and you give me this — this damned reminder of years, and sins and follies — this hand-conscience? Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself. I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?”

The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.

“What are you driving at?” the dealer asked.

“Not charitable?” returned the other gloomily. “Not charitable; not pious; not scrupulous; unloving, unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?”

“I will tell you what it is,” began the dealer, with some sharpness, and then broke off again into a chuckle. “But I see this is a love match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady’s health.”

“Ah!” cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. “Ah, have you been in love? Tell me about that.”

“I,” cried the dealer. “I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?”

“Where is the hurry?” returned Markheim. “It is very pleasant to stand here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry away from any pleasure — no, not even from so mild a one as this. We should rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a cliff’s edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it — a cliff a mile high — high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each other: why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows, we might become friends?”

“I have just one word to say to you,” said the dealer. “Either make your purchase, or walk out of my shop!”

“True, true,” said Markheim. “Enough fooling. To business. Show me something else.”

The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many different emotions were depicted together on his face — terror, horror, and resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.

“This, perhaps, may suit,” observed the dealer: and then, as he began to re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long, skewerlike dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like a hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in a heap.

Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow as was becoming to their great age; others garrulous and hurried. All these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings. Then the passage of a lad’s feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of his surroundings.

He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.

From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim’s eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion — there it must lie till it was found. Found! ay, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that would ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy.

“Time was that when the brains were out,” he thought; and the first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed was accomplished — time, which had closed for the victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer.

The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice — one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz — the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.

The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet.

And still, as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him with a sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise — poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past.

Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin.

Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumour of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their curiosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear — solitary people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him.

Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own house.

But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white face beside his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the pavement — these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate.

But here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched the servant set forth sweet-hearting, in her poor best, “out for the day” written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course; and yet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear a stir of delicate footing — he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred.

At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, did there not hang wavering a shadow?

Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to beat with a staff on the shop-door, accompanying his blows with shouts and railleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from his knocking and departed.

Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth from this accusing neighbourhood, to plunge into a bath of London multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safety and apparent innocence — his bed. One visitor had come; at any moment another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The money, that was now Markheim’s concern; and as a means to that, the keys.

He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch.

He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair-day in a fishers’ village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of the brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly coloured: Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in the death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes.

The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the thumping of the drums. A bar of that day’s music returned upon his memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantly resist and conquer.

He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his mind to realise the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a while ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale mouth had spoken, that body had been on fire with governable energies; and now, by his act, that piece of life had been arrested, as the horologist, with interjected finger, arrests the beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more remorseful consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before the painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor.

With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the keys and advanced towards the open door of the shop. Outside, it had begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton’s weight of resolve upon his muscles, and drew back the door.

The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs; on the bright suit of armour posted, halberd in hand, upon the landing; and on the dark wood-carvings, and framed pictures that hung against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain through all the house that, in Markheim’s ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes.

The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop, he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he would possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense which held the outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from their orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half-rewarded as with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The four-and-twenty steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.

On that first story, the doors stood ajar, three of them like three ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men’s observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission in the continuity of man’s experience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould of their succession?

The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; ay, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against sin. But about God Himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were his excuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men, that he felt sure of justice.

When he had got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous furniture; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and unframed, standing with their faces to the wall, a fine Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floors; but by great good fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him from the neighbours. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys.

It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides; for after all there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw the door — even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many children took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices!

Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images; church-going children and the pealing of the high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.

And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the stair slowly and steadily and presently a hand was laid upon the knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.

Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But when a face thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room, looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the visitant returned.

“Did you call me?” he asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the room and closed the door behind him.

Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candlelight of the shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror, there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the earth and not of God.

And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: “You are looking for the money, I believe?” it was in the tones of everyday politeness.

Markheim made no answer.

“I should warn you,” resumed the other, “that the maid has left her sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences.”

“You know me?” cried the murderer.

The visitor smiled. “You have long been a favourite of mine,” he said; “and I have long observed and often sought to help you.”

“What are you?” cried Markheim; “the devil?”

“What I may be,” returned the other, “cannot affect the service I propose to render you.”

“It can,” cried Markheim; “it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not by you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!”

“I know you,” replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or rather firmness. “I know you to the soul.”

“Know me!” cried Markheim. “Who can do so? My life is but a travesty and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature. All men do, all men are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control — if you could see their faces, they would be altogether different, they would shine out for heroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is more overlaid; my excuse is known to men and God. But, had I the time, I could disclose myself.”

“To me?” inquired the visitant.

“To you before all,” returned the murderer. “I supposed you were intelligent. I thought — since you exist — you could prove a reader of the heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother — the giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look within? Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any willful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as humanity — the unwilling sinner?”

“All this is very feelingly expressed,” was the reply, “but it regards me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it is as if the gallows itself was striding towards you through the Christmas streets! Shall I help you; I, who know all? Shall I tell you where to find the money?”

“For what price?” asked Markheim.

“I offer you the service for a Christmas gift,” returned the other.

Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph. “No,” said he, “I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing to commit myself to evil.”

“I have no objection to a deathbed repentance,” observed the visitant.

“Because you disbelieve their efficacy!” Markheim cried.

“I do not say so,” returned the other; “but I look on these things from a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under colour of religion, or to sow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he can add but one act of service — to repent, to die smiling, and thus to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me. Accept my help. Please yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply, spread your elbows at the board; and when the night begins to fall and the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that you will find it even easy to compound your quarrel with your conscience, and to make a truckling peace with God. I came but now from such a deathbed, and the room was full of sincere mourners, listening to the man’s last words; and when I looked into that face, which had been set as a flint against mercy, I found it smiling with hope.”

“And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?” asked Markheim. “Do you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and sin, and, at the last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is this, then, your experience of mankind? Or is it because you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness? And is this crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of good?”

“Murder is to me no special category,” replied the other. “All sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and feeding on each other’s lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death;

and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the thickness of a nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not in action but in character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling cataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a dealer, but because you are Markheim, that I offer to forward your escape.”

“I will lay my heart open to you,” answered Markheim. “This crime on which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bond-slave to poverty, driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these temptations; mine are not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day, and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches — both the power and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, hands the agents of good, this heart at peace. Something comes over me out of the past; something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound of the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies my life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of destination.”

“You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?” remarked the visitor; “and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some thousands?”

“Ah,” said Markheim, “but this time I have a sure thing.”

“This time, again, you will lose,” replied the visitor quietly.

“Ah, but I keep back the half!” cried Markheim.

“That also you will lose,” said the other.

The sweat started upon Markheim’s brow. “Well, then, what matter?” he exclaimed. “Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall one part of me, and that the worst, continue until the end to override the better? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways. I do not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life, and my virtues without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts.”

But the visitant raised his finger. “For six-and-thirty years that you have been in this world,” said he, “through many changes of fortune and varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blanched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil? — five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you.”

“It is true,” Markheim said huskily, “I have in some degree complied with evil. But it is so with all; the very saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings.”

“I will propound to you one simple question,” said the other; “and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?”

“In any one?” repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration. “No,” he added, with despair, “in none! I have gone down in all.”

“Then,” said the visitor, “content yourself with what you are, for you will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are irrevocably written down.”

Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor who first broke the silence. “That being so,” he said, “shall I show you the money?”

“And grace?” cried Markheim.

“Have you not tried it?” returned the other. “Two or three years ago did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your voice the loudest in the hymn?”

“It is true,” said Markheim; “and I see clearly what remains for me by way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am.”

At this moment, the sharp note of the doorbell rang through the house; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour.

“The maid!” he cried. “She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious countenance — no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening — the whole night, if needful — to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!” he cried; “up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the scales: up, and act!”

Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. “If I be condemned to evil acts,” he said, “there is still one door of freedom open — I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage.”

The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph, and, even as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as chance-medley — a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the farther side he perceived a quiet haven for his bark.

He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamour.

He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.

“You had better go for the police,” said he. “I have killed your master.”

A Chaparral Christmas Gift O. Henry

Times change, and so does public taste, it seems. William Sidney Porter, under the pseudonym of O. Henry, wrote more than six hundred short stories that once were as critically acclaimed as they were popular. Often undervalued today because of their sentimentality, many nonetheless remain iconic and familiar, notably such classics as “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Furnished Room,” “A Retrieved Reformation” (better known for its several stage and film versions as Alias Jimmy Valentine) and “The Ransom of Red Chief.” The O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories, a prestigious annual anthology of the year’s best short stories, has been published since 1919. “A Chaparral Christmas Gift” was one of O. Henry’s earliest stories, written while he was in prison. It was first published in the December 1903 issue of Ainslee’s; it was first collected in Whirligigs (New York, Doubleday, Page, 1910).

The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing. At the end of that time it was worth it.

Had you lived anywhere within fifty miles of Sundown Ranch you would have heard of it. It possessed a quantity of jet-black hair, a pair of extremely frank, deep-brown eyes and a laugh that rippled across the prairie like the sound of a hidden brook. The name of it was Rosita McMullen; and she was the daughter of old man McMullen of the Sundown Sheep Ranch.

There came riding on red roan steeds — or, to be more explicit, on a paint and a flea-bitten sorrel — two wooers. One was Madison Lane, and the other was the Frio Kid. But at that time they did not call him the Frio Kid, for he had not earned the honours of special nomenclature. His name was simply Johnny McRoy.

It must not be supposed that these two were the sum of the agreeable Rosita’s admirers. The bronchos of a dozen others champed their bits at the long hitching rack of the Sundown Ranch. Many were the sheeps’-eyes that were cast in those savannas that did not belong to the flocks of Dan McMullen. But of all the cavaliers, Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy galloped far ahead, wherefore they are to be chronicled.

Madison Lane, a young cattleman from the Nueces country, won the race. He and Rosita were married one Christmas day. Armed, hilarious, vociferous, magnanimous, the cowmen and the sheepmen, laying aside their hereditary hatred, joined forces to celebrate the occasion.

Sundown Ranch was sonorous with the cracking of jokes and six-shooters, the shine of buckles and bright eyes, the outspoken congratulations of the herders of kine.

But while the wedding feast was at its liveliest there descended upon it Johnny McRoy, bitten by jealousy, like one possessed.

“I’ll give you a Christmas present,” he yelled, shrilly, at the door, with his .45 in his hand. Even then he had some reputation as an offhand shot.

His first bullet cut a neat underbit in Madison Lane’s right ear. The barrel of his gun moved an inch. The next shot would have been the bride’s had not Carson, a sheepman, possessed a mind with triggers somewhat well oiled and in repair. The guns of the wedding party had been hung, in their belts, upon nails in the wall when they sat at table, as a concession to good taste. But Carson, with great promptness, hurled his plate of roast venison and frijoles at McRoy, spoiling his aim. The second bullet, then, only shattered the white petals of a Spanish dagger flower suspended two feet above Rosita’s head.

The guests spurned their chairs and jumped for their weapons. It was considered an improper act to shoot the bride and groom at a wedding. In about six seconds there were twenty or so bullets due to be whizzing in the direction of Mr. McRoy.

“I’ll shoot better next time,” yelled Johnny; “and there’ll be a next time.” He backed rapidly out the door.

Carson, the sheepman, spurred on to attempt further exploits by the success of his plate-throwing, was first to reach the door. McRoy’s bullet from the darkness laid him low.

The cattlemen then swept out upon him, calling for vengeance, for, while the slaughter of a sheepman has not always lacked condonement, it was a decided misdemeanour in this instance. Carson was innocent; he was no accomplice at the matrimonial proceedings; nor had any one heard him quote the line “Christmas comes but once a year” to the guests.

But the sortie failed in its vengeance. McRoy was on his horse and away, shouting back curses and threats as he galloped into the concealing chaparral.

That night was the birthnight of the Frio Kid. He became the “bad man” of that portion of the State. The rejection of his suit by Miss McMullen turned him to a dangerous man. When officers went after him for the shooting of Carson, he killed two of them, and entered upon the life of an outlaw. He became a marvellous shot with either hand. He would turn up in towns and settlements, raise a quarrel at the slightest opportunity, pick off his man and laugh at the officers of the law. He was so cool, so deadly, so rapid, so inhumanly blood-thirsty that none but faint attempts were ever made to capture him. When he was at last shot and killed by a little one-armed Mexican who was nearly dead himself from fright, the Frio Kid had the deaths of eighteen men on his head. About half of these were killed in fair duels depending upon the quickness of the draw. The other half were men whom he assassinated from absolute wantonness and cruelty.

Many tales are told along the border of his impudent courage and daring. But he was not one of the breed of desperadoes who have seasons of generosity and even of softness. They say he never had mercy on the object of his anger. Yet at this and every Christmastide it is well to give each one credit, if it can be done, for whatever speck of good he may have possessed. If the Frio Kid ever did a kindly act or felt a throb of generosity in his heart it was once at such a time and season, and this is the way it happened.

One who has been crossed in love should never breathe the odour from the blossoms of the ratama tree. It stirs the memory to a dangerous degree.

One December in the Frio country there was a ratama tree in full bloom, for the winter had been as warm as springtime. That way rode the Frio Kid and his satellite and co-murderer, Mexican Frank. The kid reined in his mustang, and sat in his saddle, thoughtful and grim, with dangerously narrowing eyes. The rich, sweet scent touched him somewhere beneath his ice and iron.

“I don’t know what I’ve been thinking about, Mex,” he remarked in his usual mild drawl, “to have forgot all about a Christmas present I got to give. I’m going to ride over to-morrow night and shoot Madison Lane in his own house. He got my girl — Rosita would have had me if he hadn’t cut into the game. I wonder why I happened to overlook it up to now?”

“Aw, shucks, Kid,” said Mexican, “don’t talk foolishness. You know you can’t get within a mile of Mad Lane’s house to-morrow night. I see old man Allen day before yesterday, and he says Mad is going to have Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you shot up the festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made? Don’t you suppose Mad Lane’ll kind of keep his eye open for a certain Mr. Kid? You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks.”

“I’m going,” repeated the Frio Kid, without heat, “to go to Madison Lane’s Christmas doings, and kill him. I ought to have done it a long time ago. Why, Mex, just two weeks ago I dreamed me and Rosita was married instead of her and him; and we was living in a house, and I could see her smiling at me, and — oh! h — l, Mex, he got her; and I’ll get him — yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and then’s when I’ll get him.”

“There’s other ways of committing suicide,” advised Mexican. “Why don’t you go and surrender to the sheriff?”

“I’ll get him,” said the Kid.

Christmas Eve fell as balmy as April. Perhaps there was a hint of faraway frostiness in the air, but it tingled like seltzer, perfumed faintly with late prairie blossoms and the mesquite grass.

When night came the five or six rooms of the ranch-house were brightly lit. In one room was a Christmas tree, for the Lanes had a boy of three, and a dozen or more guests were expected from the nearer ranches.

At nightfall Madison Lane called aside Jim Belcher and three other cowboys employed on his ranch.

“Now, boys,” said Lane, “keep your eyes open. Walk around the house and watch the road well. All of you know the ‘Frio Kid,’ as they call him now, and if you see him, open fire on him without asking any questions. I’m not afraid of his coming around, but Rosita is. She’s been afraid he’d come in on us every Christmas since we were married.”

The guests had arrived in buckboards and on horseback, and were making themselves comfortable inside.

The evening went along pleasantly. The guests enjoyed and praised Rosita’s excellent supper, and afterward the men scattered in groups about the rooms or on the broad “gallery,” smoking and chatting.

The Christmas tree, of course, delighted the youngsters, and above all were they pleased when Santa Claus himself in magnificent white beard and furs appeared and began to distribute the toys.

“It’s my papa,” announced Billy Sampson, aged six. “I’ve seen him wear ’em before.”

Berkly, a sheepman, an old friend of Lane, stopped Rosita as she was passing by him on the gallery, where he was sitting smoking.

“Well, Mrs. Lane,” said he, “I suppose by this Christmas you’ve gotten over being afraid of that fellow McRoy, haven’t you? Madison and I have talked about it, you know.”

“Very nearly,” said Rosita, smiling, “but I am still nervous sometimes. I shall never forget that awful time when he came so near to killing us.”

“He’s the most cold-hearted villain in the world,” said Berkly. “The citizens all along the border ought to turn out and hunt him down like a wolf.”

“He has committed awful crimes,” said Rosita, “but... I... don’t... know. I think there is a spot of good somewhere in everybody. He was not always bad — that I know.”

Rosita turned into the hallway between the rooms. Santa Claus, in muffling whiskers and furs, was just coming through.

“I heard what you said through the window, Mrs. Lane,” he said. “I was just going down in my pocket for a Christmas present for your husband. But I’ve left one for you, instead. It’s in the room to your right.”

“Oh, thank you, kind Santa Claus,” said Rosita, brightly.

Rosita went into the room, while Santa Claus stepped into the cooler air of the yard.

She found no one in the room but Madison.

“Where is my present that Santa said he left for me in here?” she asked.

“Haven’t seen anything in the way of a present,” said her husband, laughing, “unless he could have meant me.”

The next day Gabriel Radd, the foreman of the X O Ranch, dropped into the post-office at Loma Alta.

“Well, the Frio Kid’s got his dose of lead at last,” he remarked to the postmaster.

“That so? How’d it happen?”

“One of old Sanchez’s Mexican sheep herders did it! — think of it! the Frio Kid killed by a sheep herder! The Greaser saw him riding along past his camp about twelve o’clock last night, and was so skeered that he up with a Winchester and let him have it. Funniest part of it was that the Kid was dressed all up with white Angora-skin whiskers and a regular Santy Claus rig-out from head to foot. Think of the Frio Kid playing Santy!”

The Chopham Affair Edgar Wallace

It has been reported frequently — and it may even be true — that, during the height of his popularity in the 1920s, Edgar Wallace, the most successful thriller writer who ever lived, was the author of one of every four books sold in England. He self-published his first mystery, The Four Just Men, in 1905. It was a financial disaster, but he went on to produce one hundred seventy-three books, seventeen plays, countless short stories, and the original scenario for the first King Kong motion picture. “The Chopham Affair” was first collected in the author’s short story collection, The Woman from the East (London, Hutchinson, 1934).

Lawyers who write books are not, as a rule, popular with their confrères, but Archibald Lenton, the most brilliant of prosecuting attorneys, was an exception. He kept a case-book and published extracts from time to time. He has not published his theories on the Chopham affair, though I believe he formulated one. I present him with the facts of the case and the truth about Alphonse or Alphonso Riebiera.

This was a man who had a way with women, especially women who had not graduated in the more worldly school of experience. He described himself as a Spaniard, though his passport was issued by a South American republic. Sometimes he presented visiting cards which were inscribed “Le Marquis de Riebiera,” but that was only on very special occasions.

He was young, with an olive complexion, faultless features, and showed his two rows of dazzling white teeth when he smiled. He found it convenient to change his appearance. For example: when he was a hired dancer attached to the personnel of an Egyptian hotel he wore little side whiskers which, oddly enough, exaggerated his youthfulness; in the casino at Enghien, where by some means he secured the position of croupier, he was decorated with a little black moustache. Staid, sober, and unimaginative spectators of his many adventures were irritably amazed that women said anything to him, but then it is notoriously difficult for any man, even an unimaginative man, to discover attractive qualities in successful lovers.

And yet the most unlikely women came under his spell and had to regret it. There arrived a time when he became a patron of the gambling establishments where he had been the most humble and the least trusted of servants, when he lived royally in hotels where he once was hired at so many piastre per dance. Diamonds came to his spotless shirt-front, pretty manicurists tended his nails and received fees larger than his one-time dancing partners had slipped shyly into his hand.

There are certain gross men who play interminable dominoes in the cheaper cafés that abound on the unfashionable side of the Seine, who are amazing news centres. They know how the oddest people live, and they were very plain-spoken when they discussed Alphonse. They could tell you, though heaven knows how the information came to them, of fat registered letters that came to him in his flat in the Boulevard Haussman. Registered letters stuffed with money, and despairing letters that said in effect (and in various languages): “I can send you no more — this is the last.” But they did send more.

Alphonse had developed a well-organized business. He would leave for London, or Rome, or Amsterdam, or Vienna, or even Athens, arriving at his destination by sleeping-car, drive to the best hotel, hire a luxurious suite — and telephone. Usually the unhappy lady met him by appointment, tearful, hysterically furious, bitter, insulting, but always remunerative.

For when Alphonse read extracts from the letters they had sent to him in the day of the Great Glamour and told them what their husbands’ income was almost to a pound, lira, franc, or guelder, they reconsidered their decision to tell their husbands everything, and Alphonse went back to Paris with his allowance.

This was his method with the bigger game; sometimes he announced his coming visit with a letter discreetly worded, which made personal application unnecessary. He was not very much afraid of husbands or brothers; the philosophy which had germinated from his experience made him contemptuous of human nature. He believed that most people were cowards and lived in fear of their lives, and greater fear of their regulations. He carried two silver-plated revolvers, one in each hip-pocket. They had prettily damascened barrels and ivory handles carved in the likeness of nymphs. He bought them in Cairo from a man who smuggled cocaine from Vienna.

Alphonse had some twenty “clients” on his books, and added to them as opportunity arose. Of the twenty, five were gold mines (he thought of them as such), the remainder were silver mines.

There was a silver mine living in England, a very lovely, rather sad-looking girl, who was happily married, except when she thought of Alphonse. She loved her husband and hated herself and hated Alphonse intensely and impotently. Having a fortune of her own she could pay — therefore she paid.

Then in a fit of desperate revolt she wrote saying: “This is the last, etc.” Alphonse was amused. He waited until September when the next allowance was due, and it did not come. Nor in October, nor November. In December he wrote to her; he did not wish to go to England in December, for England is very gloomy and foggy, and it was so much nicer in Egypt; but business was business.

His letter reached its address when the woman to whom it was addressed was on a visit to her aunt in Long Island. She had been born an American. Alphonse had not written in answer to her letter; she had sailed for New York feeling safe.

Her husband, whose initial was the same as his wife’s, opened the letter by accident and read it through very carefully. He was no fool. He did not regard the wife he wooed as an outcast; what happened before his marriage was her business — what happened now was his.

And he understood these wild dreams of her, and her wild, uncontrollable weeping for no reason at all, and he knew what the future held for her.

He went to Paris and made enquiries: he sought the company of the gross men who play dominoes, and heard much that was interesting.

Alphonse arrived in London and telephoned from a call-box. Madam was not at home. A typewritten letter came to him, making an appointment for the Wednesday. It was the usual rendezvous, the hour specified, an injunction to secrecy. The affair ran normally.

He passed his time pleasantly in the days of waiting. Bought a new Spanza car of the latest model, arranged for its transportation to Paris and, in the meantime, amused himself by driving it.

At the appointed hour he arrived, knocked at the door of the house and was admitted...

Riebiera, green of face, shaking at the knees, surrendered his two ornamented pistols without a fight...

At eight o’clock on Christmas morning Superintendent Oakington was called from his warm bed by telephone and was told the news.

A milkman driving across Chopham Common had seen a car standing a little off the road. It was apparently a new car, and must have been standing in its position all night. There were three inches of snow on its roof, beneath the body of the car the bracken was green.

An arresting sight even for a milkman who, at seven o’clock on a wintry morning, had no other thought than to supply the needs of his customers as quickly as possible and return at the earliest moment to his own home and the festivities and feastings proper to the day.

He got out of the Ford he was driving and stamped through the snow. He saw a man lying face downwards, and in his grey hand a silver-barrelled revolver. He was dead. And then the startled milkman saw the second man. His face was invisible: it lay under a thick mask of snow that made his pinched features grotesque and hideous.

The milkman ran back to his car and drove toward a police-station.

Mr. Oakington was on the spot within an hour of being called. There were a dozen policemen grouped around the car and the shapes in the snow; the reporters, thank God, had not arrived.

Late in the afternoon the superintendent put a call through to one man who might help in a moment of profound bewilderment.

Archibald Lenton was the most promising of Treasury Juniors that the Bar had known for years. The Common Law Bar lifts its delicate nose at lawyers who are interested in criminal cases to the exclusion of other practice. But Archie Lenton survived the unspoken disapproval of his brethren and, concentrating on this unsavoury aspect of jurisprudence, was both a successful advocate and an authority on certain types of crime, for he had written a textbook which was accepted as authoritative.

An hour later he was in the superintendent’s room at Scotland Yard, listening to the story.

“We’ve identified both men. One is a foreigner, a man from the Argentine, so far as I can discover from his passport, named Alphonse or Alphonso Riebiera. He lives in Paris, and has been in this country for about a week.”

“Well off?”

“Very, I should say. We found about two hundred pounds in his pocket. He was staying at the Nederland Hotel, and bought a car for twelve hundred pounds only last Friday, paying cash. That is the car we found near the body. I’ve been on the ’phone to Paris, and he is suspected there of being a blackmailer. The police have searched and sealed his flat, but found no documents of any kind. He is evidently the sort of man who keeps his business under his hat.”

“He was shot, you say? How many times?”

“Once, through the head. The other man was killed in exactly the same way. There was a trace of blood in the car, but nothing else.”

Mr. Lenton jotted down a note on a pad of paper.

“Who was the other man?” he asked. “That’s the queerest thing of all — an old acquaintance of yours.”

“Mine? Who on earth—?”

“Do you remember a fellow you defended on a murder charge — Joe Stackett?”

“At Exeter, good lord, yes! Was that the man?”

“We’ve identified him from his fingerprints. As a matter of fact, we were after Joe — he’s an expert car thief who only came out of prison last week; he got away with a car yesterday morning, but abandoned it after a chase and slipped through the fingers of the Flying Squad. Last night he pinched an old car from a second-hand dealer and was spotted and chased. We found the car abandoned in Tooting. He was never seen again until he was picked up on the Chopham Common.”

Archie Lenton leant back in his chair and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.

“He stole the Spanza — the owner jumped on the running-board and there was a fight” — he began, but the superintendent shook his head.

“Where did he get his gun? English criminals do not carry guns. And they weren’t ordinary revolvers. Silver-plated, ivory butts carved with girls’ figures — both identical. There were fifty pounds in Joe’s pocket; they are consecutive numbers to those found in Riebiera’s pocket-book. If he’d stolen them he’d have taken the lot. Joe wouldn’t stop at murder, you know that, Mr. Lenton. He killed that old woman in Exeter, although he was acquitted. Riebiera must have given him the fifty—”

A telephone bell rang; the superintendent drew the instrument toward him and listened. After ten minutes of a conversation which was confined, so far as Oakington was concerned, to a dozen brief questions, he put down the receiver.

“One of my officers has traced the movements of the car; it was seen standing outside ‘Greenlawns,’ a house in Tooting. It was there at nine forty-five and was seen by a postman. If you feel like spending Christmas night doing a little bit of detective work, we’ll go down and see the place.”

They arrived half an hour later at a house in a very respectable neighbourhood. The two detectives who waited their coming had obtained the keys, but had not gone inside. The house was for sale and was standing empty. It was the property of two old maiden ladies who had placed the premises in an agent’s hands when they had moved into the country.

The appearance of the car before an empty house had aroused the interest of the postman. He had seen no lights in the windows, and decided that the machine was owned by one of the guests at the next door house.

Oakington opened the door and switched on the light. Strangely enough, the old ladies had not had the current disconnected, though they were notoriously mean. The passage was bare, except for a pair of bead curtains which hung from an arched support to the ceiling.

The front room drew blank. It was in one of the back rooms on the ground floor that they found evidence of the crime. There was blood on the bare planks of the floor and in the grate a litter of ashes.

“Somebody has burnt paper — I smelt it when I came into the room,” said Lenton.

He knelt before the grate and lifted a handful of fine ashes carefully.

“And these have been stirred up until there isn’t an ash big enough to hold a word,” he said.

He examined the blood-prints and made a careful scrutiny of the walls. The window was covered with a shutter.

“That kept the light from getting in,” he said, “and the sound of the shot getting out. There is nothing else here.”

The detective-sergeant who was inspecting the other rooms returned with the news that a kitchen window had been forced. There was one muddy print on the kitchen table which was under the window, and a rough attempt had been made to obliterate this. Behind the house was a large garden and behind that an allotment. It would be easy to reach and enter the house without exciting attention.

“But if Stackett was being chased by the police why should he come here?” he asked.

“His car was found abandoned not more than two hundred yards from here,” explained Oakington. “He may have entered the house in the hope of finding something valuable, and have been surprised by Riebiera.”

Archie Lenton laughed softly.

“I can give you a better theory than that,” he said, and for the greater part of the night he wrote carefully and convincingly, reconstructing the crime, giving the most minute details.

That account is still preserved at Scotland Yard, and there are many highly placed officials who swear by it.

And yet something altogether different happened on the night of that 24th of December...

The streets were greasy, the car-lines abominably so. Stackett’s mean little car slithered and skidded alarmingly. He had been in a bad temper when he started out on his hungry quest; he grew sour and savage with the evening passing on with nothing to show for his discomfort.

The suburban high street was crowded too; street cars moved at a crawl, their bells clanging pathetically; street vendors had their stalls jammed end to end on either side of the thoroughfare; stalls green and red with holly wreaths and untidy bunches of mistletoe; there were butcher stalls, raucous auctioneers holding masses of raw beef and roaring their offers; vegetable stalls; stalls piled high with plates and cups and saucers and gaudy dishes and glassware, shining in the rays of the powerful acetylene lamps...

The car skidded. There was a crash and a scream. Breaking crockery has an alarming sound... A yell from the stall owner; Stackett straightened his machine and darted between a tramcar and a trolley...

“Hi, you!”

He twisted his wheel, almost knocked down the policeman who came to intercept him, and swung into a dark side street, his foot clamped on the accelerator. He turned to the right and the left, to the right again. Here was a long suburban road; houses monotonously alike on either side, terribly dreary brick blocks where men and women and children lived, were born, paid rent, and died. A mile further on he passed the gateway of the cemetery where they found the rest which was their supreme reward for living at all.

The police whistle had followed him for less than a quarter of a mile. He had passed a policeman running toward the sound — anyway, flatties never worried Stackett. Some of his ill humour passed in the amusement which the sight of the running copper brought.

Bringing the noisy little car to a standstill by the side of the road, he got down, and, relighting the cigarette he had so carefully extinguished, he gazed glumly at the stained and battered mudguard which was shivering and shaking under the pulsations of the engine...

Through that same greasy street came a motorcyclist, muffled to the chin, his goggles dangling about his neck. He pulled up his shining wheel near the policeman on point duty and, supporting his balance with one foot in the muddy road, asked questions.

“Yes, sergeant,” said the policeman. “I saw him. He went down there. As a matter of fact, I was going to pinch him for driving to the common danger, but he hopped it.”

“That’s Joe Stackett,” nodded Sergeant Kenton of the C.I.D. “A thin-faced man with a pointed nose?”

The point-duty policeman had not seen the face behind the wind-screen, but he had seen the car, and that he described accurately.

“Stolen from Elmer’s garage. At least, Elmer will say so, but he probably provided it. Dumped stuff. Which way did you say?”

The policeman indicated, and the sergeant kicked his engine to life and went chug-chugging down the dark street.

He missed Mr. Stackett by a piece of bad luck — bad luck for everybody, including Mr. Stackett, who was at the beginning of his amazing adventure.

Switching off the engine, he had continued on foot. About fifty yards away was the wide opening of a road superior in class to any he had traversed. Even the dreariest suburb has its West End, and here were villas standing on their own acres — very sedate villas, with porches and porch lamps in wrought-iron and oddly coloured glass, and shaven lawns, and rose gardens swathed in matting, and no two villas were alike. At the far end he saw a red light, and his heart leapt with joy. Christmas — it was to be Christmas after all, with good food and lashings of drink and other manifestations of happiness and comfort peculiarly attractive to Joe Stackett.

It looked like a car worth knocking off, even in the darkness. He saw somebody near the machine and stopped. It was difficult to tell in the gloom whether the person near the car had got in or had come out. He listened. There came to him neither the slam of the driver’s door nor the whine of the self-starter. He came a little closer, walked boldly on, his restless eyes moving left and right for danger. All the houses were occupied. Bright lights illuminated the casement cloth which covered the windows. He heard the sound of revelry and two gramophones playing dance tunes. But his eyes always came back to the polished limousine at the door of the end house. There was no light there. It was completely dark, from the gabled attic to the ground floor.

He quickened his pace. It was a Spanza. His heart leapt at the recognition. For a Spanza is a car for which there is a ready sale. You can get as much as a hundred pounds for a new one. They are popular amongst Eurasians and wealthy Hindus. Binky Jones, who was the best car fence in London, would pay him cash, not less than sixty. In a week’s time that car would be crated and on its way to India, there to be resold at a handsome profit.

The driver’s door was wide open. He heard the soft purr of the engine. He slid into the driver’s seat, closed the door noiselessly, and almost without as much as a whine the Spanza moved on.

It was a new one, brand new... A hundred at least.

Gathering speed, he passed to the end of the road, came to a wide common and skirted it. Presently he was in another shopping street, but he knew too much to turn back toward London. He would take the open country for it, work round through Esher and come into London by the Portsmouth Road. The art of car-stealing is to move as quickly as possible from the police division where the machine is stolen and may be instantly reported, to a “foreign” division which will not know of the theft until hours after.

There might be all sorts of extra pickings. There was a big luggage trunk behind and possibly a few knick-knacks in the body of the car itself. At a suitable moment he would make a leisurely search. At the moment he headed for Epsom, turning back to hit the Kingston bypass. Sleet fell — snow and rain together. He set the screen-wiper working and began to hum a little tune. The Kingston by-pass was deserted. It was too unpleasant a night for much traffic.

Mr. Stackett was debating what would be the best place to make his search when he felt an unpleasant draught behind him. He had noticed there was a sliding window separating the interior of the car from the driver’s seat, which had possibly worked loose. He put up his hand to push it close.

“Drive on, don’t turn round or I’ll blow your head off!”

Involuntarily he half turned to see the gaping muzzle of an automatic, and in his agitation put his foot on the brake. The car skidded from one side of the road to the other, half turned and recovered.

“Drive on, I am telling you,” said a metallic voice. “When you reach the Portsmouth Road turn and bear toward Weybridge. If you attempt to stop I will shoot you. Is that clear?”

Joe Stackett’s teeth were chattering. He could not articulate the “yes.” All that he could do was to nod. He went on nodding for half a mile before he realized what he was doing.

No further word came from the interior of the car until they passed the race-course; then unexpectedly the voice gave a new direction:

“Turn left toward Leatherhead.”

The driver obeyed.

They came to a stretch of common. Stackett, who knew the country well, realized the complete isolation of the spot.

“Slow down, pull in to the left... There is no dip there. You can switch on your lights.”

The car slid and bumped over the uneven ground, the wheels crunched through beds of bracken...

“Stop.”

The door behind him opened. The man got out. He jerked open the driver’s door.

“Step down,” he said. “Turn out your lights first. Have you got a gun?”

“Gun? Why the hell should I have a gun?” stammered the car thief.

He was focused all the time in a ring of light from a very bright electric torch which the passenger had turned upon him.

“You are an act of Providence.”

Stackett could not see the face of the speaker. He saw only the gun in the hand, for the stranger kept this well in the light.

“Look inside the car.”

Stackett looked and almost collapsed. There was a figure huddled in one corner of the seat — the figure of a man. He saw something else — a bicycle jammed into the car, one wheel touching the roof, the other on the floor. He saw the man’s white face... Dead! A slim, rather short man, with dark hair and a dark moustache, a foreigner. There was a little red hole in his temple.

“Pull him out,” commanded the voice sharply.

Stackett shrank back, but a powerful hand pushed him toward the car.

“Pull him out!”

With his face moist with cold perspiration, the car thief obeyed; put his hands under the armpits of the inanimate figure, dragged him out and laid him on the bracken.

“He’s dead,” he whimpered.

“Completely,” said the other.

Suddenly he switched off his electric torch. Far away came a gleam of light on the road, coming swiftly toward them. It was a car moving towards Esher. It passed.

“I saw you coming just after I had got the body into the car. There wasn’t time to get back to the house. I’d hoped you were just an ordinary pedestrian. When I saw you get into the car I guessed pretty well your vocation. What is your name?”

“Joseph Stackett.”

“Stackett?”

The light flashed on his face again. “How wonderful! Do you remember the Exeter Assizes? The old woman you killed with a hammer? I defended you!”

Joe’s eyes were wide open. He stared past the light at the dim grey thing that was a face.

“Mr. Lenton?” he said hoarsely. “Good God, sir!”

“You murdered her in cold blood for a few paltry shillings, and you would have been dead now, Stackett, if I hadn’t found a flaw in the evidence. You expected to die, didn’t you? You remember how we used to talk in Exeter Gaol about the trap that would not work when they tried to hang a murderer, and the ghoulish satisfaction you had that you would stand on the same trap?”

Joe Stackett grinned uncomfortably.

“And I meant it, sir,” he said, “but you can’t try a man twice—”

Then his eyes dropped to the figure at his feet, the dapper little man with a black moustache, with a red hole in his temple.

Lenton leant over the dead man, took out a pocket-case from the inside of the jacket and at his leisure detached ten notes.

“Put these in your pocket.”

He obeyed, wondering what service would be required of him, wondered more why the pocket-book with its precious notes was returned to the dead man’s pocket.

Lenton looked back along the road. Snow was falling now, real snow. It came down in small particles, falling so thickly that it seemed that a fog lay on the land.

“You fit into this perfectly... a man unfit to live. There is fate in this meeting.”

“I don’t know what you mean by fate.”

Joe Stackett grew bold: he had to deal with a lawyer and a gentleman who, in a criminal sense, was his inferior. The money obviously had been given to him to keep his mouth shut.

“What have you been doing, Mr. Lenton? That’s bad, ain’t it? This fellow’s dead and—”

He must have seen the pencil of flame that came from the other’s hand. He could have felt nothing, for he was dead before he sprawled over the body on the ground.

Mr. Archibald Lenton examined the revolver by the light of his lamp, opened the breech and closed it again. Stooping, he laid it near the hand of the little man with the black moustache and, lifting the body of Joe Stackett, he dragged it toward the car and let it drop. Bending down, he clasped the still warm hands about the butt of another pistol. Then, at his leisure, he took the bicycle from the interior of the car and carried it back to the road. It was already white and fine snow was falling in sheets.

Mr. Lenton went on and reached his home two hours later, when the bells of the local Anglo-Catholic church were ringing musically.

There was a cable waiting for him from his wife:

He was ridiculously pleased that she had remembered to send the wire — he was very fond of his wife.

A Christmas Tragedy Agatha Christie

It will surprise no one to say that Agatha Christie is the most popular writer of detective fiction who ever lived (her sales in all languages are reported to have surpassed four billion copies). Her remarkably proficient first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), is generally and rightfully given credit as the landmark volume that initiated what has been called the Golden Age of mystery fiction. This era, bracketed by the two World Wars, saw the rise of the fair play puzzle story and the series detective, whether an official member of the police department, a private detective, or an amateur sleuth, and it was Christie who towered above all others, outselling, outproducing, and outliving the rest. “A Christmas Tragedy” was first collected in The Thirteen Problems (London, Collins, 1932).

“I have a complaint to make,” said Sir Henry Clithering.

His eyes twinkled gently as he looked round at the assembled company. Colonel Bantry, his legs stretched out, was frowning at the mantelpiece as though it were a delinquent soldier on parade, his wife was surreptitiously glancing at a catalogue of bulbs which had come by the late post, Dr. Lloyd was gazing with frank admiration at Jane Helier, and that beautiful young actress herself was thoughtfully regarding her pink polished nails. Only that elderly spinster lady, Miss Marple, was sitting bolt upright, and her faded blue eyes met Sir Henry’s with an answering twinkle.

“A complaint?” she murmured.

“A very serious complaint. We are a company of six, three representatives of each sex, and I protest on behalf of the down-trodden males. We have had three stories told tonight — and told by the three men! I protest that the ladies have not done their fair share.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Bantry with indignation. “I’m sure we have. We’ve listened with the most intelligent appreciation. We’ve displayed the true womanly attitude — not wishing to thrust ourselves into the limelight!”

“It’s an excellent excuse,” said Sir Henry; “but it won’t do. And there’s a very good precedent in the Arabian Nights! So, forward, Scheherazade.”

“Meaning me?” said Mrs. Bantry. “But I don’t know anything to tell. I’ve never been surrounded by blood or mystery.”

“I don’t absolutely insist upon blood,” said Sir Henry. “But I’m sure one of you three ladies has got a pet mystery. Come now, Miss Marple — the ‘Curious Coincidence of the Charwoman’ or the ‘Mystery of the Mothers’ Meeting.’ Don’t disappoint me in St. Mary Mead.”

Miss Marple shook her head.

“Nothing that would interest you, Sir Henry. We have our little mysteries, of course — there was that gill of picked shrimps that disappeared so incomprehensibly; but that wouldn’t interest you because it all turned out to be so trivial, though throwing a considerable light on human nature.”

“You have taught me to dote on human nature,” said Sir Henry solemnly.

“What about you, Miss Helier?” asked Colonel Bantry. “You must have had some interesting experiences.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Dr. Lloyd.

“Me?” said Jane. “You mean — you want me to tell you something that happened to me?”

“Or to one of your friends,” amended Sir Henry.

“Oh!” said Jane vaguely. “I don’t think anything has ever happened to me — I mean not that kind of thing. Flowers, of course, and queer messages — but that’s just men, isn’t it? I don’t think” — she paused and appeared lost in thought.

“I see we shall have to have that epic of the shrimps,” said Sir Henry. “Now then, Miss Marple.”

“You’re so fond of your joke, Sir Henry. The shrimps are only nonsense; but now I come to think of it, I do remember one incident — at least not exactly an incident, something very much more serious — a tragedy. And I was, in a way, mixed up in it; and for what I did, I have never had any regrets — no, no regrets at all. But it didn’t happen in St. Mary Mead.”

“That disappoints me,” said Sir Henry. “But I will endeavour to bear up. I knew we should not rely upon you in vain.”

He settled himself in the attitude of a listener. Miss Marple grew slightly pink.

“I hope I shall be able to tell it properly,” she said anxiously. “I fear I am very inclined to become rambling. One wanders from the point — altogether without knowing that one is doing so. And it is so hard to remember each fact in its proper order. You must all bear with me if I tell my story badly. It happened a very long time ago now.

“As I say it was not connected with St. Mary Mead. As a matter of fact, it had to do with a Hydro—”

“Do you mean a seaplane?” asked Jane with wide eyes.

“You wouldn’t know, dear,” said Mrs. Bantry, and explained. Her husband added his quota:

“Beastly places — absolutely beastly! Got to get up early and drink filthy-tasting water. Lot of old women sitting about. Ill-natured tittle tattle. God, when I think—”

“Now, Arthur,” said Mrs. Bantry placidly. “You know it did you all the good in the world.”

“Lot of old women sitting round talking scandal,” grunted Colonel Bantry.

“That, I am afraid, is true,” said Miss Marple. “I myself—”

“My dear Miss Marple,” cried the colonel, horrified. “I didn’t mean for one moment—”

With pink cheeks and a little gesture of the hand, Miss Marple stopped him.

“But it is true, Colonel Bantry. Only I should like to say this. Let me recollect my thoughts. Yes. Talking scandal, as you say — well it is done a good deal. And people are very down on it — especially young people. My nephew, who writes books — and very clever ones, I believe — has said some most scathing things about taking people’s characters away without any kind of proof — and how wicked it is, and all that. But what I say is that none of these young people ever stop to think. They really don’t examine the facts. Surely the whole crux of the matter is this. How often is tittle tattle, as you call it, true! And I think if, as I say, they really examined the facts they would find that it was true nine times out of ten! That’s really just what makes people so annoyed about it.”

“The inspired guess,” said Sir Henry.

“No, not that, not that at all! It’s really a matter of practice and experience. An Egyptologist, so I’ve heard, if you show him one of those curious little beetles, can tell you by the look and the feel of the thing what date BC it is, or if it’s a Birmingham imitation. And he can’t always give a definite rule for doing so. He just knows. His life has been spent handling such things.

“And that’s what I’m trying to say (very badly, I know). What my nephew calls ‘superfluous women’ have a lot of time on their hands, and their chief interest is usually people. And so, you see, they get to be what one might call experts. Now young people nowadays — they talk very freely about things that weren’t mentioned in my young days, but on the other hand their minds are terribly innocent. They believe in everyone and everything. And if one tries to warn them, ever so gently, they tell one that one has a Victorian mind — and that, they say, is like a sink.”

“After all,” said Sir Henry, “what is wrong with a sink?”

“Exactly,” said Miss Marple eagerly. “It’s the most necessary thing in any house; but, of course, not romantic. Now I must confess that I have my feelings, like everyone else, and I have sometimes been cruelly hurt by unthinking remarks. I know gentlemen are not interested in domestic matters, but I must just mention my maid Ethel — a very good-looking girl and obliging in every way. Now I realized as soon as I saw her that she was the same type as Annie Webb and poor Mrs. Bruitt’s girl. If the opportunity arose mine and thine would mean nothing to her. So I let her go at the month and I gave her a written reference saying she was honest and sober, but privately I warned old Mrs. Edwards against taking her; and my nephew, Raymond, was exceedingly angry and said he had never heard of anything so wicked — yes, wicked. Well, she went to Lady Ashton, whom I felt no obligation to warn — and what happened? All the lace cut off her underclothes and two diamond brooches taken — and the girl departed in the middle of the night and never heard of since!”

Miss Marple paused, drew a long breath, and then went on.

“You’ll be saying this has nothing to do with what went on at Keston Spa Hydro — but it has in a way. It explains why I felt no doubt in my mind the first moment I saw the Sanders together that he meant to do away with her.”

“Eh?” said Sir Henry, leaning forward.

Miss Marple turned a placid face to him.

“As I say, Sir Henry, I felt no doubt in my own mind. Mr. Sanders was a big, good-looking, florid-faced man, very hearty in his manner and popular with all. And nobody could have been pleasanter to his wife than he was. But I knew! He meant to make away with her.”

“My dear Miss Marple—”

“Yes, I know. That’s what my nephew Raymond West, would say. He’d tell me I hadn’t a shadow of proof. But I remember Walter Hones, who kept the Green Man. Walking home with his wife one night she fell into the river — and he collected the insurance money! And one or two other people that are walking about scot-free to this day — one indeed in our own class of life. Went to Switzerland for a summer holiday climbing with his wife. I warned her not to go — the poor dear didn’t get angry with me as she might have done — she only laughed. It seemed to her funny that a queer old thing like me should say such things about her Harry. Well, well, there was an accident — and Harry is married to another woman now. But what could I do? I knew, but there was no proof.”

“Oh! Miss Marple,” cried Mrs. Bantry. “You don’t really mean—”

“My dear, these things are very common — very common indeed. And gentlemen are especially tempted, being so much the stronger. So easy if a thing looks like an accident. As I say, I knew at once with the Sanders. It was on a tram. It was full inside and I had had to go on top. We all three got up to get off and Mr. Sanders lost his balance and fell right against his wife, sending her headfirst down the stairs. Fortunately the conductor was a very strong young man and caught her.”

“But surely that must have been an accident.”

“Of course it was an accident — nothing could have looked more accidental. But Mr. Sanders had been in the Merchant Service, so he told me, and a man who can keep his balance on a nasty tilting boat doesn’t lose it on top of a tram if an old woman like me doesn’t. Don’t tell me!”

“At any rate we can take it that you made up your mind, Miss Marple,” said Sir Henry. “Made it up then and there.”

The old lady nodded.

“I was sure enough, and another incident in crossing the street not long afterwards made me surer still. Now I ask you, what could I do, Sir Henry? Here was a nice contented happy little married woman shortly going to be murdered.”

“My dear lady, you take my breath away.”

“That’s because, like most people nowadays, you won’t face facts. You prefer to think such a thing couldn’t be. But it was so, and I knew it. But one is so sadly handicapped! I couldn’t, for instance, go to the police. And to warn the young woman would, I could see, be useless. She was devoted to the man. I just made it my business to find out as much as I could about them. One has a lot of opportunities doing one’s needlework round the fire. Mrs. Sanders (Gladys, her name was) was only too willing to talk. It seems they had not been married very long. Her husband had some property that was coming to him, but for the moment they were very badly off. In fact, they were living on her little income. One has heard that tale before. She bemoaned the fact that she could not touch the capital. It seems that somebody had had some sense somewhere! But the money was hers to will away — I found that out. And she and her husband had made wills in favour of each other directly after their marriage. Very touching. Of course, when Jack’s affairs came right — That was the burden all day long, and in the meantime they were very hard up indeed — actually had a room on the top floor, all among the servants — and so dangerous in case of fire, though, as it happened, there was a fire escape just outside their window. I inquired carefully if there was a balcony — dangerous things, balconies. One push — you know!

“I made her promise not to go out on the balcony; I said I’d had a dream. That impressed her — one can do a lot with superstition sometimes. She was a fair girl, rather washed-out complexion, and an untidy roll of hair on her neck. Very credulous. She repeated what I had said to her husband, and I noticed him looking at me in a curious way once or twice. He wasn’t credulous; and he knew I’d been on that tram.

“But I was very worried — terribly worried — because I couldn’t see how to circumvent him. I could prevent anything happening at the Hydro, just by saying a few words to show him I suspected. But that only meant his putting off his plan till later. No, I began to believe that the only policy was a bold one — somehow or other to lay a trap for him. If I could induce him to attempt her life in a way of my own choosing — well, then he would be unmasked, and she would be forced to face the truth however much of a shock it was to her.”

“You take my breath away,” said Dr. Lloyd. “What conceivable plan could you adopt?”

“I’d have found one — never fear,” said Miss Marple. “But the man was too clever for me. He didn’t wait. He thought I might suspect, and so he struck before I could be sure. He knew I would suspect an accident. So he made it murder.”

A little gasp went round the circle. Miss Marple nodded and set her lips grimly together.

“I’m afraid I’ve put that rather abruptly. I must try and tell you exactly what occurred. I’ve always felt very bitterly about it — it seems to me that I ought, somehow, to have prevented it. But doubtless Providence knew best. I did what I could at all events.

“There was what I can only describe as a curiously eerie feeling in the air. There seemed to be something weighing on us all. A feeling of misfortune. To begin with, there was George, the hall porter. Had been there for years and knew everybody. Bronchitis and pneumonia, and passed away on the fourth day. Terribly sad. A real blow to everybody. And four days before Christmas too. And then one of the housemaids — such a nice girl — a septic finger, actually died in twenty-four hours.

“I was in the drawing room with Miss Trollope and old Mrs. Carpenter, and Mrs. Carpenter was being positively ghoulish — relishing it all, you know.

“ ‘Mark my words,’ she said. ‘This isn’t the end. You know the saying? Never two without three. I’ve proved it true time and again. There’ll be another death. Not a doubt of it. And we shan’t have long to wait. Never two without three.’

“As she said the last words, nodding her head and clicking her knitting needles, I just chanced to look up and there was Mr. Sanders standing in the doorway. Just for a minute he was off guard, and I saw the look in his face as plain as plain. I shall believe till my dying day that it was that ghoulish Mrs. Carpenter’s words that put the whole thing into his head. I saw his mind working.

“He came forward into the room smiling in his genial way.

“ ‘Any Christmas shopping I can do for you ladies?’ he asked. ‘I’m going down to Keston presently.’

“He stayed a minute or two, laughing and talking, and then went out. As I tell you I was troubled, and I said straight away:

“ ‘Where’s Mrs. Sanders? Does anyone know?’

“Mrs. Trollope said she’d gone out to some friends of hers, the Mortimers, to play Bridge, and that eased my mind for the moment. But I was still very worried and most uncertain as to what to do. About half an hour later I went up to my room. I met Dr. Coles, my doctor, there, coming down the stairs as I was going up, and as I happened to want to consult him about my rheumatism, I took him into my room with me then and there. He mentioned to me then (in confidence, he said) about the death of the poor girl Mary. The manager didn’t want the news to get about, he said, so would I keep it to myself. Of course I didn’t tell him that we’d all been discussing nothing else for the last hour — ever since the poor girl breathed her last. These things are always known at once, and a man of his experience should know that well enough; but Dr. Coles always was a simple unsuspicious fellow who believed what he wanted to believe and that’s just what alarmed me a minute later. He said as he was leaving that Sanders had asked him to have a look at his wife. It seemed she’d been seedy of late — indigestion, etc.

“Now that very self-same day Gladys Sanders had said to me that she’d got a wonderful digestion and was thankful for it.

“You see? All my suspicions of that man came back a hundredfold. He was preparing the way — for what? Dr. Coles left before I could make up my mind whether to speak to him or not — though really if I had spoken I shouldn’t have known what to say. As I came out of my room, the man himself — Sanders — came down the stairs from the floor above. He was dressed to go out and he asked me again if he could do anything for me in town. It was all I could do to be civil to the man! I went straight into the lounge and ordered tea. It was just on half-past five, I remember.

“Now I’m very anxious to put clearly what happened next. I was still in the lounge at a quarter to seven when Mr. Sanders came in. There were two gentlemen with him and all three of them were inclined to be a little on the lively side. Mr. Sanders left his two friends and came right over to where I was sitting with Miss Trollope. He explained that he wanted our advice about a Christmas present he was giving his wife. It was an evening bag.

“ ‘And you see, ladies,’ he said. ‘I’m only a rough sailor-man. What do I know about such things? I’ve had three sent to me on approval and I want an expert opinion on them.’

“We said, of course, that we would be delighted to help him, and he asked if we’d mind coming upstairs, as his wife might come in any minute if he brought the things down. So we went up with him. I shall never forget what happened next — I can feel my little fingers tingling now.

“Mr. Sanders opened the door of the bedroom and switched on the light. I don’t know which of us saw it first...

“Mrs. Sanders was lying on the floor, face downwards — dead.

“I got to her first. I knelt down and took her hand and felt for the pulse, but it was useless, the arm itself was cold and stiff. Just by her head was a stocking filled with sand — the weapon she had been struck down with. Miss Trollope, silly creature, was moaning and moaning by the door and holding her head. Sanders gave a great cry of ‘My wife, my wife,’ and rushed to her. I stopped him touching her. You see, I was sure at the moment that he had done it, and there might have been something that he wanted to take away or hide.

“ ‘Nothing must be touched,’ I said. ‘Pull yourself together, Mr. Sanders. Miss Trollope, please go down and fetch the manager.’

“I stayed there, kneeling by the body. I wasn’t going to leave Sanders alone with it. And yet I was forced to admit that if the man was acting, he was acting marvellously. He looked dazed and bewildered and scared out of his wits.

“The manager was with us in no time. He made a quick inspection of the room then turned us all out and locked the door, the key of which he took. Then he went off and telephoned to the police. It seemed a positive age before they came (we learnt afterwards that the line was out of order). The manager had to send a messenger to the police station, and the Hydro is right out of the town, up on the edge of the moor; and Mrs. Carpenter tried us all very severely. She was so pleased at her prophecy of ‘Never two without three’ coming true so quickly. Sanders, I hear, wandered out into the grounds, clutching his head and groaning and displaying every sign of grief.

“However, the police came at last. They went upstairs with the manager and Mr. Sanders. Later, they sent down for me. I went up. The inspector was there, sitting at a table writing. He was an intelligent-looking man and I liked him.

“ ‘Miss Jane Marple?’ he said.

“ ‘Yes.’

“ ‘I understand, Madam, that you were present when the body of the deceased was found?’

“I said I was and I described exactly what had occurred. I think it was a relief to the poor man to find someone who could answer his questions coherently, having previously had to deal with Sanders and Emily Trollope, who, I gather, was completely demoralized — she would be, the silly creature! I remember my dear mother teaching me that a gentlewoman should always be able to control herself in public, however much she may give way in private.”

“An admirable maxim,” said Sir Henry gravely.

“When I had finished the inspector said:” ‘Thank you, Madam. Now I’m afraid I must ask you just to look at the body once more. Is that exactly the position in which it was lying when you entered the room? It hasn’t been moved in any way?’

“I explained that I had prevented Mr. Sanders from doing so, and the inspector nodded approval.

“ ‘The gentleman seems terribly upset,’ he remarked.

“ ‘He seems so — yes,’ I replied.

“I don’t think I put any special emphasis on the ‘seems,’ but the inspector looked at me rather keenly.

“ ‘So we can take it that the body is exactly as it was when found?’ he said.

“ ‘Except for the hat, yes,’ I replied.

“The inspector looked up sharply.

“ ‘What do you mean — the hat?’

“I explained that the hat had been on poor Gladys’s head, whereas now it was lying beside her. I thought, of course, that the police had done this. The inspector, however, denied it emphatically. Nothing had, as yet, been moved or touched. He stood looking down at that poor prone figure with a puzzled frown. Gladys was dressed in her outdoor clothes — a big dark-red tweed coat with a grey fur collar. The hat, a cheap affair of red felt, lay just by her head.

“The inspector stood for some minutes in silence, frowning to himself. Then an idea struck him.

“ ‘Can you, by any chance, remember, Madam, whether there were ear-rings in the ears, or whether the deceased habitually wore earrings?’

“Now fortunately I am in the habit of observing closely. I remembered that there had been a glint of pearls just below the hat brim, though I had paid no particular notice to it at the time. I was able to answer his first question in the affirmative.

“ ‘Then that settles it. The lady’s jewel case was rifled — not that she had anything much of value, I understand — and the rings were taken from her fingers. The murderer must have forgotten the ear-rings, and come back for them after the murder was discovered. A cool customer! Or perhaps—’ He stared round the room and said slowly. ‘He may have been concealed here in this room — all the time.’

“But I negatived that idea. I myself, I explained, had looked under the bed. And the manager had opened the doors of the wardrobe. There was nowhere else where a man could hide. It is true the hat cupboard was locked in the middle of the wardrobe, but as that was only a shallow affair with shelves, no one could have been concealed there.

“The inspector nodded his head slowly whilst I explained all this.

“ ‘I’ll take your word for it, Madam,’ he said. ‘In that case, as I said before, he must have come back. A very cool customer.’

“ ‘But the manager locked the door and took the key!’

“ ‘That’s nothing. The balcony and the fire escape — that’s the way the thief came. Why, as likely as not, you actually disturbed him at work. He slips out of the window, and when you’ve all gone, back he comes and goes on with his business.’

“ ‘You are sure,’ I said, ‘that there was a thief?’

“He said dryly:

“ ‘Well, it looks like it, doesn’t it?’

“But something in his tone satisfied me. I felt that he wouldn’t take Mr. Sanders in the rôle of the bereaved widower too seriously.

“You see, I admit it frankly, I was absolutely under the opinion of what I believe our neighbours, the French, call the idée fixe. I knew that that man, Sanders, intended his wife to die. What I didn’t allow for was that strange and fantastic thing, coincidence. My views about Mr. Sanders were — I was sure of it — absolutely right and true. The man was a scoundrel. But although his hypocritical assumptions of grief didn’t deceive me for a minute, I do remember feeling at the time that his surprise and bewilderment were marvellously well done. They seemed absolutely natural — if you know what I mean. I must admit that after my conversation with the inspector, a curious feeling of doubt crept over me. Because if Sanders had done this dreadful thing, I couldn’t imagine any conceivable reason why he should creep back by means of the fire escape and take the ear-rings from his wife’s ears. It wouldn’t have been a sensible thing to do, and Sanders was such a very sensible man — that’s just why I always felt he was so dangerous.”

Miss Marple looked round at her audience.

“You see, perhaps, what I am coming to? It is, so often, the unexpected that happens in this world. I was so sure, and that, I think, was what blinded me. The result came as a shock to me. For it was proved, beyond any possible doubt, that Mr. Sanders could not possibly have committed the crime...”

A surprised gasp came from Mrs. Bantry. Miss Marple turned to her.

“I know, my dear, that isn’t what you expected when I began this story. It wasn’t what I expected either. But facts are facts, and if one is proved to be wrong, one must just be humble about it and start again. That Mr. Sanders was a murderer at heart I knew — and nothing ever occurred to upset that firm conviction of mine.

“And now, I expect, you would like to hear the actual facts themselves. Mrs. Sanders, as you know, spent the afternoon playing bridge with some friends, the Mortimers. She left them at about a quarter past six. From her friends’ house to the Hydro was about a quarter of an hour’s walk — less if one hurried. She must have come in then, about six-thirty. No one saw her come in, so she must have entered by the side door and hurried straight up to her room. There she changed (the fawn coat and skirt she wore to the bridge party were hanging up in the cupboard) and was evidently preparing to go out again, when the blow fell. Quite possibly, they say, she never even knew who struck her. The sandbag, I understand, is a very efficient weapon. That looks as though the attackers were concealed in the room, possibly in one of the big wardrobe cupboards — the one she didn’t open.

“Now as to the movements of Mr. Sanders. He went out, as I have said, at about five-thirty — or a little after. He did some shopping at a couple of shops and at about six o’clock he entered the Grand Spa Hotel where he encountered two friends — the same with whom he returned to the Hydro later. They played billiards and, I gather, had a good many whiskies and sodas together. These two men (Hitchcock and Spender, their names were) were actually with him the whole time from six o’clock onwards. They walked back to the Hydro with him and he only left them to come across to me and Miss Trollope. That, as I told you, was about a quarter to seven — at which time his wife must have been already dead.

“I must tell you that I talked myself to these two friends of his. I did not like them. They were neither pleasant nor gentlemanly men, but I was quite certain of one thing, that they were speaking the absolute truth when they said that Sanders had been the whole time in their company.

“There was just one other little point that came up. It seems that while bridge was going on Mrs. Sanders was called to the telephone. A Mr. Littleworth wanted to speak to her. She seemed both excited and pleased about something — and incidentally made one or two bad mistakes. She left rather earlier than they had expected her to do.

“Mr. Sanders was asked whether he knew the name of Littleworth as being one of his wife’s friends, but he declared he had never heard of anyone of that name. And to me that seems borne out by his wife’s attitude — she too, did not seem to know the name of Littleworth. Nevertheless she came back from the telephone smiling and blushing, so it looks as though whoever it was did not give his real name, and that in itself has a suspicious aspect, does it not?

“Anyway, that is the problem that was left. The burglar story, which seems unlikely — or the alternative theory that Mrs. Sanders was preparing to go out and meet somebody. Did that somebody come to her room by means of the fire escape? Was there a quarrel? Or did he treacherously attack her?”

Miss Marple stopped.

“Well?” said Sir Henry. “What is the answer?”

“I wondered if any of you could guess.”

“I’m never good at guessing,” said Mrs. Bantry. “It seems a pity that Sanders had such a wonderful alibi; but if it satisfied you it must have been all right.”

Jane Helier moved her beautiful head and asked a question.

“Why,” she said, “was the hat cupboard locked?”

“How very clever of you, my dear,” said Miss Marple, beaming. “That’s just what I wondered myself. Though the explanation was quite simple. In it were a pair of embroidered slippers and some pocket handkerchiefs that the poor girl was embroidering for her husband for Christmas. That’s why she locked the cupboard. The key was found in her handbag.”

“Oh!” said Jane. “Then it isn’t very interesting after all.”

“Oh! but it is,” said Miss Marple. “It’s just the one really interesting thing — the thing that made all the murderer’s plans go wrong.”

Everyone stared at the old lady.

“I didn’t see it myself for two days,” said Miss Marple. “I puzzled and puzzled — and then suddenly there it was, all clear. I went to the inspector and asked him to try something and he did.”

“What did you ask him to try?”

“I asked him to fit that hat on the poor girl’s head — and of course he couldn’t. It wouldn’t go on. It wasn’t her hat, you see.”

Mrs. Bantry stared.

“But it was on her head to begin with?”

“Not on her head—”

Miss Marple stopped a moment to let her words sink in, and then went on.

“We took it for granted that it was poor Gladys’s body there; but we never looked at the face. She was face downwards, remember, and the hat hid everything.”

“But she was killed?”

“Yes, later. At the moment that we were telephoning to the police, Gladys Sanders was alive and well.”

“You mean it was someone pretending to be her? But surely when you touched her—”

“It was a dead body, right enough,” said Miss Marple gravely.

“But, dash it all,” said Colonel Bantry, “you can’t get hold of dead bodies right and left. What did they do with the — the first corpse afterwards?”

“He put it back,” said Miss Marple. “It was a wicked idea — but a very clever one. It was our talk in the drawing room that put it into his head. The body of poor Mary, the housemaid — why not use it? Remember, the Sanders’ room was up amongst the servants’ quarters. Mary’s room was two doors off. The undertakers wouldn’t come till after dark — he counted on that. He carried the body along the balcony (it was dark at five), dressed it in one of his wife’s dresses and her big red coat. And then he found the hat cupboard locked! There was only one thing to be done, he fetched one of the poor girl’s own hats. No one would notice. He put the sandbag down beside her. Then he went off to establish his alibi.

“He telephoned to his wife — calling himself Mr. Littleworth. I don’t know what he said to her — she was a credulous girl, as I said just now. But he got her to leave the bridge party early and not to go back to the Hydro, and arranged with her to meet him in the grounds of the Hydro near the fire escape at seven o’clock. He probably told her he had some surprise for her.

“He returns to the Hydro with his friends and arranges that Miss Trollope and I shall discover the crime with him. He even pretends to turn the body over — and I stop him! Then the police are sent for, and he staggers out into the grounds.

“Nobody asked him for an alibi after the crime. He meets his wife, takes her up the fire escape, they enter their room. Perhaps he has already told her some story about the body. She stoops over it, and he picks up his sandbag and strikes... Oh, dear! it makes me sick to think of, even now! Then quickly he strips off her coat and skirt, hangs them up, and dresses her in the clothes from the other body.

“But the hat won’t go on. Mary’s head is shingled — Gladys Sanders, as I say, had a great bun of hair. He is forced to leave it beside the body and hope no one will notice. Then he carries poor Mary’s body back to her own room and arranges it decorously once more.”

“It seems incredible,” said Dr. Lloyd. “The risks he took. The police might have arrived too soon.”

“You remember the line was out of order,” said Miss Marple. “That was a piece of his work. He couldn’t afford to have the police on the spot too soon. When they did come, they spent some time in the manager’s office before going up to the bedroom. That was the weakest point — the chance that someone might notice the difference between a body that had been dead two hours and one that had been dead just over half an hour; but he counted on the fact that the people who first discovered the crime would have no expert knowledge.”

Dr. Lloyd nodded.

“The crime would be supposed to have been committed about a quarter to seven or thereabouts, I suppose,” he said. “It was actually committed at seven or a few minutes later. When the police surgeon examined the body it would be about half-past seven at earliest. He couldn’t possibly tell.”

“I am the person who should have known,” said Miss Marple. “I felt the poor girl’s hand and it was icy cold. Yet a short time later the inspector spoke as though the murder must have been committed just before we arrived — and I saw nothing!”

“I think you saw a good deal, Miss Marple,” said Sir Henry. “The case was before my time. I don’t even remember hearing of it. What happened?”

“Sanders was hanged,” said Miss Marple crisply. “And a good job too. I have never regretted my part in bringing that man to justice. I’ve no patience with modern humanitarian scruples about capital punishment.”

Her stern face softened.

“But I have often reproached myself bitterly with failing to save the life of that poor girl. But who would have listened to an old woman jumping to conclusions? Well, well — who knows? Perhaps it was better for her to die while life was still happy than it would have been for her to live on, unhappy and disillusioned, in a world that would have seemed suddenly horrible. She loved that scoundrel and trusted him. She never found him out.”

“Well, then,” said Jane Helier, “she was all right. Quite all right. I wish—” she stopped.

Miss Marple looked at the famous, the beautiful, the successful Jane Helier and nodded her head gently.

“I see, my dear,” she said very gently. “I see.”