The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding Agatha Christie

Gold, Frankincense and Murder Catherine Aird

The detective stories of Catherine Aird are notable for their sense of fair play — that nice, old-fashioned notion that the author should have her detective actually solve mysteries by observation and deduction — not by sheer luck, coincidence, or via confession — and this is proven in the excellent and long-running series featuring her series protagonist, Inspector C. D. Sloan. “Gold, Frankincense and Murder” was first published in Tim Heald’s anthology, A Classic Christmas Crime (London, Pavilion, 1995).

“Christmas!” said Henry Tyler. “Bah!”

“And we’re expecting you on Christmas Eve as usual,” went on his sister Wendy placidly.

“But...” He was speaking down the telephone from London, “but, Wen...”

“Now it’s no use your pretending to be Ebenezer Scrooge in disguise, Henry.”

“Humbug,” exclaimed Henry more firmly.

“Nonsense,” declared his sister, quite unmoved. “You enjoy Christmas just as much as the children. You know you do.”

“Ah, but this year I may just have to stay on in London over the holiday...” Henry Tyler spent his working days — and, in these troubled times, quite a lot of his working nights as well — at the Foreign Office in Whitehall.

What he was doing now to his sister would have been immediately recognized in ambassadorial circles as “testing the reaction.” In the lower echelons of his department it was known more simply as “flying a kite.” Whatever you called it, Henry Tyler was an expert.

“And it’s no use your saying there’s trouble in the Baltic either,” countered Wendy Witherington warmly.

“Actually,” said Henry, “it’s the Balkans which are giving us a bit of a headache just now.”

“The children would never forgive you if you weren’t there,” said Wendy, playing a trump card; although it wasn’t really necessary. She knew that nothing short of an international crisis would keep Henry away from her home in the little market town of Berebury in the heart of rural Calleshire at Christmastime. The trouble was that these days international crises were not nearly so rare as they used to be.

“Ah, the children,” said their doting uncle. “And what is it that they want Father Christmas to bring this year?”

“Edward wants a model railway engine for his set.”

“Does he indeed?”

“A Hornby LMS red engine called ‘Princess Elizabeth,’ ” said Wendy Witherington readily. “It’s a 4–6—2.”

Henry made a note, marvelling that his sister, who seemed totally unable to differentiate between the Baltic and the Balkans — and quite probably the Balearics as well — had the details of a child’s model train absolutely at her fingertips.

“And Jennifer?” he asked.

Wendy sighed. “The Good Ship Lollipop. Oh, and when you come, Henry, you’d better be able to explain to her how it is that while she could see Shirley Temple at the pictures — we took her last week — Shirley Temple couldn’t see her.”

Henry, who had devoted a great deal of time in the last ten days trying to explain to a Minister in His Majesty’s Government exactly what Monsieur Pierre Laval might have in mind for the best future of France, said he would do his best.

“Who else will be staying, Wen?”

“Our old friends Peter and Dora Watkins — you remember them, don’t you?”

“He’s something in the bank, isn’t he?” said Henry.

“Nearly a manager,” replied Wendy. “Then there’ll be Tom’s old Uncle George.”

“I hope,” groaned Henry, “that your barometer’s up to it. It had a hard time last year.” Tom’s Uncle George had been a renowned maker of scientific instruments in his day. “He’s nearly tapped it to death.”

Wendy’s mind was still on her house guests. “Oh, and there’ll be two refugees.”

“Two refugees?” Henry frowned, even though he was alone in his room at the Foreign Office. They were beginning to be very careful about some refugees.

“Yes, the rector has asked us each to invite two refugees from the camp on the Calleford Road to stay for Christmas this year. You remember our Mr. Wallis, don’t you, Henry?”

“Long sermons?” hazarded Henry.

“Then you do remember him,” said Wendy without irony. “Well, he’s arranged it all through some church organization. We’ve got to be very kind to them because they’ve lost everything.”

“Give them useful presents, you mean,” said Henry, decoding this last without difficulty.

“Warm socks and scarves and things,” agreed Wendy Witherington vaguely. “And then we’ve got some people coming to dinner here on Christmas Eve.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Our doctor and his wife. Friar’s their name. She’s a bit heavy in the hand but he’s quite good company. And,” said Wendy drawing breath, “our new next-door neighbours — they’re called Steele — are coming too. He bought the pharmacy in the square last summer. We don’t know them very well — I think he married one of his assistants — but it seemed the right thing to invite them at Christmas.”

“Quite so,” said Henry. “That all?”

“Oh, and little Miss Hooper.”

“Sent her measurements, did she?”

“You know what I mean,” said his sister, unperturbed. “She always comes then. Besides, I expect she’ll know the refugees. She does a lot of church work.”

“What sort of refugees are they?” asked Henry cautiously.

But that Wendy did not know.

Henry himself wasn’t sure even after he’d first met them, and his brother-in-law was no help.

“Sorry, old man,” said that worthy as they foregathered in the drawing-room, awaiting the arrival of the rest of the dinner guests on Christmas Eve. “All I know is that this pair arrived from somewhere in Mitteleuropa last month with only what they stood up in.”

“Better out than in,” contributed Gordon Friar, the doctor, adding an old medical aphorism, “like laudable pus.”

“I understand,” said Tom Witherington, “that they only just got out, too. Skin of their teeth and all that.”

“As the poet so wisely said,” murmured Henry, “ ‘The only certain freedom’s in departure.’ ”

“If you ask me,” said old Uncle George, a veteran of the Boer War, “they did well to go while the going was good.”

“It’s the sort of thing you can leave too late,” pronounced Dr. Friar weightily. Leaving things too late was every doctor’s nightmare.

“I don’t envy ’em being where they are now,” said Tom. “That camp they’re in is pretty bleak, especially in the winter.”

This was immediately confirmed by Mrs. Godiesky the moment she entered the room. She regarded the Witheringtons’ glowing fire with deep appreciation. “We ’ave been so cooald, so cooaald,” she said as she stared hungrily at the logs stacked by the open fireside. “So very cooald...”

Her husband’s English was slightly better, although also heavily accented. “If we had not left when we did, then,” he opened his hands expressively, “then who knows what would have become of us?”

“Who, indeed?” echoed Henry, who actually had a very much better idea than anyone else present of what might have become of the Godieskys had they not left their native heath when they did. Reports reaching the Foreign Office were very, very discouraging.

“They closed my university department down overnight,” explained Professor Hans Godiesky. “Without any warning at all.”

“It was terrrrrible,” said Mrs. Godiesky, holding her hands out to the fire as if she could never be warm again.

“What sort of a department was it, sir?” enquired Henry casually of the Professor.

“Chemistry,” said the refugee, just as the two Watkins came in and the hanging mistletoe was put to good use. They were followed fairly quickly by Robert and Lorraine Steele from next door. The introductions in their case were more formal. Robert Steele was a good bit older than his wife, who was dressed in a very becoming mixture of red and dark green, though with a skirt that was rather shorter than either Wendy’s or Dora’s and even more noticeably so than that of Marjorie Friar, who was clearly no dresser.

“We’re so glad you could get away in time,” exclaimed Wendy, while Tom busied himself with furnishing everyone with sherry. “It must be difficult if there’s late dispensing to be done.”

“No trouble these days,” boomed Robert Steele. “I’ve got a young assistant now. He’s a great help.”

Then Miss Hooper, whose skirt was longest of all, was shown in. She was out of breath and full of apology for being so late. “Wendy, dear, I am so very sorry,” she fluttered. “I’m afraid the Waits will be here in no time at all...”

“And they won’t wait,” said Henry guilelessly, “will they?”

“If you ask me,” opined Tom Witherington, “they won’t get past the ‘Royal Oak’ in a hurry.”

“The children are coming down in their dressing-gowns to listen to the carols,” said Wendy, rightly ignoring both remarks. “And I don’t mind how tired they get tonight.”

“Who’s playing Father Christmas?” asked Robert Steele jovially. He was a plump fellow, whose gaze rested fondly on his young wife most of the time.

“Not me,” said Tom Witherington.

“I am,” declared Henry. “For my sins.”

“Then, when I am tackled on the matter,” said the children’s father piously, “I can put my hand on my heart and swear total innocence.”

“And how will you get out of giving an honest answer, Henry?” enquired Dora Watkins playfully.

“I shall hope,” replied Henry, “to remain true to the traditions of the Foreign Service and give an answer that is at one and the same time absolutely correct and totally meaningless...”

At which moment the sound of the dinner gong being struck came from the hall and presently the whole party moved through to the dining-room, Uncle George giving the barometer a surreptitious tap on the way.

Henry Tyler studied the members of the party under cover of a certain amount of merry chat. It was part and parcel of his training that he could at one and the same time discuss Christmas festivities in England with poor Mrs. Godiesky while covertly observing the other guests. Lorraine Steele was clearly the apple of her husband’s eye, but he wasn’t sure that the same could be said for Marjorie Friar, who emerged as a complainer and sounded — and looked — quite aggrieved with life.

Lorraine Steele though, was anything but dowdy. Henry decided her choice of red and green — Christmas colours — was a sign of a new outfit for yuletide.

He was also listening for useful clues about their homeland in the Professor’s conversation, while becoming aware that Tom’s old Uncle George really was getting quite senile now and learning that the latest of Mrs. Friar’s succession of housemaids had given in her notice.

“And at Christmas, too,” she complained. “So inconsiderate.”

Peter Watkins was displaying a modest pride in his Christmas present to his wife.

“Well,” he said in the measured tones of his profession of banking, “personally, I’m sure that refrigerators are going to be the thing of the future.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned larder,” said Wendy stoutly, like the good wife she was. There was little chance of Tom Witherington being able to afford a refrigerator for a very long time. “Besides, I don’t think Cook would want to change her ways now. She’s quite set in them, you know.”

“But think of the food we’ll save,” said Dora. “It’ll never go bad now.”

“ ‘Use it up, wear it out.’ ” Something had stirred in old Uncle George’s memory.

“ ‘Make it do, do without or we’ll send it to Belgium.’ ”

“And you’ll be more likely to avoid food poisoning, too,” said Robert Steele earnestly. “Won’t they, Dr. Friar?”

“Yes, indeed,” the medical man agreed at once. “There’s always too much of that about and it can be very dangerous.”

The pharmacist looked at both the Watkins and said gallantly, “I can’t think of a better present.”

“But you did, darling,” chipped in Lorraine Steele brightly, “didn’t you?”

Henry was aware of an unspoken communication passing between the two Steeles; and then Lorraine Steele allowed her left hand casually to appear above the table. Her fourth finger was adorned with both a broad gold wedding ring and a ring on which was set a beautiful solitaire diamond.

“Robert’s present,” she said rather complacently, patting her blonde Marcel waved hair and twisting the diamond ring round. “Isn’t it lovely?”

“I wanted her to wear it on her right hand,” put in Robert Steele, “because she’s left-handed, but she won’t hear of it.”

“I should think not,” said Dora Watkins at once. “The gold wedding ring sets it off so nicely.”

“That’s what I say, too,” said Mrs. Steele prettily, lowering her be-ringed hand out of sight again.

“Listen!” cried Wendy suddenly. “It’s the Waits. I can hear them now. Come along, everyone... it’s mince pies and coffee all round in the hall afterwards.”

The Berebury carol-singers parked their lanterns outside the front door and crowded round the Christmas tree in the Witheringtons’ entrance hall, their sheets of music held at the ready.

“Right,” called out their leader, a young man with a rather prominent Adam’s apple. He began waving a little baton. “All together now...”

The familiar words of “Once in Royal David’s City” soon rang out through the house, filling it with joyous sound. Henry caught a glimpse of a tear in Mrs. Godiesky’s eye; and noted a look of great nostalgia in little Miss Hooper’s earnest expression. There must have been ghosts of Christmases Past in the scene for her, too.

Afterwards, when it became important to recreate the scene in his mind for the police, Henry could only place the Steeles at the back of the entrance hall with Dr. Friar and Uncle George beside them. Peter and Dora Watkins had opted to stand a few steps up the stairs to the first-floor landing, slightly out of the press of people but giving them a good view. Mrs. Friar was standing awkwardly in front of the leader of the choir. Of Professor Hans Godiesky there was no sign whatsoever while the carols were being sung.

Henry remembered noticing suppressed excitement in the faces of his niece and nephew perched at the top of the stairs and hoping it was the music that they had found entrancing and not the piles of mince pies awaiting them among the decorative smilax on the credenza at the back of the hall.

They — and everyone else — fell upon them nonetheless as soon as the last carol had been sung. There was a hot punch, too, carefully mulled to just the right temperature by Tom Witherington, for those old enough to partake of it, and home-made lemonade for the young.

Almost before the last choirboy had scoffed the last mince pie the party at the Witheringtons’ broke up.

The pharmacist and his wife were the first to leave. They shook hands all round.

“I know it’s early,” said Lorraine Steele apologetically, “but I’m afraid Robert’s poor old tummy’s been playing him up again.” Henry, who had been expecting a rather limp paw, was surprised to find how firm her handshake was.

“If you’ll forgive us,” said Lorraine’s husband to Wendy, “I think we’d better be on our way now.” Robert Steele essayed a glassy, strained smile, but to Henry’s eye he looked more than a little white at the gills. Perhaps he, too, had spotted that the ring that was his Christmas present to his wife had got a nasty stain on the inner side of it.

The pair hurried off together in a flurry of farewells. Then the wispy Miss Hooper declared the evening a great success but said she wanted to check everything at St. Faith’s before the midnight service, and she, too, slipped away.

“What I want to know,” said Dora Watkins provocatively when the rest of the guests had reassembled in the drawing-room and Edward and Jennifer had been sent back — very unwillingly — to bed, “is whether it’s better to be an old man’s darling or a young man’s slave?”

A frown crossed Wendy’s face. “I’m not sure,” she said seriously.

“I reckon our Mrs. Steele’s got her husband where she wants him, all right,” said Peter Watkins, “don’t you?”

“Come back, William Wilberforce, there’s more work on slavery still to be done,” said Tom Witherington lightly. “What about a night-cap, anyone?”

But there were no takers, and in a few moments the Friars, too, had left.

Wendy suddenly said she had decided against going to the Midnight Service after all and would see everyone in the morning. The rest of the household also opted for an early night and in the event Henry Tyler was the only one of the party to attend the Midnight Service at St. Faith’s church that night.

The words of the last carol, “We Three Kings of Orient Are...” were still ringing in his ears as he crossed the Market Square to the church. Henry wished that the Foreign Office had only kings to deal with: life would be simpler then. Dictators and Presidents — particularly one President not so very many miles from “perfidious Albion” — were much more unpredictable.

He hummed the words of the last verse of the carol as he climbed the church steps:

Perhaps, he thought, as he sought a back pew and his nostrils caught the inimical odour of a mixture of burning candles and church flowers, he should have been thinking of frankincense or even — when he saw the burnished candlesticks and altar cross — Melchior’s gold...

His private orisons were interrupted a few minutes later by a sudden flurry of activity near the front of the church, and he looked up in time to see little Miss Hooper being helped out by the two churchwardens.

“If I might just have a drink of water,” he heard her say before she was borne off to the vestry. “I’ll be all right in a minute. So sorry to make a fuss. So very sorry...”

The rector’s sermon was its usual interminable length and he was able to wish his congregation a happy Christmas as they left the church. As Henry walked back across the square he met Dr. Friar coming out of the Steeles’ house.

“Chap’s collapsed,” he murmured. “Severe epigastric pain and vomiting. Mrs. Steele came round to ask me if I would go and see him. There was blood in the vomit and that frightened her.”

“It would,” said Henry.

“He’s pretty ill,” said the doctor. “I’m getting him into hospital as soon as possible.”

“Could it have been something he ate here?” said Henry, telling him about little Miss Hooper.

“Too soon to tell but quite possible,” said the doctor gruffly. “You’d better check how the others are when you get in. I rather think Wendy might be ill, too, from the look of her when we left, and I must say my wife wasn’t feeling too grand when I went out. Ring me if you need me.”

Henry came back to a very disturbed house indeed, with several bedroom lights on. No one was very ill but Wendy and Mrs. Godiesky were distinctly unwell. Dora Watkins was perfectly all right and was busy ministering to those that weren’t.

Happily, there was no sound from the children’s room and he crept in there to place a full stocking beside each of their beds. As he came back downstairs to the hall, he thought he heard an ambulance bell next door.

“The position will be clearer in the morning,” he said to himself, a Foreign Office man to the end of his fingertips.

It was.

Half the Witherington household had had a severe gastro-intestinal upset during the night, and Robert Steele had died in the Berebury Royal Infirmary at about two o’clock in the morning.

When Henry met his sister on Christmas morning she had a very wan face indeed.

“Oh, Henry,” she cried, “isn’t it terrible about Robert Steele? And the rector says half the young Waits were ill in the night, too, and poor little Miss Hooper as well!”

“That lets the punch out, doesn’t it?” said Henry thoughtfully, “seeing as the youngsters weren’t supposed to have any.”

“Cook says...”

“Is she all right?” enquired Henry curiously.

“She hasn’t been ill, if that’s what you mean, but she’s very upset.” Wendy sounded quite nervous. “Cook says nothing like this has ever happened to her before.”

“It hasn’t happened to her now,” pointed out Henry unkindly but Wendy wasn’t listening.

“And Edward and Jennifer are all right, thank goodness,” said Wendy a little tearfully. “Tom’s beginning to feel better but I hear Mrs. Friar’s pretty ill still and poor Mrs. Godiesky is feeling terrible. And as for Robert Steele... I just don’t know what to think. Oh, Henry, I feel it’s all my fault.”

“Well, it wasn’t the lemonade,” deduced Henry. “Both children had lots. I saw them drinking it.”

“They had a mince pie each, too,” said their mother. “I noticed. But some people who had them have been very ill since...”

“Exactly, my dear. Some, but not all.”

“But what could it have been, then?” quavered Wendy. “Cook is quite sure she only used the best of everything. And it stands to reason it was something that they ate here.” She struggled to put her fears into words. “Here was the only place they all were.”

“It stands to reason that it was something they were given here,” agreed Henry, whom more than one ambassador had accused of pedantry, “which is not quite the same thing.”

She stared at him. “Henry, what do you mean?”

Inspector Milsom knew what he meant.

It was the evening of Boxing Day when he and Constable Bewman came to the Witheringtons’ house.

“A number of people would appear to have suffered from the effects of ingesting a small quantity of a dangerous substance at this address,” Milsom announced to the company assembled at his behest. “One with fatal results.”

Mrs. Godiesky shuddered. “Me, I suffer a lot.”

“Me, too,” Peter Watkins chimed in.

“But not, I think, sir, your wife?” Inspector Milsom looked interrogatively at Dora Watkins.

“No, Inspector,” said Dora. “I was quite all right.”

“Just as well,” said Tom Witherington. He still looked pale. “We needed her to look after us.”

“Quite so,” said the Inspector.

“It wasn’t food poisoning, then?” said Wendy eagerly. “Cook will be very pleased...”

“It would be more accurate, madam,” said Inspector Milsom, who didn’t have a cook to be in awe of, “to say that there was poison in the food.”

Wendy paled. “Oh...”

“This dangerous substance of which you speak,” enquired Professor Godiesky with interest, “is its nature known?”

“In England,” said the Inspector, “we call it corrosive sublimate...”

“Mercury? Ah,” the refugee nodded sagely, “that would explain everything.”

“Not quite everything, sir,” said the Inspector mildly. “Now, if we might see you one at a time, please.”

“This poison, Inspector,” said Henry after he had given his account of the carol-singing to the two policemen, “I take it that it is not easily available?”

“That is correct, sir. But specific groups of people can obtain it.”

“Doctors and pharmacists?” hazarded Henry.

“And certain manufacturers...”

“Certain... Oh, Uncle George?” said Henry. “Of course. There’s plenty of mercury in thermometers.”

“The old gentleman is definitely a little confused, sir.”

“And Professors of Chemistry?” said Henry.

“In his position,” said the Inspector judiciously, “I should myself have considered having something with me just in case.”

“There being a fate worse than death,” agreed Henry swiftly, “such as life in some places in Europe today. Inspector, might I ask what form this poison takes?”

“It’s a white crystalline substance.”

“Easily confused with sugar?”

“It would seem easily enough,” said the policeman drily.

“And what you don’t know, Inspector,” deduced Henry intelligently, “is whether it was scattered on the mince pies... I take it it was on the mince pies?”

“They were the most likely vehicle,” conceded the policeman.

“By accident or whether it was meant to make a number of people slightly ill or...”

“Or,” put in Detective Constable Bewman keenly, “one person very ill indeed?”

“Or,” persisted Henry quietly, “both.”

“That is so.” He gave a dry cough. “As it happens it did both make several people ill and one fatally so.”

“Which also might have been intended?” Nobody had ever called Henry slow.

“From all accounts,” said Milsom obliquely, “Mr. Steele had a weak tummy before he ingested the corrosive sublimate of mercury.”

“Uncle George wasn’t ill, was he?”

“No, sir, nor Dr. Friar.” He gave his dry cough. “I am told that Dr. Friar never partakes of pastry.”

“Mrs. Steele?”

“Slightly ill. She says she just had one mince pie. Mrs. Watkins didn’t have any. Nor did the Professor.”

“ ‘The one without the parsley,’ ” quoted Henry, “is the one without the poison.”

“Just so, sir. It would appear at first sight from our immediate calculations quite possible that...”

“Inspector, if you can hedge your bets as well as that before you say anything, we could find you a job in the Foreign Office.”

“Thank you, sir. As I was saying, sir, it is possible that the poison was only in the mince pies furthest from the staircase. Bewman here has done a chart of where the victims took their pies from.”

“Which would explain why some people were unaffected,” said Henry.

“Which might explain it, sir.” The Inspector clearly rivalled Henry in his precision. “The Professor just wasn’t there to take one at all. He says he went to his room to finish his wife’s Christmas present. He was carving something for her out of a piece of old wood.”

“ ‘Needs must when the devil drives,’ ” responded Henry absently. He was still thinking. “It’s a pretty little problem, as they say.”

“Means and opportunity would seem to be present,” murmured Milsom.

“That leaves motive, doesn’t it?” said Henry.

“The old gentleman mightn’t have had one, seeing he’s as he is, sir, if you take my meaning and of course we don’t know anything about the Professor and his wife, do we, sir? Not yet.”

“Not a thing.”

“That leaves the doctor...”

“I’d’ve murdered Mrs. Friar years ago,” announced Henry cheerfully, “if she had been my wife.”

“And Mrs. Steele.” There was a little pause and then Inspector Milsom said, “I understand the new young assistant at the pharmacy is more what you might call a contemporary of Mrs. Steele.”

“Ah, so that’s the way the wind’s blowing, is it?”

“And then, sir,” said the policeman, “after motive there’s still what we always call down at the station the fourth dimension of crime...”

“And what might that be, Inspector?”

“Proof.” He got up to go. “Thank you for your help, sir.”

Henry sat quite still after the two policemen had gone, his memory teasing him. Someone he knew had been poisoned with corrosive sublimate of mercury, served to him in tarts. By a tart, too, if history was to be believed.

No, not someone he knew.

Someone he knew of.

Someone they knew about at the Foreign Office because it had been a political murder, a famous political murder set round an eternal triangle...

Henry Tyler sought out Professor Godiesky and explained.

“It was recorded by contemporary authors,” Henry said, “that when the tarts poisoned with mercury were delivered to the Tower of London for Sir Thomas Overbury, the fingernail of the woman delivering them had accidentally been poked through the pastry...”

The professor nodded sapiently. “And it was stained black?”

“That’s right,” said Henry. History did have some lessons to teach, in spite of what Henry Ford had said. “But it would wash off?”

“Yes,” said Hans Godiesky simply.

“So I’m afraid that doesn’t get us anywhere, does it?”

The academic leaned forward slightly, as if addressing a tutorial. “There is, however, one substance on which mercury always leaves its mark.”

“There is?” said Henry.

“Its — how do you say it in English? — its ineradicable mark.”

“That’s how we say it,” said Henry slowly. “And which substance, sir, would that be?”

“Gold, Mr. Tyler. Mercury stains gold.”

“For ever?”

“For ever.” He waved a hand. “An amalgam is created.”

“And I,” Henry gave a faint smile, “I was foolish enough to think it was diamonds that were for ever.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing, Professor. Nothing at all. Forgive me, but I think I may be able to catch the Inspector and tell him to look to the lady. And her gold wedding ring.”

“Look to the lady?” The refugee was now totally bewildered. “I do not understand...”

“It’s a quotation.”

“Ach, sir, I fear I am only a scientist.”

“There’s a better quotation,” said Henry, “about looking to science for the righting of wrongs. I rather think Mrs. Steele may have looked to science, too, to — er — improve her lot. And if she carefully scattered the corrosive sublimate over some mince pies and not others it would have been with her left hand...”

“Because she was left-handed,” said the Professor immediately. “That I remember. And you think one mince pie would have had — I know the English think this important — more than its fair share?”

“I do. Then all she had to do was to give her husband that one and Bob’s your uncle. Clever of her to do it in someone else’s house.”

Hans Godiesky looked totally mystified. “And who was Bob?”

“Don’t worry about Bob,” said Henry from the door. “Think about Melchior and his gold instead.”

Boxing Unclever Robert Barnard

When serial killer novels, police procedurals, and violent crime fiction began to dominate the mystery genre, a handful of British authors maintained the legacy of the traditional detective story, and one of the stars of that challenging subgenre during the last quarter of the twentieth century was Robert Barnard. Born in the deliciously named town of Burnham-on-Crouch, he moved to Australia to teach after his graduation from Oxford University and then taught English at two universities in Norway before settling in Leeds. Many of his humorous and satiric detective novels feature the Scotland Yard inspector Perry Trethowan. “Boxing Unclever” was first published in A Classic Christmas Crime, edited by Tim Heald (London, Pavilion, 1995).

“The true spirit of Christmas,” said Sir Adrian Tremayne, fingering the stem of the small glass of port which was all he was allowed, “is not to be found in the gluttony and ostentation which that charlatan and sentimentalist Charles Dickens encouraged.” He looked disparagingly round at the remains of the dinner still encumbering the long table. “Not in turkey and plum pudding, still less in crackers and expensive gifts. No — a thousand times!” His voice was thrilling, but was then lowered to a whisper, and it carried as it once had carried through the theatres of the nation. “The true spirit of Christmas lies of course in reconciliation.”

“Reconciliation — very true,” said the Reverend Sykes.

“Why else, in the Christmas story, do we find simple shepherds and rich kings worshipping together in the stable?”

“I don’t think they actually—” began the Reverend Fortescue, but he was waved aside.

“To show that man is one, of one nature, in the eyes of God. This reconciliation of opposites is the one true heart of the Christmas message. That was the plan that, at every Christmastide, was acted upon by myself and my dear wife Alice, now no longer with us. Or indeed with anyone. Christmas Day we would spend quietly and simply, with just ourselves for company once the children had grown up and made their own lives. On Boxing Day we would invite a lot of people round to Herriton Hall, and in particular people with whom there had been some breech, with whom we needed to be reconciled.” He paused, reaching for reserves in that treacle and molasses voice that had thrilled audiences up and down the country.

“That was what we did that memorable Christmas of 1936. Ten... years... ago.”

There were many nods around the table, both from those who had heard the story before, and from those who were hearing it for the first time.

“Christmas Day was quiet — even, it must be confessed, a little dull,” Sir Adrian resumed. “We listened to the new King’s broadcast, and wondered at his conquest of his unfortunate speech impediment. It is always good to reflect on those who do not have one’s own natural advantages. I confess the day was for me mainly notable for a sense of anticipation. I thought with joy of the beautiful work of reconciliation that was to be undertaken on the next day. And of the other work...”

There was a regrettable snigger from one or two quarters of the table.

“Reconciliation has its limits,” suggested Martin Lovejoy.

“Regrettably it does,” acknowledged Sir Adrian, with a courteous bow in Martin’s direction. “We are but human, after all. I could only hope that the Christian work of reconciliation in all cases but one would plead for me at the Judgement Seat against that one where... Ah well, who knows? Does not the Bible speak of there being only one unforgivable sin?”

The three reverend gentlemen present all seemed to want to talk at once, which enabled Sir Adrian to sweep ahead with his story. “The first to arrive that Boxing morning was Angela Montfort, closely followed by Daniel West, the critic. Indeed, I think it probable that they in fact arrived together, because there was no sign of transport for Angela. West’s reviews of her recent performances had made me wonder — so mindlessly enthusiastic were they — whether Something was Going On. Something usually was, with Angela, and the idea that the English critic is incorruptible is pure stardust. My quarrel with Angela, however, had nothing to do with Sex. It was her ludicrous and constant upstaging of me during the national tour of Private Lives, for which I had taken over the Coward role, and gave a performance which many thought — but, no matter. Old triumphs, old triumphs.”

It was given a weary intonation worthy of Prospero’s farewell to his Art.

“And West’s offence?” asked Martin Lovejoy innocently. He was the most theatrically sophisticated of them, and he knew.

“A review in his provincial newspaper of my Malvolio,” said Sir Adrian shortly, “which was hurtful in the extreme.”

“Was that the one which spoke of your ‘shrunken shanks’?” asked Peter Carbury, who was the only person present who read the Manchester Guardian.

“A deliberate effect of costuming!” said Sir Adrian fiercely. “A very clever design by my dear friend Binkie Mather. Typical of a critic’s ignorance and malice that he could not see that.”

He took a sip of port to restore his equanimity, and while he did so Peter winked at Martin and Martin winked at Peter.

“Angela gushed, of course,” resumed Sir Adrian, “as I led her into the drawing-room. ‘So wonderful to be back at dear old Herriton again’—that kind of thing. West looked around with a cynical expression on his face. He had been there before, when I had been under the illusion that he was one of the more perceptive of the up-and-coming critics, and I knew he coveted the house, with its magnificent views over the Sussex Downs. I suspected that he found the idea of the gentleman actor rather ridiculous, but the idea of the gentleman critic not ridiculous at all. The gentleman’s code allows dabbling. West had a large independent income, which is no guarantee of sound judgement. His cynical expression was assumed, but I was relentlessly courteous to them both, and it was while I was mixing them cocktails that Alice — dear Alice — led in Frank Mandeville.”

“Her lover,” said Peter Carbury.

“My dear boy, do not show your provinciality and vulgarity,” said Sir Adrian severely. “In the theatre we take such things in our stride. Let us say merely that in the past he had been her cavalier servente.”

“Her what?” demanded Stephen Coates in an aggrieved voice. He had an oft-proclaimed and very British hatred of pretension.

“An Italian term,” explained Sir Adrian kindly, “for a man who serves a lady as a sort of additional husband. There is a long tradition of such people in Italy.”

“They are usually a lot younger,” said Peter Carbury. “As in this case.”

“Younger,” conceded Sir Adrian. “Though hardly a lot younger. Frank Mandeville had been playing juvenile leads for so long he could have taken a Ph.D. in juvenility. Alice’s... patronage of him was short and long over, and when she led him in it was clear to me from the expression on her face that she was mystified as to what had once attracted her. When I saw his hair, slicked back with so much oil that it must have felt like being pleasured by a garage mechanic, I felt similarly mystified.”

“It must have been a jolly party,” commented Stephen Coates. Sir Adrian smiled at him, to signify to all that Stephen was not the sort of young man who could be expected to understand the ways of polite, still less theatrical, society.

“I must confess that when Frank bounced in Angela did say, ‘What is this?’ and looked suspiciously from Alice to me and back. But we had taken — I had taken — the precaution of inviting a number of local nonentities — the headmaster of a good school, an impoverished squire and his dreary wife, at least two vicars, and other such good people — and as they now began arriving they, so to speak, defused suspicion.”

“Suspicion?” asked Mike, who had never heard the story before and was far from bright. Sir Adrian waved his hand with an airy grandness gained playing aristocrats of the old school.

“It was not until things were well under way that Richard Mallatrat and his wife arrived.”

“The greatest Hamlet of his generation,” put in Peter Carbury, with malicious intent.

“I cannot think of fainter praise,” responded Sir Adrian loftily. “The art of Shakespearean acting is dead. If the newspapers are to be believed the Theatre today is dominated by young Olivier, who can no more speak the Bard than he can underplay a role.”

“You and Mallatrat were rivals for the part, weren’t you?” Carbury asked. Sir Adrian, after a pause, allowed the point.

“At the Old Vic. No money to speak of, but a great deal of prestige. I certainly wanted the part badly.”

“To revive your career?” suggested the Reverend Sykes. He received a look of concentrated hatred.

“My career has never needed revival! To show the younger generation how it should be done! To set standards for people who had lost the true art of acting. Instead of which Mallatrat was given the role and had in it a showy success, lacking totally the quality of thought, which is essential to the role, and quite without too the music which... another more experienced actor would have brought to it.” He bent forward malevolently, eyes glinting. “And I was offered the role of Polonius.”

“It’s a good role,” said the Reverend Fortescue, probably to rub salt in the wound. He was ignored.

“That was his malice, of course. He organized that, put the management up to it, then told the story to all his friends. I never played the Old Vic again. I had to disappoint my legion of fans, but there are some insults not to be brooked.”

“You did try to get even through his wife, didn’t you?” asked Martin Lovejoy, who was all too well informed in that sort of area.

“A mere newspaper story. Gloria Davere was not then his wife, though as good as, and she was not the trumpery Hollywood ‘star’ she has since become. Certainly we had — what is this new film called? — a brief encounter. I have told you the morality of the theatre is not the morality of Leamington Spa or Catford. We happened to meet on Crewe Station one Saturday night, after theatre engagements elsewhere. I confess — sordid though it may sound — that for me it was no more than a means of passing the time, stranded as we were by the vagaries of the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway. But the thought did occur to me that I would be teaching this gauche young thing more gracious ways — introducing her to the lovemaking of an earlier generation, when romance still reigned, and a lady was treated with chivalry and respect.”

“I believe she told the News of the World it was like fucking Old Father Time,” said Carbury to Martin Lovejoy, but so sotto was his voce that Sir Adrian was able to roll on regardless.

“She later, of course, talked, and spitefully, but the idea that our encounter had anything in it of revenge on my part is sheer moonshine. On her part, perhaps, in view of the talk she put around, but as to myself, I plead innocent of any such sordid emotion.”

“So that was the cast-list assembled, was it?” asked the Reverend Sykes.

“Nearly, nearly,” said Sir Adrian, with the unhurried stance of the habitual narrator, which in the case of this story he certainly was. “Thus far the party seemed to be going well. The attractions of Richard Mallatrat and his flashy wife to the nonentities was something I had anticipated: they crowded around them, larding them with gushing compliments and expressions of admiration for this or that trumpery performance on stage or screen. Everyone, it seemed, had seen a Gloria Davere talkie or Richard Mallatrat as Hamlet, or Romeo, or Richard II. I knew it would be nauseating, and nauseating it was. Angela Montfort, for one, was immensely put out, with no knot of admirers to feed her self-love. She contented herself with swapping barbs with Frank Mandeville, who was of course enraged by the attention paid to Richard Mallatrat.”

“Hardly a Shakespearean actor, though, this Frank Mandeville,” commented Peter Carbury.

“Hardly an actor at all,” amended Sir Adrian. “But logic does not come into theatrical feuds and jealousies. Mandeville playing Hamlet would hardly have passed muster on a wet Tuesday in Bolton, but that did not stop him grinding his teeth at the popularity of Richard Mallatrat.”

“He wasn’t the only one,” whispered Stephen Coates.

“And so it was time for a second round of drinks. I decided on that as I saw toiling up the drive the figure of my dear old dresser Jack Roden. My once-dear old dresser. I poured out a variety of drinks including some already-mixed cocktails, two kinds of sherry, some gins and tonic, and two glasses of neat whisky. There was only one person in the room with the appalling taste to drink neat whisky before luncheon. Pouring two glasses gave that person a fifty-fifty chance of survival. Depending on how the tray was presented. With my back to the guests I dropped the hyoscine into one of the whisky glasses.”

“Who was the whisky-drinker?” asked Roland, knowing the question would not be answered.

“The one with the worst taste,” said Sir Adrian dismissively. “Then I went off to open the front door. Jack shuffled in, muttering something about the dreadful train and bus service you got over Christmas. He was a pathetic sight. The man who had been seduced away from me by Richard Mallatrat, and then dumped because he was not up to the contemporary demands of the job, could hardly any longer keep himself clean and neat, let alone anyone else. I threw the bottle of hyoscine as far as I could manage into the shrubbery, then ushered him with conspicuous kindness in to the drawing-room, solicitously introducing him to people he didn’t know and people he did. ‘But you two are old friends,’ I remember saying when I led him up the scoundrel Mallatrat. Even that bounder had the grace to smile a mite queasily. Out of the corner of my eye I was pleased to see that some of the guests had already helped themselves from the tray.”

“Why were you pleased?”

“It meant that others than myself had been up the tray. And it would obviously be theatrical people — the nonentities wouldn’t dare.”

“It doesn’t sound the happiest of parties,” commented Lovejoy.

“Doesn’t it? Oh, but theatre people can relax anywhere, particularly if there are admirers present. Once some of the nonentities felt they should tear themselves away from the star duo of Mallatrat and Davere, then Angela got her share of attention, and Alice as hostess had her little knot — she had left the stage long before, of course, though she was still by nature a stage person. No, it was far from an unhappy party.”

“Until the fatality,” suggested the Reverend Fortescue.

“Until the fatality,” agreed Sir Adrian. “Though even that...”

“Did not dampen spirits?”

“Not entirely. Poison is slow, of course. You can have a quick, dramatic effect with cyanide — even I have acted on occasion in thrillers, and know that — but most of them take their time. People thought at first it was an upset tummy. Alice said she hoped that was all it was. She of course was not in on my plans. I’ve never found women entirely reliable, have you?”

He looked around the table. None of his listeners had found women entirely reliable.

“So it wasn’t she who took the tray round?” asked Simon. “Was it one of your servants?”

“No, indeed. The servants had been set to preparing lunch, and that was all they did. As a gentleman I had an instinctive aversion to involving faithful retainers in... a matter of this kind.”

“I assume you didn’t take it round yourself, though?”

“I did not. I tapped poor old Jack Roden on the shoulder — he was deep in rambling reminiscence with Daniel West (viewpoints from well away from the footlights) — and I asked him if he could help by taking round fresh drinks. That had always been my plan, though I confess that when I saw how doddering and uncertain he had become I very nearly changed it, fearing he would drop everything on the floor. But I placed the tray in his hands exactly as I wanted it, so that the poisoned whisky would be closest to hand when he got to the victim.”

“And — to state the obvious — the victim took it,” suggested the Reverend Fortescue.

“He took it. That was the signal for the toast. I cleared my throat and all fell silent. I flatter myself I know how to enforce silence. I had thought hard about the toast, and even today I think it rather beautiful. ‘My friends,’ I said. ‘To friends old and new, to renewal and reconciliation, to the true spirit of Christmas.’ There was much warm assent to my words, and glasses were raised. We all drank to Christmas, and the victim drank his down.”

“He wasn’t a sipper?” enquired Stephen.

“No. The victim was the sort who drank down and then had an interval before the next. I rather think myself that sipping is more social.”

“How long was it before the effects were felt?”

“Oh, twenty minutes or more,” said Sir Adrian, his face set in a reminiscent smile. “First just the look of queasiness, then some time later confessions of feeling ill. Alice was all solicitude. She took the victim to my study, plied him with glasses of water, nostrums from our medicine cupboard. He was sweating badly, and his vision was impaired. Finally she came in and suggested that I ring Dr. Cameron from the village. He was not happy at being fetched out on Boxing Day, particularly as he had not been invited to the party.”

“Because he might have spotted what was wrong with him and saved him in time?”

“Precisely. Fortunately Dr. Cameron was the old-fashioned type of doctor, now rare, who went everywhere on foot. By the time he arrived, all Scottish tetchiness and wounded self-esteem, there was nothing to be done. Then it was questions, suspicions, and eventually demands that the police be called in. It made for an exciting if somewhat uneasy atmosphere — not a Boxing Day, I fancy, that anyone present will forget.”

“And the police were quick to fix the blame, were they?” asked Mike. Sir Adrian sighed a Chekhovian sigh.

“Faster, I confess, than even I could have feared. The village bobby was an unknown quantity to me, being new to the district. I had counted on a thick-headed rural flatfoot of the usual kind, but even my first impression told me that he was unusually bright. He telephoned at once for a superior from Mordwick, the nearest town, but before he arrived with the usual team so familiar to us from detective fiction, the local man had established the main sequence of events, and could set out clearly for the investigating inspector’s benefit all the relevant facts.”

“But those facts would have left many people open to suspicion,” suggested Peter Carbury.

“Oh, of course. Practically all the theatre people had been near the tray, except the victim, and all of them might be thought to bear malice to the victim. It was, alas, my wife Alice who narrowed things down so disastrously — quite inadvertently, of course.” Sir Adrian was unaware that the foot of the Reverend Sykes touched the foot of the Reverend Fortescue at this point. They knew a thing or two about human nature, those clerics. And not just their own sins of the flesh. “Yes, Alice was apparently already on friendly terms with our new constable.” The feet touched again. “And when she was chatting to him quite informally after a somewhat fraught lunch, she happened to mention at some point that she had been standing near the window and imagined she saw something flying through the air.”

“The bottle?”

“The bottle. That did it. The grounds were searched, the bottle was found, and its content analysed. Then there could be no doubt.”

“No doubt?” asked Mike, not the brightest person there.

“Because the hyoscine had been put in the second round of drinks, and the only person who had left the room to go to the door had been myself — to let in Jack Roden. Roden could not have done it because the bottle was empty and thrown away by the time he got into the drawing-room. It could only be me. I was arrested and charged, and Theatre was the poorer.”

They all shook their heads, conscious they had reached the penultimate point in Sir Adrian’s narrative.

“Come along all,” said Archie by the door, on cue and jangling his keys. “Time you were making a move. We’ve got Christmas dinner to go to as well, you know.”

“But tell us,” said Mike who, apart from being stupid, hadn’t heard the story before, “who the victim was.”

Sir Adrian turned and surveyed them, standing around the table and the debris of their meal. He was now well into the run of this particular performance: there had been ten Christmases since a concerted chorus of Thespians had persuaded the new King not to celebrate his coronation with a theatrical knight on the scaffold. His head came forward and his stance came to resemble his long-ago performance as Richard III.

“You have to ask?” he rasped. “Who else could it be but the critic?” How he spat it out! “Who else could it be but the man who had libelled my legs?”

As he turned and led the shuffle back to the cells all eyes were fixed on the shrunken thighs and calves of one who had once been to tights what Betty Grable now was to silk stockings.

The Proof of the Pudding Peter Lovesey

All the books Peter Lovesey wrote in the early part of his career were set in the past, including the Victorian-era adventures of Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray, who made their debut in Wobble to Death (1970) and went on to become the basis for a popular television series on the PBS Mystery! program. He later wrote a series featuring Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, better known as Bertie — later King Edward VII. His more recent novels, notably those featuring the irascible Bath detective Peter Diamond, have been set in contemporary times. “The Proof of the Pudding” was first published in A Classic Christmas Crime, edited by Tim Heald (London, Pavilion, 1995).

Frank Morris strode into the kitchen and slammed a cold, white turkey on the kitchen table. “Seventeen pounds plucked. Satisfied?”

His wife Wendy was at the sink, washing the last few breakfast bowls. Her shoulders had tensed. “What’s that, Frank?”

“You’re not even bloody looking, woman.”

She took that as a command and wheeled around, rubbing her wet hands on the apron. “A turkey! That’s a fine bird. It really is.”

“Fine?” Frank erupted. “It’s nineteen forty-six, for Christ’s sake! It’s a bloody miracle. Most of them round here will be sitting down to joints of pork and mutton — if they’re lucky. I bring a bloody great turkey in on Christmas morning, and all you say is ‘fine’?”

“I just wasn’t prepared for it.”

“You really get my goat, you do.”

Wendy said tentatively, “Where did it come from, Frank?”

Her huge husband stepped towards her and for a moment she thought he would strike her. He lowered his face until it was inches from hers. Not even nine in the morning and she could smell sweet whisky on his breath. “I won it, didn’t I?” he said, daring her to disbelieve. “A meat raffle in the Valiant Trooper last night.”

Wendy nodded, pretending to be taken in. It didn’t do to challenge Frank’s statements. Black eyes and beatings had taught her well. She knew Frank’s rule of fist had probably won him the turkey, too. Frank didn’t lose at anything. If he could punch his way to another man’s prize, then he considered it fair game.

“Just stuff the thing and stick it in the oven,” he ordered. “Where’s the boy?”

“I think he’s upstairs,” Wendy replied warily. Norman had fled at the sound of Frank’s key in the front door.

“Upstairs?” Frank ranted. “On bloody Christmas Day?”

“I’ll call him.” Wendy was grateful for the excuse to move away from Frank to the darkened hallway. “Norman,” she gently called. “Your father’s home. Come and wish him a Happy Christmas.”

A pale, solemn young boy came cautiously downstairs, pausing at the bottom to hug his mother. Unlike most children of his age — he was nine — Norman was sorry that the war had ended in 1945. He had pinned his faith in the enemy putting up a stiff fight and extending it indefinitely. He still remembered the VE Day street party, sitting at a long wooden bench surrounded by laughing neighbours. He and his mother had found little to celebrate in the news that “the boys will soon be home.”

Wendy smoothed down his hair, whispered something, and led him gently into the kitchen.

“Happy Christmas, Dad,” he said, then added unprompted, “Did you come home last night?”

Wendy said quickly, “Never you mind about that, Norman.” She didn’t want her son provoking Frank on this of all days.

Frank didn’t appear to have heard. He was reaching up to the top shelf of a cupboard, a place where he usually kept his old army belt. Wendy pushed her arm protectively in front of the boy.

But instead of the belt, Frank took down a brown paper parcel. “Here you are, son,” he said, beckoning to Norman. “You’ll be the envy of the street in this. I saved it for you, specially.”

Norman stepped forward. He unwrapped his present, egged on by his grinning father.

He now owned an old steel helmet. “Thanks, Dad,” he said politely, turning it in his hands.

“I got it off a dead Jerry,” Frank said with gusto. “The bastard who shot your Uncle Ted. Sniper, he was. Holed up in a bombed-out building in Potsdam, outside Berlin. He got Ted with a freak shot. Twelve of us stormed the building and took him out.”

“Outside?”

“Topped him, Norman. See the hole round the back? That’s from a Lee Enfield .303. Mine.” Frank levelled an imaginary rifle to Wendy’s head and squeezed the trigger, miming both the recoil and report. “There wasn’t a lot left of Fritz after we’d finished. But I brought back the helmet for you, son. Wear it with pride. It’s what your Uncle Ted would have wanted.” He took the helmet and rammed it on the boy’s head.

Norman grimaced. He felt he was about to be sick.

“Frank dear, perhaps we should put it away until he’s a bit older,” Wendy tried her tact. “We wouldn’t want such a special thing to get damaged, would we? You know what young boys are like.”

Frank was unimpressed. “What are you talking about — ‘special thing’? It’s a bloody helmet, not a thirty-piece tea service. Look at the lad. He’s totally stunned. He loves it. Why don’t you get on and stuff that ruddy great turkey, like I told you?”

“Yes, Frank.”

Norman raised his hand, his small head an absurd sight in the large helmet. “May I go now?”

Frank beamed. “Of course, son. Want to show it off to all your friends, do you?”

Norman nodded, causing the helmet to slip over his eyes. He lifted it off his head. Smiling weakly at his father, he left the kitchen and dashed upstairs. The first thing he would do was wash his hair.

Wendy began to wash and prepare the bird, listening to Frank.

“I know just how the kid feels. I still remember my old Dad giving me a bayonet he brought back from Flanders. Said he ran six men through with it. I used to look for specks of blood, and he’d tell me how he stuck them like pigs. It was the best Christmas present I ever had.”

“I’ve got you a little something for Christmas. It’s behind the clock,” said Wendy, indicating a small package wrapped in newspaper and string.

“A present?” Frank snatched it up and tore the wrapping away. “Socks?” he said in disgust. “Is that it? Our first Christmas together in three bloody years, and all you can give your husband is a miserable pair of socks.”

“I don’t have much money, Frank,” Wendy reminded him, and instantly wished she had not.

Frank seized her by the shoulders, practically tipping the turkey off the kitchen table. “Are you saying that’s my fault?”

“No, love.”

“I’m not earning enough — is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

Wendy tried to pacify him, at the same time bracing herself for the violent shaking that would surely follow. Frank tightened his grip, forced her away from the table, and pushed her hard against the cupboard door, punctuating each word with a thump.

“That helmet cost me nothing,” he ranted. “Don’t you understand, woman? It’s the thought that counts. You don’t need money to show affection. You just need some savvy, some intelligence. Bloody socks — an insult!”

He shoved her savagely towards the table again. “Now get back to your work. This is Christmas Day. I’m a reasonable man. I’m prepared to overlook your stupidity. Stop snivelling, will you, and get that beautiful bird in the oven. Mum will be here at ten. I want the place smelling of turkey. I’m not having you ruining my Christmas.”

He strode out, heavy boots clumping on the wooden floor of the hallway. “I’m going round to Polly’s,” he shouted. “She knows how to treat a hero. Look at this dump. No decorations, no holly over the pictures. You haven’t even bought any beer, that I’ve seen. Sort something out before I get back.”

Wendy was still reeling from the shaking, but she knew she must speak before he left. If she didn’t remind him now, there would be hell to pay later. “Polly said she would bring the Christmas pudding, Frank. Would you make sure she doesn’t forget? Please, Frank.”

He stood grim-faced in the doorway, silhouetted against the drab terraced houses opposite. “Don’t tell me what to do, Wendy,” he said threateningly. “You’re the one due for a damned good reminding of what to do round here.”

The door shook in its frame. Wendy stood at the foot of the stairs, her heart pounding. She knew what Frank meant by a damned good reminding. The belt wasn’t used only on the boy.

“Is he gone, Mum?” Norman called from the top stair.

Wendy nodded, readjusting the pins in her thin, blonde hair, and drying her eyes. “Yes, love. You can come downstairs now.”

At the foot of the stairs, he told her, “I don’t want the helmet. It frightens me.”

“I know, dear.”

“I think there’s blood on it. I don’t want it. If it belonged to one of our soldiers, or one of the Yankees, I’d want it, but this is a dead man’s helmet.”

Wendy hugged her son. The base of her spine throbbed. A sob was building at the back of her throat.

“Where’s he gone?” Norman asked from the folds of her apron.

“To collect your Aunt Polly. She’s bringing a Christmas pudding, you know. We’d better make custard. I’m going to need your help.

“Was he there last night?” Norman asked innocently. “With Aunt Polly? Is it because she doesn’t have Uncle Ted any more?”

“I don’t know, Norman.” In truth, she didn’t want to know. Her widowed sister-in-law was welcome to Frank. Polly didn’t know the relief Wendy felt to be rid of him sometimes. Any humiliation was quite secondary to the fact that Frank stopped out all night, bringing respite from the tension and the brutality. The local gossips had been quick to suspect the truth, but she could do nothing to stop them.

Norman, sensing the direction her thoughts had taken, said, “Billy Slater says Dad and Aunt Polly are doing it.”

“That’s enough, Norman.”

“He says she’s got no elastic in her drawers. What does he mean, Mum?”

“Billy Slater is a disgusting little boy. Now let’s hear no more of this. We’ll make the custard.”

Norman spent the next hour helping his mother in the kitchen. The turkey barely fitted in the oven, and Norman became concerned that it wouldn’t be ready in time. Wendy knew better. There was ample time for the cooking. They couldn’t start until Frank and Polly rolled home from the Valiant Trooper. With last orders at a quarter to three, it gave the bird five hours to roast.

A gentle knock at the front door sent Norman hurrying to open it.

“Mum, it’s Grandma Morris!” he called out excitedly as he led the plump old woman into the kitchen. Maud Morris had been a marvellous support through the war years. She knew exactly when help was wanted.

“I’ve brought you some veggies,” Maud said to Wendy, dumping a bag of muddy cabbage and carrots on the table and removing her coat and hat. “Where’s that good-for-nothing son of mine? Need I ask?”

“He went to fetch Polly,” Wendy calmly replied.

“Did he, indeed?”

Norman said, “About an hour ago. I expect they’ll go to the pub.”

The old lady went into the hall to hang up her things. When she returned, she said to Wendy, “You know what people are saying, don’t you?”

Wendy ignored the question. “He brought in a seventeen-pound turkey this morning.”

“Have you got a knife?” her mother-in-law asked.

“A knife?”

“For the cabbage.” Maud turned to look at her grandson. “Have you had some good presents?”

Norman stared down at his shoe-laces.

Wendy said, “Grandma asked you a question, dear.”

“Did you get everything you asked for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you write to Saint Nick?” Maud asked with a sideward glance at Wendy.

Norman rolled his eyes upwards. “I don’t believe in that stuff anymore.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Dad gave me a dead German’s helmet. He says it belonged to the one who shot Uncle Ted. I hate it.”

Wendy gathered the carrots from the table and put them in the sink. “I’m sure he was only doing what he thought was best, Norman.”

“It’s got a bullet hole.”

“Didn’t he give you anything else?” his grandmother asked.

Norman shook his head. “Mum gave me some chocolate and the Dandy Annual.”

“But your dad didn’t give you a thing apart from the helmet?”

Wendy said, “Please don’t say anything. You know what it’s like.”

Maud Morris nodded. It was pointless to admonish her son. He’d only take it out on Wendy. She knew from personal experience the dilemma of the battered wife. To protest was to invite more violence. The knowledge that her second son had turned out such a bully shamed and angered her. Ted, her dear first-born Ted, would never have harmed a woman. Yet Ted had been taken from her. She took an apron from the back of the door and started shredding the cabbage. Norman was sent to lay the table in the front room.

Four hours later, when the King was speaking to the nation, they heard a key being tried at the front door. Wendy switched off the wireless. The door took at least three attempts to open before Frank and Polly stumbled in to the hallway. Frank stood swaying, a bottle in his hand and a paper hat cocked ridiculously on the side of his head. His sister-in-law clung to his coat, convulsed in laughter, a pair of ankle-strap shoes dangling from her right hand.

“Happy Christmas!” Frank roared. “Peace on earth and goodwill to all men except the Jerries and the lot next door.”

Polly doubled up in uncontrollable giggling.

“Let me take your coat, Polly,” Wendy offered. “Did you remember the pudding? I want to get it on right away.”

Polly turned to Frank. “The pudding. What did you do with the pudding, Frank?”

“What pudding?” said Frank.

Maud had come into the hall behind Wendy. “I know she’s made one. Don’t mess about, Frank. Where is it?”

Frank pointed vaguely over his shoulder.

Wendy said despairingly, “Back at Polly’s house? Oh no!”

“Stupid cow. What are you talking about?” said Frank. “It’s on our own bloody doorstep. I had to put it down to open the door, didn’t I?”

Wendy squeezed past them and retrieved the white basin covered with a grease-proof paper top. She carried it quickly through to the kitchen and lowered it into the waiting saucepan of simmering water. “It looks a nice big one.”

This generous remark caused another gale of laughter from Polly. Finally, slurring her words, she announced, “You’ll have to make allowances. Your old man’s a very naughty boy. He’s took me out and got me tiddly.”

Maud said, “It beats me where he gets the money from.”

“Beats Wendy, too, I expect,” said Polly. She leaned closer to her sister-in-law, a lock of brown hair swaying across her face. “From what I’ve heard, you know a bit about beating, don’t you, Wen?” The remark was not made in sympathy. It was triumphant.

Wendy felt the shame redden her face. Polly smirked and swung around, causing her black skirt to swirl as she left the room. The thick pencil lines she had drawn up the back of her legs to imitate stocking seams were badly smudged higher up. Wendy preferred not to think why.

She took the well-cooked bird from the oven, transferred it to a platter, and carried it into the front room. Maud and Norman brought in the vegetables.

“Would you like to carve, Frank?”

“Hold your horses, woman. We haven’t said the grace.”

Wendy started to say, “But we never...”

Frank had already intoned the words, “Dear Lord God Almighty.”

Everyone dipped their heads.

“Thanks for what we are about to receive,” Frank went on, “and for seeing to it that a skinny little half-pint won the meat raffle and decided to donate it to the Morris family.”

Maud clicked her tongue in disapproval.

Polly began to giggle.

“I can’t begin to understand the workings of your mysterious ways,” Frank insisted on going on, “because if there really is someone up there he should have made damned sure my brother Ted was sitting at this table today.”

Maud said, “That’s enough, Frank! Sit down.”

Frank said, “Amen. Where’s the carving knife?”

Wendy handed it to him, and he attended to the task, cutting thick slices and heaping them on the plates held by his mother. “That’s for Polly. She likes it steaming hot.”

Polly giggled again.

The plates were distributed around the table.

Not to be outdone in convivial wit, Polly said, “You’ve gone overboard on the breast, Frankie dear. I thought you were a leg man.”

Maud said tersely, “You should know.”

“Careful, Mum,” Frank cautioned, wagging the knife. “Goodwill to all men.”

Polly said, “Only if they behave themselves.”

A voice piped up, “Bill Slater says that—”

“Be quiet, Norman!” Wendy ordered.

They ate in heavy silence, save for Frank’s animalistic chewing and swallowing. The first to finish, he quickly filled his glass with more beer.

“Dad?”

“Yes, son.”

“Would we have won the war without the Americans?”

“The Yanks?” Frank scoffed. “Bunch of part-timers, son. They only came into it after men like me and your Uncle Ted had done all the real fighting. Just like the other war, the one my old Dad won. They waited till 1917. Isn’t that a fact, Mum? Americans? Where were they at Dunkirk? Where were they in Africa? I’ll tell you where they were — sitting on their fat backsides a couple of thousand miles away.”

“From what I remember, Frank,” Maud interjected. “You were sitting on yours in the snug-bar of the Valiant Trooper.”

“That was different!” Frank protested angrily. “Ted and I didn’t get called up until 1943. And when we were, we did our share. We chased Jerry all the way across Europe, right back to the bunker. Ted and me, brothers in arms, fighting for King and country. Ready to make the ultimate sacrifice. If Dad could have heard what you said just then, Mum, he’d turn in his grave.”

Maud said icily, “That would be difficult, seeing that he’s in a pot on my mantelpiece.”

Polly burst into helpless laughter and almost choked on a roast potato. It was injudicious of her.

“Belt up, will you?” Frank demanded. “We’re talking about the sacred memory of your dead husband. My brother.”

“Sorry, Frank.” Polly covered her mouth with her hands. “I don’t know what came over me. Honest.”

“You have no idea, you women,” Frank went on. “God knows what you got up to, while we were winning the war.”

“Anyway,” said Norman, “Americans have chewing gum. And jeeps.”

Fortunately, at this moment Frank was being distracted.

Wendy whispered in Norman’s ear and they both began clearing the table, but Maud put her hand over Wendy’s. She said, “Why don’t you sit down? You’ve done more than enough. I’ll fetch the pudding and custard. I’d like to get up for a while. It’s beginning to get a little warm in here.”

Polly offered to help. “It is my pudding, after all.” But she didn’t mean to get up because, unseen by the others, she had her hand on Frank’s thigh.

Maud said, “I’ll manage.”

Norman asked, “Is it a proper pudding?”

“I don’t know what you mean by proper,” said Polly. “It used up most of my rations when I made it. They have to mature, do puddings. This one is two years old. It should be delicious. There was only one drawback. In 1944, I didn’t have a man at home to help me stir the ingredients.” She gave Frank a coy smile.

Ignoring it, Wendy said, “When Norman asked if it was a proper pudding, I think he wanted to know if he might find a lucky sixpence inside.”

With a simper, Polly said, “He might, if he’s a good boy, like his dad. Of course it’s a proper pudding.”

Frank quipped, “What about the other sort? Do you ever make an improper pudding?”

Before anyone could stop him, Norman said, “You should know, Dad.” His reflexes were too quick for his drunken father’s, and the swinging blow missed him completely.

“You’ll pay for that remark, my son,” Frank shouted. “You’ll wash your mouth out with soap and water and then I’ll beat your backside raw.”

Wendy said quickly, “The boy doesn’t know what he’s saying, Frank. It’s Christmas. Let’s forgive and forget, shall we?”

He turned his anger on her. “And I know very well who puts these ideas in the boy’s head. And spreads the filthy rumours all over town. You can have your Christmas Day, Wendy. Make the most of it, because tomorrow I’m going to teach you why they call it Boxing Day.”

Maud entered the suddenly silent front room carrying the dark, upturned pudding decorated with a sprig of holly. “Be an angel and fetch the custard, Norman.”

The boy was thankful to run out to the kitchen.

Frank glanced at the pudding and then at Polly and then grinned. “What a magnificent sight!” He was staring at her cleavage.

Polly beamed at him, fully herself again, her morale restored by the humiliation her sister-in-law had just suffered. “The proof of the pudding...” she murmured.

“We’ll see if 1944 was a vintage year,” said Frank.

Maud sliced and served the pudding, giving Norman an extra large helping. The pudding was a delicious one, as Polly had promised, and there were complimentary sounds all round the table.

Norman sifted the rich, fruity mass with his spoon, hoping for one of those coveted silver sixpenny pieces. But Frank was the first to find one.

“You can have a wish. Whatever you like, lucky man,” said Polly in a husky, suggestive tone.

Frank’s thoughts were in another direction. “I wish,” he said sadly, holding the small coin between finger and thumb, “I wish God’s peace to my brother Ted, rest his soul. And I wish a Happy Christmas to all the blokes who fought with us and survived. And God rot all our enemies. And the bloody Yanks, come to that.”

“That’s about four wishes,” Polly said, “and it won’t come true if you tell everyone.”

Wendy felt the sharp edge of a sixpence in her mouth, and removed it unnoticed by the others. She wished him out of her life, with all her heart.

Norman finally found his piece of the pudding’s buried treasure. He spat the coin onto his plate and then examined it closely. “Look at this!” he said in surprise. “It isn’t a sixpence. It doesn’t have the King’s head.”

“Give it here.” Frank picked up the silver coin. “Jesus Christ! He’s right. It’s a dime. An American dime. How the hell did that get in the pudding?”

All eyes turned to Polly for an explanation. She stared wide-eyed at Frank. She was speechless.

Frank was not. He had reached his own conclusion. “I’ll tell you exactly how it got in there,” he said, thrusting it under Polly’s nose. “You’ve been stirring it up with a Yank. There was a GI base down the road, wasn’t there? When did you say you made the pudding? 1944?”

He rose from the table, spittle flying as he ranted. Norman slid from his chair and hid under the table, clinging in fear to his mother’s legs. He saw his father’s heavy boots turned towards Polly, whose legs braced. The hem of her dress was quivering.

Frank’s voice boomed around the small room. “Ted and I were fighting like bloody heroes while you were having it off with Americans. Whore!”

Norman saw a flash of his father’s hand as it reached into the fireplace and picked up a poker. He heard the women scream, then a sickening thump.

The poker fell to the floor. Polly’s legs jerked once and then appeared to relax. One of her arms flopped down and remained quite still. A drop of blood fell from the table edge. Presently there was another. Then it became a trickle. A crimson pool formed on the wooden floor.

Norman ran out of the room. Out of the house. Out into the cold afternoon, leaving the screams behind. He ran across the street and beat on a neighbour’s door with his fists. His frantic cries of “Help, murder!” filled the street. Within a short time an interested crowd in party hats had surrounded him. He pointed in horror to his own front door as his blood-stained father charged out and lurched towards him.

It took three men to hold Frank Morris down, and five policemen to take him away. The last of the policemen didn’t leave the house until long after Norman should have gone to bed. His mother and his grandmother sat silent for some time in the kitchen, unable to stay in the front room, even though Polly’s body had been taken away.

“He’s not going to come back, is he, Mum?”

Wendy shook her head. She was only beginning to think about what happened next. There would be a trial, of course, and she would try to shield Norman from the publicity. He was so impressionable.

“Will they hang him?”

“I think it’s time for your bed, young man,” Maud said. “You’ve got to be strong. Your mum will need your support more than ever now.”

The boy asked, “How did the dime get in the pudding, Grandma Morris?”

Wendy snapped out of her thoughts of what was to come and stared at her mother-in-law.

Maud went to the door, and for a moment it appeared as if she was reaching to put on her coat prior to leaving, but she had already promised to stay the night. Actually she was taking something from one of the pockets.

It was a Christmas card, a little bent at the edges now. Maud handed it to Wendy. “It was marked ‘private and confidential’ but it had my name, you see. I opened it thinking it was for me. It came last week. The address was wrong. They made a mistake over the house number. The postman delivered it to the wrong Mrs. Morris.”

Wendy took the card and opened it.

“The saddest thing is,” Maud continued to speak as Wendy read the message inside, “he is the only son I have left, but I really can’t say I’m sorry it turned out this way. I know what he did to you, Wendy. His father did the same to me for nearly forty years. I had to break the cycle. I read the card, love. I had no idea. I couldn’t let this chance pass by. For your sake, and the boy’s.”

A tear rolled down Wendy’s cheek. Norman watched as the two women hugged. The card drifted from Wendy’s lap and he pounced on it immediately. His eager eyes scanned every word.

Norman looked up at his grandmother and understood what she had done, and why. He didn’t speak. He could keep a secret as well as a grown-up. He was the man of the house now, at least until they got to America.

The Adventure of the Dauphin’s Doll Ellery Queen

In a brilliant marketing decision, the cousins who collaborated under the pseudonym Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee) also named their detective Ellery Queen. They reasoned that if readers forgot the name of the author or the name of the character, they might remember the other. It worked, as Ellery Queen is counted among the handful of best-known names in the history of mystery fiction. More than a dozen movies, as well as several radio and television shows, were based on Queen books. “The Adventure of the Dauphin’s Doll” was first published in the December 1948 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

There is a law among storytellers, originally passed by Editors at the cries (they say) of their constituents, which states that stories about Christmas shall have children in them. This Christmas story is no exception; indeed, misopedists will complain that we have overdone it. And we confess in advance that this is also a story about Dolls, and that Santa Claus comes into it, and even a Thief; though as to this last, whoever he was — and that was one of the questions — he was certainly not Barabbas, even parabolically.

Another section of the statute governing Christmas stories provides that they shall incline towards Sweetness and Light. The first arises, of course, from the orphans and the never-souring savor of the annual Miracle; as for Light, it will be provided at the end, as usual, by that luminous prodigy, Ellery Queen. The reader of gloomier temper will also find a large measure of Darkness, in the person and works of one who, at least in Inspector Queen’s harassed view, was surely the winged Prince of that region. His name, by the way, was not Satan, it was Comus; and this is paradox enow, since the original Comus, as everyone knows, was the god of festive joy and mirth, emotions not commonly associated with the Underworld. As Ellery struggled to embrace his phantom foe, he puzzled over this non sequitur in vain; in vain, that is, until Nikki Porter, no scorner of the obvious, suggested that he might seek the answer where any ordinary mortal would go at once. And there, to the great man’s mortification, it was indeed to be found: On page 262b of Volume 6, Coleb to Damasci, of the 175th Anniversary edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A French conjuror of that name — Comus — performing in London in the year 1789 caused his wife to vanish from the top of a table — the very first time, it appeared, that this feat, uxorial or otherwise, had been accomplished without the aid of mirrors. To track his dark adversary’s nom de nuit to its historic lair gave Ellery his only glint of satisfaction until that blessed moment when light burst all around him and exorcised the darkness, Prince and all.

But this is chaos.

Our story properly begins not with our invisible character but with our dead one.

Miss Ypson had not always been dead; au contraire. She had lived for seventy-eight years, for most of them breathing hard. As her father used to remark, “She was a very active little verb.” Miss Ypson’s father was a professor of Greek at a small Midwestern university. He had conjugated his daughter with the rather bewildered assistance of one of his brawnier students, an Iowa poultry heiress.

Professor Ypson was a man of distinction. Unlike most professors of Greek, he was a Greek professor of Greek, having been born Gerasymos Aghamos Ypsilonomon in Polykhnitos, on the island of Mytilini, “where,” he was fond of recalling on certain occasions, “burning Sappho loved and sung” — a quotation he found unfailingly useful in his extracurricular activities; and, the Hellenic ideal notwithstanding, Professor Ypson believed wholeheartedly in immoderation in all things. This hereditary and cultural background explains the professor’s interest in fatherhood — to his wife’s chagrin, for Mrs. Ypson’s own breeding prowess was confined to the barnyards on which her income was based — a fact of which her husband sympathetically reminded her whenever he happened to sire another wayward chick; he held their daughter to be nothing less than a biological miracle.

The professor’s mental processes also tended to confuse Mrs. Ypson. She never ceased to wonder why instead of shortening his name to Ypson, her husband had not sensibly changed it to Jones. “My dear,” the professor once replied, “you are an Iowa snob.”

“But nobody,” Mrs. Ypson cried, “can spell it or pronounce it!”

“This is a cross,” murmured Professor Ypson, “which we must bear with Ypsilanti.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Ypson.

There was invariably something Sibylline about his conversation. His favorite adjective for his wife was “ypsiliform,” a term, he explained, which referred to the germinal spot at one of the fecundation stages in a ripening egg and which was, therefore, exquisitely à propos. Mrs. Ypson continued to look bewildered; she died at an early age.

And the professor ran off with a Kansas City variety girl of considerable talent, leaving his baptized chick to be reared by an eggish relative of her mother’s, a Presbyterian named Jukes.

The only time Miss Ypson heard from her father — except when he wrote charming and erudite little notes requesting, as he termed it, lucrum — was in the fourth decade of his odyssey, when he sent her a handsome addition to her collection, a terra cotta play doll of Greek origin over three thousand years old which, unhappily, Miss Ypson felt duty-bound to return to the Brooklyn museum from which it had unaccountably vanished. The note accompanying her father’s gift had said, whimsically: “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.”

There was poetry behind Miss Ypson’s dolls. At her birth the professor, ever harmonious, signalized his devotion to fecundity by naming her Cytherea. This proved the Olympian irony. For, it turned out, her father’s philo-progenitiveness throbbed frustrate in her mother’s stony womb; even though Miss Ypson interred five husbands of quite adequate vigor, she remained infertile to the end of her days. Hence it is classically tragic to find her, when all passion was spent, a sweet little old lady with a vague if eager smile who, under the name of her father, pattered about a vast and echoing New York apartment playing enthusiastically with dolls.

In the beginning they were dolls of common clay: a Billiken, a kewpie, a Kathe Kruse, a Patsy, a Foxy Grandpa, and so forth. But then, as her need increased, Miss Ypson began her fierce sack of the past.

Down into the land of Pharaoh she went for two pieces of thin desiccated board, carved and painted and with hair of strung beads, and legless — so that they might not run away — which any connoisseur will tell you are the most superb specimens of ancient Egyptian paddle doll extant, far superior to those in the British Museum, although this fact will be denied in certain quarters.

Miss Ypson unearthed a foremother of “Letitia Penn,” until her discovery held to be the oldest doll in America, having been brought to Philadelphia from England in 1699 by William Penn as a gift for a playmate of his small daughter’s. Miss Ypson’s find was a wooden-hearted “little lady” in brocade and velvet which had been sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to the first English child born in the New World. Since Virginia Dare had been born in 1587, not even the Smithsonian dared impugn Miss Ypson’s triumph.

On the old lady’s racks, in her plate-glass cases, might be seen the wealth of a thousand childhoods, and some riches — for such is the genetics of dolls — possessed by children grown. Here could be found “fashion babies” from fourteenth century France, sacred dolls of the Orange Free State Fingo tribe, Satsuma paper dolls and court dolls from old Japan, beady-eyed “Kalifa” dolls of the Egyptian Sudan, Swedish birch-bark dolls, “Katcina” dolls of the Hopis, mammoth-tooth dolls of the Eskimos, feather dolls of the Chippewa, tumble dolls of the ancient Chinese, Coptic bone dolls, Roman dolls dedicated to Diana, pantin dolls which had been the street toys of Parisian exquisites before Madame Guillotine swept the boulevards, early Christian dolls in their crèches representing the Holy Family — to specify the merest handful of Miss Ypson’s Briarean collection. She possessed dolls of pasteboard, dolls of animal skin, spool dolls, crab-claw dolls, eggshell dolls, cornhusk dolls, rag dolls, pine-cone dolls with moss hair, stocking dolls, dolls of bisque, dolls of palm leaf, dolls of papier-mâché, even dolls made of seed pods. There were dolls forty inches tall, and there were dolls so little Miss Ypson could hide them in her gold thimble.

Cytherea Ypson’s collection bestrode the centuries and took tribute of history. There was no greater — not the fabled playthings of Montezuma, or Victoria’s, or Eugene Field’s; not the collection at the Metropolitan, or the South Kensington, or the royal palace in old Bucharest, or anywhere outside the enchantment of little girls’ dreams.

It was made of Iowan eggs and the Attic shore, corn-fed and myrtle-clothed; and it brings us at last to Attorney John Somerset Bondling and his visit to the Queen residence one December twenty-third not so very long ago.

December the twenty-third is ordinarily not a good time to seek the Queens. Inspector Richard Queen likes his Christmas old-fashioned; his turkey stuffing, for instance, calls for twenty-two hours of over-all preparation and some of its ingredients are not readily found at the corner grocer’s. And Ellery is a frustrated gift-wrapper. For a month before Christmas he turns his sleuthing genius to tracking down unusual wrapping papers, fine ribbons, and artistic stickers; and he spends the last two days creating beauty.

So it was that when Attorney John S. Bondling called, Inspector Queen was in his kitchen, swathed in a barbecue apron, up to his elbows in fines herbes, while Ellery, behind the locked door of his study, composed a secret symphony in glittering fuchsia metallic paper, forest-green moiré ribbon, and pine cones.

“It’s almost useless,” shrugged Nikki, studying Attorney Bondling’s card, which was as crackly-looking as Attorney Bondling. “You say you know the Inspector, Mr. Bondling?”

“Just tell him Bondling the estate lawyer,” said Bondling neurotically. “Park Row. He’ll know.”

“Don’t blame me,” said Nikki, “if you wind up in his stuffing. Goodness knows he’s used everything else.” And she went for Inspector Queen.

While she was gone, the study door opened noiselessly for one inch. A suspicious eye reconnoitered from the crack.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said the owner of the eye, slipping through the crack and locking the door hastily behind him. “Can’t trust them, you know. Children, just children.”

“Children!” Attorney Bondling snarled. “You’re Ellery Queen, aren’t you?”

“Yes?”

“Interested in youth, are you? Christmas? Orphans, dolls, that sort of thing?” Mr. Bondling went on in a remarkably nasty way.

“I suppose so.”

“The more fool you. Ah, here’s your father. Inspector Queen—!”

“Oh, that Bondling,” said the old gentleman absently, shaking his visitor’s hand. “My office called to say someone was coming up. Here, use my handkerchief; that’s a bit of turkey liver. Know my son? His secretary, Miss Porter? What’s on your mind, Mr. Bondling?”

“Inspector, I’m handling the Cytherea Ypson estate, and—”

“Nice meeting you, Mr. Bondling,” said Ellery. “Nikki, the door is locked, so don’t pretend you forgot the way to the bathroom...”

“Cytherea Ypson,” frowned the Inspector. “Oh, yes. She died only recently.”

“Leaving me with the headache,” said Mr. Bondling bitterly, “of disposing of her Dollection.”

“Her what?” asked Ellery, looking up from the key.

“Dolls — collection. Dollection. She coined the word.”

Ellery put the key back in his pocket and strolled over to his armchair.

“Do I take this down?” sighed Nikki.

“Dollection,” said Ellery.

“Spent about thirty years at it. Dolls!”

“Yes, Nikki, take it down.”

“Well, well, Mr. Bondling,” said Inspector Queen. “What’s the problem? Christmas comes but once a year, you know.”

“Will provides the Dollection be sold at auction,” grated the attorney, “and the proceeds used to set up a fund for orphan children. I’m holding the public sale right after New Year’s.”

“Dolls and orphans, eh?” said the Inspector, thinking of Javanese black pepper and Country Gentleman Seasoning Salt.

“That’s nice,” beamed Nikki.

“Oh, is it?” said Mr. Bondling softly. “Apparently, young woman, you’ve never tried to satisfy a Surrogate. I’ve administered estates for nine years without a whisper against me, but let an estate involve the interests of just one little ba — little fatherless child, and you’d think from the Surrogate’s attitude I was Bill Sykes himself!”

“My stuffing,” began the Inspector.

“I’ve had those dolls catalogued. The result is frightening! Did you know there’s no set market for the damnable things? And aside from a few personal possessions, the Dollection constitutes the old lady’s entire estate. Sank every nickel she had in it.”

“But it should be worth a fortune,” protested Ellery.

“To whom, Mr. Queen? Museums always want such things as free and unencumbered gifts. I tell you, except for one item, those hypothetical orphans won’t realize enough from that sale to keep them in... in bubble gum for two days!”

“Which item would that be, Mr. Bondling?”

“Number Eight-seventy-four,” snapped the lawyer. “This one.”

“Number Eight-seventy-four,” read Inspector Queen from the fat catalogue Bondling had fished out of a large greatcoat pocket. “The Dauphin’s Doll. Unique. Ivory figure of a boy Prince eight inches tall, clad in court dress, genuine ermine, brocade, velvet. Court sword in gold strapped to waist. Gold circlet crown surmounted by single blue brilliant diamond of finest water, weight approximately 49 carats—”

“How many carats?” exclaimed Nikki.

“Larger than the Hope and the Star of South Africa,” said Ellery, with a certain excitement.

“—appraised,” continued his father, “at one hundred and ten thousand dollars.”

“Expensive dollie.”

“Indecent!” said Nikki.

“This indecent — I mean exquisite royal doll,” the Inspector read on, “was a birthday gift from King Louis XVI of France to Louis Charles, his second son, who became dauphin at the death of his elder brother in 1789. The little dauphin was proclaimed Louis XVII by the royalists during the French Revolution while in custody of the sans-culottes. His fate is shrouded in mystery. Romantic, historic item.”

“Le prince perdu. I’ll say,” muttered Ellery. “Mr. Bondling, is this on the level?”

“I’m an attorney, not an antiquarian,” snapped their visitor. “There are documents attached, one of them a sworn statement — holograph — by Lady Charlotte Atkyns, the English actress-friend of the Capet family — she was in France during the Revolution — or purporting to be in Lady Charlotte’s hand. It doesn’t matter, Mr. Queen. Even if the history is bad, the diamond’s good!”

“I take it this hundred-and-ten-thousand-dollar dollie constitutes the bone, as it were, or that therein lies the rub?”

“You said it!” cried Mr. Bondling, cracking his knuckles in a sort of agony. “For my money the Dauphin’s Doll is the only negotiable asset of that collection. And what’s the old lady do? She provides by will that on the day preceding Christmas the Cytherea Ypson Dollection is to be publicly displayed... on the main floor of Nash’s Department Store! The day before Christmas, gentlemen! Think of it!”

“But why?” asked Nikki, puzzled.

“Why? Who knows why? For the entertainment of New York’s army of little beggars, I suppose! Have you any notion how many peasants pass through Nash’s on the day before Christmas? My cook tells me — she’s a very religious woman — it’s like Armageddon.”

“Day before Christmas,” frowned Ellery. “That’s tomorrow.”

“It does sound chancy,” said Nikki anxiously. Then she brightened. “Oh, well, maybe Nash’s won’t co-operate, Mr. Bondling.”

“Oh, won’t they!” howled Mr. Bondling. “Why, old lady Ypson had this stunt cooked up with that gang of peasant-purveyors for years! They’ve been snapping at my heels ever since the day she was put away!”

“It’ll draw every crook in New York,” said the Inspector, his gaze on the kitchen door.

“Orphans,” said Nikki. “The orphans’ interests must be protected.” She looked at her employer accusingly.

“Special measures, Dad,” said Ellery.

“Sure, sure,” said the Inspector, rising. “Don’t you worry about this, Mr. Bondling. Now if you’ll be kind enough to excu—”

“Inspector Queen,” hissed Mr. Bondling, leaning forward tensely, “that is not all.”

“Ah.” Ellery briskly lit a cigaret. “There’s a specific villain in this piece, Mr. Bondling, and you know who he is.”

“I do,” said the lawyer hollowly, “and then again I don’t. I mean, it’s Comus.”

“Comus!” the Inspector screamed.

“Comus?” said Ellery slowly.

“Comus?” said Nikki. “Who dat?”

“Comus,” nodded Mr. Bondling. “First thing this morning. Marched right into my office, bold as day — must have followed me; I hadn’t got my coat off, my secretary wasn’t even in. Marched in and tossed this card on my desk.”

Ellery seized it. “The usual, Dad.”

“His trademark,” growled the Inspector, his lips working.

“But the card just says ‘Comus,’ ” complained Nikki. “Who—?”

“Go on, Mr. Bondling!” thundered the Inspector.

“And he calmly announced to me,” said Bondling, blotting his cheeks with an exhausted handkerchief, “that he’s going to steal the Dauphin’s Doll tomorrow, in Nash’s.”

“Oh, a maniac,” said Nikki.

“Mr. Bondling,” said the old gentleman in a terrible voice, “just what did this fellow look like?”

“Foreigner — black beard — spoke with a thick accent of some sort. To tell you the truth, I was so thunderstruck I didn’t notice details. Didn’t even chase him till it was too late.”

The Queens shrugged at each other, Gallically.

“The old story,” said the Inspector; the corners of his nostrils were greenish. “The brass of the colonel’s monkey and when he does show himself nobody remembers anything but beards and foreign accents. Well, Mr. Bondling, with Comus in the game it’s serious business. Where’s the collection right now?”

“In the vaults of the Life Bank & Trust, Forty-third Street branch.”

“What time are you to move it over to Nash’s?”

“They wanted it this evening. I said nothing doing. I’ve made special arrangements with the bank, and the collection’s to be moved at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”

“Won’t be much time to set up,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “before the store opens its doors.” He glanced at his father.

“You leave Operation Dollie to us, Mr. Bondling,” said the Inspector grimly. “Better give me a buzz this afternoon.”

“I can’t tell you, Inspector, how relieved I am—”

“Are you?” said the old gentleman sourly. “What makes you think he won’t get it?”

When Attorney Bondling had left, the Queens put their heads together, Ellery doing most of the talking, as usual. Finally, the Inspector went into the bedroom for a session with his direct line to Headquarters.

“Anybody would think,” sniffed Nikki, “you two were planning the defense of the Bastille. Who is this Comus, anyway?”

“We don’t know, Nikki,” said Ellery slowly. “Might be anybody. Began his criminal career about five years ago. He’s in the grand tradition of Lupin — a saucy, highly intelligent rascal who’s made stealing an art. He seems to take a special delight in stealing valuable things under virtually impossible conditions. Master of makeup — he’s appeared in a dozen different disguises. And he’s an uncanny mimic. Never been caught, photographed, or fingerprinted. Imaginative, daring — I’d say he’s the most dangerous thief operating in the United States.”

“If he’s never been caught,” said Nikki skeptically, “how do you know he commits these crimes?”

“You mean and not someone else?” Ellery smiled pallidly. “The techniques mark the thefts as his work. And then, like Arsène, he leaves a card — with the name ‘Comus’ on it — on the scene of each visit.”

“Does he usually announce in advance that he’s going to swipe the crown jewels?”

“No.” Ellery frowned. “To my knowledge, this is the first such instance. Since he’s never done anything without a reason, that visit to Bondling’s office this morning must be part of his greater plan. I wonder if—”

The telephone in the living room rang clear and loud.

Nikki looked at Ellery. Ellery looked at the telephone.

“Do you suppose—?” began Nikki. But then she said, “Oh, it’s too absurd!”

“Where Comus is involved,” said Ellery wildly, “nothing is too absurd!” and he leaped for the phone. “Hello!”

“A call from an old friend,” announced a deep and hollowish male voice. “Comus.”

“Well,” said Ellery. “Hello again.”

“Did Mr. Bondling,” asked the voice jovially, “persuade you to ‘prevent’ me from stealing the Dauphin’s Doll in Nash’s tomorrow?”

“So you know Bondling’s been here.”

“No miracle involved, Queen. I followed him. Are you taking the case?”

“See here, Comus,” said Ellery. “Under ordinary circumstances I’d welcome the sporting chance to put you where you belong. But these circumstances are not ordinary. That doll represents the major asset of a future fund for orphaned children. I’d rather we didn’t play catch with it. Comus, what do you say we call this one off?”

“Shall we say,” asked the voice gently, “Nash’s Department Store — tomorrow?”

Thus the early morning of December twenty-fourth finds Messrs. Queen and Bondling, and Nikki Porter, huddled on the iron sidewalk of Forty-third Street before the holly-decked windows of the Life Bank & Trust Company, just outside a double line of armed guards. The guards form a channel between the bank entrance and an armored truck, down which Cytherea Ypson’s Dollection flows swiftly. And all about gapes New York, stamping callously on the aged, icy face of the street against the uncharitable Christmas wind.

Now is the winter of his discontent, and Mr. Queen curses.

“I don’t know what you’re beefing about,” moans Miss Porter. “You and Mr. Bondling are bundled up like Yukon prospectors. Look at me.”

“It’s that rat-hearted public relations tripe from Nash’s,” said Mr. Queen murderously. “They all swore themselves to secrecy, Brother Rat included. Honor! Spirit of Christmas!”

“It was all over the radio last night,” whimpers Mr. Bondling. “And in this morning’s papers.”

“I’ll cut his creep’s heart out. Here! Velie, keep those people away!”

Sergeant Velie says good-naturedly from the doorway of the bank, “You jerks stand back.” Little does the Sergeant know the fate in store for him.

“Armored trucks,” says Miss Porter bluishly. “Shotguns.”

“Nikki, Comus made a point of informing us in advance that he meant to steal the Dauphin’s Doll in Nash’s Department Store. It would be just like him to have said that in order to make it easier to steal the doll en route.”

“Why don’t they hurry?” shivers Mr. Bondling. “Ah!”

Inspector Queen appears suddenly in the doorway. His hands clasp treasure.

“Oh!” cries Nikki.

New York whistles.

It is magnificence, an affront to democracy. But street mobs, like children, are royalists at heart.

New York whistles, and Sergeant Thomas Velie steps menacingly before Inspector Queen, Police Positive drawn, and Inspector Queen dashes across the sidewalk between the bristling lines of guards with the Dauphin’s Doll in his embrace.

Queen the Younger vanishes, to materialize an instant later at the door of the armored truck.

“It’s just immorally, hideously beautiful, Mr. Bondling,” breathes Miss Porter, sparkly-eyed.

Mr. Bondling cranes, thinly.

Santa. Oyez, oyez. Peace, good will. Is that the dollie the radio’s been yappin’ about, folks?

Mr. B. Scram.

Miss P. Why, Mr. Bondling.

Mr. B. Well, he’s got no business here. Stand back, er, Santa. Back!

Santa. What eateth you, my lean and angry friend? Have you no compassion at this season of the year?

Mr. B. Oh... Here! (Clink.) Now will you kindly...?

Santa. Mighty pretty dollie. Where they takin’ it, girlie?

Miss P. Over to Nash’s, Santa.

Mr. B. You asked for it. Officer!!!

Santa (hurriedly). Little present for you, girlie.

Compliments of Santy. Merry, merry.

Miss P. For me? (EXIT Santa, rapidly, with bell.)

Really, Mr. Bondling, was it necessary to...?

Mr. B. Opium for the masses! What did that flatulent faker hand you, Miss Porter? What’s in that unmentionable envelope?

Miss P. I’m sure I don’t know, but isn’t it the most touching idea? Why, it’s addressed to Ellery. Oh! Elleryyyyyy!

Mr. B (EXIT excitedly). Where is he? You—! Officer! Where did that baby-deceiver disappear to? A Santa Claus...!

Mr. Q (entering on the run). Yes? Nikki, what is it? What’s happened?

Miss P. A man dressed as Santa Claus just handed me this envelope. It’s addressed to you.

Mr. Q. Note? (He snatches it, withdraws a miserable slice of paper from it on which is block-lettered in pencil a message which he reads aloud with considerable expression.) “Dear Ellery, Don’t you trust me? I said I’d steal the Dauphin in Nash’s emporium today and that’s exactly where I’m going to do it. Yours—” Signed...

Miss P (craning). “Comus.” That Santa?

Mr. Q. (Sets his manly lips. An icy wind blows.)

Even the master had to acknowledge that their defenses against Comus were ingenious.

From the Display Department of Nash’s they had requisitioned four miter-jointed counters of uniform length. These they had fitted together, and in the center of the hollow square thus formed they had erected a platform six feet high. On the counters, in plastic tiers, stretched the long lines of Miss Ypson’s babies. Atop the platform, dominant, stood a great chair of hand-carved oak, filched from the Swedish Modern section of the Fine Furniture Department; and on this Valhalla-like throne, a huge and rosy rotundity, sat Sergeant Thomas Velie of Police Headquarters, morosely grateful for the anonymity endowed by the scarlet suit and the jolly mask and whiskers of his appointed role.

Nor was this all. At a distance of six feet outside the counters shimmered a surrounding rampart of plate glass, borrowed in its various elements from The Glass Home of the Future display on the sixth floor rear, and assembled to shape an eight foot wall quoined with chrome, its glistening surfaces flawless except at one point, where a thick glass door had been installed. But the edges fitted intimately and there was a formidable lock in the door, the key to which lay buried in Mr. Queen’s right trouser pocket.

It was 8:54 a.m. The Queens, Nikki Porter, and Attorney Bondling stood among store officials and an army of plainclothesmen on Nash’s main floor surveying the product of their labors.

“I think that about does it,” muttered Inspector Queen at last. “Men! Positions around the glass partition.”

Twenty-four assorted gendarmes in mufti jostled one another. They took marked places about the wall, facing it and grinning up at Sergeant Velie. Sergeant Velie, from his throne, glared back.

“Hagstrom and Piggott — the door.”

Two detectives detached themselves from a group of reserves. As they marched to the glass door, Mr. Bondling plucked at the Inspector’s overcoat sleeve. “Can all these men be trusted, Inspector Queen?” he whispered. “I mean, this fellow Comus—”

“Mr. Bondling,” replied the old gentleman coldly, “you do your job and let me do mine.”

“But—”

“Picked men, Mr. Bondling! I picked ’em myself.”

“Yes, yes, Inspector. I merely thought I’d—”

“Lieutenant Farber.”

A little man with watery eyes stepped forward.

“Mr. Bondling, this is Lieutenant Geronimo Farber, Headquarters jewelry expert. Ellery?”

Ellery took the Dauphin’s Doll from his greatcoat pocket, but he said, “If you don’t mind, Dad, I’ll keep holding on to it.”

Somebody said, “Wow,” and then there was silence.

“Lieutenant, this doll in my son’s hand is the famous Dauphin’s Doll with the diamond crown that—”

“Don’t touch it, Lieutenant, please,” said Ellery. “I’d rather nobody touched it.”

“The doll,” continued the Inspector, “has just been brought here from a bank vault which it ought never to have left, and Mr. Bondling, who’s handling the Ypson estate, claims it’s the genuine article. Lieutenant, examine the diamond and give us your opinion.”

Lieutenant Farber produced a loupe. Ellery held the dauphin securely, and Farber did not touch it.

Finally, the expert said: “I can’t pass an opinion about the doll itself, of course, but the diamond’s a beauty. Easily worth a hundred thousand dollars at the present state of the market — maybe more. Looks like a very strong setting, by the way.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant. Okay, son,” said the Inspector. “Go into your waltz.”

Clutching the dauphin, Ellery strode over to the glass gate and unlocked it.

“This fellow Farber,” whispered Attorney Bondling in the Inspector’s hairy ear. “Inspector, are you absolutely sure he’s—?”

“He’s really Lieutenant Farber?” The Inspector controlled himself. “Mr. Bondling, I’ve known Gerry Farber for eighteen years. Calm yourself.”

Ellery was crawling perilously over the nearest counter. Then, bearing the dauphin aloft, he hurried across the floor of the enclosure to the platform.

Sergeant Velie whined, “Maestro, how in hell am I going to sit here all day without washin’ my hands?”

But Mr. Queen merely stooped and lifted from the floor a heavy little structure faced with black velvet consisting of a floor and a backdrop, with a two-armed chromium support. This object he placed on the platform directly between Sergeant Velie’s massive legs.

Carefully, he stood the Dauphin’s Doll in the velvet niche. Then he clambered back across the counter, went through the glass door, locked it with the key, and turned to examine his handiwork.

Proudly the prince’s plaything stood, the jewel in his little golden crown darting “on pale electric streams” under the concentrated tide of a dozen of the most powerful floodlights in the possession of the great store.

“Velie,” said Inspector Queen, “you’re not to touch that doll. Don’t lay a finger on it.”

The Sergeant said, “Gaaaaa.”

“You men on duty. Don’t worry about the crowds. Your job is to keep watching that doll. You’re not to take your eyes off it all day. Mr. Bondling, are you satisfied?” Mr. Bondling seemed about to say something, but then he hastily nodded. “Ellery?”

The great man smiled. “The only way he can get that bawbie,” he said, “is by well-directed mortar fire or spells and incantations. Raise the portcullis!”

Then began the interminable day, dies irae, the last shopping day before Christmas. This is traditionally the day of the inert, the procrastinating, the undecided, and the forgetful, sucked at last into the mercantile machine by the perpetual pump of Time. If there is peace upon earth, it descends only afterward; and at no time, on the part of anyone embroiled, is there good will toward men. As Miss Porter expresses it, a cat fight in a bird cage would be more Christian.

But on this December twenty-fourth, in Nash’s, the normal bedlam was augmented by the vast shrilling of thousands of children. It may be, as the Psalmist insists, that happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them; but no bowmen surrounded Miss Ypson’s darlings this day, only detectives carrying revolvers, not a few of whom forbore to use same only by the most heroic self-discipline. In the black floods of humanity overflowing the main floor little folks darted about like electrically charged minnows, pursued by exasperated maternal shrieks and the imprecations of those whose shins and rumps and toes were at the mercy of hot, happy little limbs; indeed, nothing was sacred, and Attorney Bondling was seen to quail and wrap his greatcoat defensively about him against the savage innocence of childhood. But the guardians of the law, having been ordered to simulate store employees, possessed no such armor; and many a man earned his citation that day for unique cause. They stood in the millrace of the tide; it churned about them, shouting, “Dollies! Dollies!” until the very word lost its familiar meaning and became the insensate scream of a thousand Loreleis beckoning strong men to destruction below the eye-level of their diamond Light.

But they stood fast.

And Comus was thwarted. Oh, he tried. At 11:18 a.m. a tottering old man holding to the hand of a small boy tried to wheedle Detective Hagstrom into unlocking the glass door “so my grandson here — he’s terrible nearsighted — can get a closer look at the pretty dollies.” Detective Hagstrom roared, “Rube!” and the old gentleman dropped the little boy’s hand violently and with remarkable agility lost himself in the crowd. A spot investigation revealed that, coming upon the boy, who had been crying for his mommy, the old gentleman had promised to find her. The little boy, whose name — he said — was Lance Morganstern, was removed to the Lost and Found Department; and everyone was satisfied that the great thief had finally launched his attack. Everyone, that is, but Ellery Queen. He seemed puzzled. When Nikki asked him why, he merely said: “Stupidity, Nikki. It’s not in character.”

At 1:46 p.m., Sergeant Velie sent up a distress signal. He had, it seemed, to wash his hands. Inspector Queen signaled back: “O.K. Fifteen minutes.” Sergeant Santa C. Velie scrambled off his perch, clawed his way over the counter, and pounded urgently on the inner side of the glass door. Ellery let him out, relocking the door immediately, and the Sergeant’s red-clad figure disappeared on the double in the general direction of the main-floor gentlemen’s relief station, leaving the dauphin in solitary possession of the dais.

During the Sergeant’s recess, Inspector Queen circulated among his men repeating the order of the day.

The episode of Velie’s response to the summons of Nature caused a temporary crisis. For at the end of the specified fifteen minutes he had not returned. Nor was there a sign of him at the end of a half hour. An aide dispatched to the relief station reported back that the Sergeant was not there. Fears of foul play were voiced at an emergency staff conference held then and there and counter-measures were being planned even as, at 2:35 p.m., the familiar Santa-clad bulk of the Sergeant was observed battling through the lines, pawing at his mask.

“Velie,” snarled Inspector Queen, “where have you been?”

“Eating my lunch,” growled the Sergeant’s voice, defensively. “I been taking my punishment like a good soldier all this damn day, Inspector, but I draw the line at starvin’ to death even in the line of duty.”

“Velie—!” choked the Inspector; but then he waved his hand feebly and said, “Ellery, let him back in there.”

And that was very nearly all. The only other incident of note occurred at 4:22 p.m. A well-upholstered woman with a red face yelled, “Stop! Thief! He grabbed my pocketbook! Police!” about fifty feet from the Ypson exhibit. Ellery instantly shouted, “It’s a trick! Men, don’t take your eyes off that doll!”

“It’s Comus disguised as a woman,” exclaimed Attorney Bondling, as Inspector Queen and Detective Hesse wrestled the female figure through the mob. She was now a wonderful shade of magenta. “What are you doing?” she screamed. “Don’t arrest me! — catch that crook who stole my pocketbook!” “No dice, Comus,” said the Inspector. “Wipe off that makeup.” “McComas?” said the woman loudly. “My name is Rafferty, and all these folks saw it. He was a fat man with a mustache.” “Inspector,” said Nikki Porter, making a surreptitious scientific test. “This is a female. Believe me.” And so, indeed it proved. All agreed that the mustachioed fat man had been Comus, creating a diversion in the desperate hope that the resulting confusion would give him an opportunity to steal the little dauphin.

“Stupid, stupid,” muttered Ellery, gnawing his fingernails.

“Sure,” grinned the Inspector. “We’ve got him nibbling his tail, Ellery. This was his do-or-die pitch. He’s through.”

“Frankly,” sniffed Nikki, “I’m a little disappointed.”

“Worried,” said Ellery, “would be the word for me.”

Inspector Queen was too case-hardened a sinner’s nemesis to lower his guard at his most vulnerable moment. When the 5:30 bells bonged and the crowds began struggling toward the exits, he barked: “Men, stay at your posts. Keep watching that doll!” So all hands were on the qui vive even as the store emptied. The reserves kept hustling people out. Ellery, standing on an Information booth, spotted bottlenecks and waved his arms.

At 5:50 p.m. the main floor was declared out of the battle zone. All stragglers had been herded out. The only persons visible were the refugees trapped by the closing bell on the upper floors, and these were pouring out of elevators and funneled by a solid line of detectives and accredited store personnel to the doors. By 6:05 they were a trickle; by 6:10 even the trickle had dried up. And the personnel itself began to disperse.

“No, men!” called Ellery sharply from his observation post. “Stay where you are till all the store employees are out!” The counter clerks had long since disappeared.

Sergeant Velie’s plaintive voice called from the other side of the glass door. “I got to get home and decorate my tree. Maestro, make with the key.”

Ellery jumped down and hurried over to release him. Detective Piggott jeered, “Going to play Santa to your kids tomorrow morning, Velie?” at which the Sergeant managed even through his mask to project a four-letter word distinctly, forgetful of Miss Porter’s presence, and stamped off toward the gentlemen’s relief station.

“Where you going, Velie?” asked the Inspector, smiling.

“I got to get out of these x-and-dash Santy clothes somewheres, don’t I?” came back the Sergeant’s mask-muffled tones, and he vanished in a thunder-clap of his fellow-officers’ laughter.

“Still worried, Mr. Queen?” chuckled the Inspector.

“I don’t understand it.” Ellery shook his head. “Well, Mr. Bondling, there’s your dauphin, untouched by human hands.”

“Yes. Well!” Attorney Bondling wiped his forehead happily. “I don’t profess to understand it, either, Mr. Queen. Unless it’s simply another case of an inflated reputation...” He clutched the Inspector suddenly. “Those men!” he whispered. “Who are they?”

“Relax, Mr. Bondling,” said the Inspector good-naturedly. “It’s just the men to move the dolls back to the bank. Wait a minute, you men! Perhaps, Mr. Bondling, we’d better see the dauphin back to the vaults ourselves.”

“Keep those fellows back,” said Ellery to the Headquarters men, quietly, and he followed the Inspector and Mr. Bondling into the enclosure. They pulled two of the counters apart at one corner and strolled over to the platform. The dauphin was winking at them in a friendly way. They stood looking at him.

“Cute little devil,” said the Inspector.

“Seems silly now,” beamed Attorney Bondling. “Being so worried all day.”

“Comus must have had some plan,” mumbled Ellery.

“Sure,” said the Inspector. “That old man disguise. And that purse-snatching act.”

“No, no, Dad. Something clever. He’s always pulled something clever.”

“Well, there’s the diamond,” said the lawyer comfortably. “He didn’t.”

“Disguise...” muttered Ellery. “It’s always been a disguise. Santa Claus costume — he used that once — this morning in front of the bank... Did we see a Santa Claus around here today?”

“Just Velie,” said the Inspector, grinning. “And I hardly think—”

“Wait a moment, please,” said Attorney Bondling in a very odd voice. He was staring at the Dauphin’s Doll.

“Wait for what, Mr. Bondling?”

“What’s the matter?” said Ellery, also in a very odd voice.

“But... not possible...” stammered Bondling. He snatched the doll from its black velvet repository. “No!” he howled. “This isn’t the dauphin! It’s a fake — a copy!”

Something happened in Mr. Queen’s head — a little click! like the turn of a switch. And there was light.

“Some of you men!” he roared. “After Santa Claus!”

“Who, Mr. Queen?”

“What’s he talkin’ about?”

“After who, Ellery?” gasped Inspector Queen.

“What’s the matter?”

“I dunno!”

“Don’t stand here! Get him!” screamed Ellery, dancing up and down. “The man I just let out of here! The Santa who made for the men’s room!”

Detectives started running, wildly.

“But, Ellery,” said a small voice, and Nikki found that it was her own, “that was Sergeant Velie.”

“It was not Velie, Nikki! When Velie ducked out just before two o’clock to relieve himself, Comus waylaid him! It was Comus who came back in Velie’s Santa Claus rig, wearing Velie’s whiskers and mask! Comus has been on this platform all afternoon!” He tore the dauphin from Attorney Bondling’s grasp. “Copy...! Somehow he did it, he did it.”

“But, Mr. Queen,” whispered Attorney Bondling, “his voice. He spoke to us... in Sergeant Velie’s voice.”

“Yes, Ellery,” Nikki heard herself saying.

“I told you yesterday Comus is a great mimic, Nikki. Lieutenant Farber! Is Farber still here?”

The jewelry expert, who had been gaping from a distance, shook his head as if to clear it and shuffled into the enclosure.

“Lieutenant,” said Ellery in a strangled voice. “Examine this diamond... I mean, is it a diamond?”

Inspector Queen removed his hands from his face and said froggily, “Well, Gerry?”

Lieutenant Farber squinted once through his loupe. “The hell you say. It’s strass—”

“It’s what?” said the Inspector piteously.

“Strass, Dick — lead glass — paste. Beautiful job of imitation — as nice as I’ve ever seen.”

“Lead me to that Santa Claus,” whispered Inspector Queen.

But Santa Claus was being led to him. Struggling in the grip of a dozen detectives, his red coat ripped off, his red pants around his ankles, but his whiskery mask still on his face, came a large shouting man.

“But I tell you,” he was roaring, “I’m Sergeant Tom Velie! Just take the mask off — that’s all!”

“It’s a pleasure,” growled Detective Hagstrom, trying to break their prisoner’s arm, “we’re reservin’ for the Inspector.”

“Hold him, boys,” whispered the Inspector. He struck like a cobra. His hand came away with Santa’s face.

And there, indeed, was Sergeant Velie.

“Why it’s Velie,” said the Inspector wonderingly.

“I only told you that a thousand times,” said the Sergeant, folding his great hairy arms across his great hairy chest. “Now who’s the so-and-so who tried to bust my arm?” Then he said, “My pants!” and, as Miss Porter turned delicately away, Detective Hagstrom humbly stooped and raised Sergeant Velie’s pants.

“Never mind that,” said a cold, remote voice.

It was the master, himself.

“Yeah?” said Sergeant Velie, hostilely.

“Velie, weren’t you attacked when you went to the men’s room just before two?”

“Do I look like the attackable type?”

“You did go to lunch? — in person?”

“And a lousy lunch it was.”

“It was you up here among the dolls all afternoon?”

“Nobody else, Maestro. Now, my friends, I want action. Fast patter. What’s this all about? Before,” said Sergeant Velie softly, “I lose my temper.”

While divers Headquarters orators delivered impromptu periods before the silent Sergeant, Inspector Richard Queen spoke.

“Ellery. Son. How in the name of the second sin did he do it?”

“Pa,” replied the master, “you got me.”

Deck the hall with boughs of holly, but not if your name is Queen on the evening of a certain December twenty-fourth. If your name is Queen on that lamentable evening you are seated in the living room of a New York apartment uttering no falalas but staring miserably into a somber fire. And you have company. The guest list is short, but select. It numbers two, a Miss Porter and a Sergeant Velie, and they are no comfort.

No, no ancient Yuletide carol is being trolled; only the silence sings.

Wail in your crypt, Cytherea Ypson; all was for nought; your little dauphin’s treasure lies not in the empty coffers of the orphans but in the hot clutch of one who took his evil inspiration from a long-crumbled specialist in vanishments.

Speech was spent. Should a wise man utter vain knowledge and fill his belly with the east wind? He who talks too much commits a sin, says the Talmud. He also wastes his breath; and they had now reached the point of conservation, having exhausted the available supply.

Item: Lieutenant Geronimo Farber of Police Headquarters had examined the diamond in the genuine dauphin’s crown a matter of seconds before it was conveyed to its sanctuary in the enclosure. Lieutenant Farber had pronounced the diamond a diamond, and not merely a diamond, but a diamond worth in his opinion over one hundred thousand dollars.

Question: Had Lieutenant Farber lied?

Answer: Lieutenant Farber was (a) a man of probity, tested in a thousand fires, and (b) he was incorruptible. To (a) and (b) Inspector Richard Queen attested violently, swearing by the beard of his personal Prophet.

Question: Had Lieutenant Farber been mistaken?

Answer: Lieutenant Farber was a nationally famous police expert in the field of precious stones. It must be presumed that he knew a real diamond from a piece of lapidified glass.

Question: Had it been Lieutenant Farber?

Answer: By the same beard of the identical Prophet, it had been Lieutenant Farber and no facsimile.

Conclusion: The diamond Lieutenant Farber had examined immediately preceding the opening of Nash’s doors that morning had been the veritable diamond of the dauphin, the doll had been the veritable Dauphin’s Doll, and it was this genuine article which Ellery with his own hands had carried into the glass-enclosed fortress and deposited between the authenticated Sergeant Velie’s verified feet.

Item: All day — specifically, between the moment the dauphin had been deposited in his niche until the moment he was discovered to be a fraud; that is, during the total period in which a theft-and-substitution was even theoretically possible — no person whatsoever, male or female, adult or child, had set foot within the enclosure except Sergeant Thomas Velie, alias Santa Claus. Question: Had Sergeant Velie switched dolls, carrying the genuine dauphin concealed in his Santa Claus suit, to be cached for future retrieval or turned over to Comus or a confederate of Comus’s, during one of his two departures from the enclosure?

Answer (by Sergeant Velie):[1]

Confirmation: Some dozens of persons with police training and specific instructions, not to mention the Queens themselves, Miss Porter, and Attorney Bondling, testified unqualifiedly that Sergeant Velie had not touched the doll, at any time, all day.

Conclusion: Sergeant Velie could not have stolen, and therefore he did not steal, the Dauphin’s Doll.

Item: All those deputized to watch the doll swore that they had done so without lapse or hindrance the everlasting day; moreover, that at no time had anything touched the doll — human or mechanical — either from inside or outside the enclosure.

Question: The human vessel being frail, could those so swearing have been in error? Could their attention have wandered through weariness, boredom, et cetera?

Answer: Yes; but not all at the same time, by the laws of probability. And during the only two diversions of the danger period, Ellery himself testified that he had kept his eyes on the dauphin and that nothing whatsoever had approached or threatened it.

Item: Despite all of the foregoing, at the end of the day they had found the real dauphin gone and a worthless copy in its place.

“It’s brilliantly, unthinkably clever,” said Ellery at last. “A master illusion. For, of course, it was an illusion...”

“Witchcraft,” groaned the Inspector.

“Mass mesmerism,” suggested Nikki Porter.

“Mass bird gravel,” growled the Sergeant.

Two hours later Ellery spoke again.

“So Comus had a worthless copy of the dauphin all ready for the switch,” he muttered. “It’s a world-famous dollie, been illustrated countless times, minutely described, photographed... All ready for the switch, but how did he make it? How? How?”

“You said that,” said the Sergeant, “once or forty-two times.”

“The bells are tolling,” sighed Nikki, “but for whom? Not for us.” And indeed, while they slumped there, Time, which Seneca named father of truth, had crossed the threshold of Christmas; and Nikki looked alarmed, for as that glorious song of old came upon the midnight clear, a great light spread from Ellery’s eyes and beatified the whole contorted countenance, so that peace sat there, the peace that approximateth understanding; and he threw back that noble head and laughed with the merriment of an innocent child.

“Hey,” said Sergeant Velie, staring.

“Son,” began Inspector Queen, half-rising from his armchair; when the telephone rang.

“Beautiful!” roared Ellery. “Oh, exquisite! How did Comus make the switch, eh? Nikki—”

“From somewhere,” said Nikki, handing him the telephone receiver, “a voice is calling, and if you ask me it’s saying ‘Comus.’ Why not ask him?”

“Comus,” whispered the Inspector, shrinking.

“Comus,” echoed the Sergeant, baffled.

“Comus?” said Ellery heartily. “How nice. Hello there! Congratulations.”

“Why, thank you,” said the familiar deep and hollow voice. “I called to express my appreciation for a wonderful day’s sport and to wish you the merriest kind of Yuletide.”

“You anticipate a rather merry Christmas yourself, I take it.”

“Laeti triumphantes,” said Comus jovially.

“And the orphans?”

“They have my best wishes. But I won’t detain you, Ellery. If you’ll look at the doormat outside your apartment door, you’ll find on it — in the spirit of the season — a little gift, with the compliments of Comus. Will you remember me to Inspector Queen and Attorney Bondling?”

Ellery hung up, smiling.

On the doormat he found the true Dauphin’s Doll, intact except for a contemptible detail. The jewel in the little golden crown was missing.

“It was,” said Ellery later, over pastrami sandwiches, “a fundamentally simple problem. All great illusions are. A valuable object is placed in full view in the heart of an impenetrable enclosure, it is watched hawkishly by dozens of thoroughly screened and reliable trained persons, it is never out of their view, it is not once touched by human hand or any other agency, and yet, at the expiration of the danger period, it is gone — exchanged for a worthless copy. Wonderful. Amazing. It defies the imagination. Actually, it’s susceptible — like all magical hocus-pocus — to immediate solution if only one is able — as I was not — to ignore the wonder and stick to the fact. But then, the wonder is there for precisely that purpose: to stand in the way of the fact.

“What is the fact?” continued Ellery, helping himself to a dill pickle. “The fact is that between the time the doll was placed on the exhibit platform and the time the theft was discovered no one and no thing touched it. Therefore between the time the doll was placed on the platform and the time the theft was discovered the dauphin could not have been stolen. It follows, simply and inevitably, that the dauphin must have been stolen outside that period.

“Before the period began? No. I placed the authentic dauphin inside the enclosure with my own hands; at or about the beginning of the period, then, no hand but mine had touched the doll — not even, you’ll recall, Lieutenant Farber’s.

“Then the dauphin must have been stolen after the period closed.”

Ellery brandished half the pickle. “And who,” he demanded solemnly, “is the only one besides myself who handled that doll after the period closed and before Lieutenant Farber pronounced the diamond to be paste? The only one?”

The Inspector and the Sergeant exchanged puzzled glances, and Nikki looked blank.

“Why, Mr. Bondling,” said Nikki, “and he doesn’t count.”

“He counts very much, Nikki,” said Ellery, reaching for the mustard, “because the facts say Bondling stole the dauphin at that time.”

“Bondling!” The Inspector paled.

“I don’t get it,” complained Sergeant Velie.

“Ellery, you must be wrong,” said Nikki. “At the time Mr. Bondling grabbed the doll off the platform, the theft had already taken place. It was the worthless copy he picked up.”

“That,” said Ellery, reaching for another sandwich, “was the focal point of his illusion. How do we know it was the worthless copy he picked up? Why, he said so. Simple, eh? He said so, and like the dumb bunnies we were, we took his unsupported word as gospel.”

“That’s right!” mumbled his father. “We didn’t actually examine the doll till quite a few seconds later.”

“Exactly,” said Ellery in a munchy voice. “There was a short period of beautiful confusion, as Bondling knew there would be. I yelled to the boys to follow and grab Santa Claus — I mean, the Sergeant here. The detectives were momentarily demoralized. You, Dad, were stunned. Nikki looked as if the roof had fallen in. I essayed an excited explanation. Some detectives ran; others milled around. And while all this was happening — during those few moments when nobody was watching the genuine doll in Bondling’s hand because everyone thought it was a fake — Bondling calmly slipped it into one of his greatcoat pockets and from the other produced the worthless copy which he’d been carrying there all day. When I did turn back to him, it was the copy I grabbed from his hand. And his illusion was complete.

“I know,” said Ellery dryly. “It’s rather on the let-down side. That’s why illusionists guard their professional secrets so closely; knowledge is disenchantment. No doubt the incredulous amazement aroused in his periwigged London audience by Comus the French conjuror’s dematerialization of his wife from the top of a table would have suffered the same fate if he’d revealed the trap door through which she had dropped. A good trick, like a good woman, is best in the dark. Sergeant, have another pastrami.”

“Seems like funny chow to be eating early Christmas morning,” said the Sergeant, reaching. Then he stopped. Then he said, “Bondling,” and shook his head.

“Now that we know it was Bondling,” said the Inspector, who had recovered a little, “it’s a cinch to get that diamond back. He hasn’t had time to dispose of it yet. I’ll just give downtown a buzz—”

“Wait, Dad,” said Ellery.

“Wait for what?”

“Whom are you going to sic the dogs on?”

“What?”

“You’re going to call Headquarters, get a warrant, and so on. Who’s your man?”

The Inspector felt his head. “Why... Bondling, didn’t you say?”

“It might be wise,” said Ellery, thoughtfully searching with his tongue for a pickle seed, “to specify his alias.”

“Alias?” said Nikki. “Does he have one?”

“What alias, son?”

“Comus.”

“Comus!”

“Comus?”

“Comus.”

“Oh, come off it,” said Nikki, pouring herself a shot of coffee, straight, for she was in training for the Inspector’s Christmas dinner. “How could Bondling be Comus when Bondling was with us all day? — and Comus kept making disguised appearances all over the place... that Santa who gave me the note in front of the bank — the old man who kidnapped Lance Morganstern — the fat man with the mustache who snatched Mrs. Rafferty’s purse.”

“Yeah,” said the Sergeant. “How?”

“These illusions die hard,” said Ellery. “Wasn’t it Comus who phoned a few minutes ago to rag me about the theft? Wasn’t it Comus who said he’d left the stolen dauphin — minus the diamond — on our doormat? Therefore Comus is Bondling.

“I told you Comus never does anything without a good reason,” said Ellery. “Why did ‘Comus’ announce to ‘Bondling’ that he was going to steal the Dauphin’s Doll? Bondling told us that — putting the finger on his alter ego — because he wanted us to believe he and Comus were separate individuals. He wanted us to watch for Comus and take Bondling for granted. In tactical execution of this strategy, Bondling provided us with three ‘Comus’-appearances during the day — obviously, confederates.

“Yes,” said Ellery, “I think, Dad, you’ll find on backtracking that the great thief you’ve been trying to catch for five years has been a respectable estate attorney on Park Row all the time, shedding his quiddities and his quillets at night in favor of the soft shoe and the dark lantern. And now he’ll have to exchange them all for a number and a grilled door. Well, well, it couldn’t have happened at a more appropriate season; there’s an old English proverb that says the Devil makes his Christmas pie of lawyers’ tongues. Nikki, pass the pastrami.”

Morse’s Greatest Mystery Colin Dexter

In the tradition of Dorothy L. Sayers and Michael Innes, Colin Dexter’s mysteries combine scholarly erudition, well-constructed plots, and humor. His series character, Inspector Morse, appears in all of his novels and inspired an enormously successful British television series, the eponymous Inspector Morse, in which Dexter made a cameo appearance (much as Alfred Hitchcock did) in almost every episode. It may be interesting to note that Dexter is one of the world’s most accomplished solvers of crossword puzzles, winning its top competitions on several occasions. “Morse’s Greatest Mystery” was first collected in Morse’s Greatest Mystery and Other Stories (London, Macmillan, 1993).

He had knocked diffidently at Morse’s North Oxford flat. Few had been invited into those book-lined, Wagner-haunted rooms: and even he — Sergeant Lewis — had never felt himself an over-welcome guest. Even at Christmastime. Not that it sounded much like the season of goodwill as Morse waved Lewis inside and concluded his ill-tempered conversation with the bank manager.

“Look! If I keep a couple of hundred in my current account, that’s my look-out. I’m not even asking for any interest on it. All I am asking is that you don’t stick these bloody bank charges on when I go — what? once, twice a year? — into the red. It’s not that I’m mean with money” — Lewis’s eyebrows ascended a centimetre — “but if you charge me again I want you to ring and tell me why!”

Morse banged down the receiver and sat silent.

“You don’t sound as if you’ve caught much of the Christmas spirit,” ventured Lewis.

“I don’t like Christmas — never have.”

“You staying in Oxford, sir?”

“I’m going to decorate.”

“What — decorate the Christmas cake?”

“Decorate the kitchen. I don’t like Christmas cake — never did.”

“You sound more like Scrooge every minute, sir.”

“And I shall read a Dickens novel. I always do over Christmas. Re-read, rather.”

“If I were just starting on Dickens, which one—?”

“I’d put Bleak House first, Little Dorrit second—”

The phone rang and Morse’s secretary at HQ informed him that he’d won a £50 gift-token in the Police Charity Raffle, and this time Morse cradled the receiver with considerably better grace.

“ ‘Scrooge,’ did you say, Lewis? I’ll have you know I bought five tickets — a quid apiece! — in that Charity Raffle.”

“I bought five tickets myself, sir.”

Morse smiled complacently. “Let’s be more charitable, Lewis! It’s supporting these causes that’s important, not winning.”

“I’ll be in the car, sir,” said Lewis quietly. In truth, he was beginning to feel irritated. Morse’s irascibility he could stomach; but he couldn’t stick hearing much more about Morse’s selfless generosity!

Morse’s old Jaguar was in dock again (“Too mean to buy a new one!” his colleagues claimed) and it was Lewis’s job that day to ferry the chief inspector around; doubtless, too (if things went to form), to treat him to the odd pint or two. Which indeed appeared a fair probability, since Morse had so managed things on that Tuesday morning that their arrival at the George would coincide with opening time. As they drove out past the railway station, Lewis told Morse what he’d managed to discover about the previous day’s events...

The patrons of the George had amassed £400 in aid of the Littlemore Charity for Mentally Handicapped Children, and this splendid total was to be presented to the Charity’s Secretary at the end of the week, with a photographer promised from The Oxford Times to record the grand occasion. Mrs. Michaels, the landlady, had been dropped off at the bank in Carfax by her husband at about 10:30 a.m., and had there exchanged a motley assemblage of coins and notes for forty brand-new tenners. After this she had bought several items (including grapes for a daughter just admitted to hospital) before catching a minibus back home, where she had arrived just after midday. The money, in a long white envelope, was in her shopping bag, together with her morning’s purchases. Her husband had not yet returned from the Cash and Carry Stores, and on re-entering the George via the saloon bar, Mrs. Michaels had heard the telephone ringing. Thinking that it was probably the hospital (it was) she had dumped her bag on the bar counter and rushed to answer it. On her return, the envelope was gone.

At the time of the theft, there had been about thirty people in the saloon bar, including the regular OAPs, the usual cohort of pool-playing unemployables, and a pre-Christmas party from a local firm. And — yes! — from the very beginning Lewis had known that the chances of recovering the money were virtually nil. Even so, the three perfunctory interviews that Morse conducted appeared to Lewis to be sadly unsatisfactory.

After listening a while to the landlord’s unilluminating testimony, Morse asked him why it had taken him so long to conduct his business at the Cash and Carry; and although the explanation given seemed perfectly adequate, Morse’s dismissal of this first witness had seemed almost offensively abrupt. And no man could have been more quickly or more effectively antagonised than the temporary barman (on duty the previous morning) who refused to answer Morse’s brusque enquiry about the present state of his overdraft. What then of the attractive, auburn-haired Mrs. Michaels? After a rather lopsided smile had introduced Morse to her regular if slightly nicotine-stained teeth, that distressed lady had been unable to fight back her tears as she sought to explain to Morse why she’d insisted on some genuine notes for the publicity photographer instead of a phonily magnified cheque.

But wait! Something dramatic had just happened to Morse, Lewis could see that: as if the light had suddenly shined upon a man that hitherto had sat in darkness. He (Morse) now asked — amazingly! — whether by any chance the good lady possessed a pair of bright green, high-heeled leather shoes; and when she replied that, yes, she did, Morse smiled serenely, as though he had solved the secret of the universe, and promptly summoned into the lounge bar not only the three he’d just interviewed but all those now in the George who had been drinking there the previous morning.

As they waited, Morse asked for the serial numbers of the stolen notes, and Lewis passed over a scrap of paper on which some figures had been hastily scribbled in blotchy Biro. “For Christ’s sake, man!” hissed Morse. “Didn’t they teach you to write at school?”

Lewis breathed heavily, counted to five, and then painstakingly rewrote the numbers on a virginal piece of paper: 773741–773780. At which numbers Morse glanced cursorily before sticking the paper in his pocket, and proceeding to address the George’s regulars.

He was virtually certain (he said) of who had stolen the money. What he was absolutely sure about was exactly where that money was at that very moment. He had the serial numbers of the notes — but that was of no importance whatsoever now. The thief might well have been tempted to spend the money earlier — but not any more! And why not? Because at this Christmas time that person no longer had the power to resist his better self.

In that bar, stilled now and silent as the grave itself, the faces of Morse’s audience seemed mesmerised — and remained so as Morse gave his instructions that the notes should be replaced in their original envelope and returned (he cared not by what means) to Sergeant Lewis’s office at Thames Valley Police HQ within the next twenty-four hours.

As they drove back, Lewis could restrain his curiosity no longer. “You really are confident that—?”

“Of course!”

“I never seem to be able to put the clues together myself, sir.”

“Clues? What clues, Lewis? I didn’t know we had any.”

“Well, those shoes, for example. How do they fit in?”

“Who said they fitted in anywhere? It’s just that I used to know an auburn-haired beauty who had six — six, Lewis! — pairs of bright green shoes. They suited her, she said.”

“So... they’ve got nothing to do with the case at all?”

“Not so far as I know,” muttered Morse.

The next morning a white envelope was delivered to Lewis’s office, though no one at reception could recall when or whence it had arrived. Lewis immediately rang Morse to congratulate him on the happy outcome of the case.

“There’s just one thing, sir. I’d kept that scrappy bit of paper with the serial numbers on it, and these are brand-new notes all right — but they’re not the same ones!”

“Really?” Morse sounded supremely unconcerned.

“You’re not worried about it?”

“Good Lord, no! You just get that money back to ginger-knob at the George, and tell her to settle for a jumbo cheque next time! Oh, and one other thing, Lewis. I’m on leave. So no interruptions from anybody — understand?”

“Yes, sir. And, er... Happy Christmas, sir!”

“And to you, old friend!” replied Morse quietly.

The bank manager rang just before lunch that same day. “It’s about the four hundred pounds you withdrew yesterday, Inspector. I did promise to ring about any further bank charges—”

“I explained to the girl,” protested Morse. “I needed the money quickly.”

“Oh, it’s perfectly all right. But you did say you’d call in this morning to transfer—”

“Tomorrow! I’m up a ladder with a paint brush at the moment.”

Morse put down the receiver and again sank back in the armchair with the crossword. But his mind was far away, and some of the words he himself had spoken kept echoing around his brain: something about one’s better self... And he smiled, for he knew that this would be a Christmas he might enjoy almost as much as the children up at Littlemore, perhaps. He had solved so many mysteries in his life. Was he now, he wondered, beginning to glimpse the solution to the greatest mystery of them all?

More Than Flesh and Blood Susan Moody

Susan Moody has created several memorable characters for her mystery fiction, notably the jet-setting Penny Wanawake, who is tall, gorgeous, and “black and shiny as a licorice-stick.” Her lover is a jewel thief whose loot is fenced, the proceeds sent to the poor in Africa by Penny. She is a powerful crime-fighter, though she does not regard stealing from the rich as a crime. Moody’s other series detective is the somewhat more traditional Cassandra Swann, a businesswoman and bridge instructor. “More Than Flesh and Blood” was first published in A Classic Christmas Crime, edited by Tim Heald (London, Pavilion, 1995).

Looking back, he was always to remember the place as like a honeycomb, full of golden light. The walls of the houses, made of some yellowish local stone, were glazed with it. Roofs, covered in ochre-edged rings of lichen, dripped it back into the single narrow street, where the front doors opened straight into what would once have been called the parlour.

After the long journey through the barren hills, the village welcomed him. Driving across the humped stone bridge, he knew at once that he’d found what he was looking for. He stopped the car and got out. There were no shops, no pub, no one to ask the way. At the far end of the street there were cows, creamy-gold in the fierce light of the starting-to-set sun, sauntering towards an open farm gate. Beyond it, stone buildings, mud and hay, metal churns, indicated a dairy. He followed them.

A woman was already clamping the first cow to the nozzles of an electric milking-machine. She looked up at him without straightening, her face strong from confronting the weather unprotected for fifty or sixty years.

“I’m trying to find this house,” he said, city-diffident in the presence of elemental sources. He showed her the photograph, thumb and fourth finger grasping the edges of the thick cardboard.

“Aye,” she said.

“Beckwith House, I believe it’s called.”

“Aye.”

“Is it here? In the village?”

“Noo.” Her voice was soft, rounded as the cows she tended. “Noo, it’s not.”

That shook him a little. He had been so sure it would be here, friendly with other houses, neighboured.

“Where then?”

“It’s up t’dale a way.” She nodded towards the road behind him and the deep hills into which it led. Already, shadows were tumbling down the slopes, only the higher crests fully daylit, though he could still see the outlines of the dry-stone walls which criss-crossed the lower slopes, and the occasional brooding bulk of a barn.

“How far?”

“Two, three miles. Mebbe four. It’s right on t’road.”

“Thank you.”

As she moved back towards the gate, she called after him: “Does she know you’re coming?”

He stopped. “Does who know I’m coming?”

“The missus.”

He smiled and shook his head. “No,” he said. “She doesn’t.”

Back in the open again, after the temporary closing in of the village, he could feel wind sweeping down from the high fells, gusting the car towards the edge of the black road. Now that he was close to where he had been heading for most of his life, he felt none of the excitement he had anticipated, merely a sense of a waiting void about to be filled.

“... somewhere...” she used to say, cruelly. But where? Until today, he had not known. Now, the place, the time, the night edging down on him from above, fitted round him as though tailor-made.

The road began to wind. In the bend of a turn, he saw stone gateposts, iron gates twice as tall as he was, laurels massed behind walls. He parked on the verge, tucking the car in close. Behind the gates was a short drive curving towards a house, square and two-storied. Though he had never been here before, he knew precisely how the path led round behind the house, past deep-silled windows to a porched side door. He knew it would come out on to a flag-stoned terrace looking over an enclosed garden. He knew the view from the windows at the rear of the house, and where the plums and apples would stand on either side of the wrought-iron gate set in the garden wall, through which, like a photograph, could be seen a segment of landscape. There would be a pond, too, beside the terrace, and a rockery full of alpines, little crawling plants that overflowed and spilled down the edges of white stones. On one of the gateposts there was a round slate plaque. Beckwith House. He traced the two meniscal curves of the B with his finger. He turned the handle of the right-hand gate. It whimpered metallically. The iron bars resisted as he pushed, then opened, following a deep groove in the gravelled earth behind it.

“... somewhere...”

Here. He’d found it at last, been drawn to it, almost, though perhaps that was a trifle fanciful. He had had so little to go on, just the whispered, half-heard word — “Garthway...” Garthway? The more he tried to re-run the sequence in his head, the dying eyes filming even as they looked at him, the huge body heaving, the lips puckering as they tried to form the word while one hand twitched slowly on the turndown of the linen sheet with the border of drawn-thread work, the less he could remember what exactly had been said.

His feet made no sound on the earth. The gravel had long since sunk into the soil and now lay embedded in it like the eyes of drowning men below the surface of the water. Neglect entombed the house. He walked between the leaves of dark unpruned laurels. There was a faint light in one of the windows, its dirt-streaked panes almost hidden by creeper long left untended.

There was a glow, too, from the ornate fanlight above the front door. He banged the knocker and felt the house pause, listening, questioning. Footsteps came along the passage towards him, brisk, almost eager.

The woman who opened the door stared at him for a time. Later he could not have said for how long. Two or three seconds? Or had they been minutes? Her mouth moved towards a welcoming smile, then let it be. She brushed her hand against the side of her head, even though her hair was neatly tidy.

“Martin,” she said. Not a question.

“Yes.”

“I knew you’d come.”

“Yes.”

“It’s taken you long enough.”

“I wasn’t sure where to look.” Even with the help of the police computers, it had taken weeks of work to pinpoint this place, this woman.

She nodded, as if she knew what the difficulties in tracing her had been.

“You’d best come in, then.” She stood aside, flat against the wall of the narrow hall to let him pass in front of her.

“Straight through. I’m in the kitchen.”

The kitchen was warm, pined, full of good smells. They were part of the things which had been denied him. He saw that the room had been redecorated: the wallpaper had been changed and there was shelving that had not been there before.

In the fuller light, he was able to see her properly. She was younger than he had expected. And much less sad. It seemed to him that she ought to have been sad.

“What are you now?” she said. “Thirty-two?”

“Next birthday,” he said.

“Early June, isn’t it?”

He nodded, not minding that she had forgotten the precise date; though they had not met for over thirty years, she knew the month, just as he knew that behind the door to the left of the range was the larder, that although there were only five brass dish-covers hanging above it, there had once been seven. She leaned back against the warm curves of the Aga and shook her head. “I’d have known you anywhere,” she said.

“Yes.” Of course she would.

She frowned. “You’re with the police, aren’t you?” she said.

“Am I?”

She frowned. “That’s what she said, last time I heard. That you were with the police.”

Was he? Sometimes, he could scarcely remember who he was or where he came from. Sometimes he could scarcely remember that he didn’t really know the answer to the question. Which was why he was here now.

He reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a package. He spread the contents on the shiny oilcloth which covered the kitchen table. And as he did so, the voices which never seemed to be far away, came back.

“... somewhere...”

“Where?”

“Somewhere.”

“Where, Gran?”

“Up north.”

“Where up north?”

“That would be telling, wouldn’t it now?”

“Tell me, Gran. Tell me.” Because even then, a child, six, seven, ten years old, he had known it was important. If she would just pinpoint the place for him, just give it space, meaning, then he himself would finally be rooted.

“What happened, Gran?”

She would start again. “It was Christmas Eve.” Then stop, laughing at him, the heavy rolls of her flesh shaking up and down her body. She was all too aware of the depth of the desire to know that filled him. Only to know.

“Christmas Day, Gran.” It was part of the cruel ritual that the beginning must never vary.

“Oh yes. You’re a knowing little monkey, aren’t you?” A nod of the head, a stare over the tops of her glasses, a small not-quite-pleasant smile. “It was Christmas Day, and there was champagne in a silver bucket...”

Ah, that champagne. For years he hadn’t really known what it was. “Wine, dear, with a sparkle,” she’d told him. “It made you feel good. Or bad, depending on your viewpoint.” And she had giggled, an old woman scratching at memories.

When he was older, of course, he’d seen real, not imagined champagne, seen the big bottles, the shiny tops, the labels, special, rich, different from other labels on other bottles. Later still, drunk it, felt the bubbles at the top of his mouth. The sparkle of it was entwined in his earliest memories: that Christmas, that champagne.

“Yes, Gran. The champagne.”

“There was champagne in a silver bucket, and then your mother...”

And she would stop. Always. Her fingers would float above the photographs, her hands small and delicate against the grossness of her bulk, and he would see the past in her eyes, the something terrible that she would never tell him. He knew it was terrible by her silence. And always, briefly, her face would register again the shock of whatever it was had happened that Christmas Day, before she turned off into a story of Santa Claus or mince pies or some other yuletide banality which he knew had nothing to do with the one which lurked behind her eyes.

“Then what, Gran? What?” But there would be no force in his voice now. She wasn’t going to tell him. Not then. Not ever.

Now, the woman came forward, stood beside him, stirred the photographs on the table with her finger.

“Still got all the snaps, then?” she said.

“Yes.”

“I suppose she’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“About time. How did she die?”

Slowly, he wanted to say, but did not.

“Because I hope it hurt her to let go of life,” the woman said. “I hope she fought against it, knowing she would lose.”

That was exactly how it had been. He said nothing.

“I hope it was... violent.” Her voice shook. “Like his.” She sifted through the photographs and picked one out. “Like his.”

He was young. Dark. Hair falling over his forehead. A military cap held under one arm.

The woman moved her head from side to side. “He was so beautiful,” she said, lifeless. “So... beautiful.”

“My father.”

“Yes. What did she tell you about him?”

“She told me nothing. Except that he was dead.”

“I don’t imagine she told you why.”

“No. Not even that this was his picture. At least — not until very recently.” He’d managed to choke that from her, squeezing and relaxing the soft flesh of her throat, alternately giving her hope, then removing it. “And my mother,” he’d said. “Tell me where she is, where she is.” And almost left it too late. “Garthway,” she had managed. That was all.

Outside the window, at the edge of the garden, he could see how the last of the sun caught the green hill through the iron gate which led out on to the moors. It shone like a transparency between the shadowed walls on either side.

“And now you’ve come back to see for yourself where it all happened, have you?” The woman filled a kettle at the tap and set it on top of the red Aga.

“She never told me what exactly...” He picked two photographs out of the pile on the table. “... but I knew something must have.”

Somewhere in his mind he heard the echo of the hateful voice: “It was Christmas Day, somewhere up north...”

Two photographs. Christmas dinner, every detail clear: the turkey, the sausages, the roast potatoes and steaming sprouts, a cut glass dish of cranberry sauce, a china gravy boat. Beside the table, a silver bucket. The people leaned towards each other, smiling, holding up glasses, about to celebrate. At the head of the table was a woman of maybe forty, big-boned, fair-haired, her dress cut low over prominent breasts. She was handsome, ripe. His workmates at the police station would have whistled if he’d shown them the photo, would have nudged each other, said she was pleading for it, they wouldn’t have minded a bit of that themselves. She was leaning towards the young girl sitting at her right, saying something.

“That’s you, isn’t it?” he said, his finger brushing across the girl’s face.

“It is. It was.”

And the same scene, seconds later. Glasses still in the air, but the smiles gone as they stared towards something out of frame, their faces full of horror and shock. The girl was gone. The woman at the head of the table looked straight ahead at the camera, smiling a small not-quite-pleasant smile.

“What happened?” he said. “I have to know.” Because the body down in Wandsworth would never tell now. The swollen protruding tongue was silent at last. Had been for weeks. The small white hands would never again turn and turn through the photographs, reliving a past that a cataclysm had destroyed.

The woman lifted her shoulder and released a sighing breath. “You have a right, if anybody does,” she said. “I didn’t know Bobby was taking photographs then.”

“Bobby?”

“My youngest brother. He was camera mad. He took all of these, photographed everything. ‘It’ll be a record for posterity,’ he’d say.

“It’s been that, all right.”

Staring down at the photographs, the woman said softly: “She hated me, of course.”

“Who did?”

“My mother.” She indicated the woman at the head of the table. “It must have been some kind of madness, some pathological obsession. Or maybe she was just jealous because Dad loved me more than he loved her. They’d have a word for it today, I suppose. Perhaps they did then, but I never knew what it was, just that she was dangerous. My brothers tried to protect me, even little Bobby. So did Dad, while he was alive. I think she would have killed me, if she could.” A silence. “She did the next best thing.”

“Tell me.”

Again the shuddering sigh. “Edward. Your father. He lived further up the dale. His family was rich, owned a lot of land. Edward was ten years older than I was, but it never mattered. Right from the beginning there was never anyone else for either of us.” She turned her gaze on him. “We loved one another.” On the Aga the kettle began to fizz, water drops skittering like ants across the surface of the hot plate. The woman got up, found a teapot, cups, saucers. “Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” he said, though he knew nothing of love.

“I was sent away to school, to keep me from my mother, but the first day of the holidays, Edward would be there, outside the garden gate, and then it was like summer, like fireworks, like roses shooting out of the ground and birds singing.” She smiled, looking back. Her voice was without emotion.

“What happened?”

“On my sixteenth birthday, in the middle of September, Edward wrote to me at school — he was in the Army by then — and said he was being posted overseas after Christmas and wanted me to come with him. He said I was old enough, he’d ask my mother if we could get married, since Dad had died the year before.”

“What did she say?”

“That it was out of the question, that I was far too young. I wrote and said I didn’t need her consent, I was legally able to get married and I was going to, soon as I came home at Christmas, so I could go abroad with Edward. She was furious.”

He nodded. He knew Gran’s furies. The violence, the hatred, flowing out of her like champagne from a shaken bottle.

“Edward said he thought my brothers could persuade her. And in the end, she gave in. She invited Edward to have Christmas dinner with us.” She checked, touched her forehead, closed her eyes. “I really thought that she...”

Softly, he said: “It was Christmas Day, somewhere up north.”

Equally softly, she said: “It was snowing that day and Edward was so late that we were about to start without him. Then he suddenly appeared at the door of the dining-room. He stood there, looking at me. Just — looking. Not smiling. And then my mother leaned over to me and said... she said...”

“What?” All these years, and he could feel the inner emptiness begin to fill at last with what should always have been there.

“She must have planned it, decided exactly when she would tell me, right down to the second. Normally I would never have sat next to her at the table but that day she made me. So nobody but me heard her say that she and Edward... that they were lovers. That she’d seduced him, that it had been easy, that it was not me he loved but her.”

“Did you believe her?”

“No. Not all of it. Not... everything.”

“What then?”

“Edward knew what she was doing. He called my name. He said he loved me, that in spite of everything, I was to remember he loved me. Then he — suddenly, he was gone, out through the front door. We heard a shot.”

“My God.”

“I ran and ran across the grass, in my new shoes. I could see him lying on the ground with his gun beside him, and I knelt in the snow and held him while he died. His blood was so red against the white. She put her arm round me for the first time in her life. She said they would have married. That Edward had no choice, not in the circumstances.”

“Did you believe her?” he said again.

“Not at first.” She sighed. “Later, I went into a... hospital for a while.”

“Of course. If you were carrying... I suppose in those days... more of a stigma... unmarried...” His voice died away.

“When I came out, Bobby had died in a car crash and my elder brothers had both gone out to Australia. She’d gone, too. She took you away with her, down south. You were all that was left of my Edward.”

“You poor thing.”

“Because of course, she and Edward had... not that I ever blamed him. It was all her fault.”

“Poor darling Mother.” He covered her hand. They would be friends, she and he. They would make up for all the years that the evil old woman, Gran, had taken from them both. He thought swiftly about Gran’s dying, wished it had taken her longer, that she had suffered more, that he had been, perhaps, more brutal at the beginning. “Why didn’t you come looking for me?”

She moved from under his hand. “Why would I? It would only have brought it back. The trauma. Besides, eventually I got over the shock of it all.”

He wished she did not sound so indifferent. “I didn’t,” he said.

“Jim and I started courting, we got married, had the children...” She shrugged. “You know how it is.”

“But, Mother...” The word hung in his mouth, succulent, unaccustomed.

She stared at him for a moment. “I’m not your mother,” she said, giving the word a hard emphasis.

“What?” He did not take in what she was saying.

She smiled a small, familiar, not-quite-pleasant smile. “Not me, Martin. Your father and I didn’t... hadn’t... I was a virgin when I wed Jim.”

“Then... who?”

She didn’t answer.

“Gran?” he said.

“If that’s what you called her.”

“She told me my parents were dead,” he said. Tears filled his eyes. Hatred, raw and red-edged, filled him. Was Gran, that blowsy, disgusting old woman, was she the mother, the flesh and blood, it had taken him so long to find?

The woman looked at him. “In a way, she was right, wasn’t she?”

“No! Don’t say that!” His hands were around her neck. He could feel the bone at the base of her skull and the convulsive movements of her throat. He shook his head. “She can’t be... not Gran,” he said.

He squeezed harder, trying to force the right words from her mouth, while her white fingers tore at his hands and her face darkened. “Tell me it wasn’t Gran,” he screamed, but she did not answer.

When he let her drop back in her chair her eyes, so like his own, had grown dull. In one of her small hands she still held the photograph of that long-past never-finished luncheon, and the champagne in a silver bucket, on Christmas Day.

The Butler’s Christmas Eve Mary Roberts Rinehart

The first mystery novel to appear on the bestseller list in America was The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart in 1909. She had written it as a serial for the first pulp magazine, Munsey’s Magazine, which also serialized her novel The Circular Staircase (1908), which was released in book form before The Man in Lower Ten, probably her most successful work. She and Avery Hopwood adapted it for the stage as The Bat in 1920, by which time she had become the highest-paid writer in America. As the creator of the now frequently parodied “Had-I-But-Known” school, Rinehart regularly had her plucky heroines put themselves in situations from which they needed to be rescued. “The Butler’s Christmas Eve” was first published in her short story collection Alibi for Isabel (New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1944).

William stood in the rain waiting for the bus. In the fading daylight he looked rather like a freshly washed eighty-year-old and beardless Santa Claus, and underneath his raincoat he clutched a parcel which contained a much-worn nightshirt, an extra pair of socks, a fresh shirt, and a brand-new celluloid collar. It also contained a pint flask of the best Scotch whisky.

Not that William drank, or at least not to speak of. The whisky was a gift, and in more than one way it was definitely contraband. It was whisky which had caused his trouble.

The Christmas Eve crowd around him was wet but amiable.

“Look, mama, what have you done with the suitcase?”

“What do you think you’re sitting on? A bird cage?”

The crowd laughed. The rain poured down. The excited children were restless. They darted about, were lost and found again. Women scolded.

“You stand right here, Johnny. Keep under this umbrella. That’s your new suit.”

When the bus came along one of them knocked William’s package into the gutter, and he found himself shaking with anxiety. But the bottle was all right. He could feel it, still intact. The Old Man would have it, all right, Miss Sally or no Miss Sally; the Old Man, left sitting in a wheelchair with one side of his big body dead and nothing warm in his stomach to comfort him. Just a year ago tonight on Christmas Eve William had slipped him a small drink to help him sleep, and Miss Sally had caught him at it.

She had not said anything. She had kissed her grandfather good-night and walked out of the room. But the next morning she had come into the pantry where William was fixing the Old Man’s breakfast tray and dismissed him, after fifty years.

“I’m sorry, William. But you know he is forbidden liquor.”

William put down the Old Man’s heated egg cup and looked at her.

“It was only because it was Christmas Eve, Miss Sally. He was kind of low, with Mr. Tony gone and everything.”

She went white at that, but her voice was even.

“I am trying to be fair,” she said. “But even without this — You have worked a long time, and grandfather is too heavy for you to handle. I need a younger man, now that—”

She did not finish. She did not say that her young husband had enlisted in the Navy after Pearl Harbor, and that she had fought tooth and nail against it. Or that she suspected both her grandfather and William of supporting him.

William gazed at her incredulously.

“I’ve handled him, one way and another, for fifty years, Miss Sally.”

“I know all that. But I’ve talked to the doctor. He agrees with me.”

He stood very still. She couldn’t do this to him, this girl he had raised, and her father before her. She couldn’t send him out at his age to make a life for himself, after living a vicarious one in this house for half a century. But he saw helplessly that she could and that she meant to.

“When am I to go?” he asked.

“It would be kinder not to see him again, wouldn’t it?”

“You can’t manage alone, Miss Sally,” he said stubbornly. But she merely made a little gesture with her hands.

“I’m sorry, William. I’ve already arranged for someone else.”

He took the breakfast tray to the Old Man’s door and gave it to the nurse. Then he went upstairs to his room and standing inside looked around him. This had been his room for most of his life. On the dresser was the faded snapshot of the Old Man as a Major in the Rough Riders during the Spanish War. There was a picture of Miss Sally’s father, his only son, who had not come home from France in 1918. There was a very new one of Mr. Tony, young and good-looking and slightly defiant, taken in his new Navy uniform. And of course there were pictures of Miss Sally herself, ranging from her baby days to the one of her, smiling and lovely, in her wedding dress.

William had helped to rear her. Standing there he remembered the day when she was born. The Major — he was Major Bennett then, not the Old Man — had sent for him when he heard the baby’s mother was dead.

“Well,” he said heavily, “it looks as though we’ve got a child to raise. A girl at that! Think we can do it?”

“We’ve done harder things, sir,” said William.

“All right,” said the Major. “But get this, William, I want no spoiled brat around the place. If I find you spoiling her, by the Lord Harry I’ll fire you.”

“I won’t spoil her,” William had said sturdily. “But she’ll probably be as stubborn as a mule.”

“Now why the hell do you say that?” the Major had roared.

But William had only smiled.

So she had grown up. She was lovable, but she was wild as a March wind and as stubborn as the Bennetts had always been. Then — it seemed almost no time to William — she met Mr. Tony, and one day she was walking down a church aisle on her grandfather’s arm, looking beautiful and sedate, and when she walked out again she was a married woman.

The old house had been gay after that. It was filled with youth and laughter. Then one day Miss Sally had gone to the hospital to have her baby, and her grandfather, gray of face, had waited for the news. William had tried to comfort him.

“I understand it’s a perfectly normal process, sir,” he said. “They are born every day. Millions of them.”

“Get your smug face out of here,” roared the Major. “You and your millions! What the hell do I care about them? It’s my girl who’s in trouble.”

He was all right then. He was even all right when the message came that it was over, and Miss Sally and Mr. Tony had a ten-minute-old son. But going out of the hospital he had staggered and fallen, and he had never walked again. That was when the household began to call him the Old Man. Behind his back, of course.

It was tragic, because Miss Sally had had no trouble at all. She wakened at the hospital to learn that she had borne a man-child, asked if he had the proper number of fingers and toes, stated flatly that she had no intention of raising him for purposes of war, and then asked for a cigarette.

That had been two years ago, and she had come home on Christmas Eve. Mr. Tony had a little tree for the baby in the Old Man’s bedroom, with Miss Sally’s battered wax angel on the top, and the Old Man lay in his bed and looked at it.

“I suppose this kind of thing will save us, in the end,” he said to William. “Damn it, man, people will go on having babies, and the babies will have Christmas trees, long after Hitler is dead and rotted.”

The baby of course had not noticed the tree, and there was nothing to indicate that a year later William would be about to be dismissed, or that Mr. Tony, feverishly shaking a rattle before his sleeping offspring, would be in his country’s uniform and somewhere on the high seas.

It was a bad year, in a way. It had told on Miss Sally, William thought. Her grandfather had taken his stroke badly. He would lie for hours, willing that stubborn will of his to move an arm, a leg, even a finger, on the stricken side. Nothing happened, of course, and at last he had accepted it, wheelchair and all. William had helped to care for him, turning his big body when the nurse changed the sheets, bathing him when he roared that he would be eternally damned if he would allow any woman to wash him. And during the long hours of the night it had been William who sat with him while he could not sleep.

Yet Miss Sally had taken it bravely.

“He cared for me all my life,” she said. “Now I can care for him. William and I.”

She had done it, too. William had to grant her that. She had turned a wing of the ground floor over to him, with a porch where he could sit and look out at the sea. She gave him time and devotion. Until Pearl Harbor, that is, and the night when Mr. Tony had slipped into the Old Man’s room while William was playing chess with him, and put his problem up to them.

“You know Sally,” he said. “I can’t even talk to her about this war. But she’s safe here, and the boy too. And... well, somebody’s got to fight.”

The Old Man had looked down at that swollen helpless hand of his, lying in his lap.

“I see,” he said. “You want to go, of course?”

“It isn’t a question of wanting, is it?”

“It is, damn it,” said the Old Man fiercely. “I wanted to go to Cuba. Her father couldn’t get to France fast enough. I wouldn’t give a tinker’s curse for the fellow who doesn’t want to go. But” — his voice softened — “it will hurt Sally like hell, son. She’s had enough of war.”

It had hurt her. She had fought it tooth and nail. But Tony had enlisted in the Navy almost at once, and he had gone a few days before Christmas. She did not cry when she saw him off, but she had the bleak look in her face which had never since entirely left it.

“I hope you enjoy it,” she said.

“I don’t expect to enjoy it, darling.”

She was smiling, a strange stiff smile.

“Then why are you going?” she asked. “There are plenty of men who don’t have to leave a wife to look after a baby and a helpless old man. Two old men,” she said, and looked at William, standing by with the bags.

She was still not crying when after he had gone she had walked to the Old Man’s room. William was there. She stood in the doorway looking at them.

“I hope you’re both satisfied,” she said, her voice frozen. “You can sit here, safe and sound, and beat the drums all you like. But I warn you, don’t beat them where I can hear them. I won’t have it.”

Her grandfather eyed her.

“I raised you,” he said. “William and I raised you. I guess we went wrong somewhere. You’re spoiled after all. And I’ll beat the drums all I damn please. So will William.”

Only William knew that she had not gone to bed at all that night. Some time toward morning he had seen her down on the beach in the cold, staring out at the sea.

He had trimmed the boy’s tree for him that Christmas Eve. And when it was finished, with the same ancient wax angel on the top, the Old Man had suddenly asked for a drink.

“To hell with the doctors,” he said. “I’ll drink to Tony if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

As it happened, it was practically the last thing William had to do for him. For of course he had just got the liquor down when Miss Sally walked in.

She dismissed William the next morning. He had gone upstairs and packed, leaving his livery but taking the photographs with him in his battered old suitcase. When he came down the stairs Miss Sally was waiting for him. He thought she had been crying, but the bleak look was in her face again.

“I’m sorry it has to be like this, William,” she said stiffly. “I have your check here, and of course if you ever need any help—”

“I’ve saved my money,” he told her stiffly. “I can manage. If it’s all right I’d like to see the baby before I go.”

She nodded, and he left her and went outside. The baby toddled to him, and William picked him up and held him close.

“You be a good boy,” he said. “Be a good boy and eat your cereal every day.”

“Dood boy,” said the child.

William stood for a minute, looking out at the winter ocean where perhaps even now Mr. Tony might be. Then he put the child down.

“Look after him, Miss Jones,” he told the nurse huskily. “He’s about all his great-grandfather has left.”

He found he was shaking when he got into the station wagon. Paul, the chauffeur, had to lift his suitcase. Evidently he knew. He looked concerned.

“This’ll be hard as hell on the Old Man,” he said. “What happened, anyhow?”

“Miss Sally’s upset,” said William evenly. “Mr. Tony going, and all that. She has no reason to like war.”

“Who does?” said Paul glumly. “What do you bet they’ll get me next?”

As they left a taxi was turning in at the gate. There was a tall swarthy man inside, and William disliked him instantly. Paul grunted.

“If that’s the new fellow the Old Man will have him on his backside in a week,” he said.

But so far as William knew the man was still there, and now he himself was on his way back, after a year, on some mysterious business he did not understand.

The bus rattled and roared along. The crowd was still amiable. It called Merry Christmas to each other, and strangers talked across the aisle. It was as though for this one night in the year one common bond united them. William, clutching his parcel, felt some of its warmth infecting him.

He had been very lonely. He had taken a room in the city, but most of the people he knew had died or moved away. He took out a card to the public library, and read a good bit. And when the weather was good he sat in the park at the edge of the river, watching the ships on their way up to the Sound to join their convoys. They traveled one after the other, great grayish black monsters, like elephants in a circus holding each others’ tails. Sometimes they were battleships, sometimes freighters, laden to their Plimsoll marks, their decks covered with tanks and huge crates. So close were they that once on the bridge of a destroyer he thought he saw Mr. Tony. He stood up and waved his old hat, and the young officer saluted. But it was not Tony.

When the sinkings began he watched the newspapers, his heart beating fast. Then one day he saw Tony’s picture. His ship had helped to rescue a crew at sea, and Tony was smiling. He looked tired and older, however. William had cut it out and sent it to the Old Man. But the only acknowledgment had been a post card. It had been duly censored for the United States Mail, and so all it said was: “Come back, you blankety blank fool.”

However, if the Old Man had his pride, so did William. He had not gone back.

Then, just a week before, he had received a telegram. It too had evidently been censored, this time for the benefit of the telegraph company. So it read: DRAT YOUR STIFF-NECKED PRIDE. COME AND SEE ME. LETTER FOLLOWS.

As the bus rattled along he got out the letter. The crowd had settled down by that time. One by one the tired children had dropped off to sleep, and even the adults looked weary, as though having worked themselves into a fine pitch of excitement they had now relapsed into patient waiting. He got out his spectacles and reread the letter.

It was a very odd sort of letter, written as it was in the Old Man’s cramped hand. It was almost as though he had expected someone else to read it. If there was anything wrong it did not say so. In fact, it alluded only to a Christmas surprise for the baby. Nevertheless the directions were puzzling. William was to arrive quietly and after dark. He was to leave his taxi at the gate, walk in, and rap on the Old Man’s bedroom window. It added that the writer would get rid of the nurse if he had to drown her in the bathtub, and it closed with what sounded like an appeal. “Don’t be a damn fool. I need you.”

He was still thinking about it when the bus reached its destination. The rain had continued, and the crowd got out to an opening of umbrellas and another search for missing parcels. William was stiff from the long ride, and the town surprised him. It was almost completely blacked out and his taxi, when he found one, had some sort of black material over all but a narrow strip on its headlights.

“Good thing too,” said the driver companionably. “We’re right on the coast. Too many ships getting sunk these days. One sunk off here only a week ago. If you ask me them Germans has fellows at work right in this place. Where’d you say to go?”

“The Bennett place. Out on the beach.”

The driver grinned.

“Used to drive the Major now and then,” he said. “Kind of a violent talker, ain’t he?”

“He’s had quite a bit of trouble,” said William.

“Well, his granddaughter’s a fine girl,” said the driver. “Know where she is tonight? Trimming a tree out at the camp. I seen her there myself.”

“She always was a fine girl,” said William sturdily.

The driver protested when he got out at the gate.

“Better let me take you in. It’s raining cats and dogs.”

But William shook his head.

“I want to surprise them. I know the way.”

The cab drove off to an exchange of Christmas greetings, and William started for the house. There were no lights showing as he trudged along the driveway, but he could hear ahead of him the steady boom of the waves as the Atlantic rolled in, the soft hiss of the water as it rolled up the beach. Just so for fifty years had he heard it. Only now it meant something new and different. It meant danger, men in ships watching against death; Mr. Tony perhaps somewhere out there in the dark, and the Old Man knowing it and listening, as he was listening.

He was relieved when he saw the garage doors open and no cars inside. He made his way cautiously around the house to the Old Man’s wing, and stood listening under the bedroom window. There was no sound inside, however, and he wondered what to do. If he was asleep — Suddenly he sneezed, and he almost jumped out of his skin when a familiar voice spoke, almost at his ear.

“Come in, damn it,” said the voice irritably. “What the hell are you waiting for? Want to catch your death of pneumonia?”

Suddenly William felt warm and comfortable again. This was what he had needed, to be sworn at and shouted at, to see the Old Man again, to hear him roar, or to be near him in contented silence. He crawled through the window, smiling happily.

“Nothing wrong with your voice, anyhow,” he said. “Well, here I am, sir.”

“And about time,” said the Old Man. “Turn up the light and let me look at you. Shut the window and draw those curtains. Hah! You’re flabby!”

“I’ve gained a little weight,” William admitted.

“A little! Got a tummy like a bowl of jelly.”

These amenities over they grinned at each other, and the Old Man held out his good hand.

“God,” he said, “I’m glad to see you. We’re going straight to the devil here. Well, a Merry Christmas to you anyhow.”

“The same to you, sir.”

They shook hands, and William surveyed the Old Man, sitting bolt upright in his wheelchair. He looked as truculent as ever, but some of the life had gone out of his face.

“So you ran out on me!” he said. “Why the devil didn’t you turn Sally over your knee and spank her? I’ve seen you do it.”

“I’m not as strong as I used to be,” said William apologetically. The Old Man chuckled.

“She’s a Bennett,” he said. “Always was, always will be. But she’s learning. Maybe it’s the hard way, but she’s learning.” He eyed William. “Take off that coat, man,” he said. “You’re dripping all over the place. What’s that package? Anything in it but your nightshirt?”

“I’ve got a pint of Scotch,” William admitted.

“Then what are we waiting for?” shouted the Old Man. “Sally’s out. The nurse is out. Jarvis is out — that’s the butler, if he is a butler and if that’s his name. And the rest have gone to bed. Let’s have it. It’s Christmas Eve, man!”

“They oughtn’t to leave you like that,” William said reprovingly.

“Each of them thinks somebody else is looking after me.” The Old Man chuckled. “Get some glasses. I guess you know your way. And take a look around when you get there.”

William went back to the familiar rear of the house. His feet were wet and a small trickle of water had escaped his celluloid collar and gone down his back; but he walked almost jauntily. Until he saw his pantry, that is.

He did not like what he saw. The place even smelled unclean, and the silver was only half polished, the glasses he held to the light were smeared, and the floor felt sticky under his feet.

Resentfully he washed two glasses, dried them on a not too clean dish towel, and went back. The Old Man watched him from under his heavy eyebrows.

“Well, what do you think of it?” he inquired. “Is the fellow a butler?”

“He’s not a good one, sir.”

But the Old Man said nothing more. He took his glass and waited until William had poured his own drink. Then he lifted the glass.

“To Tony,” he said. “A safe Christmas to him, and to all the other men with the guts to fight this war.”

It was like a prayer. It probably was a prayer, and William echoed it.

“To Mr. Tony,” he said, “and all the rest.”

Then at last the Old Man explained his letter. He didn’t trust the man Jarvis. Never had. Too smooth. Sally, of course, did not suspect him, although he was damned inefficient. Anyhow what could she do, with every able-bodied man in service or making armament?

“But there’s something queer about him,” he said. “And you may not know it, but we had a ship torpedoed out here last week. Some of the men landed on the beach. Some never landed anywhere, poor devils.”

“I heard about it,” said William. “What do you want me to do?”

“How the hell do I know?” said the Old Man.

“Look around. See if there’s anything suspicious. And if there isn’t, get rid of him anyhow. I don’t like him.”

A thin flush rose to William’s wrinkled face.

“You mean I’m to stay?” he inquired.

“Why the devil do you suppose I brought you back?” shouted the Old Man. “Don’t stand there staring. Get busy. We haven’t got all night.”

William’s strictly amateur activities, however, yielded him nothing. His old room — now belonging to Jarvis — surprised him by its neatness, but unless that in itself was suspicious, there was nothing more. No flashlight for signaling, no code book, which William would certainly not have recognized anyhow, not even a radio.

“Tidy, is it?” said the Old Man when he reported back. “Well, I suppose that’s that. I’d hoped to hand the FBI a Christmas gift, but — All right, no spy. I’ve got another job for you, one you’ll like better.” He leaned back in his chair and eyed William quizzically. “Sally’s not having a tree this year for the boy. I don’t blame her. For months she’s worked her fool head off. Army, Navy, and what have you. She’s tired. Maybe she’s breaking her heart. Sometimes I think she is. But by the Lord Harry he’s having a tree just the same.”

William looked at his watch.

“It’s pretty late to buy one,” he said. “But of course I can try.”

The Old Man grinned, showing a perfect set of his own teeth, only slightly yellowed.

“Think I’m getting old, don’t you?” he scoffed. “Always did think you were smarter than I was, didn’t you? Well, I’m not in my dotage yet. The tree’s on the porch. Had it delivered tonight. Unless,” he added unkindly, “you’re too feeble to drag it in!”

William also grinned, showing a perfect set of teeth, certainly not his own, except by purchase.

“I suppose you wouldn’t care to take a bet on it, sir?” he said happily.

Ten minutes later the tree was in place in a corner of the Old Man’s sitting room. William was perspiring but triumphant. The Old Man himself was exhilarated with one small drink and an enormous pride. Indeed, both were eminently cheerful until, without warning, they heard the sound of a car outside.

It was Sally, and before she had put up her car and got back to the house, William was hidden in the darkened sitting room, and her grandfather was sedately reading in his chair beside a lamp. From where he stood William could see her plainly. She had changed, he thought. She looked older. But she looked gentler, too, as though at last she had learned some of the lessons of life. Her eyes were no longer bleak, but they were sunken in her head. Nevertheless William felt a thrill of pride. She was their girl, his and the Old Man’s, and now she was a woman. A lovely woman, too. Even William, no connoisseur, could see that.

“Good gracious, why aren’t you in bed?” she said, slipping off her fur coat. “And where’s the nurse?”

“It’s Christmas Eve, my dear. I sent her off for a while. She’ll be back.”

But Sally was not listening. Even William could see that. She sat down on the edge of a chair and twisted her fingers in her lap.

“There wasn’t any mail, was there?”

“I’m afraid not. Of course we don’t know where he is. It may be difficult for him to send any.”

Suddenly she burst out.

“Why don’t you say it?” she demanded. “You always say what you think. I sent Tony off wrong. I can’t forgive myself for that. I was wrong about William, too. You miss him, don’t you?”

“Miss him?” said the Old Man, deliberately raising his voice. “Why would I miss the old rascal? Always pottering around and doing nothing! I get along fine without him.”

“I think you’re lying to make me feel better,” she said, and got up. “I was wrong about him, and tonight I realized I’d been wrong about the baby’s tree. When I saw the men around the one we’d fixed for them — I’ve made a mess of everything, haven’t I?”

“Most of us do, my dear,” said her grandfather. “But we learn. We learn.”

She went out then, closing the door quietly behind her. When William went into the bedroom he found the Old Man staring somberly at the fire.

“Damn war anyhow,” he said violently. “Damn the blasted lunatics who wished it on the earth. All I need now is for some idiots to come around and sing ‘Peace on earth, good will to men!’ ”

As though it might have been a signal, from beyond the window suddenly came a chorus of young voices, and William gingerly raised the shade. Outside, holding umbrellas in one hand and clutching their blowing cassocks around them with the other, the choir boys from the nearby church were singing, their small scrubbed faces earnest and intent. They sang about peace, and the King of peace who had been born to save the world, and the Old Man listened. When they had gone he grinned sheepishly.

“Well, maybe they’re right at that,” he said. “Sooner or later peace has to come. How about a small drink to the idea, anyhow?”

They drank it together and in silence, and once more they were back where they had been a year ago. No longer master and man, but two friends of long standing, content merely to be together.

“So you’ve been doing fine without me, sir?” said William, putting down his glass.

“Hell, did you hear that?” said the Old Man innocently.

They chuckled as at some ancient joke.

It was after eleven when William in his socks made his way to the attic where the trimmings for the tree were stored. Sally was still awake. He could hear her stirring in her room. For a moment he stood outside and listened, and it seemed no time at all since he had done the same thing when she was a child, and had been punished and sent to bed. He would stand at her door and tap, and she would open it and throw herself sobbing into his arms.

“I’ve been a bad girl, William.”

He would hold her and pat her thin little back.

“Now, now,” he would say. “Take it easy, Sally. Maybe William can fix it for you.”

But of course there was nothing he could fix now. He felt rather chilly as he climbed the attic stairs.

To his relief the attic was orderly. He turned on the light and moving cautiously went to the corner where the Christmas tree trimmings, neatly boxed and covered, had always stood. They were still there. He lifted them, one by one, and placed them behind him. Then he stiffened and stood staring.

Neatly installed behind where they had been was a small radio transmitter.

He knew it at once for what it was, and a slow flush of fury suffused his face as he knelt down to examine it.

“The spy!” he muttered thickly, “the dirty devil of a spy!”

So this was how it was done. This was how ships were being sunk at sea; the convoys assembling, the ships passing along the horizon, and men like Jarvis watching, ready to unleash the waiting submarine wolves upon them.

He was trying to tear it out with his bare hands when he heard a voice behind him.

“Stay where you are, or I’ll shoot.”

But it was not Jarvis. It was Sally, white and terrified, in a dressing gown over her nightdress and clutching a revolver in her hand. William got up slowly and turned, and she gasped and dropped the gun.

“Why, William!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

He stood still, concealing the transmitter behind his stocky body.

“Your grandfather sent for me,” he said, with dignity. “He was planning a little surprise for you and the boy, in the morning.”

She looked at him, at his dependable old face, at the familiar celluloid collar gleaming in the light, at his independent sturdy figure, and suddenly her chin quivered.

“Oh, William,” she said. “I’ve been such a dreadful person.”

All at once she was in his arms, crying bitterly.

“Everything’s so awful,” she sobbed. “I’m so frightened, William. I can’t help it.”

And once more he was holding her and saying:

“It will be all right, Sally girl. Don’t you worry. It will be all right.”

She quieted, and at last he got her back to her room. He found that he was shaking, but he went methodically to work. He did what he could to put the transmitter out of business. Then he piled up the boxes of trimmings and carried them down the stairs. There was still no sign of Jarvis, and the Old Man was dozing in his chair. William hesitated. Then he shut himself in the sitting room and cautiously called the chief of the local police.

“This is William,” he said. “The butler at Major Bennett’s. I—”

“So you’re back, you old buzzard, are you?” said the chief. “Well, Merry Christmas and welcome home.”

But he sobered when William told him what he had discovered. He promised to round up some men, and not — at William’s request — to come as if they were going to a fire.

“We’ll get him all right,” he said. “We’ll get all these dirty polecats sooner or later. All right. No siren. We’ll ring the doorbell.”

William felt steadier after that. He was in the basement getting a ladder for trimming the tree when he heard Jarvis come back. But he went directly up the back stairs to his room, and William, listening below, felt that he would not visit the attic that night.

He was singularly calm now. The Old Man was sound asleep by that time, and snoring as violently as he did everything else. William placed the ladder and hung the wax angel on the top of the tree. Then he stood precariously and surveyed it.

“Well, we’re back,” he said. “We’re kind of old and battered, but we’re still here, thank God.”

Which in its way was a prayer too, like the Old Man’s earlier in the evening.

He got down, his legs rather stiff, and going into the other room touched the sleeper lightly on the shoulder. He jerked awake.

“What the hell did you do that for?” he roared. “Can’t a man take a nap without your infernal interfering?”

“The tree’s ready to trim,” said William quietly.

Fifteen minutes later the nurse came back. The bedroom was empty, and in the sitting room before a half-trimmed tree the Old Man was holding a small — a very small — drink in his hand. He waved his glass at her outraged face.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, a slight — a very slight — thickness in his voice. “And get me that telegram that came for Sally today.”

She looked disapprovingly at William, a William on whom the full impact of the situation — plus a very small drink — had suddenly descended like the impact of a pile-driver. Her austere face softened.

“You look tired,” she said. “You’d better sit down.”

“Tired? Him?” scoffed the Old Man. “You don’t know him. And where the hell’s that telegram?”

She brought it, and he put on his spectacles to read it.

“Sally doesn’t know about it,” he explained. “Held it out on her. Do her good.” Then he read it aloud. “Home for breakfast tomorrow. Well. Love. Merry Christmas. Tony.”

He folded it and looked around, beaming.

“How’s that for a surprise?” he demanded. “Merry Christmas! Hell, it will be a real Christmas for everybody.”

William stood still. He wanted to say something, but his voice stuck in his throat. Then he stiffened. Back in the pantry the doorbell was ringing.

The Trinity Cat Ellis Peters

Few characters have enjoyed such a depth of affection among mystery aficionados as Brother Cadfael, the medieval herbalist in a Benedictine abbey in Shropshire. He was created in 1977 by Ellis Peters in A Morbid Taste for Bones, and nineteen additional novels and a short story collection followed. Even though Edith Pargeter (Ellis Peters’s real name) wrote scores of other books, the wise and gentle monk was a fan favorite for thirty years. In addition to being an outstanding detective, often helping the deputy sheriff bring transgressors to justice, Cadfael, who had been a man of the world before entering the abbey, was also frequently instrumental in helping young lovers find happiness. The author won the Edgar for Best Novel in 1963 for Death and the Joyful Woman and was presented with the Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement by the (British) Crime Writers’ Association in 1993. “The Trinity Cat” was first published in Winter’s Crimes #8 (London, Macmillan, 1976); it was first collected in the author’s collection A Rare Benedictine (London, Headline, 1988).

He was sitting on top of one of the rear gate-posts of the churchyard when I walked through on Christmas Eve, grooming in his lordly style, with one back leg wrapped round his neck, and his bitten ear at an angle of forty-five degrees, as usual. I reckon one of the toms he’d tangled with in his nomad days had ripped the starched bit out of that one, the other stood up sharply enough. There was snow on the ground, a thin veiling, just beginning to crackle in promise of frost before evening, but he had at least three warm refuges around the place whenever he felt like holing up, besides his two houses, which he used only for visiting and cadging. He’d been a known character around our village for three years then, ever since he walked in from nowhere and made himself agreeable to the vicar and the verger, and finding the billet comfortable and the pickings good, constituted himself resident cat to Holy Trinity church, and took over all the jobs around the place that humans were too slow to tackle, like rat-catching, and chasing off invading dogs.

Nobody knows how old he is, but I think he could only have been about two when he settled here, a scrawny, chewed-up black bandit as lean as wire. After three years of being fed by Joel Woodward at Trinity Cottage, which was the verger’s house by tradition, and flanked the lych-gate on one side, and pampered and petted by Miss Patience Thomson at Church Cottage on the other side, he was double his old size, and sleek as velvet, but still had one lop ear and a kink two inches from the end of his tail. He still looked like a brigand, but a highly prosperous brigand. Nobody ever gave him a name, he wasn’t the sort to get called anything fluffy or familiar. Only Miss Patience ever dared coo at him, and he was very gracious about that, she being elderly and innocent and very free with little perks like raw liver, on which he doted. One way and another, he had it made. He lived mostly outdoors, never staying in either house overnight. In winter he had his own little ground-level hatch into the furnace-room of the church, sharing his lodgings matily with a hedgehog that had qualified as assistant vermin-destructor around the churchyard, and preferred sitting out the winter among the coke to hibernating like common hedgehogs. These individualists keep turning up in our valley, for some reason.

All I’d gone to the church for that afternoon was to fix up with the vicar about the Christmas peal, having been roped into the bell-ringing team. Resident police in remote areas like ours get dragged into all sorts of activities, and when the area’s changing, and new problems cropping up, if they have any sense they don’t need too much dragging, but go willingly. I’ve put my finger on many an astonished yobbo who thought he’d got clean away with his little breaking-and-entering, just by keeping my ears open during a darts match, or choir practice.

When I came back through the churchyard, around half-past two, Miss Patience was just coming out of her gate, with a shopping bag on her wrist, and heading towards the street, and we walked along together a bit of the way. She was getting on for seventy, and hardly bigger than a bird, but very independent. Never having married or left the valley, and having looked after a mother who lived to be nearly ninety, she’d never had time to catch up with new ideas in the style of dress suitable for elderly ladies. Everything had always been done mother’s way, and fashion, music, and morals had stuck at the period when mother was a carefully-brought-up girl learning domestic skills, and preparing for a chaste marriage. There’s a lot to be said for it! But it had turned Miss Patience into a frail little lady in long-skirted black or grey or navy blue, who still felt undressed without hat and gloves, at an age when Mrs. Newcombe, for instance, up at the pub, favoured shocking pink trouser suits and red-gold hair-pieces. A pretty little old lady Miss Patience was, though, very straight and neat. It was a pleasure to watch her walk. Which is more than I could say for Mrs. Newcombe in her trouser suit, especially from the back!

“A happy Christmas, Sergeant Moon!” she chirped at me on sight. And I wished her the same, and slowed up to her pace.

“It’s going to be slippery by twilight,” I said. “You be careful how you go.”

“Oh, I’m only going to be an hour or so,” she said serenely. “I shall be home long before the frost sets in. I’m only doing the last bit of Christmas shopping. There’s a cardigan I have to collect for Mrs. Downs.” That was her cleaning-lady, who went in three mornings a week. “I ordered it long ago, but deliveries are so slow nowadays. They’ve promised it for today. And a gramophone record for my little errand-boy.” Tommy Fowler that was, one of the church trebles, as pink and wholesome-looking as they usually contrive to be, and just as artful. “And one mustn’t forget our dumb friends, either, must one?” said Miss Patience cheerfully. “They’re all important, too.”

I took this to mean a couple of packets of some new product to lure wild birds to her garden. The Church Cottage thrushes were so fat they could hardly fly, and when it was frosty she put out fresh water three and four times a day.

We came to our brief street of shops, and off she went, with her big jet-and-gold brooch gleaming in her scarf. She had quite a few pieces of Victorian and Edwardian jewellery her mother’d left behind, and almost always wore one piece, being used to the belief that a lady dresses meticulously every day, not just on Sundays. And I went for a brisk walk round to see what was going on, and then went home to Molly and high tea, and took my boots off thankfully.

That was Christmas Eve. Christmas Day little Miss Thomson didn’t turn up for eight o’clock Communion, which was unheard-of. The vicar said he’d call in after matins and see that she was all right, and hadn’t taken cold trotting about in the snow. But somebody else beat us both to it. Tommy Fowler! He was anxious about that pop record of his. But even he had no chance until after service, for in our village it’s the custom for the choir to go and sing the vicar an aubade in the shape of “Christians, Awake!” before the main service, ignoring the fact that he’s then been up four hours, and conducted two Communions. And Tommy Fowler had a solo in the anthem, too. It was a quarter-past twelve when he got away, and shot up the garden path to the door of Church Cottage.

He shot back even faster a minute later. I was heading for home when he came rocketing out of the gate and ran slam into me, with his eyes sticking out on stalks and his mouth wide open, making a sort of muted keening sound with shock. He clutched hold of me and pointed back towards Miss Thomson’s front door, left half-open when he fled, and tried three times before he could croak out:

“Miss Patience... She’s there on the floor — she’s bad!”

I went in on the run, thinking she’d had a heart attack all alone there, and was lying helpless. The front door led through a diminutive hall, and through another glazed door into the living-room, and that door was open, too, and there was Miss Patience face-down on the carpet, still in her coat and gloves, and with her shopping-bag lying beside her. An occasional table had been knocked over in her fall, spilling a vase and a book. Her hat was askew over one ear, and caved in like a trodden mushroom, and her neat grey bun of hair had come undone and trailed on her shoulder, and it was no longer grey but soiled, brownish black. She was dead and stiff. The room was so cold, you could tell those doors had been ajar all night.

The kid had followed me in, hanging on to my sleeve, his teeth chattering. “I didn’t open the door — it was open! I didn’t touch her, or anything. I only came to see if she was all right, and get my record.”

It was there, lying unbroken, half out of the shopping-bag by her arm. She’d meant it for him, and I told him he should have it, but not yet, because it might be evidence, and we mustn’t move anything. And I got him out of there quick, and gave him to the vicar to cope with, and went back to Miss Patience as soon as I’d telephoned for the outfit. Because we had a murder on our hands.

So that was the end of one gentle, harmless old woman, one of very many these days, battered to death because she walked in on an intruder who panicked. Walked in on him, I judged, not much more than an hour after I left her in the street. Everything about her looked the same as then, the shopping-bag, the coat, the hat, the gloves. The only difference, that she was dead. No, one more thing! No handbag, unless it was under the body, and later, when we were able to move her, I wasn’t surprised to see that it wasn’t there. Handbags are where old ladies carry their money. The sneak-thief who panicked and lashed out at her had still had greed and presence of mind enough to grab the bag as he fled. Nobody’d have to describe that bag to me, I knew it well, soft black leather with an old-fashioned gilt clasp and a short handle, a small thing, not like the holdalls they carry nowadays.

She was lying facing the opposite door, also open, which led to the stairs. On the writing-desk by that door stood one of a pair of heavy brass candlesticks. Its fellow was on the floor beside Miss Thomson’s body, and though the bun of hair and the felt hat had prevented any great spattering of blood, there was blood enough on the square base to label the weapon. Whoever had hit her had been just sneaking down the stairs, ready to leave. She’d come home barely five minutes too soon.

Upstairs, in her bedroom, her bits of jewellery hadn’t taken much finding. She’d never thought of herself as having valuables, or of other people as coveting them. Her gold and turquoise and funereal jet and true-lover’s-knots in gold and opals, and mother’s engagement and wedding rings, and her little Edwardian pendant watch set with seed pearls, had simply lived in the small top drawer of her dressing-table. She belonged to an honest epoch, and it was gone, and now she was gone after it. She didn’t even lock her door when she went shopping. There wouldn’t have been so much as the warning of a key grating in the lock, just the door opening.

Ten years ago not a soul in this valley behaved differently from Miss Patience. Nobody locked doors, sometimes not even overnight. Some of us went on a fortnight’s holiday and left the doors unlocked. Now we can’t even put out the milk money until the milkman knocks at the door in person. If this generation likes to pride itself on its progress, let it! As for me, I thought suddenly that maybe the innocent was well out of it.

We did the usual things, photographed the body and the scene of the crime, the doctor examined her and authorised her removal, and confirmed what I’d supposed about the approximate time of her death. And the forensic boys lifted a lot of smudgy latents that weren’t going to be of any use to anybody, because they weren’t going to be on record, barring a million to one chance. The whole thing stank of the amateur. There wouldn’t be any easy matching up of prints, even if they got beauties. One more thing we did for Miss Patience. We tolled the dead-bell for her on Christmas night, six heavy, muffled strokes. She was a virgin. Nobody had to vouch for it, we all knew. And let me point out, it is a title of honour, to be respected accordingly.

We’d hardly got the poor soul out of the house when the Trinity cat strolled in, taking advantage of the minute or two while the door was open. He got as far as the place on the carpet where she’d lain, and his fur and whiskers stood on end, and even his lop ear jerked up straight. He put his nose down to the pile of the Wilton, about where her shopping bag and handbag must have lain, and started going round in interested circles, snuffing the floor and making little throaty noises that might have been distress, but sounded like pleasure. Excitement, anyhow. The chaps from the C.I.D. were still busy, and didn’t want him under their feet, so I picked him up and took him with me when I went across to Trinity Cottage to talk to the verger. The cat never liked being picked up, after a minute he started clawing and cursing, and I put him down. He stalked away again at once, past the corner where people shot their dead flowers, out at the lych-gate, and straight back to sit on Miss Thomson’s doorstep. Well, after all, he used to get fed there, he might well be uneasy at all these queer comings and goings. And they don’t say “as curious as a cat” for nothing, either.

I didn’t need telling that Joel Woodward had had no hand in what had happened, he’d been nearest neighbour and good friend to Miss Patience for years, but he might have seen or heard something out of the ordinary. He was a little, wiry fellow, gnarled like a tree-root, the kind that goes on spry and active into his nineties, and then decides that’s enough, and leaves overnight. His wife was dead long ago, and his daughter had come back to keep house for him after her husband deserted her, until she died, too, in a bus accident. There was just old Joel now, and the grandson she’d left with him, young Joel Barnett, nineteen, and a bit of a tearaway by his grandad’s standards, but so far pretty innocuous by mine. He was a sulky, graceless sort, but he did work, and he stuck with the old man when many another would have lit out elsewhere.

“A bad business,” said old Joel, shaking his head. “I only wish I could help you lay hands on whoever did it. But I only saw her yesterday morning about ten, when she took in the milk. I was round at the church hall all afternoon, getting things ready for the youth social they had last night, it was dark before I got back. I never saw or heard anything out of place. You can’t see her living-room light from here, so there was no call to wonder. But the lad was here all afternoon. They only work till one, Christmas Eve. Then they all went boozing together for an hour or so, I expect, so I don’t know exactly what time he got in, but he was here and had the tea on when I came home. Drop round in an hour or so and he should be here, he’s gone round to collect this girl he’s mashing. There’s a party somewhere tonight.”

I dropped round accordingly, and young Joel was there, sure enough, shoulder-length hair, frilled shirt, outsize lapels and all, got up to kill, all for the benefit of the girl his grandad had mentioned. And it turned out to be Connie Dymond, from the comparatively respectable branch of the family, along the canal-side. There were three sets of Dymond cousins, boys, no great harm in ’em but worth watching, but only this one girl in Connie’s family. A good-looker, or at least most of the lads seemed to think so, she had a dozen or so on her string before she took up with young Joel. Big girl, too, with a lot of mauve eye-shadow and a mother-of-pearl mouth, in huge platform shoes and the fashionable drab granny-coat. But she was acting very prim and proper with old Joel around.

“Half-past two when I got home,” said young Joel. “Grandad was round at the hall, and I’d have gone round to help him, only I’d had a pint or two, and after I’d had me dinner I went to sleep, so it wasn’t worth it by the time I woke up. Around four, that’d be. From then on I was here watching the telly, and I never saw nor heard a thing. But there was nobody else here, so I could be spinning you the yarn, if you want to look at it that way.”

He had a way of going looking for trouble before anybody else suggested it, there was nothing new about that. Still, there it was. One young fellow on the spot, and minus any alibi. There’d be plenty of others in the same case.

In the evening he’d been at the church social. Miss Patience wouldn’t be expected there, it was mainly for the young, and anyhow, she very seldom went out in the evenings.

“I was there with Joel,” said Connie Dymond. “He called for me at seven, I was with him all the evening. We went home to our place after the social finished, and he didn’t leave till nearly midnight.”

Very firm about it she was, doing her best for him. She could hardly know that his movements in the evening didn’t interest us, since Miss Patience had then been dead for some hours.

When I opened the door to leave the Trinity cat walked in, stalking past me with a purposeful stride. He had a look round us all, and then made for the girl, reached up his front paws to her knees, and was on her lap before she could fend him off, though she didn’t look as if she welcomed his attentions. Very civil he was, purring and rubbing himself against her coat sleeve, and poking his whiskery face into hers. Unusual for him to be effusive, but when he did decide on it, it was always with someone who couldn’t stand cats. You’ll have noticed it’s a way they have.

“Shove him off,” said young Joel, seeing she didn’t at all care for being singled out. “He only does it to annoy people.”

And she did, but he only jumped on again, I noticed as I closed the door on them and left. It was a Dymond party they were going to, the senior lot, up at the filling station. Not much point in trying to check up on all her cousins and swains when they were gathered for a booze-up. Coming out of a hangover, tomorrow, they might be easy meat. Not that I had any special reason to look their way, they were an extrovert lot, more given to grievous bodily harm in street punch-ups than anything secretive. But it was wide open.

Well, we summed up. None of the lifted prints was on record, all we could do in that line was exclude all those that were Miss Thomson’s. This kind of sordid little opportunist break-in had come into local experience only fairly recently, and though it was no novelty now, it had never before led to a death. No motive but the impulse of greed, so no traces leading up to the act, and none leading away. Everyone connected with the church, and most of the village besides, knew about the bits of jewellery she had, but never before had anyone considered them as desirable loot. Victoriana now carry inflated values, and are in demand, but this still didn’t look calculated, just wanton. A kid’s crime, a teenager’s crime. Or the crime of a permanent teenager. They start at twelve years old now, but there are also the shiftless louts who never get beyond twelve years old, even in their forties.

We checked all the obvious people, her part-time gardener — but he was demonstrably elsewhere at the time — and his drifter of a son, whose alibi was non-existent but voluble, the window-cleaner, a sidelong soul who played up his ailments and did rather well out of her, all the delivery men. Several there who were clear, one or two who could have been around, but had no particular reason to be. Then we went after all the youngsters who, on their records, were possibles. There were three with breaking-and-entering convictions, but if they’d been there they’d been gloved. Several others with petty theft against them were also without alibis. By the end of a pretty exhaustive survey the field was wide, and none of the runners seemed to be ahead of the rest, and we were still looking. None of the stolen property had so far showed up.

Not, that is, until the Saturday. I was coming from Church Cottage through the graveyard again, and as I came near the corner where the dead flowers were shot, I noticed a glaring black patch making an irregular hole in the veil of frozen snow that still covered the ground. You couldn’t miss it, it showed up like a black eye. And part of it was the soil and rotting leaves showing through, and part, the blackest part, was the Trinity cat, head down and back arched, digging industriously like a terrier after a rat. The bent end of his tail lashed steadily, while the remaining eight inches stood erect. If he knew I was standing watching him, he didn’t care. Nothing was going to deflect him from what he was doing. And in a minute or two he heaved his prize clear, and clawed out to the light a little black leather handbag with a gilt clasp. No mistaking it, all stuck over as it was with dirt and rotting leaves. And he loved it, he was patting it and playing with it and rubbing his head against it, and purring like a steam-engine. He cursed, though, when I took it off him, and walked round and round me, pawing and swearing, telling me and the world he’d found it, and it was his.

It hadn’t been there long. I’d been along that path often enough to know that the snow hadn’t been disturbed the day before. Also, the mess of humus fell off it pretty quick and clean, and left it hardly stained at all. I held it in my handkerchief and snapped the catch, and the inside was clean and empty, the lining slightly frayed from long use. The Trinity cat stood upright on his hind legs and protested loudly, and he had a voice that could outshout a Siamese.

Somebody behind me said curiously: “Whatever’ve you got there?” And there was young Joel standing open-mouthed, staring, with Connie Dymond hanging on to his arm and gaping at the cat’s find in horrified recognition.

“Oh, no! My gawd, that’s Miss Thomson’s bag, isn’t it? I’ve seen her carrying it hundreds of times.”

“Did he dig it up?” said Joel, incredulous. “You reckon the chap who — you know, him! — he buried it there? It could be anybody, everybody uses this way through.”

“My gawd!” said Connie, shrinking in fascinated horror against his side. “Look at that cat! You’d think he knows... He gives me the shivers! What’s got into him?”

What, indeed? After I’d got rid of them and taken the bag away with me I was still wondering. I walked away with his prize and he followed me as far as the road, howling and swearing, and once I put the bag down, open, to see what he’d do, and he pounced on it and started his fun and games again until I took it from him. For the life of me I couldn’t see what there was about it to delight him, but he was in no doubt. I was beginning to feel right superstitious about this avenging detective cat, and to wonder what he was going to unearth next.

I know I ought to have delivered the bag to the forensic lab, but somehow I hung on to it overnight. There was something fermenting at the back of my mind that I couldn’t yet grasp.

Next morning we had two more at morning service besides the regulars. Young Joel hardly ever went to church, and I doubt if anybody’d ever seen Connie Dymond there before, but there they both were, large as life and solemn as death, in a middle pew, the boy sulky and scowling as if he’d been press-ganged into it, as he certainly had, Connie very subdued and big-eyed, with almost no make-up and an unusually grave and thoughtful face. Sudden death brings people up against daunting possibilities, and creates penitents. Young Joel felt silly there, but he was daft about her, plainly enough, she could get him to do what she wanted, and she’d wanted to make this gesture. She went through all the movements of devotion, he just sat, stood and kneeled awkwardly as required, and went on scowling.

There was a bitter east wind when we came out. On the steps of the porch everybody dug out gloves and turned up collars against it, and so did young Joel, and as he hauled his gloves out of his coat pocket, out with them came a little bright thing that rolled down the steps in front of us all and came to rest in a crack between the flagstones of the path. A gleam of pale blue and gold. A dozen people must have recognised it. Mrs. Downs gave tongue in a shriek that informed even those who hadn’t.

“That’s Miss Thomson’s! It’s one of her turquoise ear-rings! How did you get hold of that, Joel Barnett?”

How, indeed? Everybody stood staring at the tiny thing, and then at young Joel, and he was gazing at the flagstones, struck white and dumb. And all in a moment Connie Dymond had pulled her arm free of his and recoiled from him until her back was against the wall, and was edging away from him like somebody trying to get out of range of flood or fire, and her face a sight to be seen, blind and stiff with horror.

“You!” she said in a whisper. “It was you! Oh, my God, you did it — you killed her! And me keeping company — how could I? How could you!”

She let out a screech and burst into sobs, and before anybody could stop her she turned and took to her heels, running for home like a mad thing.

I let her go. She’d keep. And I got young Joel and that single ear-ring away from the Sunday congregation and into Trinity Cottage before half the people there knew what was happening, and shut the world out, all but old Joel who came panting and shaking after us a few minutes later.

The boy was a long time getting his voice back, and when he did he had nothing to say but, hopelessly, over and over: “I didn’t! I never touched her, I wouldn’t. I don’t know how that thing got into my pocket. I didn’t do it. I never...”

Human beings are not all that inventive. Given a similar set of circumstances they tend to come out with the same formula. And in any case, “deny everything and say nothing else” is a very good rule when cornered.

They thought I’d gone round the bend when I said: “Where’s the cat? See if you can get him in.”

Old Joel was past wondering. He went out and rattled a saucer on the steps, and pretty soon the Trinity cat strolled in. Not at all excited, not wanting anything, fed and lazy, just curious enough to come and see why he was wanted. I turned him loose on young Joel’s overcoat, and he couldn’t have cared less. The pocket that had held the ear-ring held very little interest for him. He didn’t care about any of the clothes in the wardrobe, or on the pegs in the little hall. As far as he was concerned, this new find was a nonevent.

I sent for a constable and a car, and took young Joel in with me to the station, and all the village, you may be sure, either saw us pass or heard about it very shortly after. But I didn’t stop to take any statement from him, just left him there, and took the car up to Mary Melton’s place, where she breeds Siamese, and borrowed a cat-basket from her, the sort she uses to carry her queens to the vet. She asked what on earth I wanted it for, and I said to take the Trinity cat for a ride. She laughed her head off.

“Well, he’s no queen,” she said, “and no king, either. Not even a jack! And you’ll never get that wild thing into a basket.”

“Oh, yes, I will,” I said. “And if he isn’t any of the other picture cards, he’s probably going to turn out to be the joker.”

A very neat basket it was, not too obviously meant for a cat. And it was no trick getting the Trinity cat into it, all I did was drop in Miss Thomson’s handbag, and he was in after it in a moment. He growled when he found himself shut in, but it was too late to complain then.

At the house by the canal Connie Dymond’s mother let me in, but was none too happy about letting me see Connie, until I explained that I needed a statement from her before I could fit together young Joel’s movements all through those Christmas days. Naturally I understood that the girl was terribly upset, but she’d had a lucky escape, and the sooner everything was cleared up, the better for her. And it wouldn’t take long.

It didn’t take long. Connie came down the stairs readily enough when her mother called her. She was all stained and pale and tearful, but had perked up somewhat with a sort of shivering pride in her own prominence. I’ve seen them like that before, getting the juice out of being the centre of attention even while they wish they were elsewhere. You could even say she hurried down, and she left the door of her bedroom open behind her, by the light coming through at the head of the stairs.

“Oh, Sergeant Moon!” she quavered at me from three steps up. “Isn’t it awful? I still can’t believe it! Can there be some mistake? Is there any chance it wasn’t...?”

I said soothingly, yes, there was always a chance. And I slipped the latch of the cat-basket with one hand, so that the flap fell open, and the Trinity cat was out of there and up those stairs like a black flash, startling her so much she nearly fell down the last step, and steadied herself against the wall with a small shriek. And I blurted apologies for accidentally loosing him, and went up the stairs three at a time ahead of her, before she could recover her balance.

He was up on his hind legs in her dolly little room, full of pop posters and frills and garish colours, pawing at the second drawer of her dressing-table, and singing a loud, joyous, impatient song. When I came plunging in, he even looked over his shoulder at me and stood down, as though he knew I’d open the drawer for him. And I did, and he was up among her fancy undies like a shot, and digging with his front paws.

He found what he wanted just as she came in at the door. He yanked it out from among her bras and slips, and tossed it into the air, and in seconds he was on the floor with it, rolling and wrestling it, juggling it on his four paws like a circus turn, and purring fit to kill, a cat in ecstasy. A comic little thing it was, a muslin mouse with a plaited green nylon string for a tail, yellow beads for eyes, and nylon threads for whiskers, that rustled and sent out wafts of strong scent as he batted it around and sang to it. A catmint mouse, old Miss Thomson’s last-minute purchase from the pet shop for her dumb friend. If you could ever call the Trinity cat dumb! The only thing she bought that day small enough to be slipped into her handbag instead of the shopping bag.

Connie let out a screech, and was across that room so fast I only just beat her to the open drawer. They were all there, the little pendant watch, the locket, the brooches, the true-lover’s-knot, the purse, even the other ear-ring. A mistake, she should have ditched both while she was about it, but she was too greedy. They were for pierced ears, anyhow, no good to Connie.

I held them out in the palm of my hand — such a large haul they made — and let her see what she’d robbed and killed for.

If she’d kept her head she might have made a fight of it even then, claimed he’d made her hide them for him, and she’d been afraid to tell on him directly, and could only think of staging that public act at church, to get him safely in custody before she came clean. But she went wild. She did the one deadly thing, turned and kicked out in a screaming fury at the Trinity cat. He was spinning like a humming-top, and all she touched was the kink in his tail. He whipped round and clawed a red streak down her leg through the nylon. And then she screamed again, and began to babble through hysterical sobs that she never meant to hurt the poor old sod, that it wasn’t her fault! Ever since she’d been going with young Joel she’d been seeing that little old bag going in and out, draped with her bits of gold. What in hell did an old witch like her want with jewellery? She had no right! At her age!

“But I never meant to hurt her! She came in too soon,” lamented Connie, still and for ever the aggrieved. “What was I supposed to do? I had to get away, didn’t I? She was between me and the door!”

She was half her size, too, and nearly four times her age! Ah well! What the courts would do with Connie, thank God, was none of my business. I just took her in and charged her, and got her statement. Once we had her dabs it was all over, because she’d left a bunch of them sweaty and clear on that brass candlestick. But if it hadn’t been for the Trinity cat and his single-minded pursuit, scaring her into that ill-judged attempt to hand us young Joel as a scapegoat, she might, she just might, have got clean away with it. At least the boy could go home now, and count his blessings.

Not that she was very bright, of course. Who but a stupid harpy, soaked in cheap perfume and gimcrack dreams, would have hung on even to the catmint mouse, mistaking it for an herbal sachet to put among her smalls?

I saw the Trinity cat only this morning, sitting grooming in the church porch. He’s getting very self-important, as if he knows he’s a celebrity, though throughout he was only looking after the interests of Number One, like all cats. He’s lost interest in his mouse already, now most of the scent’s gone.