Crime at Christmas (10 page)

A
MONG
all the children hanging around the department, this one was
definitely the most persistently bothersome. Even now, she was tugging at
Pauline's sleeve.

'Hey,
miss.'

'What is it
now?'

'Something's
up with Santa.'

'That's
quite enough from you, young lady,' Pauline said sharply—unseasonably sharply
for Christmas week in an Oxford Street department store.

The Toy
Fair was a bedlam of electric trains, robots, talking dolls, and whining infants,
but the counter staff, however hard-pressed they might be feeling, weren't
expected to threaten the kids.

The day had
got off to a distinctly trying start when a boy with mischief in mind had
pulled a panda off the shelf and started an avalanche of soft toys. Pauline had
found herself wading knee-deep in teddies, rabbits, and hippos.

Now she was
desperately trying to reassemble the display, between attending to customers
and coping with little nuisances like this one, dumped in the department while
their parents went off and shopped elsewhere in the store.

'Take a
butcher's in the grotto, miss.'

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

'I think
Santa's snuffed it, miss.'

'For the
last time. . .'

A man held
out a green felt crocodile, and Pauline rolled her eyes upwards and exchanged a
smile. She rang up the sale, locked her till, and stepped around the counter to
look for Mark Daventry, the head of the toy department. The child had a point.
It was 10:05 and Santa's grotto should have opened at 10:00. A queue had
started to form. There was no sign of Zena, the 'gnome' who sold the tickets.

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

However,
Zena wasn't merely the latest Christmas casual in the toy department. She
wasn't merely an attractive blonde. She happened to be the wife of Santa Claus.

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

'Coming,
miss?'

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

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

'See what I
mean, miss?'

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

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

'Stay here.
Don't come any closer.'

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

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

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

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

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

'Is Mr
Beckington there?'

'Mr
Beckington? Yes.'

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

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

She told
the queue that Santa was going to be late, and someone made a joke about
reindeer in the rush hour.

This is
totally bizarre, Pauline thought, standing here under the glitter with these
smiling people and their children, and 'Jingle Bells' belting out from the
public address, while a man lies murdered a few yards away. Her nerves were
stretched to snapping point.

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

She took
him to the grotto.

They
stopped and stared.

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

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

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

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

She gaped
at them in disbelief.

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

She said,
trying to stay calm, 'I'm perfectly well, thank you. I don't need to go home.
And if it's all my imagination, where's Mark Daventry?'

Mr
Beckington told her: 'He's down with flu. We had a message.'

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

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

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

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

About
12:30, there was a quiet period. Pauline asked Zena to keep an eye on her
counter for five minutes.

'I want to
check the stock lists in the sports department.'

'Whatever
for?'

'To see if
a crossbow is missing.'

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

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

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

'I've got
some more checking to do.'

'Proper
Miss Marple, aren't you? You're wasting your time, darling.'

'Coming
from you, that's good.'

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

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

Zena
smiled. 'You bet we did.'

'What's
funny?'

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

'But you
definitely finished with Mark last week?'

'Absolutely.
I wouldn't say he was heartbroken. You know how he is. Adaptable.'

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

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

'Yes, he's
here. He arrived early this morning, just after 8:15.'

She said,
'Are you sure?'

To prove
his point, the security man showed her Mark's overcoat in the staff
locker-room. There was no question now that what she had seen was true.

She asked
the security man about Ben and Zena. They'd arrived together at their usual
time, 9:50—which was odd, not to say suspicious, considering how late the
grotto had opened.