Crime at Christmas (21 page)

Silence.

'Mrs Keene,
your husband is unconscious with a head wound and he needs you. Please believe
me.'

More
silence. Then, just as he was about to issue another plea, there was a rustling
and stirring in one of the empty stalls to his left. He moved over that way in
time to see Martha Keene rise up slowly from her hiding place deep under the
pile of hay.

She was
young, attractive, as fair-haired as her husband, and wrapped warmly in a heavy
fleece-lined coat. She was also, Quincannon noted with surprise, quite
obviously with child.

What didn't
surprise him was the length of round, hollow glass she held in one hand—the
chimney that belonged to the lamp base on the bedroom floor. She had had the
presence of mind to snatch it up before climbing out the window, in her haste
dislodging the base from the bedside table. The chimney was the reason neither
he nor Slick Henry had found her; by using it as a breathing tube, she had been
able to burrow deep enough into the haypile to escape a superficial search.

For a space
she stared at Quincannon out of wide, anxious eyes. What she saw seemed to
reassure her. She released a thin, sighing breath and said tremulously, 'My
husband—you're sure he's not. . .?'

'No, no.
Wounded I said and wounded I meant. He'll soon be good as new.'

'Thank
God!'

'And you,
my dear? Are you all right?'

'Yes, I. .
. yes. Just frightened. I've been lying here imagining all sorts of dreadful
things.' Mrs Keene sighed again, plucked clinging straw from her face and hair.
'I didn't
want
to run and hide, but I thought Adam
must be dead and I was afraid for my baby. . . oh!' She winced as if with a
sudden sharp pain, dropped the lamp chimney and placed both hands over the
swell of her abdomen. 'All the excitement. . .I believe the baby will arrive
sooner than expected.'

Quincannon
gave her a horrified look. 'Right here?
Now?
'

'No, not
that soon.' A wan smile. 'Tomorrow . . .'

It was his
turn to put forth a relieved sigh as he moved into the stall to help her up.

Tomorrow.
Christmas Day. Appropriate that she should have her baby then. But it wasn't
the only thing about this situation that was appropriate to the season. This
was a stable, and what was the stall where she had lain with her unborn child
but a manger? There were animals in attendance, too. And at least one wise man
(wise in
some
things, surely) who had come bearing
a gift without even knowing it, a gift of a third—no, a half—of the $5000 reward
for the capture of Slick Henry Garber.

Peace on earth, good will to men.

Quincannon
smiled; of a sudden he felt very jolly and very much in a holiday spirit. This
was, he thought, going to be a fine Christmas after all.

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At Christmas-time we gladly greet

Each old familiar face.

At Christmas time we hope to meet

At th' old familiar place.

Five hundred loving greetings, dear,

From you to me

To welcome in the glad New Year

I look to see!

H
ILDA TRENT
turned the Christmas card over with her carefully manicured
fingers as she read the idiotic lines aloud.

'Did you
ever hear anything so completely palsied?' she asked her husband. 'I wonder
who on earth they can get to write the stuff. Timothy, do you know anybody
called Leech?'

'Leech?'

'Yes—that's
what it says: 'From your old Leech.' Must be a friend of yours. The only Leach
I ever knew spelt her name with an a and this one has two e's.' She looked at
the envelope. 'Yes, it was addressed to you. Who is the old Leech?' She flicked
the card across the breakfast-table.

Timothy
stared hard at the rhyme and the scrawled message beneath it.

'I haven't
the least idea,' he said slowly.

As he spoke
he was taking in, with a sense of cold misery, the fact that the printed
message on the card had been neatly altered by hand. The word 'Five' was in
ink. The original, poet no doubt, had been content with 'A hundred loving
greetings'.

'Put it on
the mantelpiece with the others,' said his wife. 'There's a nice paunchy robin
on the outside.'

'Damn it,
no!' In a sudden access of rage he tore the card in two and flung the pieces
into the Fire.

It was
silly of him, he reflected as he travelled up to the City half an hour later,
to break out in that way in front of Hilda; but she would put it down to the
nervous strain about which she was always pestering him to take medical advice.
Not for all the gold in the Bank of England could he have stood the sight of
that damnable jingle on his dining-room mantelpiece. The insolence of it! The
cool, calculated devilry! All the way to London the train wheels beat out the
maddening rhythm:

At Christmas-time we gladly greet. . .

And he had
thought that the last payment had seen the end of it. He had returned from
James's funeral triumphant in the certain belief that he had attended the
burial of the blood-sucker who called himself 'Leech'. But he was wrong, it
seemed.

Five hundred loving greetings, dear. . .

Five
hundred! Last year it had been three, and that had been bad enough. It had
meant selling out some holdings at an awkward moment. And now Five hundred,
with the market in its present state! How in the name of all that was horrible
was he going to raise the money?

He would
raise it, of course. He would have to. The sickening, familiar routine would be
gone through again. The cash in Treasury notes would be packed in an un-obtrusive
parcel and left in the cloakroom at Waterloo. Next day he would park his car as
usual in the railway yard at his local station. Beneath the windscreen wiper—'the
old familiar place'—would be tucked the cloakroom ticket. When he came down
again from work in the evening the ticket would be gone. And that would be
that—till next time. It was the way that Leech preferred it and he had no
option but to comply.

The one
certain thing that Trent knew about the identity of his blackmailer was that
he—or could it be she?—was a member of his family. His family! Thank heaven,
they were no true kindred of his. So far as he knew he had no blood relation
alive. But 'his' family they had been, ever since, when he was a tiny, ailing
boy, his father had married the gentle, ineffective Mary Grigson, with her long
trail of soft, useless children. And when the influenza epidemic of 1919
carried off John Trent he had been left to be brought up as one of that
clinging, grasping clan. He had got on in the world, made money, married money,
but he had never got away from the 'Grigsons'. Save for his stepmother, to whom
he grudgingly acknowledged that he owed his start in life, how he loathed them
all! But 'his' family they remained, expecting to be treated with brotherly
affection, demanding his presence at family reunions, especially at
Christmas-time.

At Christmas-time we hope to meet. . .

He put down
his paper unread and stared forlornly out of the carriage window. It was at
Christmas-time, four years before, that the whole thing started—at his stepmother's
Christmas Eve party, just such a boring family function as the one he would
have to attend in a few days' time. There had been some silly games to amuse
the children—Blind Man's Bluff and Musical Chairs—and in the course of them his
wallet must have slipped from his pocket. He discovered the loss next morning,
went round to the house and retrieved it. But when it came into his hands again
there was one item missing from its contents. Just one. A letter, quite short
and explicit, signed in a name that had about then become fairly notorious in
connection with an unsavoury enquiry into certain large-scale dealings in
government securities. How he could have been fool enough to keep it a moment
longer than was necessary!. . .but it was no good going back on that.

And then
the messages from Leech had begun. Leech had the letter. Leech considered it
his duty to send it to the principal of Trent's firm, who was also Trent's
father-in-law. But, meanwhile, Leech was a trifle short of money, and for a
small consideration. . .

So it had
begun, and so, year in and year out, it had gone on.

He had been
so sure that it was James! That seedy, unsuccessful stock-jobber, with his
gambling debts and his inordinate thirst for whisky, had seemed the very stuff
of which blackmailers are made. But he had got rid of James last February, and
here was Leech again, hungrier than ever. Trent shifted uneasily in his seat.
'Got rid of him' was hardly the right way to put it. One must be fair to
oneself. He had merely assisted James to get rid of his worthless self. He had
done no more than ask James to dinner at his club, fill him up with whisky and
leave him to drive home on a foggy night with the roads treacherous with frost.
There had been an unfortunate incident on the Kingston bypass, and that was the
end of James—and, incidentally, of two perfect strangers who had happened to be
on the road at the same time. Forget it! The point was that the dinner—and the
whisky—had been a dead loss. He would not make the same mistake again. This
Christmas Eve he intended to make sure who his persecutor was. Once he knew,
there would be no half measures.

Revelation
came at him midway through Mrs John Trent's party—at the very moment, in fact,
when the presents were being distributed from the Christmas tree, when the room
was bathed in the soft radiance of coloured candles and noisy with the 'Oohs!'
and 'Ahs!' of excited children and with the rustle of hastily unfolded paper
parcels. It was so simple, and so unexpected, that he could have laughed aloud.
Appropriately enough, it was his own contribution to the party that was responsible.
For some time past it had been his unwritten duty, as the prosperous member of
the family, to present his stepmother with some delicacy to help out the straitened
resources of her house in providing a feast worthy of the occasion. This year,
his gift had taken the form of half a dozen bottles of champagne—part of a
consignment which he suspected of being corked. That champagne, acting on a
head unused to anything stronger than lemonade, was enough to loosen Bessie's
tongue for one fatal instant.

Bessie! Of
all people, faded, spinsterish Bessie! Bessie, with her woolwork and her
charities—Bessie with her large, stupid, appealing eyes and her air of
frustration, that put you in mind of a bud frosted just before it could come
into flower! And yet, when you came to think of it, it was natural enough.
Probably, of all the Grigson tribe, he disliked her the most. He felt for her
all the loathing one must naturally feel for a person one has treated badly;
and he had been simple enough to believe that she did not resent it.

She was
just his own age, and from the moment that he had been introduced into the
family had constituted herself his protector against the unkindness of his
elder step-brother. She had been, in her revoltingly sentimental phrase, his
'own special sister'. As they grew up, the roles were reversed, and she became
his protégée, the admiring spectator of early struggles. Then it had become
pretty clear that she and everybody else expected him to marry her. He had
considered the idea quite seriously for some time. She was pretty enough in
those days, and, as the phrase went, worshipped the ground he trod on. But he
had had the good sense to see in time that he must look elsewhere if he wanted
to make his way in the world. His engagement to Hilda had been a blow to
Bessie. Her old-maidish look and her absorption in good works dated from then.
But she had been sweetly forgiving—to all appearances. Now, as he stood there
under the mistletoe, with a ridiculous paper cap on his head, he marvelled how
he could have been so easily deceived. As though, after all, anyone could have
written that Christmas card but a woman!

Bessie was
smiling at him still—smiling with the confidential air of the mildly tipsy, her
upturned shiny nose glowing pink in the candle-light. She had assumed a
slightly puzzled expression, as though trying to recollect what she had said.
Timothy smiled back and raised his glass to her. He was stone-cold sober, and
he could remind her of her words when the occasion arose.

'My present
for you, Timothy, is in the post. You'll get it tomorrow, I expect. I thought
you'd like a change from those horrid Christmas cards!'

And the
words had been accompanied with an unmistakable wink.

'Uncle
Timothy!' One of James's bouncing girls jumped up at him and gave him a
smacking kiss. He put her down with a grin and tickled her ribs as he did so.
He suddenly felt light-hearted and on good terms with all the world—one woman
excepted. He moved away from the mistletoe and strolled round the room, exchanging
pleasantries with all the family. He could look them in the face now without a
qualm. He clicked glasses with Roger, the prematurely aged, overworked GP. No
need to worry now whether his money was going in that direction! He slapped
Peter on the back and endured patiently five minutes' confidential chat on the
difficulties of the motor-car business in these days. To Marjorie, James's
window, looking wan and ever so brave in her made-over black frock, he spoke
just the right words of blended sympathy and cheer. He even found in his
pockets some half-crowns for his great, hulking step-nephews. Then he was
standing by his stepmother near the fireplace, whence she presided quietly over
the noisy, cheerful scene, beaming gentle good nature from her faded blue eyes.

'A
delightful evening,' he said, and meant it.

'Thanks to
you, Timothy, in great part,' she replied. 'You have always been so good to
us.'

Wonderful
what a little doubtful champagne would do! He would have given a lot to see
her face if he were to say: 'I suppose you are not aware that your youngest
daughter, who is just now pulling a cracker with that ugly little boy of
Peter's, is blackmailing me and that I shortly intend to stop her mouth for
good?'

He turned
away. What a gang they all were! What a shabby, out-at-elbows gang! Not a
decently cut suit or a well-turned-out woman among the lot of them! And he had
imagined that his money had been going to support some of them! Why, they all
simply reeked of honest poverty! He could see it now. Bessie explained
everything. It was typical of her twisted mind to wring cash from him by
threats and give it all away in charities.

'You have
always been so good to us.' Come to think of it, his stepmother was worth the
whole of the rest put together. She must be hard put to it, keeping up Father's
old house, with precious little coming in from her children. Perhaps one day,
when his money was really his own again, he might see his way to do something
for her. . .

But there
was a lot to do before he could indulge in extravagant fancies like that.

Hilda was
coming across the room towards him. Her elegance made an agreeable contrast to
the get-up of the Grigson women. She looked tired and rather bored, which was
not unusual for her at parties at this house.

'Timothy,'
she murmured, 'can't we get out of here? My head feels like a ton of bricks,
and if I'm going to be fit for anything tomorrow morning—'

Timothy cut
her short.

'You go
home straight away, darling,' he said. 'I can see that it's high time you were
in bed. Take the car. I can walk—it's a fine evening. Don't wait up for me.'