Crime at Christmas (33 page)

Anyway,
tea-time came along and we only had one customer. He was a big, tall sort of a
bloke who didn't look a bit Christmassy. He ordered a pot of tea, just that.
When he asked how much, I said a bob. And he gave a bob, just that. But I was
past caring. He went back to his compartment, then five minutes later he was
back again, asking for another pot of tea. He knew it was a bob now, and a bob
he gave, just that. As I say, I was past caring. He went back to his
compartment again, and blow me if he wasn't back five minutes later asking for
another pot of tea.

'You seem
to like our tea,' I said, bitter.

'Yes,' he
said, 'I like your tea. It's a nice pot of tea. It's worth a bob,' he said. He
saw me looking a bit gloomy, so he made himself a bit more comfortable behind
his pot of tea and said, 'Not been too good a day for you lot, has it?'

'I don't
quite understand what you mean,' I said, trying not to look interested.

'Come off
it,' he said. 'All that lot saying what a good time had been had by all,
mistletoe in the dining-car and what-not, and not one penny piece in tips from
the whole lot put together.'

'What about
it?' I said.

'I'm on
duty,' said this bloke. 'I get my expenses, see, but that doesn't cover tips.
I'm on duty, and I've been asking some of the passengers about it all. They
were a bit surprised to find out that you didn't get what you should have got.'

'Surprised,
were they?' I said.

'Yes. And
would you like to know why you didn't? Would you like to know what happened?'

He seemed a
bit too eager to tell me all about it—there was a bit too much relish about
him, as you might say. So I said, 'It's up to you whether you tell me or not.'

'Right,' he
said. And he leaned back more comfortable, his hands over his belly. 'I've
missed her now,' he said. 'I've been after her all over Christmas. She was a
bit too quick. She got off just before I got on. We'll get her, though, never
fear, never have any fear about that, matey. She goes under various names—Mrs
Mervin, the Hon. Dora Goffin, Fast Lizzie, and various others more. She's a
very good-looking woman, and very well-spoken.'

'Well,' I
said, 'What about it?'

'She's been
up and down the train all morning, I gather. She was on other trains yesterday
and the day before. She goes up to the passengers and she says, ever so polite
and well-off, "Don't you think it would be ever so nice and ever so jolly
an idea if we gave a little present to the dining-car staff? After all, it is
Christmas, isn't it, and they do work ever so hard, don't they?'

He said all
this in a refined sort of voice, a kind of squeak, like taking the Mickey out
of somebody speaking well-off. It began to dawn on me then what had happened.

'Yes,' said
this copper-in-disguise, 'that's what happened.' He spoke in his ordinary voice
again, quite common. 'I don't know how much she got away with, but it must have
been a nice little bit. People are always generous round about Christmas. I
suppose she got off at Reading. Anyway, we'll get her yet. But that doesn't
help you much, does it?' He looked at me in a pitying sort of way and said,
'Fetch us another pot of that tea. If you don't mind,' he added politely.

When I
brought it, he was ready with his bob. But he looked at me sort of pitying
again and said, 'Here. Just to show you that a heart of gold beats beneath this
rough exterior, here's a tanner. That comes out of my own pocket, mind, not
expenses. Don't forget to share it with the others.'

I could
have thrown it in his face, but it doesn't do to be impolite to a copper.
Besides, it was Christmas Day. Peace on earth and all that tripe.

Never mind.

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R
ORY BIGTOES,
Santa's Security Chief, was tall for an elf, measuring almost
seven inches from the curly tips of his shoes to the top of his fedora. But he
had to stride to keep abreast of Garth Hardnoggin, the quick little Director
General of the Toy-works, as they hurried, beards streaming back over their
shoulders, through the racket and bustle of Shop Number 5, one of the many
vaulted caverns honeycombing the undiscovered island beneath the Polar icecap.

Director
General Hardnoggin wasn't pleased. He slapped his megaphone, the symbol of his
office (for as a member of the Board he spoke directly to Santa Claus), against
his thigh. 'A bomb in the Board Room on Christmas Eve!' he muttered with angry
disbelief.

'I'll admit
that Security doesn't look good,' said Bigtoes.

Hardnoggin
gave a snort and stopped at a construction site for Dick and Jane Doll
dollhouses. Elf carpenters and painters were hard at work, pipes in their jaws
and beards tucked into their belts. A foreman darted over to show Hardnoggin
the wallpaper samples for the dining room.

'See this
unit, Bigtoes?' said Hardnoggin, 'Split-level ranch type. Wall-to-wall
carpeting. Breakfast nook. Your choice of Early American or French Provincial
furnishings. They said I couldn't build it for the price. But I did. And how
did I do it?'

'Cardboard,'
said a passing elf, an old carpenter with a plank over his shoulder.

'And what's
wrong with cardboard? Good substantial cardboard for the interior walls!'
shouted the Director General striding off again. 'Let them bellyache, Bigtoes.
I'm not out to win any popularity contests. But I do my job. Let's see you do
yours. Find Dirk Crouchback and Find him fast.'

At the
automotive section the new Lazaretto sports cars (1/32 scale) were coming off
the assembly line. Hardnoggin stopped to slam one of the car doors. 'You left
out the
kachunk
,' he told an elf engineer in white
coveralls.

'Nobody
gets a tin door to go
kachunk,'
said the engineer.

'Detroit
does. So can we,' said Hardnoggin, moving on. 'You think I don't miss the good
old days, Bigtoes?' he said. 'I was a spinner. And a damn good one. Nobody made
a top that could spin as long and smooth as Garth Hardnoggin's.'

'I was a
jacksmith myself,' said Bigtoes. Satisfying work, building each jack-in-the-box
from the ground up, carpentering the box, rigging the spring mechanism, making
the funny head, spreading each careful coat of paint.

'How many
could you make in a week?' asked Director General Hardnoggin.

'Three,
with overtime,' said Security Chief Bigtoes.

Hardnoggin
nodded. 'And how many children had empty stockings on Christmas morning because
we couldn't handcraft enough stuff to go around? That's where your Ghengis
Khans, your Hitlers, and your Stalins come from, Bigtoes—children who through
no fault of their own didn't get any toys for Christmas. So Santa had to make a
policy decision: quality or quantity? He opted for quantity.'

Crouchback,
at that time one of Santa's right-hand elves, had blamed the decision on
Hardnoggin's sinister influence. By way of protest he had placed a bomb in the
new plastic machine. The explosion had coated three elves with a thick layer of
plastic which had to be chipped off with hammers and chisels. Of course they
lost their beards. Santa, who was particularly sensitive about beards,
sentenced Crouchback to two years in the cooler, as the elves called it. This
meant he was assigned to a refrigerator (one in Ottawa, Canada, as it happened)
with the responsibility of turning the light on and off as the door was opened
or closed.

But after a
month Crouchback had failed to answer the daily roll call which Security made
by means of a two way intercom system. He had fled the refrigerator and become
a renegade elf. Then suddenly, three years later, Crouchback had reappeared at
the North Pole, a shadowy fugitive figure, editor of a clandestine newspaper,
The Midnight Elf
, which made violent attacks on
Director General Hardnoggin and his policies. More recently, Crouchback had
become the leader of SHAFT—Santa's Helpers Against Flimsy Toys—an organization
of dissident groups including the Anti-plastic League, the Sons and Daughters
of the Good Old Days, the Ban the Toy-Bomb people and the Hippie Elves for
Peace. . .

'Santa
opted for quantity,' repeated Hardnoggin. 'And I carried out his decision.
Just between the two of us it hasn't always been easy.' Hardnoggin waved his
megaphone at the Pacification and Rehabilitation Section where thousands of
toy bacteriological warfare kits (JiffyPox) were being converted to civilian
use (The Freckle Machine). After years of pondering Santa had finally ordered a
halt to war-toy production. His decision was considered a victory for SHAFT
and a defeat for Hardnoggin.

'Unilateral
disarmament is a mistake, Bigtoes,' said Hardnoggin grimly as they passed
through a door marked
Santa's Executive Helpers Only
and into the carpeted world of the
front office. 'Mark my words, right now the tanks and planes are rolling off
the assembly lines at Acme Toy and into the department stores.' (Acme Toy, the
international consortium of toymakers, was the elves' greatest bugbear.) 'So
the rich kids will have war toys, while the poor kids won't even have a popgun.
That's not democratic.'

Bigtoes
stopped at a door marked
Security.
Hardnoggin strode on without slackening his pace. 'Sticks-and-Stones
session at five o'clock,' he said over his shoulder. 'Don't be late. And do
your job. Find Crouch-back!'

Dejected,
Bigtoes slumped down at his desk, receiving a sympathetic smile from Charity
Nosegay, his little blonde blue-eyed secretary. Charity was a recent acquisition
and Bigtoes had intended to make a play for her once the Sticks-and-Stones
paperwork was out of the way. (Security had to prepare a report for Santa on
each alleged naughty boy and girl.) Now that play would have to wait.

Bigtoes
sighed. Security looked bad. Bigtoes had even been warned. The night before, a
battered and broken elf had crawled into his office, gasped, 'He's going to
kill Santa,' and died. It was Darby Shortribs who had once been a brilliant
doll designer. But then one day he had decided that if war toys encouraged
little boys to become soldiers when they grew up, then dolls encouraged little
girls to become mothers, contributing to overpopulation. So Shortribs had
joined SHAFT and risen to membership on its Central Committee.

The trail
of Shortribs' blood had led to the Quality Control lab and the Endurance
Machine which simulated the brutal punishment, the bashing, crushing, and kicking
that a toy receives at the hands of a four-year-old (or two two-year-olds). A
hell of a way for an elf to die!

After
Shortribs' warning, Bigtoes had alerted his Security elves and sent a flying
squad after Crouchback. But the SHAFT leader had disappeared. The next morning
a bomb had exploded in the Board Room.

On the top
of Bigtoes' desk were the remains of that bomb. Small enough to fit into an
elf's briefcase, it had been placed under the Board Room table, just at Santa's
feet. If Owen Brassbottom, Santa's Traffic Manager, hadn't chosen just that
moment to usher the jolly old man into the Map Room to pinpoint the spot where,
with the permission and blessing of the Strategic Air Command, Santa's sleigh
and reindeer were to penetrate the DEW Line, there wouldn't have been much left
of Santa from the waist down. Seconds before the bomb went off, Director
General Hardnoggin had been called from the room to take a private phone call.
Fergus Bandylegs, Vice-President of Santa Enterprises, Inc., had just gone
down to the other end of the table to discuss something with Tom Thumbskin,
Santa's Creative Head, and escaped the blast. But Thumbskin had to be sent to
the hospital with a concussion when his chair—the elves sat on high chairs with
ladders up the side like those used by lifeguards—was knocked over backward by
the explosion.

All this
was important, for the room had been searched before the meeting and found
safe. So the bomb must have been brought in by a member of the Board. It
certainly hadn't been Traffic Manager Brassbottom who had saved Santa, and
probably not Thumbskin. That left Director General Hardnoggin and
Vice-President Bandylegs. . .

'Any luck
checking out that personal phone call Hardnoggin received just before the bomb
went off?' asked Bigtoes.

Charity
shook her golden locks.

'The
switchboard operator fainted right after she took the call. She's still out
cold.'

Leaving the
Toyworks, Bigtoes walked quickly down a corridor lined with expensive
boutiques and fashionable restaurants. On one wall of Mademoiselle Fanny's
Salon of Haute Couture some SHAFT elf had written:
Santa, Si! Hardnoggin, No!
On one wall of the Hotel St.
Nicholas some Hardnoggin backer had written:
Support Your Local Director General!
Bigtoes was no philosopher and the
social unrest that was racking the North Pole confused him. Once, in disguise,
he had attended a SHAFT rally in The Underwood, that vast and forbidding cavern
of phosphorescent stinkhorn and hanging roots. Gathered beneath an immense
picture of Santa were hippie elves with their beards tied in outlandish knots,
matron-lady elves in sensible shoes, tweedy elves and green-collar elves.

Crouchback
himself had made a surprise appearance, coming out of hiding to deliver his now
famous 'Plastic Lives!' speech. 'Hardnoggin says plastic is inanimate. But I
say that plastic lives! Plastic infects all it touches and spreads like crab
grass in the innocent souls of little children. Plastic toys make plastic girls
and boys!' Crouchback drew himself up to his full six inches. 'I say:
quality—quality now!' The crowd roared his words back at him. The meeting
closed with all the elves joining hands and singing 'We shall Overcome.' It had
been a moving experience . . .

As he
expected, Bigtoes found Bandylegs at the Hotel St Nicholas bar, staring
morosely down into a thimble-mug of ale. Fergus Bandylegs was a dapper,
fast-talking elf with a chestnut beard which he scented with lavender. As
Vice-President of Santa Enterprises, Inc., he was in charge of financing the
entire Toyworks operation by arranging for Santa to appear in advertising
campaigns, by collecting royalties on the use of the jolly old man's name, and
by leasing Santa suits to department stores.

Bandylegs
ordered a drink for the Security Chief. Their friendship went back to Rory
Bigtoes' jacksmith days when Bandylegs had been a master sledwright. 'These
are topsy-turvy times, Rory,' said Bandylegs. 'First there's that bomb and now
Santa's turned down the Jolly Roger cigarette account. For years now they've
had this ad campaign showing Santa slipping a carton of Jolly Rogers into
Christmas stockings. But not anymore. "Smoking may be hazardous to your
health," says Santa.'

'Santa
knows best,' said Bigtoes.

'Granted,'
said Bandylegs. 'But counting television residuals, that's a cool two million
sugar plums thrown out the window.' (At the current rate of exchange there are
4.27 sugar plums to the U.S. dollar.) 'Hardnoggin's already on my back to make
up the loss. Nothing must interfere with his grand plan for automating the
Toyworks. So it's off to Madison Avenue again. Sure I'll stay at the Plaza and
eat at the Chambord, but I'll still get homesick.'

The
Vice-President smiled sadly. 'Do you know what I used to do? There's this guy
who stands outside Grand Central Station selling those little mechanical men
you wind up and they march around. I used to march around with them. It made me
feel better somehow. But now they remind me of Hardnoggin. He's a machine,
Rory, and he wants to make all of us into machines.'

'What about
the bomb?' asked Bigtoes.

Bandylegs
shrugged. 'Acme Toy, I suppose.'

Bigtoes
shook his head. Acme Toy hadn't slipped an elf spy into the North Pole for
months. 'What about Crouchback?'

'No,' said
Bandylegs firmly. 'I'll level with you, Rory. I had a get-together with
Crouchback just last week. He wanted to get my thoughts on the
quality-versus-quantity question and on the future of the Toyworks. Maybe I'm
wrong, but I got the impression that a top-level shake-up is in the works with
Crouchback slated to become the new Director General. In any event I found him
a very perceptive and understanding elf.'