Murder Most Merry (38 page)

Sir Leo shivered. “We can’t
all
get in,” he objected. “Perhaps the Superintendent...”

“No. You and I will go.” Campion was obstinate. “Is that all right with you, Super?”

Bussy waved them on. “If you have to dig for us we shall be just about here,” he said cheerfully. “I’m over my ankles now. What a place! Does anybody ever come here
except
the postman. Constable?”

Campion took Sir Leo’s arm and led him firmly round to the front of the cottage. There was a yellow light in the single window on the ground floor and, as they slid up a narrow brick path to the very small door. Sir Leo hung back. His repugnance was as apparent as the cold.

“I hate this,” he muttered. “Go on. Knock if you must.”

Mr. Campion obeyed, stooping so that his head might miss the lintel. There was a movement inside, and at once the door was opened wide, so that he was startled by the rush of warmth from within.

A little old woman stood before him, peering up without astonishment. He was principally aware of bright eyes.

‘Oh, dear,” she said unexpectedly, and her voice was friendly. “You
are
damp. Come in.” And then, looking past him at the skulking Sir Leo, “Two of you! Well, isn’t that nice. Mind your poor heads.”

The visit became a social occasion before they were well in the room. Her complete lack of surprise, coupled with the extreme lowness of the ceiling, gave her an advantage from which the interview never entirely recovered.

From the first she did her best to put them at ease.

“You’ll have to sit down at once,” she said, laughing as she waved them to two little chairs, one on either side of the small black stove. “Most people have to. I’m all right, you see, because I’m not tall. This is my chair here. You must undo that,” she went on. touching Sir Leo’s coat. “Otherwise you may take cold when you go out. It is so very chilly, isn’t it? But so seasonable and that’s always nice.”

Afterwards it was Mr. Campion’s belief that neither he nor Sir Leo had a word to say for themselves for the first five minutes. They were certainly seated and looking round the one downstairs room which the house contained before anything approaching a conversation took place.

It was not a sordid room, yet the walls were unpapered, the furniture old without being in any way antique, and the place could hardly have been called neat. But at the moment it was festive. There was holly over the two pictures and on the mantle above the stove, and a crowd of bright Christmas cards.

Their hostess sat between them, near the table. It was set for a small tea party and the oil lamp with the red and white frosted glass shade, which stood in the center of it, shed a comfortable light on her serene face.

She was a short, plump old person whose white hair was brushed tightly to her little round head. Her clothes were all knitted and of an assortment of colors, and with them she wore, most unsuitably, a maltese-silk lace collarette and a heavy gold chain. It was only when they noticed she was blushing that they realized she was shy.

“Oh,” she exclaimed at last, making a move which put their dumbness to shame. “I quite forgot to say it before. A Merry Christmas to you! Isn’t it wonderful how it keeps coming round? Very quickly, I’m afraid, but it is so nice when it does. It’s such a
happy
time, isn’t it?”

Sir Leo pulled himself together with an effort which was practically visible.

“I must apologize,” he began. “This is an imposition on such a day. I...” But she smiled and silenced him again.

“Not at all,” she said. “Oh, not at all. Visitors are a great treat. Not everybody braves my footpath in the winter.”

“But some people do, of course?” ventured Mr. Campion.

“Of course.” She shot him her shy smile. “Certainly every week. They send down from the village every week and only this morning a young man, the policeman to be exact, came all the way over the fields to wish me the compliments of the season and to know if I’d got my post!”

“And you had!” Sir Leo glanced at the array of Christmas cards with relief. He was a kindly, sentimental, family man, with a horror of loneliness.

She nodded at the brave collection with deep affection.

“It’s lovely to see them all up there again, it’s one of the real joys of Christmas, isn’t it? Messages from people you love and who love you and all so
pretty
, too.”

“Did you come down bright and early to meet the postman?” Sir Leo’s question was disarmingly innocent, but she looked ashamed and dropped her eyes.

“I wasn’t up! Wasn’t it dreadful? I was late this morning. In fact, I was only just picking the letters off the mat there when the policeman called. He helped me gather them, the nice boy. There were such a lot. I lay lazily in bed this morning thinking of them instead of moving.”

“Still, you heard them come.” Sir Leo was very satisfied. “And you knew they were there.”

“Oh, yes.” She sounded content. “I knew they were there. May I offer you a cup of tea? I’m waiting for my party... just a woman and her dear little boy; they won’t be long. In fact, when I heard your knock I thought they were here already.”

Sir Leo excused them, but not with any undue haste. He appeared to be enjoying himself. Meanwhile, Mr. Campion, who had risen to inspect the display on the mantle shelf more closely, helped her to move the kettle so that it should not boil too soon.

The Christmas cards were splendid. There were nearly 30 of them in all, and the envelopes which had contained them were packed in a neat bundle and tucked behind the clock, to add even more color to the whole.

In design, they were mostly conventional. There were wreaths and firesides, saints and angels, with a secondary line of gardens in unseasonable bloom and Scotch terriers in tam-o’shanter caps. One magnificent card was entirely in ivorine, with a cutout disclosing a coach and horses surrounded by roses and forget-me-nots. The written messages were all warm and personal, all breathing affection and friendliness and the out-spoken joy of the season:

The very best to you. Darling, from all at The Limes.

To dear Auntie from Little Phil.

Love and Memories. Edith and Ted.

There is no wish like the old wish. Warm regards, George.

For dearest Mother.

Cheerio. Lots of love. Just off. Writing. Take care of yourself. Sonny.

For dear little Agnes with love from us all.

Mr. Campion stood before them for a long time but at length he turned away. He had to stoop to avoid the beam and yet he towered over the old woman who stood looking up at him.

Something had happened. It had suddenly become very still in the house. The gentle hissing of the kettle sounded unnaturally loud. The recollection of its lonely remoteness returned to chill the cosy room.

The old lady had lost her smile and there was wariness in her eyes.

“Tell me.” Campion spoke very gently. “What do you do? Do you put them all down there on the mat in their envelopes before you go to bed on Christmas Eve?”

While the point of his question and the enormity of it was dawning upon Sir Leo, there was silence. It was breathless and unbearable until old Mrs. Fyson pierced it with a laugh of genuine naughtiness.

“Well,” she said, “it does make it more fun!” She glanced back at Sir Leo whose handsome face was growing steadily more and more scarlet.

“Then... ?” He was having difficulty with his voice. “Then the postman did not call this morning, ma’am?”

She stood looking at him placidly, the flicker of the smile still playing round her mouth.

“The postman never calls here except when he brings something from the Government,” she said pleasantly. “Everybody gets letters from the Government nowadays, don’t they? But he doesn’t call here with
personal
letters because, you see, I’m the last of us.” She paused and frowned very faintly. It rippled like a shadow over the smoothness of her quiet, careless brow. “There’s been so many wars,” she said sadly.

“But, dear lady...” Sir Leo was completely overcome. There were tears in his eyes and his voice failed him.

She patted his arm to comfort him.

“My dear man,” she said kindly. “Don’t be distressed. It’s not sad. It’s Christmas. We all loved Christmas. They sent me their love at Christmas and you see
I’ve still got it
. At Christmas I remember them and they remember me...wherever they are.” Her eyes strayed to the ivorine card with the coach on it. “I do sometimes wonder about poor George,” she remarked seriously. “He was my husband’s elder brother and he really did have quite a shocking life. But he once sent me that remarkable card and I kept it with the others. After all, we ought to be charitable, oughtn’t we? At Christmas time...”

As the four men plodded back through the fields, Bussy was jubilant.

“That’s done the trick,” he said. “Cleared up the mystery and made it all plain sailing. We’ll get those two crooks for doing in poor old Noakes. A real bit of luck that Mr. Campion was here,” he added generously, as he squelched on through the mud. “The old girl was just cheering herself up and you fell for it, eh, Constable? Oh, don’t worry, my boy. There’s no harm done, and it’s a thing that might have deceived anybody. Just let it be a lesson to you. I know how it happened. You didn’t want to worry the old thing with the tale of a death on Christmas morning, so you took the sight of the Christmas cards as evidence and didn’t go into it. As it turned out, you were wrong. That’s life.”

He thrust the young man on ahead of him and came over to Mr. Campion.

“What beats me is how you cottoned to it,” he confided. “What gave you the idea?”

“I merely read it, I’m afraid.” Mr. Campion sounded apologetic. “All the envelopes were there, sticking out from behind the clock. The top one had a ha’penny stamp on it, so I looked at the postmark. It was 1914.”

Bussy laughed “Given to you.” he chuckled. “Still, I bet you had a job to believe your eyes.”

“Ah.” Mr. Campion’s voice was thoughtful in the dusk. “That, Super, that was the really difficult bit.”

Sir Leo, who had been striding in silence, was the last to climb up onto the road. He glanced anxiously towards the village for a moment or so. and presently touched Campion on the shoulder.

“Look there.” A woman was hurrying towards them and at her side, earnest and expectant, trotted a small, plump child. They scurried past and as they paused by the stile, and the woman lifted the boy onto the footpath, Sir Leo expelled a long sighing breath.

“So there was a party,” he said simply. “Thank God for that. Do you know, Campion, all the way back here I’ve been wonderin’.”

SANTA CLAUS BEAT – Rex Stout

Christmas Eve,” Art Hippie was thinking to himself, “would be a good time for the murder.”

The thought was both timely and characteristic. It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon of December 24, and though the murder would have got an eager welcome from Art Hippie any day at all. his disdainful attitude toward the prolonged hurly-burly of Christmas sentiment and shopping made that the best possible date for it. He did not actually turn up his nose at Christmas, for that would have been un-American: but as a New York cop not yet out of his twenties who had recently been made a precinct dick and had hung his uniform in the back of the closet of his furnished room, it had to be made clear, especially to himself, that he was good and tough. A cynical slant on Christmas was therefore imperative.

His hope of running across a murder had begun back in the days when his assignment had been tagging illegally parked cars, and was merely practical and professional. His biggest ambition was promotion to Homicide, and the shortest cut would have been discovery of a corpse, followed by swift, brilliant, solo detection and capture of the culprit. It had not gone so far as becoming an obsession; as he strode down the sidewalk this December afternoon he was not sniffing for the scent of blood at each dingy entrance he passed; but when he reached the number he had been given and turned to enter, his hand darted inside his jacket to touch his gun.