Murder On Christmas Eve Read online

  The doctor allowed him to talk himself out; indeed it would have been difficult to check the ferocity of his malicious energy.

  The plot was ingenious, the invention of a slightly insane, jealous recluse who hated his wife and hated the man she had never ceased to love; Bevis Holroyd could see the nets very skillfully drawn round him; but the main issue of the mystery remained untouched; who was administering the arsenic?

  The young man glanced across the sombre bed to the dark figure of the secretary.

  ‘What is your place in all this farrago, Mr Deane?’ he asked sternly.

  ‘I’m Sir Harry’s friend,’ answered the other stubbornly, ‘and I’ll bring witness any time against Lady Strange-ways. I’ve tried to circumvent her –’

  ‘Stop,’ cried the doctor. ‘You think that Lady Strangeways is poisoning her husband and that I am her accomplice?’

  The sick man, who had been looking with bitter malice from one to another, whispered hoarsely:

  ‘That is what you think, isn’t it, Deane?’

  ‘I’ll say what I think at the proper time,’ said the secretary obstinately.

  ‘No doubt you are being well paid for your share in this.’

  ‘I’ve remembered his services in my will,’ smiled Sir Harry grimly. ‘You can adjust your differences then, Dr Holroyd, when I’m dead, poisoned, murdered. It will be a pretty story, a nice scandal, you and she in the house together, the letters, the cambric tea!’

  An expression of ferocity dominated him, then he made an effort to dominate this and to speak in his usual suave stilted manner:

  ‘You must admit that we shall all have a very Happy Christmas, doctor.’

  Bevis Holroyd was looking at the secretary, who stood at the other side of the bed, cringing, yet somehow in the attitude of a man ready to pounce; Dr Holroyd wondered if this was the murderer.

  ‘Why,’ he asked quietly to gain time, ‘did you hatch this plan to ruin a man you had never seen before?’

  ‘I always hated you,’ replied the sick man faintly. ‘Mollie never forgot you, you see, and she never allowed me to forget that she never forgot you. And then I found those letters she had cherished.’

  ‘You are a very wicked man,’ said the doctor dryly, ‘but it will all come to nothing, for I am not going to allow you to die.’

  ‘You won’t be able to help yourself,’ replied the patient. ‘I’m dying, I tell you. I shall die on Christmas Day.’

  He turned his head towards the secretary and added:

  ‘Send my wife up to me.’

  ‘No,’ interrupted Dr Holroyd strongly. ‘She shall not come near you again.’

  Sir Harry Strangeways ignored this.

  ‘Send her up,’ he repeated.

  ‘I will bring her, sir.’

  The secretary left, with a movement suggestive of flight, and Bevis Holroyd stood rigid, waiting, thinking, looking at the ugly man who now had closed his eyes and lay as if insensible. He was certainly very ill, dying perhaps, and he certainly had been poisoned by arsenic given in cambric tea, and, as certainly, a terrible scandal and a terrible danger would threaten with his death; the letters were not dated, the marriage was notoriously unhappy, and he, Bevis Holroyd, was associated in every one’s mind with a murder case in which this form of poison, given in this manner, had been used.

  Drops of moisture stood out on the doctor’s forehead; sure that if he could clear himself it would be very difficult for Mollie to do so; how could even he himself in his soul swear to her innocence!

  Of course he must get the woman out of the house at once, he must have another doctor from town, nurses – but could this be done in time; if the patient died on his hands would he not be only bringing witnesses to his own discomfiture? And the right people, his own friends, were difficult to get hold of now, at Christmas time.

  He longed to go in search of Mollie – she must at least be got away, but how, without a scandal, without a suspicion?

  He longed to have the matter out with this odious secretary, but he dared not leave his patient.

  Lady Strangeways returned with Garth Deane and seated herself, mute, shadowy, with eyes full of panic, on the other side of the sombre bed.

  ‘Is he going to live?’ she presently whispered as she watched Bevis Holroyd ministering to her unconscious husband.

  ‘We must see that he does,’ he answered grimly.

  All through that Christmas Eve and the bitter night to the stark dawn when the church bells broke ghastly on their wan senses did they tend the sick man who only came to his senses to grin at them in malice.

  Once Bevis Holroyd asked the pallid woman:

  ‘What was that white packet you had in your work box?’

  And she replied:

  ‘I never had such a packet.’

  And he:

  ‘I must believe you.’

  But he did not send for the other doctors and nurses, he did not dare.

  The Christmas bells seemed to rouse the sick man from his deadly swoon.

  ‘You can’t save me,’ he said with indescribable malice. ‘I shall die and put you both in the dock –’

  Mollie Strangeways sank down beside the bed and began to cry, and Garth Deane, who by his master’s express desire had been in and out of the room all night, stopped and looked at her with a peculiar expression. Sir Harry looked at her also.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he gasped, ‘this is Christmas Day. We ought all to be happy – bring me my cambric tea – do you hear?’

  She rose mechanically and left the room to take in the tray with the fresh milk and water that the housekeeper had placed softly on the table outside the door; for all through the nightmare vigil, the sick man’s cry had been for ‘cambric tea’. As he sat up in bed feebly sipping the vapid and odious drink the tortured woman’s nerves slipped her control.

  ‘I can’t endure those bells, I wish they would stop those bells!’ she cried and ran out of the room.

  Bevis Holroyd instantly followed her; and now as suddenly as it had sprung on him, the fell little drama disappeared, fled like a poison cloud out of the compass of his life.

  Mollie was leaning against the closed window, her sick head resting against the mullions; through the casement showed, surprisingly, sunlight on the pure snow and blue sky behind the withered trees.

  ‘Listen, Mollie,’ said the young man resolutely. ‘I’m sure he’ll live if you are careful – you mustn’t lose heart –’

  The sick room door opened and the secretary slipped out.

  He nervously approached the two in the window place.

  ‘I can’t stand this any longer,’ he said through dry lips. ‘I didn’t know he meant to go so far, he is doing it himself, you know; he’s got the stuff hidden in his bed, he puts it into the cambric tea, he’s willing to die to spite you two, but I can’t stand it any longer.’

  ‘You’ve been abetting this!’ cried the doctor.

  ‘Not abetting,’ smiled the secretary wanly. ‘Just standing by. I found out by chance – and then he forced me to be silent – I had his will, you know, and I’ve destroyed it.’

  With this the strange creature glided downstairs.

  The doctor sprang at once to Sir Harry’s room; the sick man was sitting up in the sombre bed and with a last effort was scattering a grain of powder into the glass of cambric tea.

  With a look of baffled horror he saw Bevis Holroyd but the drink had already slipped down his throat; he fell back and hid his face, baulked at the last of his diabolic revenge.

  When Bevis Holroyd left the dead man’s chamber he found Mollie still leaning in the window; she was free, the sun was shining, it was Christmas Day.

  As Dark as Christmas Gets

  Lawrence Block

  It was 9:54 in the morning when I got to the little bookshop on West 56th Street. Before I went to work for Leo Haig I probably wouldn’t have bothered to look at my watch, if I was even wearing one in the first place, and the best I’d have been able to
say was it was around ten o’clock. But Haig wanted me to be his legs and eyes, and sometimes his ears, nose and throat, and if he was going to play in Nero Wolfe’s league, that meant I had to turn into Archie Goodwin, for Pete’s sake, noticing everything and getting the details right and reporting conversations verbatim.

  Well, forget that last part. My memory’s getting better – Haig’s right about that part – but what follows won’t be word for word, because all I am is a human being. If you want a tape recorder, buy one.

  There was a lot of fake snow in the window, and a Santa Claus doll in handcuffs, and some toy guns and knives, and a lot of mysteries with a Christmas theme, including the one by Fredric Brown where the murderer dresses up as a department store Santa. (Someone pulled that a year ago, put on a red suit and a white beard and shot a man at the corner of Broadway and 37th, and I told Haig how ingenious I thought it was. He gave me a look, left the room, and came back with a book. I read it – that’s what I do when Haig hands me a book – and found out Brown had had the idea fifty years earlier. Which doesn’t mean that’s where the killer got the idea. The book’s long out of print – the one I read was a paperback, and falling apart, not like the handsome hardcover copy in the window. And how many killers get their ideas out of old books?)

  Now if you’re a detective yourself you’ll have figured out two things by now – the bookshop specialized in mysteries, and it was the Christmas season. And if you’d noticed the sign in the window you’d have made one more deduction, i.e., that they were closed.

  I went down the half flight of steps and poked the buzzer. When nothing happened I poked it again, and eventually the door was opened by a little man with white hair and a white beard – all he needed was padding and a red suit, and someone to teach him to be jolly. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid we’re closed. It’s Christmas morning, and it’s not even ten o’clock.’

  ‘You called us,’ I said, ‘and it wasn’t even nine o’clock.’

  He took a good look at me, and light dawned. ‘You’re Harrison,’ he said. ‘And I know your first name, but I can’t –’

  ‘Chip,’ I supplied.

  ‘Of course. But where’s Haig? I know he thinks he’s Nero Wolfe, but he’s not gone housebound, has he? He’s been here often enough in the past.’

  ‘Haig gets out and about,’ I agreed, ‘but Wolfe went all the way to Montana once, as far as that goes. What Wolfe refused to do was leave the house on business, and Haig’s with him on that one. Besides, he just spawned some unspawnable cichlids from Lake Chad, and you’d think the aquarium was a television set and they were showing Midnight Blue.’

  ‘Fish.’ He sounded more reflective than contemptuous. ‘Well, at least you’re here. That’s something.’ He locked the door and led me up a spiral staircase to a room full of books, and full as well with the residue of a party. There were empty glasses here and there, hors d’oeuvres trays that held nothing but crumbs, and a cut-glass dish with a sole remaining cashew.

  ‘Christmas,’ he said, and shuddered. ‘I had a houseful of people here last night. All of them eating, all of them drinking, and many of them actually singing.’ He made a face. ‘I didn’t sing,’ he said, ‘but I certainly ate and drank. And eventually they all went home and I went upstairs to bed. I must have, because that’s where I was when I woke up two hours ago.’

  ‘But you don’t remember.’

  ‘Well, no,’ he said, ‘but then what would there be to remember? The guests leave and you’re alone with vague feelings of sadness.’ His gaze turned inward. ‘If she’d stayed,’ he said, ‘I’d have remembered.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Never mind. I awoke this morning, alone in my own bed. I swallowed some aspirin and came downstairs. I went into the library.’

  ‘You mean this room?’

  ‘This is the salesroom. These books are for sale.’

  ‘Well, I figured. I mean, this is a bookshop.’

  ‘You’ve never seen the library?’ He didn’t wait for an answer but turned to open a door and lead me down a hallway to another room twice the size of the first. It was lined with floor-to-ceiling hardwood shelves, and the shelves were filled with double rows of hardcover books. It was hard to identify the books, though, because all but one section was wrapped in plastic sheeting.

  ‘This is my collection,’ he announced. ‘These books are not for sale. I’ll only part with one if I’ve replaced it with a finer copy. Your employer doesn’t collect, does he?’

  ‘Haig? He’s got thousands of books.’

  ‘Yes, and he’s bought some of them from me. But he doesn’t give a damn about first editions. He doesn’t care what kind of shape a book is in, or even if it’s got a dust jacket. He’d as soon have a Grosset reprint or a book-club edition or even a paperback.’

  ‘He just wants to read them.’

  ‘It takes all kinds, doesn’t it?’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘Last night’s party filled this room as well as the salesroom. I put up plastic to keep the books from getting handled and possibly damaged. Or – how shall I put this?’

  Any way you want, I thought. You’re the client.

  ‘Some of these books are extremely valuable,’ he said. ‘And my guests were all extremely reputable people, but many of them are good customers, and that means they’re collectors. Ardent, even rabid collectors.’

  ‘And you didn’t want them stealing the books.’

  ‘You’re very direct,’ he said. ‘I suppose that’s a useful quality in your line of work. But no, I didn’t want to tempt anyone, especially when alcoholic indulgence might make temptation particularly difficult to resist.’

  ‘So you hung up plastic sheets.’

  ‘And came downstairs this morning to remove the plastic, and pick up some dirty glasses and clear some of the debris. I puttered around. I took down the plastic from this one section, as you can see. I did a bit of tidying. And then I saw it.’

  ‘Saw what?’

  He pointed to a set of glassed-in shelves, on top of which stood a three-foot row of leather-bound volumes. ‘There,’ he said. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Leather-bound books, but –’

  ‘Boxes,’ he corrected. ‘Wrapped in leather and stamped in gold, and each one holding a manuscript. They’re fashioned to look like finely-bound books, but they’re original manuscripts.’

  ‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘I suppose they must be very rare.’

  ‘They’re unique.’

  ‘That too.’

  He made a face. ‘One of a kind. The author’s original manuscript, with corrections in his own hand. Most are typed, but the Elmore Leonard is handwritten. The West-lake, of course, is typed on that famous Smith-Corona manual portable of his. The Paul Kavanagh is the author’s first novel. He only wrote three, you know.’

  I didn’t, but Haig would.

  ‘They’re very nice,’ I said politely. ‘And I don’t suppose they’re for sale.’

  ‘Of course not. They’re in the library. They’re part of the collection.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, and paused for him to continue. When he didn’t I said, ‘Uh, I was thinking. Maybe you could tell me …’

  ‘Why I summoned you here.’ He sighed. ‘Look at the boxed manuscript between the Westlake and the Kavanagh.’

  ‘Between them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Kavanagh is Such Men are Dangerous,’ I said, ‘and the Westlake is Drowned Hopes. But there’s nothing at all between them but a three-inch gap.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  ‘As Dark as It Gets,’ I said. ‘By Cornell Woolrich.’

  Haig frowned. ‘I don’t know the book,’ he said. ‘Not under that title, not with Woolrich’s name on it, nor William Irish or George Hopley. Those were his pen names.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘You don’t know the book because it was never published. The manuscript was found among Woolrich’s effects after his death.’

 
‘There was a posthumous book, Chip.’

  ‘Into the Night,’ I said. ‘Another writer completed it, writing replacement scenes for some that had gone missing in the original. It wound up being publishable.’

  ‘It wound up being published,’ Haig said. ‘That’s not necessarily the same thing. But this manuscript, As Dark –’

  ‘As It Gets. It wasn’t publishable, according to our client. Woolrich evidently worked on it over the years, and what survived him incorporated unresolved portions of several drafts. There are characters who die early on and then reappear with no explanation. There’s supposed to be some great writing and plenty of Woolrich’s trademark paranoid suspense, but it doesn’t add up to a book, or even something that could be edited into a book. But to a collector –’

  ‘Collectors,’ Haig said heavily.

  ‘Yes, sir. I asked what the manuscript was worth. He said, “Well, I paid five thousand dollars for it.” That’s verbatim, but don’t ask me if the thing’s worth more or less than that, because I don’t know if he was bragging that he was a big spender or a slick trader.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Haig said. ‘The money’s the least of it. He added it to his collection and he wants it back.’

  ‘And the person who stole it,’ I said, ‘is either a friend or a customer or both.’

  ‘And so he called us and not the police. The manuscript was there when the party started?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And gone this morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And there were how many in attendance?’

  ‘Forty or fifty,’ I said, ‘including the caterer and her staff.’

  ‘If the party was catered,’ he mused, ‘why was the room a mess when you saw it? Wouldn’t the catering staff have cleaned up at the party’s end?’

  ‘I asked him that question myself. The party lasted longer than the caterer had signed on for. She hung around herself for a while after her employees packed it in, but she stopped working and became a guest. Our client was hoping she would stay.’

  ‘But you just said she did.’