Murder On Christmas Eve Read online

  There was a silence, broken at length by Zoltan Mihalyi, offering our client congratulations on his triumph and sympathy for the memory loss. ‘When you write your memoirs,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to leave that chapter blank.’

  ‘Or have someone ghost it for you,’ Philip Perigord offered.

  ‘The manuscript,’ Stokes said. ‘What became of it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the caterer said. ‘I finished it –’

  ‘Which is more than Woolrich could say,’ Jayne Corn-Wallace said.

  ‘– and I left it there.’

  ‘There?’

  ‘In its box. On the bedside table, where you’d be sure to find it first thing in the morning. But I guess you didn’t.’

  ‘The manuscript? Haig, you’re telling me you want the manuscript!’

  ‘You find my fee excessive?’

  ‘But it wasn’t even lost. No one took it. It was next to my bed. I’d have found it sooner or later.’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ Haig said. ‘Not until you’d cost me and my young associate the better part of our holiday. You’ve been reading mysteries all your life. Now you got to see one solved in front of you, and in your own magnificent library.’

  He brightened. ‘It is a nice room, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s first-rate.’

  ‘Thanks. But Haig, listen to reason. You did solve the puzzle and recover the manuscript, but now you’re demanding what you recovered as compensation. That’s like rescuing a kidnap victim and insisting on adopting the child yourself.’

  ‘Nonsense. It’s nothing like that.’

  ‘All right, then it’s like recovering stolen jewels and demanding the jewels themselves as reward. It’s just plain disproportionate. I hired you because I wanted the manuscript in my collection, and now you expect to wind up with it in your collection.’

  It did sound a little weird to me, but I kept my mouth shut. Haig had the ball, and I wanted to see where he’d go with it.

  He put his fingertips together. ‘In Black Orchids,’ he said, ‘Wolfe’s client was his friend Lewis Hewitt. As recompense for his work, Wolfe insisted on all of the black orchid plants Hewitt had bred. Not one. All of them.’

  ‘That always seemed greedy to me.’

  ‘If we were speaking of fish,’ Haig went on, ‘I might be similarly inclined. But books are of use to me only as reading material. I want to read that book, sir, and I want to have it close to hand if I need to refer to it.’ He shrugged. ‘But I don’t need the original that you prize so highly. Make me a copy.’

  ‘A copy?’

  ‘Indeed. Have the manuscript photocopied.’

  ‘You’d be content with a … a copy?’

  ‘And a credit,’ I said quickly, before Haig could give away the store. We’d put in a full day, and he ought to get more than a few hours’ reading out of it. ‘A two thousand dollar store credit,’ I added, ‘which Mr Haig can use up as he sees fit.’

  ‘Buying paperbacks and book-club editions,’ our client said. ‘It should last you for years.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘A photocopy and a store credit. Well, if that makes you happy …’

  And that pretty much wrapped it up. I ran straight home and sat down at the typewriter, and if the story seems a little hurried it’s because I was in a rush when I wrote it. See, our client tried for a second date with Jeanne Botleigh, to refresh his memory, I suppose, but a woman tends to feel less than flattered when you forget having gone to bed with her, and she wasn’t having any.

  So I called her the minute I got home, and we talked about this and that, and we’ve got a date in an hour and a half. I’ll tell you this much, if I get lucky, I’ll remember. So wish me luck, huh?

  And, by the way …

  Merry Christmas!

  On Christmas Day in the Morning

  Margery Allingham

  Sir Leo Pursuivant, the Chief Constable, had been sitting in his comfortable study after a magnificent lunch and talking heavily of the sadness of Christmas, while his guest, Mr Campion, most favoured of his large house-party, had been laughing at him gently.

  It was true, the younger man had admitted, his pale eyes sleepy behind his horn-rimmed spectacles, that, however good the organization, the festival was never quite the same after one was six and a half, but then, what sensible man would expect it to be, and meanwhile, what a truly remarkable bird that had been!

  At that point the Superintendent had arrived with his grim little story and the atmosphere was spoiled altogether.

  The policeman sat in a highbacked chair, against a panelled wall festooned with holly and tinsel, his round black eyes hard and preoccupied under his short grey hair. Superintendent Pussey was one of those lean and urgent countrymen who never quite lose their innate fondness for a wonder. Despite years of experience the thing that simply could not have happened and yet indubitably had retained a place in his cosmos. He was holding forth about the latest example. It had already ruined his Christmas and had kept a great many other people out in the sleet all day, but nothing would induce him to leave it alone even for five minutes. A heap of turkey sandwiches was disappearing as he talked and a glass of scotch and soda stood untasted at his side.

  ‘You can see I had to come at once,’ he was saying. ‘I had to. I don’t see what happened and that’s a fact. It’s a sort of miracle. Besides, fancy killing a poor old postman on Christmas morning! That’s inhuman isn’t it? Unnatural?’

  Sir Leo nodded his white head. ‘Let me get this clear: the dead man appears to have been run down at the Benham cross roads …’

  Pussey took a handful of cigarettes from the box at his side and arranged them in a cross on the shining surface of the table.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘here is the Ashby road with a slight bend in it and here, running at right angles, slap through the curve, is the Benham road. You know as well as I do, sir, they’re both good wide main thoroughfares as roads go in these parts. This morning the Benham postman, old Fred Noakes, came along the Benham Road loaded down with mail.’

  ‘On a bicycle,’ murmured Campion.

  ‘Naturally. On a bicycle. He called at the last farm before the cross roads and left just about ten o’ clock. We know that because he had a cup of tea there. Then his way led him over the crossing and on towards Benham proper.’

  He paused and looked up from his cigarettes.

  ‘There was very little traffic early today, terrible weather all the time, and quite a bit of activity later, so we’ve got no skid marks to help us. Well, no one seems to have seen old Noakes until close on half an hour later. Then the Benham constable, who lives some three hundred yards from the crossing, came out of his house and walked down to his gate. He saw the postman at once, lying in the middle of the road across his machine. He was dead then.’

  ‘He had been trying to carry on?’

  ‘Yes. He was walking, pushing the bike, and he’d dropped in his tracks. There was a depressed fracture in the side of his skull where something – say a car mirror – had struck him. I’ve got the doctor’s report. Meanwhile there’s something else.’

  He returned to his second line of cigarettes.

  ‘Just about ten o’clock there were a couple of fellows walking here on the Ashby road. They report that they were almost run down by a saloon car which came up behind them. It missed them and careered off out of their sight round the bend towards the crossing.

  ‘A few minutes later, half a mile farther on, on the other side of the cross roads, a police car met and succeeded in stopping, the same saloon. There was a row and the driver, getting the wind up suddenly, started up again, skidded and smashed the vehicle on the nearest telephone pole. The car turned out to be stolen and there were four half full bottles of gin in the back. The two occupants were both fighting drunk and are now detained.’

  Mr Campion took off his spectacles and blinked at the speaker.

  ‘You suggest that there was a connection, do you? Fred and the gin drinkers met at the cross r
oads, in fact. Any signs on the car?’

  Pussey shrugged his shoulders. ‘Our chaps are at work on that now. The second smash has complicated things a bit but last time I ’phoned they were hopeful.’

  ‘But my dear fellow!’ Sir Leo was puzzled. ‘If you can get expert evidence of a collision between the car and the postman, your worries are over. That is, of course, if the medical evidence permits the theory that the unfortunate fellow picked himself up and struggled the three hundred yards towards the constable’s house.’

  Pussey hesitated.

  ‘There’s the trouble,’ he admitted. ‘If that was all we’d be sitting pretty, but it’s not and I’ll tell you why. In that three hundred yards of Benham Road, between the crossing and the spot where old Fred died, there is a stile which leads to a footpath. Down the footpath, the best part of a quarter of a mile away, there is one small cottage and at that cottage letters were delivered this morning. The doctor says Noakes might have staggered the three hundred yards up the road leaning on his bike but he puts his foot down and says the other journey, over the stile, would have been plain impossible. I’ve talked to him. He’s the best man in the world on the job and we shan’t shake him on that.’

  ‘All of which would argue,’ observed Mr Campion brightly, ‘that the postman met the car after he came back from the cottage – between the stile and the policeman’s house.’

  ‘That’s what the constable thought.’ Pussey’s black eyes were snapping. ‘As soon as he’d telephoned for help he slipped down to the cottage to see if Noakes had called there. When he found he had, he searched the road. He was mystified though because both he and his missus had been at their window for an hour watching for the mail and they hadn’t seen a vehicle of any sort go by either way. If a car did hit the postman where he fell it must have turned and gone back afterwards and that’s impossible, for the patrol would have seen it.’

  Leo frowned at him. ‘What about the other witnesses? Did they see any second car?’

  ‘No.’ Pussey’s face shone with honest wonder. ‘I made sure of that. Everybody sticks to it that there was no other car or cart about and a good job too, they say, considering the way the saloon was being driven. As I see it, it’s a proper mystery, a kind of not very nice miracle, and those two beauties are going to get away with murder on the strength of it. Whatever our fellows find on the car they’ll never get past the doctor’s evidence.’

  Mr Campion got up sadly. The sleet was beating on the windows and from inside the house came the more cheerful sound of teacups. He nodded to the Chief Constable.

  ‘I fear we shall have to see that footpath before it gets utterly dark, you know,’ he said. ‘In this weather conditions may have changed by tomorrow.’

  Leo sighed.

  They stopped their freezing journey at the Benham police station to pick up the constable, who proved to be a pleasant youngster who had known and liked the postman and was anxious to serve as their guide.

  They inspected the cross roads and the bend and the spot where the saloon had come to grief. By the time they reached the stile the world was grey and dismal and all trace of Christmas had vanished.

  Mr Campion climbed over and the others followed him on to the path which was narrow and slippery. It wound out into the mist before them, apparently without end.

  The procession slid and scrambled in silence for what seemed a mile only to encounter yet another stile and a plank bridge over a stream leading to a patch of bog. As he struggled out of it Pussey pushed back his dripping hat and gazed at the constable.

  ‘You’re not having a game I suppose?’ he enquired briefly.

  ‘No, sir, no. The little house is just here. You can’t make it out because it’s a little bit low. There it is, sir.’

  He pointed to a hump in the near distance which they had all taken to be a haystack and which now emerged as the roof of a hovel with its back towards them in the wet waste.

  ‘Good Heavens!’ Leo regarded its desolation with dismay. ‘Does anybody actually live here?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir. An old widow lady. Mrs Fyson’s the name.’

  ‘Alone? How old?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know, sir. Over seventy five, must be.’

  Leo grunted and a silence fell on the company. The scene was so forlorn and so unutterably quiet in its loneliness that the world might have died.

  Mr Campion broke the spell.

  ‘This is definitely no walk for a dying man,’ he said firmly. ‘The doctor’s evidence is completely convincing, don’t you think? Now we’re here perhaps we should drop in and see the householder.’

  ‘We can’t all get in,’ Leo objected. ‘Perhaps the Superintendent …?’

  ‘No. You and I will go.’ Mr Campion was obstinate, and taking the Chief Constable’s arm 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 a very small door, Leo hung back.

  ‘I hate this,’ he muttered. ‘Oh – all right, 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 very 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. ‘You are damp. Come in.’ And then, looking past him at the skulking 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 or question 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 their ease.

  ‘You’ll have to sit down at once,’ she said, waving them to two chairs, one on either side of the small black kitchener. ‘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 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 the Chief Constable had a word to say for themselves for the first five minutes.

  They were certainly seated and looking round the one downstair room the house contained before anything approaching conversation took place.

  It was not a sordid interior yet the walls were discoloured, 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 mantel, above the stove, 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 centre 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 colours 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? It’s such a happy time, isn’t it?’

  Leo took himself in hand.

  ‘I do apologize,’ he began. ‘This is an imposition on such a day.’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Visitors are a great treat. Not every body braves my footpath in the winter.’

  ‘But some people do, of course?’ ventured Mr Campion.

  ‘Of course.’ She shot him her shy smile. ‘Always once a week. They send down from the village every Friday 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!’ Leo glanced at the array of 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?’ The Chief Constable’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 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 Christmas party to arrive, just a woman and her dear greedy little boy; they won’t be long. In fact, when I heard your knock I thought they were here already.’

  Mr Campion, who had risen to inspect the display of cards on the mantel shelf more closely, helped her to move the kettle so that it should not boil too soon.

  The cards were splendid. There were nearly thirty of them in all, and the envelopes which had contained them were packed in a neat bundle and tucked behind the clock.

  In design they were mostly conventional. There were robins and firesides, saints and angels, with a secondary line in pictures of gardens in unseasonable bloom, and Scots terriers in tam o’ shanter caps. One magnificent affair was entirely in ivorine with a cut-out disclosing a coach and horses surrounded with roses and forget-me-nots. The written messages were all warm and personal – all breathing affection and friendliness and the outspoken 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’.