The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  “We’ve done harder things, sir,” said William.

  “All right,” said the Major. “But get this, William, I want no spoiled brat around the place. If I find you spoiling her, by the Lord Harry I’ll fire you.”

  “I won’t spoil her,” William had said sturdily. “But she’ll probably be as stubborn as a mule.”

  “Now why the hell do you say that?” the Major had roared.

  But William had only smiled.

  So she had grown up. She was lovable, but she was wild as a March wind and as stubborn as the Bennetts had always been. Then—it seemed almost no time to William—she met Mr. Tony, and one day she was walking down a church aisle on her grandfather’s arm, looking beautiful and sedate, and when she walked out again she was a married woman.

  The old house had been gay after that. It was filled with youth and laughter. Then one day Miss Sally had gone to the hospital to have her baby, and her grandfather, gray of face, had waited for the news. William had tried to comfort him.

  “I understand it’s a perfectly normal process, sir,” he said. “They are born every day. Millions of them.”

  “Get your smug face out of here,” roared the Major. “You and your millions! What the hell do I care about them? It’s my girl who’s in trouble.”

  He was all right then. He was even all right when the message came that it was over, and Miss Sally and Mr. Tony had a ten-minute-old son. But going out of the hospital he had staggered and fallen, and he had never walked again. That was when the household began to call him the Old Man. Behind his back, of course.

  It was tragic, because Miss Sally had had no trouble at all. She wakened at the hospital to learn that she had borne a man-child, asked if he had the proper number of fingers and toes, stated flatly that she had no intention of raising him for purposes of war, and then asked for a cigarette.

  That had been two years ago, and she had come home on Christmas Eve. Mr. Tony had a little tree for the baby in the Old Man’s bedroom, with Miss Sally’s battered wax angel on the top, and the Old Man lay in his bed and looked at it.

  “I suppose this kind of thing will save us, in the end,” he said to William. “Damn it, man, people will go on having babies, and the babies will have Christmas trees, long after Hitler is dead and rotted.”

  The baby of course had not noticed the tree, and there was nothing to indicate that a year later William would be about to be dismissed, or that Mr. Tony, feverishly shaking a rattle before his sleeping offspring, would be in his country’s uniform and somewhere on the high seas.

  It was a bad year, in a way. It had told on Miss Sally, William thought. Her grandfather had taken his stroke badly. He would lie for hours, willing that stubborn will of his to move an arm, a leg, even a finger, on the stricken side. Nothing happened, of course, and at last he had accepted it, wheelchair and all. William had helped to care for him, turning his big body when the nurse changed the sheets, bathing him when he roared that he would be eternally damned if he would allow any woman to wash him. And during the long hours of the night it had been William who sat with him while he could not sleep.

  Yet Miss Sally had taken it bravely.

  “He cared for me all my life,” she said. “Now I can care for him. William and I.”

  She had done it, too. William had to grant her that. She had turned a wing of the ground floor over to him, with a porch where he could sit and look out at the sea. She gave him time and devotion. Until Pearl Harbor, that is, and the night when Mr. Tony had slipped into the Old Man’s room while William was playing chess with him, and put his problem up to them.

  “You know Sally,” he said. “I can’t even talk to her about this war. But she’s safe here, and the boy too. And—well, somebody’s got to fight.”

  The Old Man had looked down at that swollen helpless hand of his, lying in his lap.

  “I see,” he said. “You want to go, of course?”

  “It isn’t a question of wanting, is it?”

  “It is, damn it,” said the Old Man fiercely. “I wanted to go to Cuba. Her father couldn’t get to France fast enough. I wouldn’t give a tinker’s curse for the fellow who doesn’t want to go. But”—his voice softened—“it will hurt Sally like hell, son. She’s had enough of war.”

  It had hurt her. She had fought it tooth and nail. But Tony had enlisted in the Navy almost at once, and he had gone a few days before Christmas. She did not cry when she saw him off, but she had the bleak look in her face which had never since entirely left it.

  “I hope you enjoy it,” she said.

  “I don’t expect to enjoy it, darling.”

  She was smiling, a strange stiff smile.

  “Then why are you going?” she asked. “There are plenty of men who don’t have to leave a wife to look after a baby and a helpless old man. Two old men,” she said, and looked at William, standing by with the bags.

  She was still not crying when after he had gone she had walked to the Old Man’s room. William was there. She stood in the doorway looking at them.

  “I hope you’re both satisfied,” she said, her voice frozen. “You can sit here, safe and sound, and beat the drums all you like. But I warn you, don’t beat them where I can hear them. I won’t have it.”

  Her grandfather eyed her.

  “I raised you,” he said. “William and I raised you. I guess we went wrong somewhere. You’re spoiled after all. And I’ll beat the drums all I damn please. So will William.”

  Only William knew that she had not gone to bed at all that night. Some time toward morning he had seen her down on the beach in the cold, staring out at the sea.

  He had trimmed the boy’s tree for him that Christmas Eve. And when it was finished, with the same ancient wax angel on the top, the Old Man had suddenly asked for a drink.

  “To hell with the doctors,” he said. “I’ll drink to Tony if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  As it happened, it was practically the last thing William had to do for him. For of course he had just got the liquor down when Miss Sally walked in.

  She dismissed William the next morning. He had gone upstairs and packed, leaving his livery but taking the photographs with him in his battered old suitcase. When he came down the stairs Miss Sally was waiting for him. He thought she had been crying, but the bleak look was in her face again.

  “I’m sorry it has to be like this, William,” she said stiffly. “I have your check here, and of course if you ever need any help—”

  “I’ve saved my money,” he told her stiffly. “I can manage. If it’s all right I’d like to see the baby before I go.”

  She nodded, and he left her and went outside. The baby toddled to him, and William picked him up and held him close.

  “You be a good boy,” he said. “Be a good boy and eat your cereal every day.”

  “Dood boy,” said the child.

  William stood for a minute, looking out at the winter ocean where perhaps even now Mr. Tony might be. Then he put the child down.

  “Look after him, Miss Jones,” he told the nurse huskily. “He’s about all his great-grandfather has left.”

  He found he was shaking when he got into the station wagon. Paul, the chauffeur, had to lift his suitcase. Evidently he knew. He looked concerned.

  “This’ll be hard as hell on the Old Man,” he said. “What happened, anyhow?”

  “Miss Sally’s upset,” said William evenly. “Mr. Tony going, and all that. She has no reason to like war.”

  “Who does?” said Paul glumly. “What do you bet they’ll get me next?”

  As they left a taxi was turning in at the gate. There was a tall swarthy man inside, and William disliked him instantly. Paul grunted.

  “If that’s the new fellow the Old Man will have him on his backside in a week,” he said.

  But so far as William knew the man was still there, and now he himself was on his way back, after a year, on some mysterious business he did not understand.

  The bus rattl
ed and roared along. The crowd was still amiable. It called Merry Christmas to each other, and strangers talked across the aisle. It was as though for this one night in the year one common bond united them. William, clutching his parcel, felt some of its warmth infecting him.

  He had been very lonely. He had taken a room in the city, but most of the people he knew had died or moved away. He took out a card to the public library, and read a good bit. And when the weather was good he sat in the park at the edge of the river, watching the ships on their way up to the Sound to join their convoys. They traveled one after the other, great grayish black monsters, like elephants in a circus holding each others’ tails. Sometimes they were battleships, sometimes freighters, laden to their Plimsoll marks, their decks covered with tanks and huge crates. So close were they that once on the bridge of a destroyer he thought he saw Mr. Tony. He stood up and waved his old hat, and the young officer saluted. But it was not Tony.

  When the sinkings began he watched the newspapers, his heart beating fast. Then one day he saw Tony’s picture. His ship had helped to rescue a crew at sea, and Tony was smiling. He looked tired and older, however. William had cut it out and sent it to the Old Man. But the only acknowledgment had been a post card. It had been duly censored for the United States Mail, and so all it said was: “Come back, you blankety blank fool.”

  However, if the Old Man had his pride, so did William. He had not gone back.

  Then, just a week before, he had received a telegram. It too had evidently been censored, this time for the benefit of the telegraph company. So it read: DRAT YOUR STIFF-NECKED PRIDE. COME AND SEE ME. LETTER FOLLOWS.

  As the bus rattled along he got out the letter. The crowd had settled down by that time. One by one the tired children had dropped off to sleep, and even the adults looked weary, as though having worked themselves into a fine pitch of excitement they had now relapsed into patient waiting. He got out his spectacles and reread the letter.

  It was a very odd sort of letter, written as it was in the Old Man’s cramped hand. It was almost as though he had expected someone else to read it. If there was anything wrong it did not say so. In fact, it alluded only to a Christmas surprise for the baby. Nevertheless the directions were puzzling. William was to arrive quietly and after dark. He was to leave his taxi at the gate, walk in, and rap on the Old Man’s bedroom window. It added that the writer would get rid of the nurse if he had to drown her in the bathtub, and it closed with what sounded like an appeal. “Don’t be a damn fool. I need you.”

  He was still thinking about it when the bus reached its destination. The rain had continued, and the crowd got out to an opening of umbrellas and another search for missing parcels. William was stiff from the long ride, and the town surprised him. It was almost completely blacked out and his taxi, when he found one, had some sort of black material over all but a narrow strip on its headlights.

  “Good thing too,” said the driver companionably. “We’re right on the coast. Too many ships getting sunk these days. One sunk off here only a week ago. If you ask me them Germans has fellows at work right in this place. Where’d you say to go?”

  “The Bennett place. Out on the beach.”

  The driver grinned.

  “Used to drive the Major now and then,” he said. “Kind of a violent talker, ain’t he?”

  “He’s had quite a bit of trouble,” said William.

  “Well, his granddaughter’s a fine girl,” said the driver. “Know where she is tonight? Trimming a tree out at the camp. I seen her there myself.”

  “She always was a fine girl,” said William sturdily.

  The driver protested when he got out at the gate.

  “Better let me take you in. It’s raining cats and dogs.”

  But William shook his head.

  “I want to surprise them. I know the way.”

  The cab drove off to an exchange of Christmas greetings, and William started for the house. There were no lights showing as he trudged along the driveway, but he could hear ahead of him the steady boom of the waves as the Atlantic rolled in, the soft hiss of the water as it rolled up the beach. Just so for fifty years had he heard it. Only now it meant something new and different. It meant danger, men in ships watching against death; Mr. Tony perhaps somewhere out there in the dark, and the Old Man knowing it and listening, as he was listening.

  He was relieved when he saw the garage doors open and no cars inside. He made his way cautiously around the house to the Old Man’s wing, and stood listening under the bedroom window. There was no sound inside, however, and he wondered what to do. If he was asleep—Suddenly he sneezed, and he almost jumped out of his skin when a familiar voice spoke, almost at his ear.

  “Come in, damn it,” said the voice irritably. “What the hell are you waiting for? Want to catch your death of pneumonia?”

  Suddenly William felt warm and comfortable again. This was what he had needed, to be sworn at and shouted at, to see the Old Man again, to hear him roar, or to be near him in contented silence. He crawled through the window, smiling happily.

  “Nothing wrong with your voice, anyhow,” he said. “Well, here I am, sir.”

  “And about time,” said the Old Man. “Turn up the light and let me look at you. Shut the window and draw those curtains. Hah! You’re flabby!”

  “I’ve gained a little weight,” William admitted.

  “A little! Got a tummy like a bowl of jelly.”

  These amenities over they grinned at each other, and the Old Man held out his good hand.

  “God,” he said, “I’m glad to see you. We’re going straight to the devil here. Well, a Merry Christmas to you anyhow.”

  “The same to you, sir.”

  They shook hands, and William surveyed the Old Man, sitting bolt upright in his wheelchair. He looked as truculent as ever, but some of the life had gone out of his face.

  “So you ran out on me!” he said. “Why the devil didn’t you turn Sally over your knee and spank her? I’ve seen you do it.”

  “I’m not as strong as I used to be,” said William apologetically. The Old Man chuckled.

  “She’s a Bennett,” he said. “Always was, always will be. But she’s learning. Maybe it’s the hard way, but she’s learning.” He eyed William. “Take off that coat, man,” he said. “You’re dripping all over the place. What’s that package? Anything in it but your nightshirt?”

  “I’ve got a pint of Scotch,” William admitted.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” shouted the Old Man. “Sally’s out. The nurse is out. Jarvis is out—that’s the butler, if he is a butler and if that’s his name. And the rest have gone to bed. Let’s have it. It’s Christmas Eve, man!”

  “They oughtn’t to leave you like that,” William said reprovingly.

  “Each of them thinks somebody else is looking after me.” The Old Man chuckled. “Get some glasses. I guess you know your way. And take a look around when you get there.”

  William went back to the familiar rear of the house. His feet were wet and a small trickle of water had escaped his celluloid collar and gone down his back; but he walked almost jauntily. Until he saw his pantry, that is.

  He did not like what he saw. The place even smelled unclean, and the silver was only half polished, the glasses he held to the light were smeared, and the floor felt sticky under his feet.

  Resentfully he washed two glasses, dried them on a not too clean dish towel, and went back. The Old Man watched him from under his heavy eyebrows.

  “Well, what do you think of it?” he inquired. “Is the fellow a butler?”

  “He’s not a good one, sir.”

  But the Old Man said nothing more. He took his glass and waited until William had poured his own drink. Then he lifted the glass.

  “To Tony,” he said. “A safe Christmas to him, and to all the other men with the guts to fight this war.”

  It was like a prayer. It probably was a prayer, and William echoed it.

  “To Mr. Tony,” he
said, “and all the rest.”

  Then at last the Old Man explained his letter. He didn’t trust the man Jarvis. Never had. Too smooth. Sally, of course, did not suspect him, although he was damned inefficient. Anyhow what could she do, with every able-bodied man in service or making armament?

  “But there’s something queer about him,” he said. “And you may not know it, but we had a ship torpedoed out here last week. Some of the men landed on the beach. Some never landed anywhere, poor devils.”

  “I heard about it,” said William. “What do you want me to do?”

  “How the hell do I know?” said the Old Man.

  “Look around. See if there’s anything suspicious. And if there isn’t, get rid of him anyhow. I don’t like him.”

  A thin flush rose to William’s wrinkled face.

  “You mean I’m to stay?” he inquired.

  “Why the devil do you suppose I brought you back?” shouted the Old Man. “Don’t stand there staring. Get busy. We haven’t got all night.”

  William’s strictly amateur activities, however, yielded him nothing. His old room—now belonging to Jarvis—surprised him by its neatness, but unless that in itself was suspicious, there was nothing more. No flashlight for signaling, no code book, which William would certainly not have recognized anyhow, not even a radio.

  “Tidy, is it?” said the Old Man when he reported back. “Well, I suppose that’s that. I’d hoped to hand the FBI a Christmas gift, but—All right, no spy. I’ve got another job for you, one you’ll like better.” He leaned back in his chair and eyed William quizzically. “Sally’s not having a tree this year for the boy. I don’t blame her. For months she’s worked her fool head off. Army, Navy, and what have you. She’s tired. Maybe she’s breaking her heart. Sometimes I think she is. But by the Lord Harry he’s having a tree just the same.”

  William looked at his watch.

  “It’s pretty late to buy one,” he said. “But of course I can try.”

  The Old Man grinned, showing a perfect set of his own teeth, only slightly yellowed.

  “Think I’m getting old, don’t you?” he scoffed. “Always did think you were smarter than I was, didn’t you? Well, I’m not in my dotage yet. The tree’s on the porch. Had it delivered tonight. Unless,” he added unkindly, “you’re too feeble to drag it in!”