The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  William also grinned, showing a perfect set of teeth, certainly not his own, except by purchase.

  “I suppose you wouldn’t care to take a bet on it, sir?” he said happily.

  Ten minutes later the tree was in place in a corner of the Old Man’s sitting room. William was perspiring but triumphant. The Old Man himself was exhilarated with one small drink and an enormous pride. Indeed, both were eminently cheerful until, without warning, they heard the sound of a car outside.

  It was Sally, and before she had put up her car and got back to the house, William was hidden in the darkened sitting room, and her grandfather was sedately reading in his chair beside a lamp. From where he stood William could see her plainly. She had changed, he thought. She looked older. But she looked gentler, too, as though at last she had learned some of the lessons of life. Her eyes were no longer bleak, but they were sunken in her head. Nevertheless William felt a thrill of pride. She was their girl, his and the Old Man’s, and now she was a woman. A lovely woman, too. Even William, no connoisseur, could see that.

  “Good gracious, why aren’t you in bed?” she said, slipping off her fur coat. “And where’s the nurse?”

  “It’s Christmas Eve, my dear. I sent her off for a while. She’ll be back.”

  But Sally was not listening. Even William could see that. She sat down on the edge of a chair and twisted her fingers in her lap.

  “There wasn’t any mail, was there?”

  “I’m afraid not. Of course we don’t know where he is. It may be difficult for him to send any.”

  Suddenly she burst out.

  “Why don’t you say it?” she demanded. “You always say what you think. I sent Tony off wrong. I can’t forgive myself for that. I was wrong about William, too. You miss him, don’t you?”

  “Miss him?” said the Old Man, deliberately raising his voice. “Why would I miss the old rascal? Always pottering around and doing nothing! I get along fine without him.”

  “I think you’re lying to make me feel better,” she said, and got up. “I was wrong about him, and tonight I realized I’d been wrong about the baby’s tree. When I saw the men around the one we’d fixed for them—I’ve made a mess of everything, haven’t I?”

  “Most of us do, my dear,” said her grandfather. “But we learn. We learn.”

  She went out then, closing the door quietly behind her. When William went into the bedroom he found the Old Man staring somberly at the fire.

  “Damn war anyhow,” he said violently. “Damn the blasted lunatics who wished it on the earth. All I need now is for some idiots to come around and sing ‘Peace on earth, good will to men!’ ”

  As though it might have been a signal, from beyond the window suddenly came a chorus of young voices, and William gingerly raised the shade. Outside, holding umbrellas in one hand and clutching their blowing cassocks around them with the other, the choir boys from the nearby church were singing, their small scrubbed faces earnest and intent. They sang about peace, and the King of peace who had been born to save the world, and the Old Man listened. When they had gone he grinned sheepishly.

  “Well, maybe they’re right at that,” he said. “Sooner or later peace has to come. How about a small drink to the idea, anyhow?”

  They drank it together and in silence, and once more they were back where they had been a year ago. No longer master and man, but two friends of long standing, content merely to be together.

  “So you’ve been doing fine without me, sir?” said William, putting down his glass.

  “Hell, did you hear that?” said the Old Man innocently.

  They chuckled as at some ancient joke.

  It was after eleven when William in his socks made his way to the attic where the trimmings for the tree were stored. Sally was still awake. He could hear her stirring in her room. For a moment he stood outside and listened, and it seemed no time at all since he had done the same thing when she was a child, and had been punished and sent to bed. He would stand at her door and tap, and she would open it and throw herself sobbing into his arms.

  “I’ve been a bad girl, William.”

  He would hold her and pat her thin little back.

  “Now, now,” he would say. “Take it easy, Sally. Maybe William can fix it for you.”

  But of course there was nothing he could fix now. He felt rather chilly as he climbed the attic stairs.

  To his relief the attic was orderly. He turned on the light and moving cautiously went to the corner where the Christmas tree trimmings, neatly boxed and covered, had always stood. They were still there. He lifted them, one by one, and placed them behind him. Then he stiffened and stood staring.

  Neatly installed behind where they had been was a small radio transmitter.

  He knew it at once for what it was, and a slow flush of fury suffused his face as he knelt down to examine it.

  “The spy!” he muttered thickly, “the dirty devil of a spy!”

  So this was how it was done. This was how ships were being sunk at sea; the convoys assembling, the ships passing along the horizon, and men like Jarvis watching, ready to unleash the waiting submarine wolves upon them.

  He was trying to tear it out with his bare hands when he heard a voice behind him.

  “Stay where you are, or I’ll shoot.”

  But it was not Jarvis. It was Sally, white and terrified, in a dressing gown over her nightdress and clutching a revolver in her hand. William got up slowly and turned, and she gasped and dropped the gun.

  “Why, William!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  He stood still, concealing the transmitter behind his stocky body.

  “Your grandfather sent for me,” he said, with dignity. “He was planning a little surprise for you and the boy, in the morning.”

  She looked at him, at his dependable old face, at the familiar celluloid collar gleaming in the light, at his independent sturdy figure, and suddenly her chin quivered.

  “Oh, William,” she said. “I’ve been such a dreadful person.”

  All at once she was in his arms, crying bitterly.

  “Everything’s so awful,” she sobbed. “I’m so frightened, William. I can’t help it.”

  And once more he was holding her and saying:

  “It will be all right, Sally girl. Don’t you worry. It will be all right.”

  She quieted, and at last he got her back to her room. He found that he was shaking, but he went methodically to work. He did what he could to put the transmitter out of business. Then he piled up the boxes of trimmings and carried them down the stairs. There was still no sign of Jarvis, and the Old Man was dozing in his chair. William hesitated. Then he shut himself in the sitting room and cautiously called the chief of the local police.

  “This is William,” he said. “The butler at Major Bennett’s. I—”

  “So you’re back, you old buzzard, are you?” said the chief. “Well, Merry Christmas and welcome home.”

  But he sobered when William told him what he had discovered. He promised to round up some men, and not—at William’s request—to come as if they were going to a fire.

  “We’ll get him all right,” he said. “We’ll get all these dirty polecats sooner or later. All right. No siren. We’ll ring the doorbell.”

  William felt steadier after that. He was in the basement getting a ladder for trimming the tree when he heard Jarvis come back. But he went directly up the back stairs to his room, and William, listening below, felt that he would not visit the attic that night.

  He was singularly calm now. The Old Man was sound asleep by that time, and snoring as violently as he did everything else. William placed the ladder and hung the wax angel on the top of the tree. Then he stood precariously and surveyed it.

  “Well, we’re back,” he said. “We’re kind of old and battered, but we’re still here, thank God.”

  Which in its way was a prayer too, like the Old Man’s earlier in the evening.

  He got down, his legs rather
stiff, and going into the other room touched the sleeper lightly on the shoulder. He jerked awake.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” he roared. “Can’t a man take a nap without your infernal interfering?”

  “The tree’s ready to trim,” said William quietly.

  Fifteen minutes later the nurse came back. The bedroom was empty, and in the sitting room before a half-trimmed tree the Old Man was holding a small—a very small—drink in his hand. He waved his glass at her outraged face.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, a slight—a very slight—thickness in his voice. “And get me that telegram that came for Sally today.”

  She looked disapprovingly at William, a William on whom the full impact of the situation—plus a very small drink—had suddenly descended like the impact of a pile-driver. Her austere face softened.

  “You look tired,” she said. “You’d better sit down.”

  “Tired? Him?” scoffed the Old Man. “You don’t know him. And where the hell’s that telegram?”

  She brought it, and he put on his spectacles to read it.

  “Sally doesn’t know about it,” he explained. “Held it out on her. Do her good.” Then he read it aloud. “Home for breakfast tomorrow. Well. Love. Merry Christmas. Tony.”

  He folded it and looked around, beaming.

  “How’s that for a surprise?” he demanded. “Merry Christmas! Hell, it will be a real Christmas for everybody.”

  William stood still. He wanted to say something, but his voice stuck in his throat. Then he stiffened. Back in the pantry the doorbell was ringing.

  THE TRINITY CAT

  Ellis Peters

  FEW CHARACTERS HAVE ENJOYED such a depth of affection among mystery aficionados as Brother Cadfael, the medieval herbalist in a Benedictine abbey in Shropshire. He was created in 1977 by Ellis Peters in A Morbid Taste for Bones, and nineteen additional novels and a short story collection followed. Even though Edith Pargeter (Ellis Peters’s real name) wrote scores of other books, the wise and gentle monk was a fan favorite for thirty years. In addition to being an outstanding detective, often helping the deputy sheriff bring transgressors to justice, Cadfael, who had been a man of the world before entering the abbey, was also frequently instrumental in helping young lovers find happiness. The author won the Edgar for Best Novel in 1963 for Death and the Joyful Woman and was presented with the Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement by the (British) Crime Writers’ Association in 1993. “The Trinity Cat” was first published in Winter’s Crimes #8 (London, Macmillan, 1976); it was first collected in the author’s collection A Rare Benedictine (London, Headline, 1988).

  The Trinity Cat

  ELLIS PETERS

  HE WAS SITTING ON TOP OF ONE of the rear gate-posts of the churchyard when I walked through on Christmas Eve, grooming in his lordly style, with one back leg wrapped round his neck, and his bitten ear at an angle of forty-five degrees, as usual. I reckon one of the toms he’d tangled with in his nomad days had ripped the starched bit out of that one, the other stood up sharply enough. There was snow on the ground, a thin veiling, just beginning to crackle in promise of frost before evening, but he had at least three warm refuges around the place whenever he felt like holing up, besides his two houses, which he used only for visiting and cadging. He’d been a known character around our village for three years then, ever since he walked in from nowhere and made himself agreeable to the vicar and the verger, and finding the billet comfortable and the pickings good, constituted himself resident cat to Holy Trinity church, and took over all the jobs around the place that humans were too slow to tackle, like rat-catching, and chasing off invading dogs.

  Nobody knows how old he is, but I think he could only have been about two when he settled here, a scrawny, chewed-up black bandit as lean as wire. After three years of being fed by Joel Woodward at Trinity Cottage, which was the verger’s house by tradition, and flanked the lych-gate on one side, and pampered and petted by Miss Patience Thomson at Church Cottage on the other side, he was double his old size, and sleek as velvet, but still had one lop ear and a kink two inches from the end of his tail. He still looked like a brigand, but a highly prosperous brigand. Nobody ever gave him a name, he wasn’t the sort to get called anything fluffy or familiar. Only Miss Patience ever dared coo at him, and he was very gracious about that, she being elderly and innocent and very free with little perks like raw liver, on which he doted. One way and another, he had it made. He lived mostly outdoors, never staying in either house overnight. In winter he had his own little ground-level hatch into the furnace-room of the church, sharing his lodgings matily with a hedgehog that had qualified as assistant vermin-destructor around the churchyard, and preferred sitting out the winter among the coke to hibernating like common hedgehogs. These individualists keep turning up in our valley, for some reason.

  All I’d gone to the church for that afternoon was to fix up with the vicar about the Christmas peal, having been roped into the bell-ringing team. Resident police in remote areas like ours get dragged into all sorts of activities, and when the area’s changing, and new problems cropping up, if they have any sense they don’t need too much dragging, but go willingly. I’ve put my finger on many an astonished yobbo who thought he’d got clean away with his little breaking-and-entering, just by keeping my ears open during a darts match, or choir practice.

  When I came back through the churchyard, around half-past two, Miss Patience was just coming out of her gate, with a shopping bag on her wrist, and heading towards the street, and we walked along together a bit of the way. She was getting on for seventy, and hardly bigger than a bird, but very independent. Never having married or left the valley, and having looked after a mother who lived to be nearly ninety, she’d never had time to catch up with new ideas in the style of dress suitable for elderly ladies. Everything had always been done mother’s way, and fashion, music, and morals had stuck at the period when mother was a carefully-brought-up girl learning domestic skills, and preparing for a chaste marriage. There’s a lot to be said for it! But it had turned Miss Patience into a frail little lady in long-skirted black or grey or navy blue, who still felt undressed without hat and gloves, at an age when Mrs. Newcombe, for instance, up at the pub, favoured shocking pink trouser suits and red-gold hair-pieces. A pretty little old lady Miss Patience was, though, very straight and neat. It was a pleasure to watch her walk. Which is more than I could say for Mrs. Newcombe in her trouser suit, especially from the back!

  “A happy Christmas, Sergeant Moon!” she chirped at me on sight. And I wished her the same, and slowed up to her pace.

  “It’s going to be slippery by twilight,” I said. “You be careful how you go.”

  “Oh, I’m only going to be an hour or so,” she said serenely. “I shall be home long before the frost sets in. I’m only doing the last bit of Christmas shopping. There’s a cardigan I have to collect for Mrs. Downs.” That was her cleaning-lady, who went in three mornings a week. “I ordered it long ago, but deliveries are so slow nowadays. They’ve promised it for today. And a gramophone record for my little errand-boy.” Tommy Fowler that was, one of the church trebles, as pink and wholesome-looking as they usually contrive to be, and just as artful. “And one mustn’t forget our dumb friends, either, must one?” said Miss Patience cheerfully. “They’re all important, too.”

  I took this to mean a couple of packets of some new product to lure wild birds to her garden. The Church Cottage thrushes were so fat they could hardly fly, and when it was frosty she put out fresh water three and four times a day.

  We came to our brief street of shops, and off she went, with her big jet-and-gold brooch gleaming in her scarf. She had quite a few pieces of Victorian and Edwardian jewellery her mother’d left behind, and almost always wore one piece, being used to the belief that a lady dresses meticulously every day, not just on Sundays. And I went for a brisk walk round to see what was going on, and then went home to Molly and high tea, and took my boots off thankfully.
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br />   That was Christmas Eve. Christmas Day little Miss Thomson didn’t turn up for eight o’clock Communion, which was unheard-of. The vicar said he’d call in after matins and see that she was all right, and hadn’t taken cold trotting about in the snow. But somebody else beat us both to it. Tommy Fowler! He was anxious about that pop record of his. But even he had no chance until after service, for in our village it’s the custom for the choir to go and sing the vicar an aubade in the shape of “Christians, Awake!” before the main service, ignoring the fact that he’s then been up four hours, and conducted two Communions. And Tommy Fowler had a solo in the anthem, too. It was a quarter-past twelve when he got away, and shot up the garden path to the door of Church Cottage.

  He shot back even faster a minute later. I was heading for home when he came rocketing out of the gate and ran slam into me, with his eyes sticking out on stalks and his mouth wide open, making a sort of muted keening sound with shock. He clutched hold of me and pointed back towards Miss Thomson’s front door, left half-open when he fled, and tried three times before he could croak out:

  “Miss Patience … She’s there on the floor—she’s bad!”

  I went in on the run, thinking she’d had a heart attack all alone there, and was lying helpless. The front door led through a diminutive hall, and through another glazed door into the living-room, and that door was open, too, and there was Miss Patience face-down on the carpet, still in her coat and gloves, and with her shopping-bag lying beside her. An occasional table had been knocked over in her fall, spilling a vase and a book. Her hat was askew over one ear, and caved in like a trodden mushroom, and her neat grey bun of hair had come undone and trailed on her shoulder, and it was no longer grey but soiled, brownish black. She was dead and stiff. The room was so cold, you could tell those doors had been ajar all night.