“Our Lady will know it,” said Cadfael, “and so shall I. Now, how were you planning to get out of this enclave and into Shrewsbury? Both our gates and the town gates are closed until morning.”
She lifted eloquent shoulders. “The parish doors are not barred. And even if I leave tracks, will it matter, provided I find a safe hiding-place inside the town?”
“And wait in the cold of the night? You would freeze before morning. No, let me think. We can do better for you than that.”
Her lips shaped: “We?” in silence, wondering, but quick to understand. She did not question his decisions, as he had not questioned hers. He thought he would long remember the slow, deepening smile, the glow of warmth mantling her cheeks. “You believe me!” she said.
“Every word! Here, give me the candlesticks, let me wrap them, and do you put up your hair again in net and hood. We’ve had no fresh snow since morning, the path to the parish door is well trodden, no one will know your tracks among the many. And, girl, when you come to the town end of the bridge there’s a little house off to the left, under the wall, close to the town gate. Knock there and ask for shelter over the night till the gates open, and say that Brother Cadfael sent you. They know me, I doctored their son when he was sick. They’ll give you a warm corner and a place to lie, for kindness’ sake, and ask no questions, and answer none from others, either. And likely they’ll know where to find the silversmiths of the town, to set you on your way.”
She bound up her pale, bright hair and covered her head, wrapping the cloak about her, and was again the maidservant in homespun. She obeyed without question his every word, moved silently at his back round the great court by way of the shadows, halting when he halted, and so he brought her to the church, and let her out by the parish door into the public street, still a good hour before Matins. At the last moment she said, close at his shoulder within the half-open door. “I shall be grateful always. Some day I shall send you word.”
“No need for words,” said Brother Cadfael, “if you send me the sign I shall be waiting for. Go now, quickly, there’s not a soul stirring.”
She was gone, lightly and silently, flitting past the abbey gatehouse like a tall shadow, towards the bridge and the town. Cadfael closed the door softly, and went back up the night stairs to the dortoir, too late to sleep, but in good time to rise at the sound of the bell, and return in procession to celebrate Matins.
There was, of course, the resultant uproar to face next morning, and he could not afford to avoid it, there was too much at stake. Lady FitzHamon naturally expected her maid to be in attendance as soon as she opened her eyes, and raised a petulant outcry when there was no submissive shadow waiting to dress her and do her hair. Calling failed to summon and search to find Elfgiva, but it was an hour or more before it dawned on the lady that she had lost her accomplished maid for good. Furiously she made her own toilet, unassisted, and raged out to complain to her husband, who had risen before her, and was waiting for her to accompany him to Mass. At her angry declaration that Elfgiva was nowhere to be found, and must have run away during the night, he first scoffed, for why should a sane girl take herself off into a killing frost when she had warmth and shelter and enough to eat where she was? Then he made the inevitable connection, and let out a roar of rage.
“Gone, is she? And my candlesticks gone with her, I dare swear! So it was she! The foul little thief! But I’ll have her yet, I’ll drag her back, she shall not live to enjoy her ill-gotten gains.…”
It seemed likely that the lady would heartily endorse all this; her mouth was already open to echo him when Brother Cadfael, brushing her sleeve close as the agitated brothers ringed the pair, contrived to shake a few grains of lavender on to her wrist. Her mouth closed abruptly. She gazed at the tiny things for the briefest instant before she shook them offf, she flashed an even briefer glance at Brother Cadfael, caught his eye, and heard in a rapid whisper: “Madam, softly!—proof of the maid’s innocence is also proof of the mistress’s.”
She was by no means a stupid woman. A second quick glance confirmed what she had already grasped, that there was one man here who had a weapon to hold over her at least as deadly as any she could use against Elfgiva. She was also a woman of decision, and wasted no time in bitterness once her course was chosen. The tone in which she addressed her lord was almost as sharp as that in which she had complained of Elfgiva’s desertion.
“She your thief, indeed! That’s folly, as you should very well know. The girl is an ungrateful fool to leave me, but a thief she never has been, and certainly is not this time. She can’t possibly have taken the candlesticks, you know well enough when they vanished, and you know I was not well that night, and went early to bed. She was with me until long after Brother Prior discovered the theft. I asked her to stay with me until you came to bed. As you never did!” she ended tartly. “You may remember!”
Hamo probably remembered very little of that night; certainly he was in no position to gainsay what his wife so roundly declared. He took out a little of his ill-temper on her, but she was not so much in awe of him that she dared not reply in kind. Of course she was certain of what she said! She had not drunk herself stupid at the lord abbot’s table, she had been nursing a bad head of another kind, and even with Brother Cadfael’s remedies she had not slept until after midnight, and Elfgiva had then been still beside her. Let him hunt a runaway maidservant, by all means, the thankless hussy, but never call her a thief, for she was none.
Hunt her he did, though with less energy now it seemed clear he would not recapture his property with her. He sent his grooms and half the lay servants off in both directions to enquire if anyone had seen a solitary girl in a hurry; they were kept at it all day, but they returned empty-handed.
The party from Lidyate, less one member, left for home next day. Lady FitzHamon rode demurely behind young Madoc, her cheek against his broad shoulders; she even gave Brother Cadfael the flicker of a conspiratorial smile as the cavalcade rode out of the gates, and detached one arm from round Madoc’s waist to wave as they reached the roadway. So Hamo was not present to hear when Brother Jordan, at last released from his vow, told how Our Lady had appeared to him in a vision of light, fair as an angel, and taken away with her the candlesticks that were hers to take and do with as she would, and how she had spoken to him, and enjoined on him his three days of silence. And if there were some among the listeners who wondered whether the fair woman had not been a more corporeal being, no one had the heart to say so to Jordan, whose vision was comfort and consolation for the fading of the light.
That was at Matins, at midnight of the day of St. Stephen’s. Among the scattering of alms handed in at the gatehouse next morning for the beggars, there was a little basket that weighed surprisingly heavily. The porter could not remember who had brought it, taking it to be some offerings of food or old clothing, like all the rest; but when it was opened it sent Brother Oswald, almost incoherent with joy and wonder, running to Abbot Heribert to report what seemed to be a miracle. For the basket was full of gold coin, to the value of more than a hundred marks. Well used, it would ease all the worst needs of his poorest petitioners, until the weather relented.
“Surely,” said Brother Oswald devoutly, “Our Lady has made her own will known. Is not this the sign we have hoped for?”
Certainly it was for Cadfael, and earlier than he had dared to hope for it. He had the message that needed no words. She had found him, and been welcomed with joy. Since midnight Alard the silversmith had been a free man, and free man makes free wife. Presented with such a woman as Elfgiva, he could give as gladly as she, for what was gold, what was silver, by comparison?
A PRESENT FOR SANTA SAHIB
H. R. F. Keating
THE MOST POPULAR CHARACTER CREATED BY H. R. F. KEATING was Inspector Ganesh Ghote of the Bombay Criminal Investigation Division, a protagonist he invented in an effort to find an American publisher. It is the same type of convoluted notion that Keating brought to his humorou
s novels, in which strange events befall odd people in peculiar situations. In addition to winning numerous awards for mystery fiction, Keating was also acknowledged as a great scholar of crime fiction, being the reviewer for The Times (London) for fifteen years and the author of books about Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, and many others. “A Present for Santa Sahib” was first collected in Inspector Ghote, His Life and Crimes (London, Hutchinson, 1989).
A Present for Santa Sahib
H. R. F. KEATING
INSPECTOR GHOTE PUT A HAND TO his hip pocket and made sure it was firmly buttoned up. Ahead of him, where he stood in the entrance doorway to one of Bombay’s biggest department stores, the crowds were dense just two days before the festival of Christmas. It was not only the Christians who celebrated the day by buying presents and good things to eat in the huge cosmopolitan city. People of every religion were always happy to share in the high days and holidays in each other’s calendars. When Hindus honoured Bombay’s favourite god, elephant-headed Ganesh, by taking huge statues of him to be immersed in the sea, Moslems, Parsis, and Christians delighted to join the enormous throngs watching them go by. Everyone had a day off too, and enjoyed it to the full for the Moslem Idd holiday.
But the crowds that gathered in the days before any such celebration brought always trouble as well as joy, Ghote thought to himself with a sigh. When people came in their thousands to buy sweets and fireworks for Diwali or to acquire stocks of coloured powders to throw and squirt in the springtime excitement of Holi, they made a very nice golden opportunity for the pickpockets.
He had, in fact, caught a glimpse just as he had entered the shop of a certain Ram Prasad, a well-known jackal stalking easy prey if ever there was. It equally had been the sight of the fellow, spotting him himself and turning rapidly back, that had made him check that his wallet was secure. It would look altogether bad if an Inspector of Crime Branch had to go back minus one wallet and empty-handed to the wife who had as usual commissioned him to buy a present for her Christian friend, Mrs. D’Cruz, in return for the one they had received at Diwali.
And he had another little obligation, too, on this trip to the store. Not only was there a gift to get for Mrs. D’Cruz but there was a visit to pay to Santa Claus as he sat—voluminously wrapped in shiny red coat, a silky red cap trimmed in fluffy white on his head, puffy cottonwool beard descending from his chin, sack of presents tucked away beside him—in his special place in the store.
Ghote was not actually going to line up with the children waiting to be given, in exchange for a rupee surreptitiously handed over by a hovering mother, a bar of chocolate or a packet of sweets from the big sack. Santa was an old friend who merited a word or two of greeting. Or, if not exactly a friend, he was at least someone known for a good long time.
In fact Santa—his actual name was Moti Popatkar—was a small-fry con-man. There was no getting past that. For all save the ten days each year leading up to Christmas, he made a dubious living from a variety of minor anti-social activities. There was the fine story he had for any British holidaymaker he happened upon—his English was unusually good, fruit of a mission school education long ago—about how he had been batman to an Army officer still living in retirement in India and how he needed just the rail fare to go back and look after Colonel Sahib again. Or he would offer himself as a guide to any lone European tourist he could spot, and sooner or later cajole them into buying him potent country liquor at some illicit drinking den.
It was at one such that Ghote had first met him. A visiting German businessman had complained to the police that, on top of being persuaded into handing over to his guide a much bigger tip than he had meant to give, he had also been induced to fork out some fifty rupees for drinks at a place tucked away inside a rabbit-warren building in Nagandas Master Road called the Beauty Bar.
There was not much that could be done about the complaint, but since the businessman had had a letter of introduction to a junior Minister in the State Government, Ghote had been detailed to investigate. He had dutifully gone along to the Beauty Bar, which proved to be very much as he had expected, a single room with a shabby counter in one corner, its walls painted blue and peeling, half a dozen plastic-topped tables set about. Where sat a handful of men, white-capped office messengers, a khaki-uniformed postman delaying on his round, a red-turbaned ear-cleaner with his little aluminium case beside him, an itinerant coldwaterman who had left his barrel pushcart outside. All hunched over smeary glasses of clear fluid.
But one of the drinkers seemed to answer to the description the German businessman had given of his guide. And, at the first sharp question, the fellow had cheerfully admitted that he was Moti Popatkar and that, yes, he had brought a German visitor to the place the day before.
“Exciting for him, no?” he had said. “Seeing one damn fine Indian den of vice?”
Ghote had looked at the peeling walls, at a boy lackadaisically swiping at one of the table tops with a sodden heap of darkly grey cloth, at the two pictures hanging askew opposite him, one of an English maiden from some time in the past showing most of her breasts, the other of the late Mrs. Gandhi looking severe.
“Well, do not let me be catching you bringing any visitor from foreign to such a fourth class place again,” he said.
“Oh, Inspectorji, I would not. In nine–ten days only I would be Santa Claus.”
So then it had come out what job Moti Popatkar had every year in the run-up to Christmas.
“And I am keeping same,” he had ended up. “When I was first beginning, too many years past, the son of Owner, who is himself Ownerji now, was very much liking me when his mother was bringing him to tell his wishings to old Santa. So now Manager Sahib cannot be giving me one boot, however much he is wanting.”
There had been then something in Moti Popatkar’s cheerful disregard of the proper respect due to a police inspector, even of the cringing most of his like would have adopted before any policewalla, that had appealed to a side of Ghote which he generally felt he ought to keep well hidden. He felt a trickle of liking for this fellow, however much he knew he should disapprove of anyone who led visitors to India into such disgraceful places, and however wrong it seemed that such a good-for-nothing should wear the robe, even for a short period, of a figure who was after all a Christian saint, to be revered equally with Hindu holy man or Muslim pir.
So, visiting Santa’s store a few days later to get Mrs. D’Cruz her present, he had gone out of his way to have a look at Moti Popatkar, happy-go-lucky specimen of Bombay’s riff-raffs, impersonating Santa Claus, Christian holy man of bygone days.
There had been a lull in the stream of children coming to collect chocolate bars and breathily whisper wishes into Santa’s spreading cottonwool beard at the time, so he had stayed to chat with the red-robed fellow for a few minutes. And every successive year since he had found himself doing the same thing, for all that he still felt he ought to disapprove of the man behind the soft white whiskers. The truth was he somehow liked his irresponsible impudent approach to life and to his present task in particular.
Only last year Father Christmas had had a particularly comical tale to tell.
“Oh, Inspectorji, you have nearly seen me in much, much trouble.”
“How is that, you Number One scallywag?”
Moti Popatkar grinned through his big white beard, already looking slightly grimy.
“Well, you know, Inspector, I am half the time making the baba log believe they will be getting what for they are wishing, and half the time also I am taking one damn fine good look at the mothers, if they are being in any way pretty. Well, just only ten minutes past, a real beauty was coming, Anglo-Indian, short skirt an’ all. Jolly spicy. And—oh, forgive, forgive God above—I was so much distracted I was giving her little girl not just only one bar of chocolate but a half-kilo cake of same. And then—then who should come jumping out from behind but Manager Sahib himself? What for are you giving away so much of Store property, he is demanding and denoun
cing. Then—oh, Inspector, I am a wicked, wicked fellow. You know what I am saying?”
“No?”
“I am saying, quick only as one flash of lightning, ‘But, Manager sahib, that little girl has come with her governess. She is grand-daughter of multi-millionaire Tata, you are knowing.’ ”
Ghote had laughed aloud. He could not help himself. Besides, the Manager, whom he had once had dealings with, was a very self-satisfied individual.
“But then, Inspectorji, what is Manager sahib saying to me?”
“Well, tell.”
“He is saying, ‘Damn fool, you should have given whole kilo cake.’ ”
And Ghote had felt then his Christmas was all the merrier. Mrs. D’Cruz had got a better present than usual, too.
So now he decided to pay his visit to Santa Claus before he went present-buying. But when he came to the raised platform on which Father Christmas was installed, his fat sack of little gifts on the floor beside him, he found the scene was by no means one of goodwill to all men.
Moti Popatkar was sitting in state as usual on his throne-like chair, his bright red shiny robe as ever gathered round him, his floppy red hat with the white trimming on his head. But he was not bending forward to catch the spit-laden whisperings of the children. Nor was he rocking back and issuing some Ho, ho, hos. Instead he was looking decidedly shifty under his cottonwool beard, and in front of him there was standing the Store Manager, both enraged and triumphant.
A lady dressed in a silk sari that must have cost several thousand rupees was standing just behind the Manager holding the hand of a little girl, evidently her daughter, plainly bewildered and on the verge of tears.
“You are hearing what this lady is stating,” the Manager was shouting as Ghote came up. “When she was bringing this sweet little girl to visit Santa Claus there was in her handbag one note-case containing many, many hundred-rupee notes. But, just after leaving you, she was noticing the handbag itself was wide open and she was shutting same—click—and then when she was wanting to pay for purchase made at Knick-knacks and Assorted counter, what was she finding? That note-case had gone.”
The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Page 107