The Mistletoe Murder

by P. D. James

  “And your engagement?”

  “It was broken, you could say by mutual consent. A marriage, Mr. Dalgliesh, is like any other legal contract. It is most successful when both parties are convinced they have a bargain. Captain Brize-Lacey was sufficiently discouraged by the scandal of a murder in the family. He was a proud and highly conventional man. But that alone might have been accepted with the Goddard fortune and the Goddard emeralds to deodorise the bad smell. But the marriage couldn’t have succeeded if he had discovered that he had married socially beneath him, into a family with a major scandal and no compensating fortune.”

  Dalgliesh said: “Once you had begun to pay you had no choice but to go on. I see that. But why did you pay? She could hardly have told her story. It would have meant involving the child.”

  “Oh no! That wasn’t her plan at all. She never meant to involve the child. She was a sentimental woman and she was fond of Hubert. No, she intended to accuse me of murder outright. Then, if I decided to tell the truth, how would it help me? After all, I wiped up the spilled liquid, I topped up the bowl. She had nothing to lose remember, neither life nor reputation. They couldn’t try her twice. That’s why she waited until after the trial. It made her secure for ever.

  “But what of me? In the circles in which I moved at that time reputation was everything. She needed only to breathe the story in the ears of a few servants and I was finished. The truth can be remarkably tenacious. But it wasn’t only reputation. I paid in the shadow of the gallows.”

  Dalgliesh asked, “But could she ever prove it?”

  Suddenly she looked at him and gave an eerie screech of laughter. It tore at her throat until he thought the taut tendons would snap violently.

  “Of course she could! You fool! Don’t you understand? She took my handkerchief, the one I used to mop up the arsenic mixture. That was her profession, remember. Some time during that evening, perhaps when we were all crowding around the bed, two soft plump fingers insinuated themselves between the satin of my evening dress and my flesh and extracted that stained and damning piece of linen.”

  She stretched out feebly towards the bedside locker. Dalgliesh saw what she wanted and pulled open the drawer. There on the top was a small square of very fine linen with a border of hand-stitched lace. He took it up. In the corner was her monogram delicately embroidered. And half of the handkerchief was still stiff and stained with brown.

  She said: “She left instructions with her solicitors that this was to be returned to me after her death. She always knew where I was. But now she’s dead. And I shall soon follow. You may have the handkerchief, Mr. Dalgliesh. It can be of no further use to either of us now.”

  Dalgliesh put it in his pocket without speaking. As soon as possible he would see that it was burnt. But there was something else he had to say. “Is there anything you would wish me to do? Is there anyone you want told, or to tell? Would you care to see a priest?”

  Again there was that uncanny screech of laughter but softer now:

  “There’s nothing I can say to a priest. I only regret what I did because it wasn’t successful. That is hardly the proper frame of mind for a good confession. But I bear her no ill will. One should be a good loser. But I’ve paid, Mr. Dalgliesh. For sixty-seven years I’ve paid. And in this world, young man, the rich only pay once.”

  She lay back as if suddenly exhausted. There was a silence for a moment. Then she said with sudden vigour:

  “I believe your visit has done me good. I would be obliged if you’d return each afternoon for the next three days. I shan’t trouble you after that.”

  Dalgliesh extended his leave with some difficulty and stayed at a local inn. He saw her each afternoon. They never spoke again of the murder. And when he came punctually at 2:00 p.m. on the fourth day it was to be told that Miss Goddard had died peacefully in the night with apparently no trouble to anyone. She was, as she had said, a good loser.

  A week later, Dalgliesh reported to the Canon.

  “I was able to see a man who has made a detailed study of the case. I have read the transcript of the trial and visited Colebrook Croft. And I have seen one other person, closely connected with the case but who is now dead. I know you will want me to respect confidence and to say no more than I need.”

  The Canon murmured his quiet assurance. Dalgliesh went on quickly:

  “As a result I can give you my word that the verdict was a just verdict and that not one penny of your grandfather’s fortune is coming to you through anyone’s wrongdoing.”

  He turned his face away and gazed out of the window. There was a long silence. The old man was probably giving thanks in his own way. Then Dalgliesh was aware of his godfather speaking. Something was being said about gratitude, about the time he had given up to the investigation.

  “Please don’t misunderstand me, Adam. But when the formalities have been completed I should like to donate something to a charity named by you, one close to your heart.”

  Dalgliesh smiled. His contributions to charity were impersonal; a quarterly obligation discharged by banker’s order. The Canon obviously regarded charities as so many old clothes; all were friends but some fitted better and were consequently more affectionately regarded than others.

  But inspiration came:

  “It’s good of you to think of it, Sir. I rather liked what I learned about Great Aunt Allie. It would be pleasant to give something in her name. Isn’t there a society for the assistance of retired and indigent variety artists, conjurers and so on?”

  The Canon, predictably, knew that there was and could name it.

  Dalgliesh said: “Then I think, Canon, that Great Aunt Allie would have agreed that a donation in her name would be entirely appropriate.”

  The Twelve Clues of Christmas

  The figure who leaps from the side of the road in the darkness of a winter afternoon, frantically waving down the approaching motorist, is so much the creature of fiction that when it happened to the newly promoted Sergeant Adam Dalgliesh his first thought was that he had somehow become involved in one of those Christmas short stories written to provide a seasonal frisson for the readers of an upmarket weekly magazine. But the figure was real enough, the emergency apparently genuine.

  Dalgliesh wound down the window of his MG Midget letting in a stream of cold December air, a swirl of soft snow and a male head.

  “Thank God you’ve stopped! I’ve got to telephone the police. My uncle’s committed suicide. I’m from Harkerville Hall.”

  “Haven’t you got a telephone?”

  “If I had I wouldn’t be stopping you. It’s out of order. It often is. And now the car’s packed up.”

  Adam had noticed a telephone box on the outskirts of a village he had passed less than five minutes ago. On the other hand, he was only ten minutes’ drive from his aunt’s cottage on the Suffolk coast where he was to spend Christmas. But why intrude a not particularly agreeable stranger on her privacy? He said: “I can drive you to a telephone box. I passed one just outside Wivenhaven.”

  “Then hurry. It’s urgent. He’s dead.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. He’s cold and he isn’t breathing and he’s got no pulse.”

  Dalgliesh was tempted to say, “In that case there’s no particular hurry,” but forbore.

  The stranger’s voice was harsh and didactic, and Adam suspected that his face might be equally unprepossessing. He was, however, wearing a heavy tweed coat with collar upturned and little was visible except a long nose. Adam leaned over to open the left-hand door and he got in. He was certainly genuine enough in the sense that he was obviously labouring under some emotion, but Adam detected more anxiety and chagrin than shock or grief.

  His passenger said ungraciously: “I’d better introduce myself. Helmut Harkerville, and I’m not German. My mother liked the name.”

  There seemed no possible reply to this. Dalgliesh introduced himself and they drove in uncompanionable silence to the telephone box
. Getting out, Harkerville said crossly: “Oh God, I’ve forgotten the money.”

  Dalgliesh dug into his jacket pocket and handed over an assortment of coins, then followed him out to the telephone. The local police wouldn’t relish being called out at 4:30 on Christmas Eve, and if this was some kind of hoax he preferred not to be an active participant. On the other hand, it was right to call his aunt to warn her that he might be delayed.

  The first call took some minutes. Returning, Harkerville said with annoyance: “They took it remarkably calmly. Anyone would think people in this county kill themselves routinely at Christmas.”

  Dalgliesh said, “East Anglians are robust. Family members are occasionally tempted, but most manage to resist.”

  Adam’s call completed, they came to the place where he had picked up his passenger. Harkerville said shortly: “There’s a right-hand turning here. It’s less than a mile to Harkerville Hall.”

  Driving in silence, it occurred to Adam that he might have a responsibility beyond dropping his passenger at the front door. He was, after all, a police officer. This wasn’t his patch, but he ought to confirm that the corpse was indeed a corpse and beyond help, and to await the arrival of the local police. He put this proposition to his companion, quietly but firmly, and after a minute received a grudging acquiescence.

  “Do what you like, but you’re wasting your time. He’s left a note. This is Harkerville Hall, but if you’re local you probably know it, at least by sight.”

  Dalgliesh did know the hall by sight and its owner by reputation. It was a house difficult to avoid noticing. He reflected that today not even the most accommodating planning authority would have sanctioned its erection close to one of the most attractive stretches of the Suffolk coastline. In the 1870s a more indulgent system had prevailed. The then Harkerville had made his millions from dosing insomniacs, dyspeptics and the impotent with a mixture of opium, bicarbonate of soda and liquorice, and had retired to Suffolk to build his status symbol designed to impress the neighbours and inconvenience his staff. Its present owner was reputed to be equally rich, mean and reclusive.

  Helmut said: “I’m down for Christmas as usual with my sister Gertrude and my brother Carl. My wife isn’t with us. Not feeling up to it. Oh, and there’s a temporary cook, Mrs. Dagworth. My uncle instructed me to advertise for her in the Lady’s Companion and bring her down with us yesterday evening. His usual cook-housekeeper and Mavis the house parlour maid go home for Christmas.”

  Having put Adam into the picture by this surely unnecessary recital of domestic arrangements, he relapsed into silence.

  The hall came upon them with such suddenness that Adam instinctively braked. It reared up in the headlights, looking more like an aberration of the natural world than a human habitation. The architect, if architect had indeed been employed, had begun his monstrosity as a large, square, multi-windowed house in red brick and had then, under the impulse of a perverse creative frenzy, erected a huge ornamental porch more suitable for a cathedral, thrown out four large bay windows and adorned the roof with a turret at each corner and a central dome.

  It had snowed all night, but the morning had been dry and very cold. Now, however, the first flakes were thickening, beginning to obliterate the double tyre marks in the car’s headlights. Their approach was silent, and the house itself seemed deserted. Only the ground floor and an upper window showed a frail light shining through the slits of drawn curtains.

  The great hall, oak-panelled and ill-lit, was cold. A cavernous fireplace contained only a two-bar electric fire, and a bunch of holly stuck behind a couple of heavy, undistinguished portraits enhanced rather than mitigated the gloom. The man who let them in and who now pushed shut the solid oak door was clearly Carl Harkerville. Like his sister, who came rushing forward, he had the Harkerville nose, bright suspicious eyes and a thin tight mouth. A second woman, standing at the edge of the group in stony disapproval, was not introduced, but was presumably the hired cook, although a thin plaster on her middle right finger suggested a certain incompetence with a knife. Her mean little mouth and dark suspicious eyes suggested that her mind was as tightly corseted as her body. Helmut’s introduction of Adam as “a sergeant of the Metropolitan Police” was received by his siblings with a wary silence, and by Mrs. Dagworth with a quickly repressed gasp. When the family preceded Adam up to the bedroom she followed.

  The room, also panelled in oak, was immense. The bed was an oak four-poster with a canopy, and the dead man lay on top of the counterpane. He was wearing only his pyjamas and there was a small sprig of dry holly, extremely prickly and with shrunken berries, stuck into the top buttonhole. The Harkerville nose stuck out, pitted and scarred like a ship’s prow weathered by many voyages. The eyes were tight-closed as if by an effort of will. The gaping mouth was stuffed with what looked like Christmas pudding. His gnarled hands, the nails surprisingly long and gummed with ointment, were disposed across his stomach. On his head was a crown in red tissue paper, obviously from a cracker. The heavy bedside table held a lamp, switched on but giving a subdued light, an empty bottle of whisky, a labelled pill bottle, also empty, an open tin containing an obnoxious-smelling ointment labelled Harkerville’s Hair Restorer, a small thermos-flask, a Christmas cracker which had been pulled, and a Christmas pudding still in its basin but with a lump gouged out of the top. There was also a note.

  The message was handwritten in a surprisingly firm script. Dalgliesh read: “I’ve been planning this for some time, and if you don’t like it, you can put up with it. This, thank God, will be my last family Christmas. No more of Gertrude’s stodgy Christmas pudding and overcooked turkey. No more ridiculous paper hats. No more holly indiscriminately stuck around the house. No more of your repellently ugly faces and mind-numbing company. I’m entitled to some peace and happiness. I’m going where I can get it, and my darling will be waiting for me.”

  Helmut Harkerville said: “He was always a practical joker, but you’d think he’d want to die with some dignity. Finding him like this was a terrible shock, particularly for my sister. But then Uncle never had any consideration for others.”

  His brother said, with quiet reproof: “Nil nisi bonum, Helmut, nil nisi bonum. He knows better now.”

  Adam asked: “Who found him?”

  “I did,” said Helmut. “Well, at least I was first up the ladder. We never have early morning tea here, but Uncle always took to bed a flask of strong coffee to drink in the morning with a tot of whisky. He’s usually up early so when he didn’t appear for breakfast by nine o’clock Mrs. Dagworth went to see if he was all right. She found the door locked, but he shouted out that he didn’t want to be disturbed. My sister tried again when he didn’t come down for lunch. When we couldn’t make him hear we got out the ladder and climbed in through the window. The ladder’s still in place.”

  Mrs. Dagworth was standing beside the bed in stiff disapproval. She said: “I was employed to cook Christmas dinner for four. No one told me that the house was an unheated monstrosity and the owner suicidal. God knows how his usual cook manages. That kitchen hasn’t been upgraded for eighty years. I tell you now, I’m not staying. As soon as the police arrive, I go. And I shall make a complaint to the Lady’s Companion. You’ll be lucky to get another cook.”

  Helmut said: “The last bus leaves for London early on Christmas Eve and there isn’t another until Boxing Day. You’ll have to stay until then, so you may as well do what you’re paid to do, get on with some work.”

  His brother said: “And you can make a start by getting us some tea, hot and strong. I’m starved in here.”

  Indeed the room was exceptionally cold. Gertrude said: “It will be warm in the kitchen. Thank God for the Aga. We’ll all go there.”

  Dalgliesh had hoped for something a little more seasonal than tea and thought with longing of the excellent meal awaiting him at his aunt’s cottage, the carefully chosen claret already open, the cracking and sea-tang of a driftwood fire. But the kitchen was at least warmer. T
he Aga was the only piece of reasonably modern equipment. The floor was stone-flagged, the double sink was stained and there was a huge dresser covering one wall loaded with an assortment of jugs, mugs, plates and tins, and several cupboards, the tops all similarly covered. On an overhead pulley a collection of tea towels, obviously washed but still stained, hung like depressing flags of truce.

  Gertrude said: “I brought down a Christmas cake. Perhaps we could cut that.”

  Carl said quietly: “I think not, Gertrude. I don’t think I could stomach Christmas cake with Uncle lying dead. There are probably some biscuits in the usual tin.”

  Mrs. Dagworth, her face a mask of resentment, took a tin from the dresser labelled “sugar” and began spooning out tea into the teapot, then burrowed in one of the cupboards and brought out a large red tin. The biscuits were old and soft. Dalgliesh declined them but was grateful for the tea when it came.

  He said: “When did you last see your uncle alive?”

  It was Helmut who replied: “He had supper with us last night. We didn’t arrive till eight and naturally his cook had left nothing for us. She never does. But we’d brought some cold meat and salad and had that. Mrs. Dagworth opened a tin of soup. At nine o’clock, immediately after the news, Uncle said he’d go to bed. No one saw or heard him again except Mrs. Dagworth.”

  Mrs. Dagworth said: “When I called him for breakfast and he shouted to me to go away, I heard him pull the cracker. So he was alive at nine or just after.”

  Adam said: “You’re sure of the sound?”

  “Of course I was. I know the sound of a cracker being pulled. It seemed a little odd so I went to the door and called out, ‘Are you all right Mr. Harkerville?’ He called back, ‘Of course I’m all right. Go away and stay away.’ That’s the last time he spoke to anyone.”

  Dalgliesh said: “He must have been standing close to the door for you to hear him. It’s solid wood.”

  Mrs. Dagworth flushed, then said angrily: “Solid wood it may be, but I know what I heard. I heard the cracker and I heard him tell me to go away. Anyway, it’s plain what’s happened. You’ve got the suicide note, haven’t you? It’s in his handwriting.”