Christmas Stalkings

by Charlotte MacLeod

  There are many reasons why the old custom of wife murder has not fallen into disuse in this age of easy—indeed practically obligatory—divorce. One is to get custody of the children. Another is money. Another is personal satisfaction that no divorce can give. My situation is peculiar. Normally even an MP can move out of the family home, make mutterings about “irretrievable breakdown,” and in two shakes of a duck’s tail be shacking up with his secretary, or Miss Bournemouth 1989, or whomever he has had his eye on. Not the MP for the constituency of Dundee Kirkside. My constituents, though Conservative almost to a man and woman, are tight-lipped, censorious, pleasure-hating accountants and small shopkeepers, people for whom John Knox did not go nearly far enough. Liquor never passes their lips, dance never animates their lower limbs—their very sperm is deep-frozen.

  Divorce, for the MP for Dundee Kirkside, was a non-starter.

  Equally, living for the rest of my life with Annabelle was simply not to be contemplated. If I had not known this before, I certainly knew it at a Downing Street dinner shortly after my appointment. As ill luck would have it, Annabelle was seated near to the Prime Minister, while I was someway down on the other side of the table. But of course I am all too attuned to her voice, and I heard her say, “Whenever I see my two little ones tucked up in their little bed, I always seem to see the baby Jesus there making a third I”

  The Prime Minister’s face was a picture. So, I imagine, was mine.

  Not that Annabelle’s style of conversation, apparently derived from Victorian commonplace books designed to be given as Sunday school prizes, hadn’t been useful to me in the past I’d be the first to admit that in private. For instance, being only half-Scottish (and on my mother’s side at that) and having been educated at Lancing, I was not an obvious candidate for a Scottish constituency. Thank God we Tories still interview the wives as part of the selection procedure! I don’t say anyone was melted by Annabelle’s liquid caramel smile, but they were enraptured by her expressed conviction that we (we in the Conservative party) are on this earth to do the Lord’s bidding, that she prayed every night that her husband would do the Lord Jesus’ work, that we were the party of the family, and the Christian family at that—and a lot more balls along these lines. I got the nomination, and we celebrated by going down on our knees beside the twin beds in our hideous Dundee hotel room. It was the least I could do. Luckily the curriculum vitae which I submitted to the selection committee had merely stated that we had been married in 1985 and our first child born in 1986—months not given. Being the party of the family didn’t mean they approved of women who were in the family way when they went to the altar.

  That happened, of course, before Annabelle got religion from a poisonous American woman evangelist at a dreadful rally in Earls Court that she had gone along to under the impression that it was Aida with elephants.

  “I’m so longing for Christmas to come this year,” burbled Annabelle, her eyes all fizzing sparklers. “Just us and our two babies celebrating the coming of Jesus.”

  I looked at her with love in my eyes and Semtex in my heart.

  “It will be lovely. But, do you know, I sometimes regret the Christmases of my childhood. Over in Belgium the real celebration was Christmas Eve.”

  My family retreated to Ostend, in the manner pioneered by bankrupt Victorians, when I was five. This was as a consequence of a disagreement my father had with the Inland Revenue which was not sorted out for many years. I have no idea whether the Belgians do in fact celebrate Christmas Eve. It was bad enough living with the clog-hoppers, without mixing with them. But I do know that many Continental countries do, and Annabelle has no knowledge of habits and customs outside Pinner.

  “How odd,” she said in reply. “Before the baby Jesus was actually born. I’m not sure I’d like that.”

  “Don’t be so parochial,” I said. “God isn’t just English. He’s got the whole world in his hands, remember.”

  That set Annabelle off singing for the rest of the evening in her clear, bright Julie Andrews voice that can shatter glass ornaments if she goes too high.

  I meanwhile was not neglecting the practical side. I never do, it’s part of my strength. I’ve always been pretty smart at do-it-yourself, and to explain my evening hours in the garage I told Annabelle that I was preparing a little surprise for Gavin and Janet at Christmas. Which wasn’t so far from the truth. I had already made an incognito visit (luckily for me I am still so junior that my face is not known, which will not be the case for long) to Tottenham Court Road, where I picked up one of the devices the inspector had so kindly demonstrated to me. Fortunately I had a very dodgy contact in the underworld (I had used him when I worked for Conservative Central Office, for a small job of ballot-rigging), and from him I got the modest quantity of explosive necessary to send Annabelle into the arms of the Lord Jesus.

  All was going beautifully to plan.

  While all this was coming to fruition, I was naturally fulfilling—very energetically fulfilling—my obligations and duties at the Home Office. I was also making routine preparations for Christmas, or getting other people to do them for me. I paid particular attention to getting the right presents for Annabelle. I meant her to die happy—or, if she insisted on leaving my presents till later, I intended to make much, in a thoroughly maudlin way, of what pleasures I had had in store for her to the Special Branch officers who would investigate her death. I bought a diamond pendant from Carrier’s; I had one of the bookish secretaries from the Home Office scouring the secondhand bookshops of Highgate and Hampstead for a copy of The Bible Designed to Be Read as Literature, which she had expressed a desire for—everything, right down to the Thornton’s chocolates that she loved. Thoughtful presents, though I say so myself. The presents of a model husband.

  The children’s presents I could safely leave to her. She loved shopping for them, and she was usually out when I rang home in the weeks leading up to Christmas, on some spree or other of that kind. I got one of the secretaries to ring Harrods, and by the eighteenth a large Christmas tree was in place in the living room. Annabelle, the children, and the Norwegian au pair decorated it the same day. They were just finishing it when I arrived back from Whitehall.

  “Do you celebrate Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in Norway?” I asked Margret he.

  “Christmas Eve,” she said promptly. “That is when the Christmas gnome brings all the presents.”

  I smiled at her more benevolently than usual and suppressed any comment about the Christmas gnome. Really, was it a Christian country or a European Disneyland?

  “You know, I think we’ll do that this year,” I said to Annabelle later than evening. “Celebrate our Christmas on Christmas Eve, after the babies have gone to bed. Then we can give all our time and attention to them on Christmas Day itself. Their day, entirely and completely.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said Annabelle, smiling her melting-fudge smile. “When you come to think about it, Christmas Day should be just for the little ones, shouldn’t it?”

  Soon the packages began to pile up under the tree. Presents from grandparents, aunties, presents from constituents, especially from businessmen and property developers anxious to keep on the right side of me. Most of them were for Gavin and Janet, of course, but Annabelle and I soon had a respectable number. I began to separate the piles—the children’s on one side of the tree, ours on the other.

  On December the twenty-first I put the suspect package into the pile—a brown padded envelope, with a stamp and a fake postmark. It nestled shyly under bigger and gaudier packages.

  Christmas is a very uninteresting time in politics. Nothing important gets announced (unless it is something dodgy we are hoping to slip past the public with little publicity), and so many of the MPs slope off home early that there is very little of the cut and thrust of political infighting which is what I excel at. Even in the department things slackened off. I was able to get home on two or three afternoons in the lead-up period. I found Annabelle out
shopping and the kids in the charge of Margret he. Margret he proved very unresponsive to my suggestions of how we should spend the afternoon. Really, Norwegians are not all they’re cracked up to be.

  Once she had got the idea of a special dinner for us on Christmas Eve, Annabelle chattered on about what it should be. The damned kids insisted on turkey on

  The Day, of course, though I can think of about twenty meats I would find more interesting. We finally decided on a cold meal—light, but with a few touches of luxury. Margret he was flying back to Bergen on the twenty-third, but she did some of the preparations before she went. We really get quite a lot of work out of Margret he. I made one or two suggestions—not that I expected to eat anything much, but in order that it should look right to the investigating officers. I would have been a superb stage director. Annabelle said she could get some of the things at the delicatessen around the corner, and she would get the rest at Harrods. She also said it was going to be an absolutely smashing evening.

  The day dawned. The children (“the babies,” as Annabelle calls them, though they are no longer that, thank God) were of course wild with pre-Christmas excitement, so I escaped to the office for most of the day. There was, after all, nothing left to do. Soon after I got home I suggested it was time for the kids to go to bed, and as they were confidently expecting a visit from Santa Claus, they didn’t make too many objections. Then I began setting the scene. I put the drinks on the phone table at the far end by the door. I intended to be over there when Annabelle opened the package. I toyed with the idea of being rather closer, to get the odd cut and scar from the debris, but I rejected the idea. Annabelle began bringing on the cold collation with a series of appreciative shrieks— “Doesn’t this look scrumptious?” and the like. The room was beautifully warm from the central heating, and I rejected Annabelle’s suggestion that I light the fire. In fact, I was feeling distinctly sweaty, and I would have taken off” my jacket and tie, except that I hate that sort of slovenliness. Round about seven-thirty, I said,

  “I think it’s about time for a drink.”

  “Oh, goody!” said Annabelle. Getting God had not quenched her taste for dry martinis. I got her a large one with plenty of ice. Then I got for myself a gin and tonic that was mostly tonic and ice. Keep cool, George, keep cool!

  “Now!” I said, and we looked at each other and smiled. We had agreed to open presents when we had our first drinks.

  First of all we opened our own to each other. Annabelle oohed over the Carrier pendant (“You shouldn’t have, Georgie boy! What must it have cost?”) I tried to look pleased with a very expensive shaving kit.

  “I really thought you should start shaving properly, Georgie. Electric razors are frightfully infra, and people are starting to comment on your midnight shadow. Look what harm that did to Richard Nixon.”

  I regarded my midnight shadow as part of my saturnine and macho image. Nobody ever found Richard Nixon macho.

  “I promise, my darling,” I said.

  Then she opened her Bible Designed to Be Read as Literature.

  “Oh, wonderful! How thoughtful you are, Georgie-Porgy. People say that reading this is an entirely new experience!” She opened it and read: “‘There were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night.’“

  I suppose I was lucky she didn’t sing it. She sometimes takes part in those come-along-and-sing Messiahs which are so very matey and democratic—practically the Labour Party at song. I opened a little square box and found a three-disc set of Luciano Pavarotti’s greatest hits. Talk about things being infra!

  “Perfect!” I said.

  So we worked through our presents, eating chocolates and trying things on till at last she laid her hand on the brown padded envelope and took it up.

  “What is this one?” she said.

  My heart stood still. I tried with all the nonchalance my sweaty state would allow to take up one of my presents and open it.

  “Haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “I noticed it the other day. Did it really come by post?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Because neither Margret he nor I took it in, so you must have done.”

  “Can’t remember. I may have done, I suppose.”

  “If so, it must have been Sunday. It’s the only day when you were on your own here. I didn’t think they delivered parcels on Sunday. What did the postman look like?”

  Normally this would have been a cue for a spurt of sarcasm on my part. I hoped Annabelle would attribute it to the Christmas spirit that it was not forthcoming.

  “Good heavens, one doesn’t notice what postmen look like,” I said mildly. “If you’re wondering who sent it, you’d better open it and find out.”

  She was looking at it closely.

  “The postmark is all smudged. In fact it doesn’t look like a real postmark at all.” She got up. “Georgie, I think we ought to phone the police.”

  She walked over toward the phone. I felt my face going red; our positions in my plan were exactly reversed. I forced myself to take up the package.

  “Of course I see what you’re getting at, darling, but I really do think that you’re panicking needlessly. I don’t see any of the things the inspector said should put us on our guard. It’s not from Ireland, the name is spelled right—there are none of the signs. A smudged postmark is hardly unusual.”

  Her finger was poised over the press-button dial.

  “Better safe than sorry.”

  “No!”

  My voice had come out very loud. The police would almost certainly be able to trace the package back to me if they got it intact Annabelle paused.

  “No?”

  “I mean . . . we’d look awful fools . . . disturbing them on Christmas Eve, for nothing.”

  “How unusually considerate of you, Georgie. But you’ve been unusual for quite a while now. I’m beginning to think that Paul is right”

  “Paul?”

  “A chap I’ve been seeing.”

  “Seeing?”

  “He said that if I drove you too mad with my Pollyanna act, it wouldn’t be divorce I drove you to, but murder. He’s seen you on television from the House. He thinks you’re mad.”

  “Annabelle, look, this really has gone too far. There’s no need at all to call the police. I was told all about suspect packages. This one hasn’t got the look of one at all.”

  She stood there, twenty feet away from me, her hand poised over the dial, very, very cool.

  “All right, buster: open it”

  MARGARET MARON - FRUITCAKE, MERCY, AND BLACK-EYED PEAS

  It’s no wonder Margaret Maron chose to write mysteries; her own mother is one of the world’s great mystery fans. And it’s not surprising that Margaret agreed to do a short story for Christmas Stalkings. She has always thought of herself primarily as a short-story writer, even though she’s better known for her superbly crafted novels. Nor is it any accident that this one takes place in rural North Carolina. Her own roots go more than seven generations deep into its sandy soil, where she still lives on her family’s farm south of Raleigh.

  The only person who’s privileged to read and critique Margaret’s work in progress is her artist husband, Joseph Maron. She says they fight a lot, but her system appears to be working, judging from critics’ acclaim and the number of times she’s been nominated for awards in the mystery field. So far, only one of her novels, Bloody Kin, has been set in fictional but very real Colleton County, N.C., but we understand more will be coming. In the meantime, here’s your chance to spend New Year’s Eve in that enigmatic land of the black-eyed pea.

  Vlarnolla’s first question after I bailed her out of jail was, “What’s a revisionist?” Her second was, “Ain’t you getting too old for a squinchy little shoe box like this?”

  “You wanted a Cadillac ride home, you should’ve called James Rufus Sanders,” I told her, referring to the most successful black lawyer in Colleton County, North Carolina. I switche
d on the heater of my admittedly small sports car against the chill December air and helped pull the seat belt across her broad hips, an expanse further broadened by her bulky winter coat “You mean recidivist?”

  “I reckon. Something like that Miz Utley said I was one and I won’t going to give her the satisfaction of asking what it was. Ain’t something ugly, is it?”

  “Miz Utley never talks ugly and you know it,” I said as I pulled out of the courthouse parking lot and headed toward Darkside, the nearest thing Dobbs has to a purely black section. “Magistrates have to be polite to everybody, but under the habitual-offender statutes—”

  “Don’t give me no lawyer talk, Deb’rah,” she snapped. “I wanted that, I would’ve called Mr. Sanders.

  “It means this isn’t the first time Billy Tyson’s caught you shoplifting in his store, and this time he wants to put you under the jail, not in it,” I snapped back.

  She leaned back and loosened the buttons of her dark-blue coat “Naw, you won’t let him do that.”

  It was three days past Christmas, but she still wore a sprig of artificial holly topped by two tiny yellow plastic bells that had been dipped in gold glitter and sparkled gaily in the low winter sun.

  Marnolla Faison was barely ten years older than me, yet her short black hair was almost half gray and her callused hands had worked about twenty years harder than mine. In truth our families had worked for each other more years than either of us could count and it looks like it’s going to go on another generation, even though Marnolla left the farm before she was full grown.