“Later in the evening, when the children were sleepy and there was tissue paper scattered all over the house, the grown-ups began their games in earnest. Someone suggested Blind Man’s Bluff. They were mostly using the hall and this room here, as having more space than the dining room. Various members of the party were blindfolded with the men’s handkerchiefs, but there was a dreadful amount of cheating. Mr. Fenton grew quite annoyed about it, because the ladies almost always caught Mr. Wilkes when they could; Mr. Wilkes was laughing and perspiring heartily, and his great cravat with the silver pin had almost come loose.
“To make it certain nobody could cheat, Mr. Fenton, got a little white linen bag—like this one. It was the pillowcase off the baby’s cot, really; and he said nobody could look through that if it were tied over the head.
“I should explain that they had been having some trouble with the lamp in this room. Mr. Fenton said: ‘Confound it, Mother, what is wrong with that lamp? Turn up the wick, will you?’ It was really quite a good lamp, from Spence and Minstead’s, and should not have burned so dull as it did. In the confusion, while Mrs. Fenton was trying to make the light better, and he was looking over his shoulder at her, Mr. Fenton had been rather absently fastening the bag on the head of the last person caught. He has said since that he did not notice who it was. No one else noticed, either, the light being so dim and there being such a large number of people. It seemed to be a girl in a broad bluish kind of dress, standing over near the door.
“Perhaps you know how people act when they have just been blindfolded in this game. First they usually stand very still, as though they were smelling or sensing in which direction to go. Sometimes they make a sudden jump, or sometimes they begin to shuffle gently forward. Everyone noticed what an air of purpose there seemed to be about this person whose face was covered; she went forward very slowly, and seemed to crouch down a bit.
“It began to move towards Mr. Wilkes in very short but quick little jerks, the white bag bobbing on its face. At this time Mr. Wilkes was sitting at the end of the table, laughing, with his face pink above the beard, and a glass of our Kentish cider in his hand. I want you to imagine this room as being very dim, and much more cluttered, what with all the tassels they had on the furniture then; and the high-piled hair of the ladies, too. The hooded person got to the edge of the table. It began to edge along towards Mr. Wilkes’s chair; and then it jumped.
“Mr. Wilkes got up and skipped (yes, skipped) out of its way, laughing. It waited quietly, after which it went, in the same slow way, towards him again. It nearly got him again, by the edge of the potted plant. All this time it did not say anything, you understand, although everyone was applauding it and crying encouraging advice. It kept its head down. Miss Abbott says she began to notice an unpleasant faint smell of burnt cloth or something worse, which turned her half ill. By the time the hooded person came stooping clear across the room, as certainly as though it could see him, Mr. Wilkes was not laughing any longer.
“In the corner by one bookcase, he said out loud: ‘I’m tired of this silly, rotten game; go away, do you hear?’ Nobody there had ever heard him speak like that, in such a loud, wild way, but they laughed and thought it must be the Kentish cider. ‘Go away!” cried Mr. Wilkes again, and began to strike at it with his fist. All this time, Miss Abbott says, she had observed his face gradually changing. He dodged again, very pleasant and nimble for such a big man, but with the perspiration running down his face. Back across the room he went again, with it following him; and he cried out something that most naturally shocked them all inexpressibly.
“He screamed out: ‘For God’s sake, Fenton, take it off me!’
“And for the last time the thing jumped.
“They were over near the curtains of that bay window, which were drawn, as they are now. Miss Twigelow, who was nearest, says that Mr. Wilkes could not have seen anything, because the white bag was still drawn over the woman’s head. The only thing she noticed was that at the lower part of the bag, where the face must have been there was a curious kind of discoloration, a stain of some sort, which had not been there before: something seemed to be seeping through. Mr. Wilkes fell back between the curtains, with the hooded person after him, and screamed again. There was a kind of thrashing noise in or behind the curtains; then they fell straight again, and everything grew quiet.
“Now, our Kentish cider is very strong, and for a moment Mr. Fenton did not know what to think. He tried to laugh at it, but the laugh did not sound well. Then he went over to the curtains, calling out gruffly to them to come out of there and not play the fool. But after he had looked inside the curtains, he turned round very sharply and asked the rector to get the ladies out of the room. This was done, but Miss Abbott often said that she had one quick peep inside. Though the bay windows were locked on the inside, Mr. Wilkes was now alone on the window seat. She could see his beard sticking up, and the blood. He was dead, of course. But, since he had murdered Jane Waycross, I sincerely think that he deserved to die.”
For several seconds the two listeners did not move. She had all too successfully conjured up this room in the late ’seventies, whose stuffiness still seemed to pervade it now.
“But look here!” protested Hunter, when he could fight down an inclination to get out of the room quickly. “You say he killed her after all? And yet you told us he had an absolute alibi. You said he never went closer to the house than the windows….”
“No more he did, my dear,” said the other.
“He was courting the Linshaw heiress at the time,” she resumed; “and Miss Linshaw was a very proper young lady, who would have been horrified if she had heard about him and Jane Waycross. She would have broken off the match, naturally. But poor Jane Waycross meant her to hear. She was much in love with Mr. Wilkes, and she was going to tell the whole matter publicly: Mr. Wilkes had been trying to persuade her not to do so.”
“But—”
“Oh, don’t you see what happened?” cried the other in a pettish tone. “It is so dreadfully simple. I am not clever at these things, but I should have seen it in a moment, even if I did not already know. I told you everything so that you should be able to guess.
“When Mr. Wilkes and Dr. Sutton and Mr. Pawley drove past here in the gig that night, they saw a bright light burning in the windows of this room. I told you that. But the police never wondered, as anyone should, what caused that light. Jane Waycross never came into this room, as you know; she was out in the hall, carrying either a lamp or a candle. But that lamp in the thick blue-silk shade, held out there in the hall, would not have caused a bright light to shine through this room and illuminate it. Neither would a tiny candle; it is absurd. And I told you there were no other lamps in the house except some empty ones waiting to be filled in the back kitchen. There is only one thing they could have seen. They saw the great blaze of the paraffin oil round Jane Waycross’s body.
“Didn’t I tell you it was dreadfully simple? Poor Jane was upstairs waiting for her lover. From the upstairs window she saw Mr. Wilkes’s gig, with the fine yellow wheels, drive along the road in the moonlight, and she did not know there were other men in it; she thought he was alone. She came downstairs—
“It is an awful thing that the police did not think more about that broken medicine bottle lying in the hall, the large bottle that was broken in just two long pieces. She must have had a use for it; and, of course, she had. You knew that the oil in the lamp was almost exhausted, although there was a great blaze round the body. When poor Jane came downstairs, she was carrying the unlighted lamp in one hand; in the other hand she was carrying a lighted candle and an old medicine bottle containing paraffin oil. When she got downstairs, she meant to fill the lamp from the medicine bottle, and then light it with the candle.
“But she was too eager to get downstairs, I am afraid. When she was more than halfway down, hurrying, that long nightgown tripped her. She pitched forward down the stairs on her face. The medicine bottle broke on the tiles und
er her, and poured a lake of paraffin round her body. Of course, the lighted candle set the paraffin blazing when it fell; but that was not all. One intact side of that broken bottle, long and sharp and cleaner than any blade, cut her throat when she fell on the smashed bottle. She was not quite stunned by the fall. When she felt herself burning, and the blood almost as hot, she tried to save herself. She tried to crawl forward on her hands, forward into the hall, away from the blood and oil and fire.
“That was what Mr. Wilkes really saw when he looked in the window.
“You see, he had been unable to get rid of the two fuddled friends, who insisted on clinging to him and drinking with him. He had been obliged to drive them home. If he could not go to ‘Clearlawns’ now, he wondered how at least he could leave a message; and the light in the window gave him an excuse.
“He saw pretty Jane propped up on her hands in the hall, looking out at him beseechingly while the blue flame ran up and turned yellow. You might have thought he would have pitied, for she loved him very much. Her wound was not really a deep wound. If he had broken into the house at that moment, he might have saved her life. But he preferred to let her die, because now she would make no public scandal and spoil his chances with the rich Miss Linshaw. That was why he returned to his friends and told a lie about a murderer in a tall hat. It is why, in heaven’s truth, he murdered her himself. But when he returned to his friends, I do not wonder that they saw him mopping his forehead. You know now how Jane Waycross came back for him, presently.”
There was another heavy silence.
The girl got to her feet, with a sort of bouncing motion which was as suggestive as it was vaguely familiar. It was as though she were about to run. She stood there, a trifle crouched, in her prim brown dress, so oddly narrow at the waist after an old-fashioned pattern; and in the play of light on her face Rodney Hunter fancied that its prettiness was only a shell.
“The same thing happened afterwards, on some Christmas Eves,” she explained. “They played Blind Man’s Bluff over again. That is why people who live here do not care to risk it nowadays. It happens at a quarter past seven—”
Hunter stared at the curtains. “But it was a quarter past seven when we got here!” he said. “It must now be—”
“Oh, yes,” said the girl, and her eyes brimmed over. “You see, I told you you had nothing to fear; it was all over then. But that is not why I thank you. I begged you to stay, and you did. You have listened to me, as no one else would. And now I have told it at last, and now I think both of us can sleep.”
Not a fold stirred or altered in the dark curtains that closed the window bay; yet, as though a blurred lens had come into focus, they now seemed innocent and devoid of harm. You could have put a Christmas tree there. Rodney Hunter, with Muriel following his gaze, walked across and threw back the curtains. He saw a quiet window seat covered with chintz, and the rising moon beyond the window. When he turned round, the girl in the old-fashioned dress was not there. But the front doors were open again, for he could feel a current of air blowing through the house.
With his arm round Muriel, who was white-faced, he went out into the hall. They did not look long at the scorched and beaded stains at the foot of the paneling, for even the scars of fire seemed gentle now. Instead, they stood in the doorway looking out, while the house threw its great blaze of light across the frosty Weald. It was a welcoming light. Over the rise of a hill, black dots trudging in the frost showed that Jack Bannister’s party was returning; and they could hear the sound of voices carrying far. They heard one of the party carelessly singing a Christmas carol for glory and joy, and the laughter of children coming home.
THE THIRTEENTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS
by Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov is perhaps best known in the mystery field for his Black Widowers stories. He has to date compiled three volumes of these mystery puzzles: Tales of the Black Widowers, More Tales of the Black Widowers and Casebook of the Black Widowers. He has also to his credit two full-length mystery novels: A Whiff of Death and (my favorite) Murder at the A.B.A.
This was one year when we were glad Christmas Day was over.
It had been a grim Christmas Eve, and I was just as glad I don’t stay awake listening for sleigh bells any more. After all, I’m about ready to get out of junior high. —But then, I kind of stayed awake listening for bombs.
We stayed up till midnight of Christmas Day, though, up till the last minute of it, Mom and I. Then Dad called and said, “Okay, it’s over. Nothing’s happened. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
Mom and I danced around for a while as though Santa Claus had just come, and then, after about an hour, Dad came home and I went to bed and slept fine.
You see, it’s special in our house. Dad’s a detective on the force, and these days, with terrorists and bombings, it can get pretty hairy. So when, on December twentieth, warnings reached headquarters that there would be a Christmas Day bombing at the Soviet offices in the United Nations, it had to be taken seriously.
The entire force was put on the alert and the F.B.I. came in too. The Soviets had their own security, I guess, but none of it satisfied Dad.
The day before Christmas he said, “If someone is crazy enough to want to plant a bomb and if he’s not too worried about getting caught afterwards, he’s likely to be able to do it no matter what precautions we take.”
Mom said, “I suppose there’s no way of knowing who it is.”
Dad shook his head. “Letters from newspapers pasted on paper. No fingerprints; only smudges. Common stuff we can’t trace, and he said it would be the only warning, so we won’t get anything else to work on. What can we do?”
Mom said, “Well, it must be someone who doesn’t like the Russians, I guess.”
Dad said, “That doesn’t narrow it much. Of course, the Soviets say it’s a Zionist threat, and we’ve got to keep an eye on the Jewish Defense League.”
I said, “Gee, Dad, that doesn’t make much sense. The Jewish people wouldn’t pick Christmas Day to do it, would they? It doesn’t mean anything to them, and it doesn’t mean anything to the Soviet Union, either. They’re officially atheist.”
Dad said, “You can’t reason that out to the Russians. Now, why don’t you turn in, because tomorrow may be a bad day all round, Christmas or not.”
Then he left, and he was out all Christmas Day, and it was pretty rotten. We didn’t even open any presents, just sat listening to the radio, which was timed to an all-day news station.
Then at midnight, when Dad called and said nothing had happened, we breathed again, but I still forgot to open my presents.
That didn’t come till the morning of the twenty-sixth. We made that day Christmas. Dad had a day off, and Mom baked the turkey a day late. It wasn’t till after dinner that we talked about it again.
Mom said, “I suppose the person, whoever it was, couldn’t find any way of planting the bomb once the Department drew the security strings tight.”
Dad smiled, as though he appreciated Mom’s loyalty. He said, “I don’t think you can make security that tight, but what’s the difference? There was no bomb. Maybe it was a bluff. After all, it did disrupt the city a bit and it gave the Soviet people at the United Nations some sleepless nights, I bet. That might have been almost as good for the bomber as letting the bomb go off.”
I said, “If he couldn’t do it on Christmas Day, maybe he’ll do it another time. Maybe he just said Christmas to get everyone keyed up, and then, after they relax, he’ll—”
Dad gave me one of his little pushes on the side of my head. “You’re a cheerful one, Larry. No, I don’t think so. Real bombers value the sense of power. When they say something is going to happen at a certain time, it’s got to be that time or it’s no fun for them.”
I was still suspicious, but the days passed and there was no bombing, and the Department gradually got back to normal. The F.B.I. left, and even the Soviet people seemed to forget about it, according to Dad.
On January second the Christmas-New Year’s vacation was over and I went back to school, and we started rehearsing our Christmas pageant. We didn’t call it that, of course, because we’re not supposed to have religious celebrations at school, what with the separation of church and state. We just made an elaborate show out of the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” which doesn’t have any religion to it—just presents.
There were twelve of us kids, each one singing a particular line every time it came up and then coming in all together on the “partridge in a pear tree.” I was number five, singing “Five gold rings” because I was still a boy soprano and I could hit that high note pretty nicely, if I do say so myself.
The Twelve Crimes of Christmas Page 31