“Get him up.”
“Peter, no,” Sheila wailed. “He’s overstimulated already.”
“So am I. Where does he sleep?”
Shandy headed for the staircase. Young Jackman leaped off the sofa.
“For God’s sake, have mercy! You’ll wake the whole damned pack of them. All right, if you insist, I’ll get him. I’m sorry I opened my mouth.”
He took a last pull at his grown-up vitamins and slogged upstairs. He was back in less time than Shandy could have hoped, preceded by a nine-year-old a good deal wider awake than his father.
“Pop says you want to see me, Professor Shandy.”
“Yes, JoJo. I want you to tell me about the night you watched the elves kidnap my Santa Claus. Can you describe exactly what happened?”
The youngster wiggled and scratched. “Well, see, it wasn’t elves. I mean it was only this one elf and I didn’t really see him steal it. He just had it.”
“You mean the Santa Claus dummy was on the sled when you first caught sight of it?”
“That’s right. See, what happened was, we had the Sunday School party that afternoon. It was a real drag, so me and Tommy Hoggins got to kidding around about who could drink the most punch. They had this goofy punch, right, one bowl red and one bowl green. It was prob’ly just Kool-Aid or something, but anyway me and Tommy started mixing the two kinds together—”
“Like father, like son,” Sheila murmured. “Never mind all that, JoJo. Professor Shandy doesn’t want to hear about your tummy ache.”
“But if I hadn’t drunk all that punch, I wouldn’t have had to keep getting up and going to the bathroom,” the boy pointed out reasonably. “That’s how I saw the sled.”
“Have you any idea what time it was?” Shandy asked.
“All I know is it must have been real late, because the Christmas lights were out and there was nobody around except this one elf, see, giving Santa Claus a ride on the sled. It was dumb. I mean, what’s the sense of doing some oddball thing like that when there’s nobody around to watch? I was going to yell down at him but then I thought I better not because I didn’t want to wake up Mum and Pop and the brats,” JoJo said virtuously.
“Did you put on the light in the bathroom?”
“I didn’t have to. There’s a little night light that’s always on.”
“That’s right,” Sheila put in. “We’ve had it ever since JoJo was a baby. Roger was always stubbing his toe on something when he had to get up in the night.”
“That’s because you always made me do the feedings when it was your turn.”
Apparently Dickie and Wendy came naturally by their bickering. Shandy nipped the squabble in the bud. “Then the elf never knew you were watching, JoJo?”
“How could he? I was upstairs and he was down on the ground. Anyway, he didn’t look up.”
“How could you tell where he was looking, if all the lights were out?”
“It’s never pitch-dark when there’s snow on the ground. You ought to know that,” the child replied loftily. “Anyway, I’m good at seeing in the dark. Ask Pop.”
“That’s right,” said Jackman. “JoJo has exceptionally keen night vision. It comes in handy, considering the times and places Sheila chooses to drop the car keys.”
Before the wife could get in her retort, Shandy asked, “How long did you watch the elf?”
JoJo shrugged. “I don’t know. A couple of minutes, I guess. There wasn’t much to see. He just came across—”
“Across from where?”
“Across the walkway. Like as if he was coming from the Enderbles’, only he wasn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the sleds aren’t allowed to go in the shrubbery. Professor Enderble won’t let ’em.”
“But what if this elf disobeyed?”
“Then I guess Professor Enderble would get sore.”
“So in fact all you can say for sure is that the sled was in the road when you first saw it, and it came to my house. Did it come to the front or the back door?”
JoJo hesitated. “I don’t know. I thought it must be going to the front because I figured the elf was going to put Santa Claus back on the porch like you had it, but I couldn’t tell because the spruce trees were in the way. Anyway, I guess maybe he never went to either door because I looked the next morning to see if the Santa Claus was back and it wasn’t and I never saw it again.”
“You didn’t notice where the elf went after that?”
“No, I went back to bed.”
JoJo squirmed a bit inside his new Christmas-present bathrobe, then blurted out, “I was sort of scared, if you want to know.”
“Why, son? You didn’t tell me that last night. Hey, come on. Get it out and you’ll feel better.” Jackman was, after all, a concerned father.
“Well, like I said, there was something funny about the whole scene. Like—I mean, I knew it had to be Professor Shandy’s dummy on the sled but it—it didn’t feel like a dummy. It was as if it was real but not alive. I don’t know what I mean!”
He looked from one to the other, then said abruptly, “Can I go back to bed now?”
“Of course,” Shandy answered. “Thank you, JoJo. You’ve been very helpful. You may be interested to know that the elves brought back my Santa Claus yesterday, while you were camping. I put it in the cellar. And—er—it’s still a dummy. Come and see it tomorrow, if you like.”
“We’re going to a hockey game,” said Roger Jackman. “You run on upstairs, JoJo. Mum and I will be up soon. Very soon,” he added with a meaningful look at their uninvited guest.
Shandy took the hint. “I’ll be off. Sorry to butt in on you like this, but I had to know.”
“Aren’t you going to tell us why?” Sheila pouted.
“Later, perhaps. Right now, I wouldn’t know what to say.”
Shandy let himself out and stood for a moment on the doorstep, wondering what to do next. His own house stood next door, serene and inviting in spite of its gaudy bedizenments, and he was extremely tired. The snow was falling yet faster, caking on his overcoat sleeves and shoulders. There must be one hell of a traffic jam on Main Street by now. Perhaps visitors would be stranded and the college would have to put them up in the dorms. The gawkers would get their fill of Balaclava before this night was over. He’d about had it, too.
Nevertheless, Shandy turned his coat collar as high as it would go, jammed his gray felt hat down over his eyes, and trudged past his snug front door, up toward the glow of searchlights that still showed through the gathering whiteness to the northeast. Even as he walked, the lights dimmed and the noise of departing fire apparatus filtered down over the campus. The show was over.
But the trouble might hardly have begun. First it was a bludgeoning faked to look like an accident, now open murder and arson in one day. What was next on the agenda?
Arresting Hannah Cadwall wasn’t going to solve anything. Only a nitwit like Mirelle Feldster could believe that. True, the police seemed to believe it, too, but he supposed they had to, once a jug of taxine turned up in her medicine cabinet and a whopping motive in Ben’s bankbooks.
There was no such blatant evidence in Jemima’s case. He was going to have one hell of a time convincing anybody that her body had been brought to his house on a sled, disguised by a Santa Claus mask.
Still, that had to be how it happened. The murderer having somehow managed to pinch one of those all-concealing elf costumes, waited in the shrubbery knowing she’d make a production of leaving the party early to go on her self-appointed rounds, because she always did. If anybody else happened along the path in the meantime, it didn’t matter. The elf was just another trespassing student. The worst he could get was a scolding.
Perhaps she’d been offered a ride on the sled. That would explain why there was no sign of a struggle in the snow. Jemima would fall for a silly caper like that. She loved being involved with the students’ pranks and, like Helen, she’d been wearing her party shoes
instead of sensible boots.
Excited now, Shandy walked faster, manufacturing dialogue. “Come on, Mrs. Ames, I’ll ride you to your door so you can change.”
Then a whack on the head in the dark—Jemima never bothered with a hat, so it would be easy enough to land a killing blow—and that was that. The plastic cover designed to protect the riders’ clothing would hide her telltale purple cloak, the Santa Claus mask would cover her face and head. The dummy, no doubt, had already been kidnaped and taken sleigh riding around the Crescent. Nobody would notice it wasn’t a dummy any more.
Still, the murderer wouldn’t dare hang around in public for long. The sled must have been dragged off somewhere, probably up on campus where it ought to be anyway, and hidden somewhere until the coast was clear. If the body did happen to be discovered any time during the evening, the plan to pass off the death as accident would have been spoiled, but how critical was that? Suspicion would no doubt fall on the student sled-pullers, but there was no great likelihood the bogus elf would ever be caught.
According to JoJo, the killer was still in costume when he brought the body back. Then how did Alice’s fried marble get into the Cadwalls’ bedroom? It couldn’t have got caught up in a trouser cuff or pocket as Shandy had supposed—unless Ben himself had been the one to carry it back.
Was it possible the comptroller had tracked the murderer into the brick house and actually been standing close by when the dish was overturned? Would he have had nerve enough to confront a killer in the act of dumping a corpse?
No, but he might very well have tried to nail a student who was carrying a joke too far, and that was what the whole scene had been staged to look like. He could have got into the situation without knowing he was risking anything other than his dignity. He could have hidden behind the whatnot and spilled the marbles himself trying to get at the elf, or more likely trying to get away. It would be like him to keep quiet afterward and play a lone hand, especially if he didn’t know who was under the disguise but thought he had a good chance of finding out. It was also typical of Cadwall to believe he could pin down the culprit before the killer got to him.
Did that mean Ben had got hold of a tangible clue to the elf’s identity? Shandy began to walk faster. If he had, the evidence must have been kept in his desk at the office, that sanctum sanctorum where not even his secretary would dream of meddling. Since the office had been locked up right after the body was found, there was a chance it might still be there.
Normally, Grimble would be off duty by now and his minions would never dare pass out a key in his absence. Because of the fire, however, there was a good chance he might still be around. Shandy only hoped he could get the man to open the comptroller’s office without insisting on tagging along and wanting to know what the professor was hunting for when Shandy hadn’t the least idea and probably wouldn’t find it in any case. This was a stupid wild-goose chase and he’d probably catch nothing but flu out of it, if he hadn’t picked up the bug already. Nevertheless, Shandy wallowed on.
He wished to heaven he knew where that dummy Santa Claus had been kept after it was taken, and whether the elves who brought it back were the same ones who’d staged the original kidnaping. There was another point he hadn’t considered. Mirelle had seen two on Monday, but JoJo had seen only one the night Jemima was killed. Was there a second hiding somewhere then? Jemima was a big woman. Getting her off the sled and up into the living room must have taken plenty of muscle. Why had he been so ready to assume one person could manage the job alone?
Shandy gave up trying to think straight and concentrated on fighting his way uphill. It was a sticky, wet snow that clung to his galoshes like fresh cement. By the time he caught sight of the security office, he was thinking only of getting in out of the snow and sitting down. His heart sank when he saw the small building was in darkness, but he tried the door anyway and for a wonder it opened.
For a moment, he was too preoccupied with catching his breath and beating the snow off his coat to realize that he was not alone. From behind the closed door of Grimble’s inner sanctum, voices were audible. Though he could catch no words, he deduced from the low-pitched grunts and the high-pitched squeals that one was a man and one was a woman. The man was certainly Grimble, but who was the woman and what were they up to?
It didn’t sound like conversation. It sounded like—Shandy suddenly realized what it sounded like and, being a man of delicacy, decided this was no time to come looking for keys. The decent thing would be to go straight away. But he was very tired and cold, and the office was warm. He felt for one of the wooden chairs that ought to be ranged along the wall, and found it. There was something hanging over the back, something soft and thick but wet, as though it had been out in the snow, a cap or muffler or some such thing. He fingered the knitted wool curiously. It was a cap, he decided, a long stockinet cap with three biggish openings knitted into one end. In fact, it was an elf mask.
Grimble.
Grimble, the one person who stuck out so far he couldn’t be seen. Grimble, who’d managed to get Jemima’s death passed off as an accident, who’d played the buffoon while Ben Cadwall was sitting dead at his desk, who had access to every house, every building, every room on Balaclava’s campus, Grimble who could go where he chose and apparently take whom he pleased, judging from the sounds beyond the door. Grimble, who’d probably flummoxed his own keyboard in case some wiseacre like Shandy came nosing about wondering how somebody could get hold of a key without authorization. Grimble with the soul of a ferret and the morals of a buck rabbit. Who was more likely to get caught flagrante delicto by a pair of snoops like Jemima and Ben, and who was better equipped to get rid of them both before they could make out a provable case against him?
A provable case. That was the rub. What proof had Shandy now but a soggy head covering identical to twenty or thirty others? Grimble could always say he’d found the mask outside somewhere, and who was to convince the police that he hadn’t?
As to having a woman in his office, that was a misdemeanor, not a crime. Shandy might carry the tale to President Svenson and Grimble might get fired, but that would solve nothing. Shandy wasn’t a vengeful man, he was merely a good farmer. Once a dog started killing sheep, you had to get him away from the lambs. But you didn’t shoot the dog unless you knew for sure he was guilty.
Not liking the job at all, Shandy tiptoed over to the inner office door and pressed his ear against the crack. It was no good. There was weather stripping around the edges to keep out drafts from the constantly opening outside door, and also perhaps to muffle sounds from within, since the place seemed warm enough where Shandy was. He started to loosen his overcoat, then buttoned it up again. If the outer office was this temperate, the inner chamber must be a pretty hot spot, all things considered. Maybe they’d opened a window at the back. Wearily, he went out again to face the elements. Something landed hard on his head, and he knew no more.
Chapter 22
“YOU’RE UNDER ARREST.”
Shandy opened one eye, got a snowflake smack in the cornea, and shut it again. “What the hell are you talking about?” He had difficulty speaking, and this seemed due to the fact that somebody was sitting on his chest.
“I’m performing a citizen’s arrest. Lie still or I’ll clobber you.” The voice was identifiable now. It was Shirley Wrenne’s.
“Shirley,” he began testily, “have you—”
“Why, Peter Shandy! I must say you’re almost the last person I’d expect to find skulking around the security office.”
“I wasn’t skulking, damn it!”
He had been, but that was beside the point. “Get off me, you wanton hussy.”
“I will not. I’m going to sit here till Grimble comes.”
“Grimble’s not coming. He’s busy.”
“Then you’re in trouble, Shandy.”
“What have you been drinking, for God’s sake?”
Shandy struggled to get out from under the not inconsiderable weig
ht, narrowly escaped being clobbered as promised, and at last managed to dump his irate colleague into a snowbank. Miss Wrenne fastened on his left ankle and had all but managed to divest him of his trousers when the lights in the security office went on and Grimble did in fact appear.
“What’s going on here?”
“She’s trying to arrest me.”
“I am arresting him.”
“What the hell for?”
“He was skulking.”
“She’s drunk.”
“Wait a second. One at a time, damn it. Okay, Miz Wrenne, what’s the scoop?”
“I caught him trying to break into the security office and bopped him one. He’s a saboteur.”
“I am, not a saboteur,” said the professor with what little dignity he had left, “nor was I trying to break into the security office.”
“Tell that to the fuzz, buster.”
“Now, just a minute,” said Grimble. “Let’s not get hasty. Professor, what was you doing?”
“I was looking for you,” Shandy replied truthfully.
Miss Wrenne snorted. “The door’s around the other side, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Shandy realized his best defense was attack. “For that matter, what were you yourself doing here, Shirley?”
“Looking for saboteurs.”
“Well, while you’re horsing around out here bopping and clobbering innocent fellow faculty members, the saboteurs are probably up setting fire to President Svenson’s pajamas,” he snapped. “If you must play cops and robbers in the snow, why don’t you go where the action is?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Grimble. “No hard feelings, Miss Wrenne, but we got security officers all over the place tonight. Why don’t you go on home and get some sleep? Nice of you to take an interest,” he added politely.
She was in no mood for courtesies. “Aren’t you at least going to grill him?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that. Professor, you go on into the office. I’ll be back soon as I walk Miss Wrenne up the hill.”
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