Murder Most Merry

by ed. Abigail Browining

  And me neither, I guess. I cursed the bones of old Kris Kringle and went out to get the car.

  Traffic was light, and a good thing, too. because the streets were godawful. We saw just one snow plow on our way across town, slumping through the snow drifts like a whipped dog. The rest of the way, it was find the road and try to stay on it.

  After a while, though. I got into the tracks made by the cruisers already on the scene ahead of us. and I figured this might be my chance. Now that I could drive with one hand, I reached out and got the radio mike.

  “I’ll just make sure Rosey called the lieutenant—”

  That was as far as I got with it before Sughrue’s big left hand jerked out and knocked the mike clean from my fingers.

  That was a funny moment, right then. I mean, Sughrue had a temper, all right, and he was fast and mean and looked to be hungover bad, but hitting my hand like that was past the edge, even for him. I looked over—real quick because I had to pay attention to the road—and just for a second he was bent over, his face screwed up like he was mad as hell. Then his eyes opened up and locked on mine.

  It couldn’t have been more than a quarter of a second, that glance, because I had to look right back at the road, but it was long enough for something to pass between us. Something really ugly.

  “I’ll call him from Smokey’s.” Sughrue slumped back in the seat, his voice softer than I expected. I thought he was going to say more, and I think he thought so. too, but we were both quiet the rest of the way.

  And that thing that passed between us. whatever it was. kept biting my butt.

  I wasn’t long figuring it out, either. It didn’t take a real educated nose to smell the stink around this business pretty quick, and by the time we got to Smokey’s. I’d pretty much put it together.

  I saw it like this: Smollett, who probably has more dirt on the department in general and Sughrue in particular than was safe for anyone, gets shot dead. And it happens on Christmas, when the senior detectives and the brass hats are all at home with the kiddies. And here’s Sughrue, he just comes tripping into work on Christmas morning looking like slime on a shingle and insisting him and me are going to investigate this all by ourselves—him that supposedly Smollett was paying off, and me...

  Some folks say I became a cop because I’m too lazy to work and not smart enough to steal, but they’re only half right. I could see this one coming down Main Street. And I was getting scared, because when Sughrue knocked that mike out of my hand and we looked at each other, I could tell he didn’t want anyone at that crime scene who’d act like he gave a damn. And maybe in my eyes he saw I’d figured that out. And if he did see it. my life wasn’t worth dryer lint, because Sughrue was that much faster and stronger and meaner than me that if he got worried about me giving him up. and decided to do something about it, I was damn sure to finish second.

  That’s what I was thinking when we walked into Smokey’s that Christmas day, and it was pretty damn grim, if you ask me. Of course, Sughrue’s dead now, and maybe I killed him. and I for sure didn’t have it all figured out like I thought I did. But you can understand, maybe, why I was sweating like a crack-head when Sughrue told the uniforms at the scene to secure the area and take a statement from old Bob Gates, who used to sweep up the place, while he and I went into the office where Smollett was laying around dead.

  It looked like the office of every bar everywhere. Maybe bigger than some, but with the same battered desk, cheap paneling, and old steel safe you see in all of them. Only here the safe hung open: a dead man sat behind the desk, white like the snow, leaning way back in his chair, with a raunchy cigar still clenched in his teeth: and there was blood all over.

  And I mean. There Was Blood All Over: it was on the wall behind Smollett’s body in big splash patterns, it was soaked into the carpet under his chair, it was spritzed across the top of his desk, and it dribbled from his private toilet—a closet-sized deal off to one side—clear to the front of the desk.

  “Let’s check out the bathroom,” Sughrue said, and I followed him quick. It wasn’t quite as gross as the rest of the place, but there was plenty of blood on the floor by the sink, and like I said, the trail of drops to the front of the desk.

  “This is where it started,” Sughrue said when we’d looked around a little. “Smollett got shot here, went to his desk, tried to call for help, then fell back in his chair and bled to death. I’ll call the coroner.” He took a couple of slow steps back to the office and dialed the dead man’s phone.

  And if I had any doubts about the smell around this thing, I stopped having them right then. Because we never call the coroner till we’re completely through gathering evidence. Last thing we want is those guys coming in with their jumpsuits and body bags, stepping all over everything. But here Sughrue calls them first thing.

  I didn’t say a word, though. No sense letting on I knew any more than he already thought I did. Just stay quiet, act dumb, and maybe you’ll get out of this better than Smollett did, I told myself.

  So I took pictures, knowing that no better than I am, and in this light, they’d be worthless. I got shots of Smollett in his chair, supposedly showing how he’d sat down, leaned back against the wall where his blood was spattered, and bled to death. I took pictures of the empty safe, thinking whoever shot him also took all the incriminating records (that ‘s how long ago this was: nowadays there’d be computer disks and backup files and all but back then, if it wasn’t on paper, it wasn’t there, period), and just as the guys from the coroner’s came clomping in, I got pictures of the blood on Smollett’s desk and the drips running from his toilet into the office. And like I say, I knew every damn one of them was worthless: The way I handled a camera, no one’d even recognize it was Smollett unless they saw the cigar stuck in his mouth, and the other shots would be too light or too dark, or just not pointed right to show which way the blood was splattered—

  So maybe I’m not bright, after all. It took me all the while they were moving Smollett to figure out what that blood was telling me. And to tie it in with how Sughrue was sitting heavy in a spare seat off to one side while the coroner’s boys made their haul. But by the time they left, I was almost curious about all this.

  “You collect, Marley,” Sughrue sighed. “I’ll tag. Start in the toilet where it started, and work out to the desk.”

  The toilet where it started? Well, that was one theory. Of course, it wouldn’t explain how so much of Smollett got splattered back against the wall behind his chair, or why there wasn’t more of him spilled over the desk he supposedly leaned across. It wouldn’t even account for why the blood drops on the carpet were in front of the desk, and trailed toward the toilet, not away from it. No, the only story that would explain all that was one where Smollett and whoever killed him got up in each other’s face over his desk and one of them pulled a gun but didn’t do it quick enough to keep the other one from shooting him. Or shooting him back.

  But I had a feeling that wasn’t how Sughrue wanted things to look, and they damn well weren’t going to look like that when we left. Well, I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick my foot in his story just now. I got down on my knees—not much fun for a guy of my build—and started scraping half-dried blood from the floor onto little sterile pieces of paper that went into little sterile envelopes for Sughrue to put labels on.

  Sughrue didn’t get up. Just sat there with his pen out and wrote down what part of the room each envelope came from before putting it carefully in the kit.

  That’s another thing shows how long ago this was: Nowadays you can get DNA identification from a blood smear and know whose it was and what he ate last Thursday. But back then, all you could get was blood type. So if Sughrue was fiddling with the envelopes like I thought he was. all the blood that got to the lab would be from behind the desk. The envelopes might say this sample or that sample was from the toilet or the front of the desk, but...

  Then I thought of one other thing, and it almost got me killed right th
ere. Which shows where thinking will get you. I was picking up blood from behind the desk, and when I got up I sort of routinely opened and closed the desk drawers. There was the usual clutter of coin wrappers, old receipts, and business cards, but “No gun,” I said, and then kicked myself for saying it, because Sughrue turned to me real fast—fast like when he’d knocked the mike out of my fingers—and I couldn’t see where his right hand was, which scared me so that I tried to cover.

  “I mean” —I said it slow and dumb-like— “I was thinking there’d be one. Guess not, though; I never heard of him to pack.” Fact is. you could look in a million back-room offices in bars like this and find a gun in every one of them. It’s like bar owners think they’re supposed to have one. or maybe they come with the liquor license or something. And considering Smollett’s reputation, it was damn funny there wasn’t one here. Maybe it was with the records gone from the safe. But I could see I wasn’t going to get much older by saying that in front of Sughrue. so I just stood there looking stupid till he finally untensed and moved his hand out where I could see it empty.

  “That’s enough,” he said. What with pictures and samples and the coroner’s boys, we’d been there maybe two hours. “Let’s get this to the station and ready for the lab.” He got to his feet, slow, wincing a little.

  So here I was with a guy who I thought had done the murder we were investigating, a guy who was also maybe roping me in as his accomplice, and who might just put me out of my misery if he thought I’d figured that out. And all I could think was, I wonder how he plans to keep anyone else from looking over the scene and reading it right. And I never did find that out.

  Funny how your mind works. I mean, I should’ve been thinking a lot of other stuff, about Smollett and Sughrue, and if my guesses were right—about both of them—and whether Sughrue thought I was going along with whatever his plans were, and what ideas he might have about my future. But what I remember most was worrying about how he was going to keep everyone else from seeing what I saw in the back room there at Smokey’s.

  So this next part nobody believes. I must’ve told it a hundred times in the week after it happened and never got anything but funny looks, but it’s true just like I’m going to say: We were walking out the back of Smokey’s, to the car. And the snow hadn’t let up a bit, but it’d been packed down by the uniforms standing around holding the scene for us. So as I followed Sughrue out the back door, onto the little landing there, I stepped onto that smooth-packed snow and my foot slid out from under me, and I lurched up to keep from falling and bumped into Sughrue, and he went down. Hard. Into the snow.

  And he yelped.

  Like I say, most folks don’t think it happened that way. I could see on their faces when I got to that part, they all figured I pushed Sughrue on purpose. But it ain’t so; I was there, I seen it, and it was pure luck, good or bad.

  Anyway, Sughrue hit the snow and he yelped and laid there. After a second, I reached down to help him up. but he kind of half swung at me so I pulled back.

  He rolled over then and got to his feet, but it wasn’t like anything I ever saw before. You know how sometimes you get hurt and feel like you’re moving in slow motion? Well, now I saw just that. Sughrue moving in slow motion. It was almost like he floated onto his side, holding his coat shut real tight, then got to his knees, then his feet, and I swear I wouldn’t have been surprised if he drifted up into the falling snow and vanished in the gray clouds.

  He might as well have.

  We looked at each other again. We both knew now that he’d got shot last night, and I knew that the guy who’d done it just went to the morgue. And Sughrue knew I knew, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it but walk back to the car with me.

  And I mean to tell you, that ride back was weird. We had this thing between us now, and we both knew what it was, and neither one of us said a word all the way back to the station. I wasn’t worried about Sughrue anymore, I wasn’t even thinking what I should do about this sorry mess. I just kept trying to remember a word I read in a book once about something the Greeks call it, when fear turns to pity.

  I never did think of that word. I don’t think I had one other clear thought in my head all the time I fought the car through the snow-drifted streets. I parked and followed Sughrue across the parking lot to the station, seeing his steps get stiff and lurchy. And slow. I followed him up the stairs to the second floor even slower, hearing his breath get loud and raspy as he pulled himself up the steps one at a time, and I mean, One. At. A. Time.

  I never saw his face again. Not while he was alive, anyway. I stood there at the top of the stairs and watched the back of him ooze down the hall to his office and get the door closed. Then I figured it was safe and I told Rosey to call the lieutenant.

  Lieutenant Franklin retired a few years back, then died or something. So no one but me remembers pushing open the door to Sughrue’s office and seeing him sprawled back in his chair, white like Smollett was, white like the snow, with his coat hanging open and red blood spread all over his shirt and down on the floor. The same blood that was trailed from the front of Smollett’s desk into the bathroom where last night he’d gone to stop the bleeding and thought he had till he went down in the snow and opened up the wound again.

  But all that was a long time ago. and nobody remembers Sughrue much anymore, and us who were there reported what we had to and covered up the rest and never talked about it after. In a few years it was like it never happened at all. Like I say. I’d even quit seeing Sughrue’s picture on the wall till the new kid made a point of it.

  And even though I looked at it again on the way out that night, it didn’t mean much to me; just some guy I killed once, that’s all.

  RUMPOLE AND THE CHAMBERS PARTY – John Mortimer

  Christmas comes but once a year. Once a year I receive a gift of socks from She Who Must Be Obeyed; each year I add to her cellar of bottles of lavender water, which she now seems to use mainly for the purpose of “laying down” in the bedroom cupboard (I suspect she has only just started on the 1980 vintage).

  Tinseled cards and sprigs of holly appear at the entrance to the cells under the Old Bailey and a constantly repeated tape of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” adds little zest to my two eggs, bacon, and sausage on a fried slice in the Taste-Ee-Bite, Fleet Street; and once a year the Great Debate takes place at our December meeting. Should we invite solicitors to our Chambers party?

  “No doubt at the season of our Savior’s birth we should offer hospitality to all sorts and conditions of men,” “Soapy” Sam Ballard, q. c., our devout Head of Chambers, opened the proceedings in his usual manner, that of a somewhat backward bishop addressing Synod on the wisdom of offering the rites of baptism to non-practicing, gay Anglican converts of riper years.

  “All conditions of men and women.” Phillida Erskine-Brown, q. c.. nee Trant, the Portia of our Chambers, was looking particularly fetching in a well fitting black jacket and an only slightly flippant version of a male collar and tie. As she looked doe-eyed at him, Ballard, who hides a ridiculously susceptible heart beneath his monkish exterior, conceded her point.

  “The question before us is, does all sorts and conditions of men, and women, too, of course, include members of the junior branch of the legal profession?”

  “I’m against it!” Claude Erskine-Brown had remained an aging junior whilst his wife Phillida fluttered into silk, and he was never in favor of radical change. “The party is very much a family thing for the chaps in Chambers, and the clerk’s room, of course. If we ask solicitors, it looks very much as though we’re touting for briefs.”

  “I’m very much in favor of touting for briefs.” Up spake the somewhat grey barrister, Hoskins. “Speaking as a man with four daughters to educate. For heaven’s sake, let’s ask as many solicitors as we know, which, in my case, I’m afraid, is not many.”

  “Do you have a view, Rumpole?” Ballard felt bound to ask me, just as a formality.

  “Well, ye
s, nothing wrong with a bit of touting, I agree with Hoskins. But I’m in favor of asking the people who really provide us with work.”

  “You mean solicitors?”

  “I mean the criminals of England. Fine conservative fellows who should appeal to you, Ballard. Greatly in favor of free enterprise and against the closed shop. I propose we invite a few of the better-class crooks who have no previous engagements as guests of Her Majesty, and show our gratitude.”

  A somewhat glazed look came over the assembly at this suggestion and then Mrs. Erskine-Brown broke the silence with: “Claude’s really being awfully stuffy and old-fashioned about this. I propose we invite a smattering of solicitors. from the better-class firms.”

  Our Portia’s proposal was carried nem con, such was the disarming nature of her sudden smile on everyone, including her husband, who may have had some reason to fear it. Rumpole’s suggestion, to nobody’s surprise, received no support whatsoever.

  Our clerk, Henry, invariably arranged the Chambers party for the night on which his wife put on the Nativity play in the Bexley Heath Comprehensive at which she was a teacher. This gave him more scope for kissing Dianne, our plucky but somewhat hit-and-miss typist, beneath the mistletoe which swung from the dim, religious light in the entrance hall of number three Equity Court.

  Paper streamers dangled from the bookcase full of All England Law Reports in Ballard’s room and were hooked up to his views of the major English cathedrals. Barristers’ wives were invited, and Mrs. Hilda Rumpole, known to me only as She Who Must Be Obeyed, was downing sherry and telling Soapy Sam all about the golden days when her daddy, C. H. Wystan, ran Chambers. There were also six or seven solicitors among those present.