Richard Dalby (ed)

by Crime for Christmas

  Mrs Prothero put them on top of the bureau next to the telephone and glanced at the fob watch she had got into the habit of wearing in her nursing-sister days.

  Arthur was a little late. But then with Christmas Day falling on a Monday there was bound to be an extra rush this morning. But thank goodness the bank did at least close on Saturdays leaving him free to go out into the hurly-burly of the town’s shopping streets to get the last things that could not be bought earlier. It was good of him to do this each year, though no more than his duty.

  However the angels had hardly begun to swing to and fro a little in the heat from the fire below when there came a scuffly sort of bump on the flat’s front door and Mrs Prothero hurried out to the hallway.

  She pictured Arthur standing outside, his arms—they were rather short—clutching an assortment of parcels, unable to get at the latch-key in his trouser pocket, fastened by a chain to one of his braces buttons. It happened every year.

  A rare twinkle of pleasure lighting up her large grey eyes and quite transforming the helmet-severe face with its long straight nose and uncompromising lower jaw, she hastened across to the solid door and turned back the latch. And there he was, just as she had pictured.

  ‘You poor dear,’ she said. ‘You must have had an awful time.’

  She closed the heavy door firmly behind him.

  ‘It was pretty rough,’ her husband agreed, waddling forward and laying down the bundle of holly he had been clutching on the top of the bureau, the only clear space he could see.

  Mrs Prothero quickly relieved him of the rest of his purchases and took them through into the spick-and-span kitchen she prided herself on.

  ‘I tell you what,’ she called while her husband went to hang his overcoat in the hall cupboard, ‘we’ll make a little change for once. Let’s have our start-of-Christmas drink now, and I’ll tidy these away while you put up the holly before luncheon.’

  For a moment a really quite apprehensive look appeared on Mr Prothero’s round, twinkling-eyed face at this departure from tradition.

  But then he gave a little squaring-up shrug of his shoulders under his black bank-manager’s jacket.

  ‘Right ho,’ he called. ‘Let’s do that, and be damned.’

  He strutted boldly over to the hanging corner-cupboard where he kept his cellar and poured two glasses of ginger wine, adding a tot of whisky to his own.

  He held the latter bottle up after he had finished, and assessed the quantity remaining in it.

  ‘The senior staff certainly punished this at our little do the other day,’ he said as Mrs Prothero came back in.

  She looked severe.

  ‘It was Mr Perkins,’ she said. ‘Considering he’s your second-in-command, he ought to be more restrained.’

  Mr Prothero sighed. Then he brightened up.

  ‘But I thought the whole affair went better than in some other years,’ he said.

  Mrs Prothero considered.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the juniors behaved well. Especially young Smith. He spoke to me quite nicely, asking about our Christmas and so forth. Really showing an interest.’

  Mr Prothero puffed out his pink cheeks dubiously.

  ‘I try to like him,’ he said. ‘I feel I ought to. But he will dress in that provocative manner.’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Prothero firmly. ‘I was quite impressed. I shall revise my opinion of him.’

  Her husband handed her her glass.

  ‘Shall we drink to him?’ he asked, only half in joke.

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Prothero decidedly, ‘we’ll drink to Christmas.’

  ‘To Christmas,’ said Mr Prothero, raising his glass.

  ‘To three whole days of perfect peace,’ his wife replied.

  She took a modest sip and sat herself down in her customary chair to one side of the fire, her toes just resting on the black-leaded surround.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I do think it was one of the wisest things we ever did, to say we’d never go away for Christmas. This little spell of quiet means more to me than any amount of junketing.’

  ‘Perfectly so,’ agreed Mr Prothero, though it was hard, for all his pink benevolence of face, to conceive of him doing much in the way of junketing.

  Mrs Prothero took another sip of her wine and gave an unexpected chuckle.

  ‘Such a funny thing yesterday afternoon,’ she said. ‘I quite forgot to tell you last night what with all the rush.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘A man called. You know how they do sometimes, even though our door is so tucked away inside the flats. It’s being on the ground floor, I think.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I often feel something should be done about such people. Some sort of notice. Only chaps like that are just the kind to ignore notices.’

  ‘Yes. Well, I tried to tell him I never deal with hawkers, but he had me answering all sorts of questions before I got rid of him. And can you guess how I did that?’

  Mrs Prothero wore a look of mild triumph.

  ‘No,’ said Mr Prothero. ‘Did you take a broom to him?’

  He chuckled.

  ‘Oh, I would if necessary,’ Mrs Prothero answered. ‘But nothing like that was needed. You see, in the end I got it out of him what he was meant to be selling. Insurance. And then I told him who you were. I’ve never seen a face fall so quickly. “Just my luck,” he said, “think I’m interesting a client and it turns out to be the wife of the bank manager.” ‘

  But Mr Prothero appeared not to appreciate the joke to the full.

  ‘Questions,’ he said. ‘You say he asked questions. What sort of questions?’

  ‘Oh, dozens. And perfectly ridiculous some of them. Like were we going out to church late on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of this,’ said Mr Prothero, a look of almost pantomime shrewdness appearing on his round face.

  ‘Oh, he had his reasons,’ his wife replied. ‘It was a dangerous time to be out in the cold, he said. What if one of us slipped and broke a leg?’

  ‘You told him we weren’t going out?’ Mr Prothero asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. But whatever makes you so serious?’

  Mr Prothero gave a man-of-the-world shake of his head.

  ‘Because I very much suspect,’ he said, ‘that your insurance salesman was nothing but a crook. That’s an old dodge for spying out the lie of the land, you know. And these fellows often go about their business over the holiday period.’

  Mrs Prothero took a moment or two to digest this example of duplicity.

  ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘he certainly learnt this flat wouldn’t be empty over Christmas. Quite providential really.’

  She looked comfortably over at her husband.

  But he was not looking at her. Instead he was sitting open-mouthed in his cosy wing-chair staring at the door behind her.

  Mrs Prothero turned to see what had transfixed him.

  In the half-open doorway of the room a man was standing. He was aged about thirty, dressed in a trench-coat mackintosh in spite of the sharpness of the weather, hatless, and with a thin face from which two big brown eyes looked out with an uneasy mixture of bravado and pain. At his throat was the somewhat greasy knot of a striped Club tie.

  And now Mr Prothero found his tongue.

  ‘Who the devil are you?’ he demanded. ‘And how did you get in here?’

  But Mrs Prothero knew the man.

  ‘Arthur,’ she said, her voice suddenly hollow with unexamined fears. ‘Arthur, this is the person I was telling you about.’

  ‘That’s right,’ the intruder said with a jerk of brashness, ‘I popped in yesterday. Mrs Prothero and I had a chat.’

  ‘You know my name then?’ Mr Prothero said, a small tremor of doubt taking away somewhat from the determination with which the question was meant to have been put.

  The man smiled, almost ingratiatingly.

  ‘We had to know all about you both,’ he explained. ‘Just the same as we had to pull your fron
t-door key from your pocket last week and take an impression from it. It’s all part of the job.’

  The door beside him was pushed wide and a second man entered. He was older than the first, between forty-five and fifty, short, broad-shouldered and with a fat, aggressive belly pushing open his heavy overcoat.

  ‘Keep your bloody mouth shut, Tony,’ he said curtly.

  ‘What is this?’ Mr Prothero demanded again. ‘Who are you?’

  The self-confident newcomer ignored this pouter-pigeon question.

  ‘Just listen to me, and do what you’re told,’ he said with a cheerful briskness that suited his bustling manner.

  ‘I certainly will not. I don’t even know your name.’

  The small mouth in the mottled face split into a quick grin at this.

  ‘Proper introductions, is it, mate? All right then. The name’s Dawson. And I’m here to do your bank. We’re going to go in underground. Tunnel beneath that alleyway to the building on the other side.’

  ‘That won’t get you anywhere,’ Mr Prothero snapped back, ruffled but undaunted. ‘You’ll not find a penny piece that’s not in the main safe, and you won’t get into that in a hurry.’

  Dawson grinned again, standing solidly on short legs.

  ‘What about the deposit boxes, cock?’ he said. ‘You’ve got the key to the gate for them, ain’t you?’

  Mr Prothero’s round pink face positively paled.

  ‘How did you know that?’ he asked petulantly.

  Dawson turned and called out in a loud, larky voice.

  ‘Here, Dennis boy, you’d better come and show your spotty face.’

  A young man of nineteen or twenty entered the room a little sheepishly. Dawson was right: there was at least one blatantly inflamed pimple on his pale face, just below and to the left of the thin nose.

  ‘Smith,’ exclaimed Mr Prothero at the sight of him.

  The boy gave him a belligerent look.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s how we know all about what goes on in the bank, sir.’

  The last word was an open jeer.

  Mr Prothero ignored it.

  ‘You have betrayed your trust,’ he said.

  For all the schoolmasterishness of the remark there was a dignity to it. It was a condemnation.

  For an instant Smith had nothing to answer. Then he gushed words.

  ‘You bet I’ve betrayed my trust,’ he said. ‘What sort of trust do you think you bought for my measly so-called salary? I’m making some real money now, something to make a show with.’

  It was a moment of triumph for him. A declaration of independence.

  But he was not allowed to savour it. His new boss trampled on his fine thoughts just as unfeelingly as his old one had done.

  ‘All right, lad,’ he said, ‘you’ll get your cut.’

  He turned to Mr Prothero.

  ‘So we want your key to the safe-deposit gate, mate,’ he said. ‘Where do you keep it? Over here?’

  He marched down on the well-polished dark-oak bureau.

  Mr Prothero scuttled up behind him.

  ‘Get out of here this instant,’ he said.

  Dawson turned and the two short men stood confronting one another. The indignant cock robin and the small, aggressive bird-of-prey.

  ‘I’ll give you till I count five,’ Mr Prothero said. ‘And then I ring for the police.’

  He glared pointedly at the telephone on top of the bureau, magnificently ignoring the fact that Dawson stood, straddle-legged, between him and it with the salesman Tony and young Smith watching from in front of the cheerful little fire.

  ‘One. Two. Three—’

  ‘Arthur,’ said Mrs Prothero, breaking in unsteadily. ‘Arthur, there are three of them.’

  ‘Leave this to me, Ellen.’

  It was the Manager speaking.

  ‘Four,’ he counted. ‘Five.’

  He gave Dawson a push. He might as well have pushed at a solid stone statue.

  ‘Phone’s cut off anyhow,’ Dawson said, ‘so just let’s have that key.’

  His right hand dipped into the sagging pocket of his open overcoat and came out holding a strip of dulled brass.

  ‘You know what this is?’ he said. ‘It’s the brass knuckles.’

  He slipped the vicious-looking instrument over his fingers.

  ‘Arthur,’ said Mrs Prothero urgently. ‘It’s no good trying to outfight a man like this.’

  ‘Quite right, old lady,’ Dawson said. ‘So come on, cock.’

  ‘No,’ squawked Mr Prothero.

  And he darted sideways to the end of the bureau, picked up the bunch of holly he had put there only a few minutes earlier and rammed it hard into Dawson’s face.

  Dawson gave a howl of agony and Mr Prothero swung sharply on his heel and headed for the open door of the room.

  Only to come bang into collision with yet another intruder, a dark, curly-headed man in a white polo-necked sweater, broad as a barn-door. Mr Prothero was sent staggering backwards.

  And then Dawson, his mottled face pinpointed with blood drops, caught him by the shoulder and swung him round.

  The brass knuckles came up from below with terrible force.

  The crack they made as they hit Mr Prothero’s jaw was like a pistol-shot, clean and sharp. Mr Prothero fell as if he was a tree under the axe. The back of his head struck the black-leaded fireplace surround with a sound that was quieter than Dawson’s blow but as sickening.

  Almost at once Mrs Prothero was on her knees beside him.

  The man at the door spoke.

  ‘What in the name of goodness did you do that for?’ he asked Dawson in a strong Welsh accent.

  ‘You never saw what the bastard did to me,’ Dawson replied sharply. ‘He jabbed that holly right in my face.’ ‘But you shouldn’t have hit him like that, man,’ the newcomer said.

  The Welsh accent enabled him to voice a wealth of shocked dismay.

  But Dawson was not easily put in the wrong.

  ‘Listen, Morgan,’ he said, ‘when I want advice from you I’ll ask for it.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Get over to that desk and look for the key to the gate.’

  Morgan gave one glowering look from his sombrely handsome Welsh face and then went over to the bureau, flapping the front down with unnecessary violence and starting to rummage.

  ‘And where’s the peterman?’ Dawson snapped at him.

  ‘Making himself at home in the bedroom, if you must know,’ Morgan answered.

  ‘Yes, I must know,’ Dawson replied. ‘He’s the bloke who’s going to blow the big safe. He’s important.’

  Morgan’s white-sweatered back eloquently expressed his feelings at the implication that he himself was not important. But he said nothing.

  Down on the floor beside the fireplace Mrs Prothero had been examining her husband with quiet competence. Now she looked up.

  ‘He’s badly hurt,’ she said. ‘He must on no account be disturbed till the doctor’s seen him.’

  ‘No doctor,’ Dawson said.

  It took Mrs Prothero, down on her knees on the floor, some two or three seconds to absorb this. Then she rose in two stiff movements.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said to Dawson, ‘I was a nursing sister for years. I can recognise a serious injury when I see one. My husband must be got to hospital.’

  ‘You’ll have to nurse him here,’ Dawson said brutally. ‘I know your sort. I’ve been in hospital. And right nasty bitches you are. Well, see what good it does him.’

  He glanced down at the tubby little unconscious figure on the floor.

  ‘Here, Morgan,’ he said, ‘you and Tony carry him into the bathroom. That’s right it hasn’t got an outside window?’

  He flicked a look across at the boy Smith, standing where he had been ever since the sudden explosion of violence and looking paler than before.

  ‘I told you,’ the boy said hurriedly. ‘I took a good look round during the party.’

 
; ‘Then get him out,’ Dawson said.

  White-sweatered Morgan and Club-tie Tony exchanged glances, but seemed to find nothing to say. They moved over towards Mr Prothero.

  ‘Don’t jerk him,’ his wife said. ‘Whatever you do don’t jerk.’

  The two of them knelt almost with reverence and slowly lifted Mr Prothero up. Mrs Prothero followed them out, grim-faced.

  Smith scuttled into the little hall of the flat and opened the bathroom door for them.

  In the sitting-room Dawson went over to the bureau and tried to open the top drawer. He had just burst it open with the coal-shovel and had started into it like a gutsy hen with a dish of scraps when Tony came back in.

  ‘She isn’t liking it,’ he said.

  ‘And you’d want her to like it, eh?’ Dawson answered, paying little attention. ‘You’d like everyone to be merry and bright all the way along.’

  Suddenly he swung round.

  ‘Well, they ain’t always merry and bright, not unless they bloody well make sure of it for themselves.’

  In his hand there dangled a ring with two keys on it.

  Tony’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Is that the one?’ he asked.

  ‘ ‘Course it is. That and the front-door mortise here, by the look of it. But there’s fifteen feet of solid earth between us and the bank, so get into that kitchen and get the boards up.’

  At midnight the fire in the sitting-room was still burning well, something quite unprecedented. But the little fireplace was scattered with ash in a fashion which Mrs Prothero would never have tolerated. Above, the tinfoil angels swung in high perturbation.

  But if the empty sitting-room was untidy, the kitchen beyond was chaos. The polished yellow-and-grey linoleum had been torn right across. Three floorboards had been removed wholesale and lay piled beside Mrs Prothero’s ironing-table. The corner of the room where normally the vegetable rack plumply held potatoes, carrots and onions was heaped with chunks of clay and dirt-encrusted brick from the foundations of the flats.

  On the spotlessly kept kitchen table sat Dawson, swinging stubby legs and sipping coffee which Morgan, divested long since of his white sweater, had just made, neatly ranging cups, saucers and teaspoons in a fashion that did credit to his upbringing. Tony, his face dirt-streaked and unhappy, sat exhaustedly on one of Mrs Prothero’s two kitchen chairs. Young Smith, his pimple inflamed to a yet angrier red by hours of hard work, sat on the other, elbows on knees, body slumped.