Crime at Christmas

by Jack Adrian (ed)

  'Eh?' said Joe. 'What's that—safe broken open?'

  The old man nodded.

  'I heered 'em when I was hiding in the pantry. His lordship found that the safe had been opened an' money took. He sent for the constable, and they've got the prince locked up in a room, with the under-gardener and the butler on guard outside the door—’

  He looked down at the frozen turkey in his red, numbed hand; and his lips twitched pathetically.

  'His lordship promised me a turkey and his lordship said I shouldn't have—'

  Joe Runner was a quick thinker. 'Jump up in the truck,' he commanded roughly. 'Where do you live?'

  'About three miles from here,' began Mr Timmins.

  Joe leaned over, and pulled him up, parcel, bag and turkey.

  'Get through into the back, and keep quiet.'

  He leapt down, cranked up the engine with some difficulty, and sent the little trolley lumbering on to the main road. When he passed three officers in a police car speeding towards Carfane Hall his heart was in his mouth, but he was not challenged. Presently, at the urgent desire of the old man, he stopped at the end of a row of cottages.

  'Gawd bless you, mister!' whimpered Mr Timmins. 'I'll never do a thing like this again.’

  'Hi!' said Joe sternly. 'What do I get out of this?'

  And then, as the recollection of a debt came to him:

  'Leave the turkey—and hop!'

  Mr Timmins hopped.

  It was nine o'clock on Christmas morning, and Angela Willett had just finished her packing.

  Outside the skies were dark and cheerless, snow and rain were falling together, so that this tiny furnished room had almost a palatial atmosphere in comparison with the drear world outside.

  'I suppose it's too early to cook the sausages—by the way, our train leaves at ten tonight, so we needn't invent ways of spending the evening—come in.'

  It was Joe the Runner, rather wet but smiling. He carried under his arm something wrapped in an old newspaper.

  'Excuse me, miss,' he said, as he removed the covering, 'but a gent I met in the street asked me to give you this.'

  'A turkey!' gasped Angela. 'How wonderful. . .who was it?'

  'I don't know, miss—an old gentleman,' said Joe vaguely. 'He said "Be sure an' give it to the young lady herself—wishin' her a happy Christmas".'

  They gazed on the carcase in awe and ecstasy. As the front door slammed, announcing Joe's hasty departure:

  'An old gentleman,' said Angela slowly. 'Uncle Peter!'

  'Uncle grandmother!' smiled John. 'I believe he stole it!'

  'How uncharitable you are!' she reproached him. 'It's the sort of thing Uncle Peter would do. He always had that Haroun al Raschid complex—I wrote and told him we were leaving for Canada tonight. I'm sure it was he.'

  Half-convinced, John Willett prodded at the bird. It seemed a little tough.

  'Anyway, it's turkey,' he said, 'And, darling, I adore turkey stuffed with chestnuts. I wonder if there are any shops open

  There was a large cavity at one end of the bird, and as he lifted the turkey up by the neck, the better to examine it, something dropped to the table with a flop. It was a tight roll of paper. He shook the bird again and a second fell from its unoffending body.

  'Good God!' gasped John.

  With trembling hands he cut the string that bound the roll

  'It's money!' she whispered.

  John nodded.

  'Hundred dollar bills. . .five hundred of them at least!' he said hollowly.

  Their eyes met.

  'Uncle Peter!' she breathed. 'The darling!'

  Mr Peter Elmer, the eminent ship owner, received the following day a telegram which was entirely meaningless:

  Thank you a thousand times for your thought and generosity. You have given us a wonderful start and we shall be worthy of your splendid kindness.

  It was signed 'Angela'. Mr Peter Elmer scratched his head.

  And at that moment Inspector Mailing was interrogating Harry the Valet in the little police station at Carfane.

  'Now come across, Harry,' he said kindly. 'We know you got the money out of the safe. Where did you plant it? You couldn't have taken it far, because the butler saw you leaving the room. Just tell us where the money is, and I'll make it all right for you when you come up in front of the old man.'

  'I don't know what you're talking about,' said Harry the Valet, game to the last.

  Back to Table of Contents

  10 - No Room at the Inn by BILL PRONZINI

  BILL PRONZINI (b. 1943) is a writer to his fingertips, a pro of the first water. This does not mean to say he particularly enjoys writing; he doesn't. Particularly. Show me the writer who leaps out of bed every morning, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, just raring to tackle that ol' typewriter, and I'll show you a nitwit. Writing's fine when the burn is on and every word's a gem, every paragraph seems fresh-minted, but otherwise what we're talking is mostly hard graft, and since the late 1960s Bill Pronzini has certainly done his share of that.

  Thus far, he must have had a hand in well over eighty books, over half of which have been detective stories or novels of suspense, either under his own name or one or two pseudonyms, either solo or in collaboration (Pronzini is known as one of the most simpatico collabs in the business). He's edited (again, alone or with others) quantities of anthologies in the mystery, horror, SF and Western genres, often rescuing fine old-time writers from an oblivion they didn't deserve. He's written maybe 180 short stories, maybe more (and there are some real twist-ending stunners amongst them). He even did a stint producing torrid paperbacks for the sex market, but that was long ago and far away, and in any case his sense of the absurd kept getting in the way of the action.

  Bill's main series detective has no name. This was not deliberate. He just didn't bother to fix a handle on his PI narrator in the first couple of books and then (for probably the only time in his career) couldn't figure out a way of dropping a name into the narrative without it appearing crass. So nameless he was and 'Nameless' he's become.

  'Nameless' is terribly real. He's gruff, he's intelligent, he gets depressed, he has a mordant sense of humour, he panics about his health, he does stupid things and he does smart things; he has his highs and his lows. I do sometimes think that a capricious Fate slaps the poor so-and-so around just a little too much, but otherwise 'Nameless' seems to me to be one of the most flesh-and-blood fictional characters around.

  But what I really admire are Pronzini's novels of suspense—such as Games (1977), Night Screams (1979, with Barry Malzberg), Masques (1981) and The Lighthouse (1987, with Marcia Muller)—which are just that: chilling exercises in pure wired-up tension. The kind of books where you're gritting your teeth so hard over the last fifty-odd pages that 'The End' brings little immediate relief, especially as he usually has some savage and unforeseen (but always fairly, if subliminally,

  signalled) twist all ready and waiting for you, the final sucker-punch that leaves you twitching. Sheer class.

  Bill also writes a nifty Western. Secretly, he's hooked on oaters and has been since devouring copies of Dime Western, Thrilling Western, Texas Rangers, .44 Western and a slew of other titles as a kid. So to tempt him to do an original story for this anthology, it seemed wisest to hit him where he's weakest.

  A Western? In Crime At Christmas? Ah, but its hero, John Quincannon, is a fully-fledged, no-nonsense detective—who has already appeared, incidentally, in Quincannon (1985) and the ingeniously-plotted Beyond The Grave (1986, with Marcia Muller). And it all happens on a wild night in the Sierra Nevada—the night of 24 December 1894. . .

  WHEN the snowstorm started, Quincannon was high up in a sparsely populated section of the Sierra Nevada—alone except for his rented horse, with not much idea of where he was and no idea at all of where Slick Henry Garber was.

  And as if all of that wasn't enough, it was almost nightfall on Christmas Eve.

  The storm had caught him by surprise. The winter sky had bee
n clear when he'd set out from Big Creek in mid-morning, and it had stayed clear until two hours ago; then the clouds had commenced piling up rapidly, the way they sometimes did in this high-mountain country, getting thicker and darker-veined until the whole sky was the colour of moiling coal smoke. The wind had sharpened to an icy breath that buffeted both him and the ewe-necked strawberry roan. And now, at dusk, the snow flurries had begun—thick Hakes driven and agitated by the wind so that the pine and spruce forests through which the trail climbed were a misty blur and he could see no more than forty or fifty feet ahead.

  He rode huddled inside his fleece-lined long coat and rabbit-fur mittens and cap, feeling sorry for himself and at the same time cursing himself for a rattlepate. If he had paid more mind to that build-up of clouds, he would have realized the need to find shelter much sooner than he had. As it was, he had begun looking too late. So far no cabin or mine-shaft or cave or suitable gegraphical configuration had presented itself—not one place in all this vast wooded emptiness where he and the roan could escape the snapping teeth of the storm.

  A man had no sense wandering around an unfamiliar mountain wilderness on the night before Christmas, even if he was a manhunter by trade and a greedy glory-hound by inclination. He ought to be home in front of a blazing fire, roasting chestnuts in the company of a good woman. Sabina, for instance. Dear, sweet Sabina, waiting for him back in San Francisco. Not by his hearth or in his bed, curse the luck, but at least in the Market Street offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.

  Well, it was his own fault that he was alone up here, freezing to death in a snowstorm. In the first place he could have refused the job of tracking down Slick Henry Garber when it was offered to him by the West Coast Banking Association two weeks ago. In the second place he could have decided not to come to Big Creek to investigate a report that Slick Henry and his satchel full of counterfeit mining stock were in the vicinity. And in the third place he could have remained in Big Creek this morning when Slick Henry managed to elude his clutches and flee even higher into these blasted mountains.

  But no, Rattlepate John Quincannon had done none of those sensible things. Instead he had accepted the Banking Association's fat fee, thinking only of that and of the additional $5000 reward for Slick Henry's apprehension or demise being offered by a mining coalition in Colorado and of the glory of nabbing the most notorious—and the most dangerous—confidence trickster operating west of the Rockies in this year of 1894. Then, after tracing his quarry to Big Creek, he had not only bungled the arrest but made a second mistake in setting out on Slick Henry's trail with the sublime confidence of an unrepentant sinner looking for the Promised Land—only to lose that trail two hours ago, at a road fork, just before he made his third mistake of the day by underestimating the weather.

  Christmas, he thought. 'Tis the season to be jolly. Bah. Humbug.

  Ice particles now clung to his beard, his eyebrows; kept trying to freeze his eyelids shut. He had continually to rub his eyes clear in order to see where he was going. Which, now, in full darkness, was along the rim of a snow-skinned meadow that had opened up on his left. The wind was even fiercer here, without a single tree to deflect its force. Quincannon shivered and huddled and cursed, and felt sorrier for himself by the minute.

  He should never have decided to join forces with Sabina and open a detective agency. She had been happy with her position as a female operative with the Pinkerton Agency's Denver office; he had been more or less content working in the San Francisco office of the United States Secret Service. What had possessed him to suggest, not long after their first professional meeting, that they pool their talents? Well, he knew the answer to that well enough. Sabina had possessed him. Dear, sweet, un-seducible, infuriating Sabina. . .

  Was that light ahead?

  He scrubbed at his eyes and leaned forward in the saddle, squinting. Yes, light—lamplight. He had just come around a jog in the trail, away from the open meadow, and there it was, ahead on his right: a faint glowing rectangle in the night's churning white-and-black. He could just make out the shapes of buildings, too, in what appeared to be a clearing before a sheer rock face.

  The lamplight and the buildings changed Quincannon's bleak remonstrations into murmurs of thanksgiving. He urged the stiff-legged and balky roan into a quicker pace. The buildings took on shape and definition as he approached. There were three of them, grouped in a loose triangle; two appeared to be cabins, fashioned of rough-hewn logs and planks, each with a sloping roof, while the bulkiest structure had the look of a barn. The larger cabin, the one with the lighted window, was set between the other two and farther back near the base of the rock wall.

  A lane led off the trail to the buildings. Quincannon couldn't see it under its covering of snow, but he knew it was there by a painted board sign nailed to one of the trees at the intersection. TRAVELLER'S REST, the sign said, and below that, in smaller letters, Meals and Lodging. One of the tiny roadhouses, then, that dotted the Sierras and catered to prospectors, hunters, and foolish wilderness wayfarers such as himself.

  It was possible, he thought as he turned past the sign, that Slick Henry Garber had come this way and likewise been drawn to the Traveller's Rest. Which would allow Quincannon to make amends today, after all, for his earlier bungling, and perhaps even permit him to spend Christmas Day in the relative comfort of the Big Creek Hotel. Given his recent run of foul luck, however, such a serendipitous turnabout was as likely to happen as Sabina presenting him, on his return to San Francisco, with the holiday gift he most desired.

  Nevertheless, caution here was indicated. So despite the warmth promised by the lamplit window, he rode at an off-angle toward the barn. There was also the roan's welfare to consider. He would have to pay for the animal if it froze to death while in his charge.

  If he was being observed from within the lighted cabin, it was covertly: no one came out and no one showed himself in the window. At the barn he dismounted, took himself and the roan inside, struggled to reshut the doors against the howling thrust of the wind. Blackness surrounded him, heavy with the smells of animals and hay and oiled leather. He stripped off both mittens, found a lucifer in one of his pockets and scraped it alight. The barn lantern hung from a hook near the doors; he reached up to light the wick. Now he could see that there were eight stalls, half of which were occupied: three saddle horses and one work horse, each nibbling a pile of hay. He didn't bother to examine the saddle horses because he had no idea what type of animal Slick Henry had been riding. He hadn't got close enough to his quarry all day to get a look at him or his transportation.

  He led the roan into an empty stall, unsaddled it, left it there munching a hay supper of its own. Later, he would ask the owner of Traveller's Rest to come out and give the beast a proper rubdown. With his hands mittened again he braved the storm on foot, slogging through calf-deep snow to the lighted cabin.

  Still no one came out or appeared at the window. He moved along the front wall, stopped to peer through the rimed window glass. What he could see of the big parlour inside was uninhabited. He ploughed ahead to the door.

  It was against his nature to walk unannounced into the home of a stranger, mainly because it was a fine way to get shot, but in this case he had no choice. He could have shouted himself hoarse in competition with the storm before anyone heard him. Thumping on the door would be just as futile; the wind was already doing that. Again he stripped off his right mitten, opened his coat for easy access to the Remington Navy revolver he carried at his waist, unlatched the door with his left hand, and cautiously let the wind push him inside.

  The entire parlour was deserted. He leaned back hard against the door to get it closed again and then called out, 'Hello the house! Company!' No one answered.

  He stood scraping snowcake off his face, slapping it off his clothing. The room was warm: a log fire crackled merrily on the hearth, banking somewhat because it hadn't been fed in a while. Two lamps were lit in here, another in wha
t looked to be a dining room adjacent. Near the hearth, a cut spruce reached almost to the raftered ceiling; it was festooned with Christmas decorations—strung popcorn and bright-coloured beads, stubs of tallow candles in bent can tops, snippets of fleece from some old garment sprinkled on the branches to resemble snow, a five-pointed star atop the uppermost branch.

  All very cosy and inviting, but where were the occupants? He called out again, and again received no response. He cocked his head to listen. Heard only the plaint of the storm and the snicking of flung snow against the windowpane—no sound at all within the cabin.

  He crossed the parlour, entered the dining room. The puncheon table was set for two, and in fact two people had been eating there not so long ago. A clay pot of venison stew sat in the centre of the table; when he touched it he found it and its contents still slightly warm. Ladlings of stew and slices of bread were on each of the two plates.

  The hair began to pull along the nape of his neck, as it always did when he sensed a wrongness to things. Slick Henry? Or something else? With his hand now gripping the butt of his Navy, he eased his way through a doorway at the rear of the dining room.

  Kitchen and larder. Stove still warm, a kettle atop it blackening smokily because all the water it had contained had boiled away. Quincannon transferred the kettle to the sink drainboard. Moved then to another closed door that must lead to a bedroom, the last of the cabin's rooms. He depressed the latch and pushed the door wide.

  Bedroom, indeed. And as empty as the other three rooms. But there were two odd things here: the sash of a window in the far wall was raised a few inches; and on the floor was the base of a lamp that had been dropped or knocked off the bedside table. Snow coated the window sill and there was a sifting of it on the floor and on the lamp base.