Crime at Christmas

by Jack Adrian (ed)

  Purvis shouldered the pack, got it steady on his back, and made sure his gun was ready. Then he picked up the little string of sleigh bells and jangled them. At the shrill tintinnabulation they gave off he grinned, and stepped over the roof coping onto the fire escape.

  'Reindeer, huh?' he said aloud. 'But the guy who drives them carries a scythe, not a pack of gifts.'

  Lippy, a little man with a large, loose mouth and ferret eyes, crouching at the glassless window of the building across the 'El' tracks from the St Francis Home, heard the childish voices of the singing orphans rise on the night air and grinned.

  It came upon a midnight clear. . .

  'The kids are a little early,' he remarked. 'It ain't hardly nine-thirty. But they're right about its coming. Any minute now.'

  He coughed. The room smelled of paint and plaster, and since there was no window in the frame, it was bitterly cold.

  'Hasn't he come yet?' the girl asked tensely. She ground a cigarette beneath her shoe and tossed it out the window. 'Oh, I wish he'd come. I want to get this over with.'

  That glorious song of old. . .

  'We don't have to do it if you don't wana,' Lippy said, and pulled his coat tighter about his throat.

  'Yes, we do!' the girl whispered shrilly. 'We have to do it. We have to!'

  'Well, if we have to, we have to,' Lippy said, 'Personally, if it's got to be done, we couldn't think of no better way. Here we are in a building no one else is in, not thirty yards away. Nobody to hear us, nobody to see us come or go.

  'Then there's the "El." A train's bound to go by the right time. We couldn't want a sweeter setup.'

  'Oh, I don't want to do it,' the girl half-sobbed. Then her voice stiffened with desperate resolution. 'But we have to Lippy! We have to, don't we?'

  'Yeah, I guess we do,' Lippy agreed, and turned his attention again to the building across the street where the fire escape cut a black spidery line past tall lighted windows.

  From angels bending near the earth. . .

  'Hey!' he said suddenly. 'Listen!'

  They both heard it plainly—the little jingle of sleigh bells. Then they both saw the figure that appeared above the roof coping across the street, silhouetted for a moment against the sky—the bulbous-stomached figure with the beard, the tasselled cap, and the pack on his back, starting carefully down the spidery black fire escape toward the lighted windows below.

  'Here comes a train,' the girl whispered shakily.

  'I hear it.' Lippy Hung away a cigarette and kneeled at the window. 'He'll get opposite the first window just as it comes by,' he announced.

  To pluck their harps of gold. . .

  Then the downtown 'El' train came roaring along, and suddenly it was opposite them, filling the canyon of the narrow street with thundering sound. And at the same moment the bulky figure on the fire escape opposite became silhouetted clearly against the first lighted window.

  Red leaned forward, her throat so tight she could hardly breathe. Unhurriedly, Lippy lifted the rifle in his hand to his shoulder, gave a little mmm, and tightened his finger. A tiny pencil of flame leaped outward and was gone. The noise of the shot was sucked away by the roaring elevated express.

  But across the street the figure on the lire escape was swaying, tottering. Then it fell. It fell headlong down the iron steps, the pack on its back splitting open and tumbling small white packages into the air like a flurry of monster snowflakes.

  The somersaulting figure rocketed against the guard rail of the fire escape and went over, plummeting downward.

  From the street below came a solid crunching sound. Then, with eerie macabreness, a startled jingling of sleigh bells as the little strip of bells fell beside the dark spot in the snow in the alley far beneath.

  Then—nothing.

  Lippy took the gun apart swiftly, put it in a gayly wrapped package that looked like a Christmas present and moved toward the door.

  'Come on, Red,' he said. 'That does it. There's our Christmas present to Ed. Just what he asked for—that damned McElroy's life.'

  Red followed him. 'We had to do it,' she half-laughed and half-cried hysterically. 'We had to. Ed himself told me how easy it would be to do tonight, and we had to do it. Because we'd never get another chance. And because if we didn't kill him, Ed would, when he gets out.

  'But now he won't have to. Now he won't have to kill McElroy. And so they won't take him away from me. Because we did it, and now Ed will be with me always and they won't take him away. We'll just be happy together, like I've always wanted to be, and I'll have him forever—'

  Then her sobbing voice was gone too. Only the children's voices were left, singing in the stillness of the night.

  Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,

  From heaven's all gracious King;

  The world in golden stillness lay

  To hear the angels sing.

  Back to Table of Contents

  15 - The Santa Claus Club by JULIAN SYMONS

  LITERARY critic, social historian, biographer, and poet, Julian Symons (b. 1912) is also one of detective fiction's most distinguished practitioners, although his first crime novel, The Immaterial Murder Case (1945), was conceived as a joke (with his friend and fellow-poet Ruthven Todd, who was himself to write several mildly eccentric detective stories as 'R.T. Campbell').

  Perhaps some of Symons's early work is a bit larky, and there are times when jarring thriller-elements intrude—The Paper Chase (1956) in particular is a bizarre mix of Edgar Wallace plot (criminal's fortune hidden in old house) with strong traces of Dashiell Hammett (blazing shoot-outs; a Gutman/Wilmer relationship). He didn't mind occasionally taking on oddball projects like 'The What's My Line Murder', with British tele-personality Gilbert Harding as a distinctly grouchy sleuth, and 'Cup Final Kidnap', featuring Bolton Wanderers' wizard Nat Lofthouse in a central role (although oddball or not, both were ingeniously plotted and entertainingly presented).

  But by the late-1950s Symons had pretty well served his apprenticeship and settled down to chart 'Subtopia' (neither town nor country, a territory he was to make his own) and explore the strange and at times horrific other-lives led by the outwardly respectable: sometimes to really chilling effect, as in The Players And The Game (1972), loosely based on the British Moors Murders.

  Quite often his plots derive from real events, real people. The captain of industry who is by no means a man of probity—notably Johnny Bogue in The Paper Chase; Ocky Gaye in The Killing of Francie Lake (1962)—is clearly modelled on the notorious swindler Horatio Bottomley (Symons wrote an excellent biography of him in 1955); The Belting Inheritance (1965) has strong echoes of the Tichbourne Claimant case; the Thomas Wise literary forgeries are utilized in Bland Beginning (1949).

  Not that Symons merely rehashes ancient history. He uses it to point up his most persistent theme: how tenuous the link between illusion and reality, how easily it snaps; how catastrophic the results. Symons specializes in dark secrets, disquieting secrets; revelations that shock and disturb (and for this reason, although for others as well, The Blackheath Poisonings is still one of my own Top Ten detective novels published since the War). Rub away the veneer and there are some pretty odd coves out there. Or perhaps not so odd, Symons implies. Perhaps the really odd ones are those with no mental blemishes, no emotional scars, no dark thoughts bubbling away under a bland mask of flesh. And perhaps there aren't too many of those around.

  His short stories—especially those written in the more liberated climate of the past twenty-odd years—are often as unsettling as his novels, and sometimes have been used as jumping-off points for full-length books (like 'The Main Chance': later expanded into one of his most darkly ironical novels, The Man Whose Dreams Came True). For those who enjoy the fresh approach Symons's The Great Detectives (1981) is essential reading (beg, buy, or steal it). A tour de force by anybody's standards, it features Symons himself investigating, sometimes interviewing, characters as diverse as Holmes, Maigret, Archie Goodwin, and Philip
Marlowe.

  In England, the Second World War killed off most of the markets for short fiction, but during the 1950s there were still one or two outlets—magazines like John Bull and Argosy, newspapers like the London Evening Standard—and writers made the most of them. Dig deep and you find gold, some of it collected in book form much later, a good deal of it still unreprinted.

  Series characters abounded (a hangover from pre-War days). Michael Gilbert had a small host of heroes: Chief Inspector Hazlerigg; lawyers Nap Rumbold and Henry Bohun; Sergeant, later Inspector, Patrick Petrella. Edmund Crispin had Gervase Fen. John Appleby had Inspector Innes; Michael Innes had Sir John Appleby (one wonders what each thought of the other). All were likable characters. Julian Symon's sleuth was Francis Quarles.

  The real Francis Quarles was a pamphleteer, pedant, and prosy poet who had a mind, according to the Worthy Dr Fuller, 'biased to devotion' (a lowering phrase if ever I heard one), and whose Emblems (1635) is a work of unspeakable tedium. The fictional Quarles (nice touch) is a donnish know-it-all whose superior manner, in real life, would invite a good kick in the ankles.

  But he's a very good detective. . .

  IT IS not often, in real life, that letters are written recording implacable hatred nursed over the years, or that private detectives are invited by peers to select dining clubs, or that murders occur at such dining clubs, or that they are solved on the spot by a process of deduction. The case of the Santa Claus Club provided an example of all these rarities.

  The case began one day a week before Christmas, when Francis Quarles went to see Lord Acrise. He was a rich man, Lord Acrise, and an important one, the chairman of this big building concern and director of that and the other insurance company, and consultant to the Government on half a dozen matters. He had been a harsh, intolerant man in his prime, and was still hard enough in his early seventies, Quarles guessed, as he looked at the beaky nose, jutting chin and stony blue eyes.

  They sat in the study of Acrise's house just off the Brompton Road.

  'Just tell me what you think of these,' Lord Acrise said.

  These were three letters, badly typed on a machine with a worn ribbon. They were all signed with the name James Gliddon. The first two contained vague references to some wrong done to Gliddon by Acrise in the past. They were written in language that was wild but unmistakably threatening. You have been a whited sepulchre for too long, but now your time has come. . . You don't know what I'm going to do, now I've come back, but you won't be able to help wondering and worrying. . . The mills of God grind slowly, but they're going to grind you into little bits for what you've done to me.

  The third letter was more specific. So the thief is going to play Santa Claus. That will be your last evening alive. I shall be there, Joe Acrise, and I shall watch with pleasure as you squirm in agony.

  Quarles looked at the envelopes. They were plain and cheap. The address was typed, and the word Personal was on top of each envelope.

  'Who is James Gliddon?' he asked.

  The stony eyes glared at him. 'I'm told you're to be trusted. Gliddon was a school friend of mine. We grew up together in the slums of Nottingham. We started a building company together. It did well for a time, then went bust. There was a lot of money missing. Gliddon kept the books. He got five years for fraud.'

  'Have you heard from him since then? I see all these letters are recent.'

  'He's written half a dozen letters, I suppose, over the years. The last one came—oh, seven years ago, I should think. From the Argentine.' Acrise stopped, then added abruptly, 'Snewin tried to find him for me, but he'd disappeared.'

  'Snewin?'

  'My secretary. Been with me twelve years.'

  He pressed a bell. An obsequious, fattish man, whose appearance somehow put Quarles in mind of an enormous mouse, scurried in.

  'Snewin—did we keep any of those old letters from Gliddon?'

  'No sir. You told me to destroy them.'

  'The last ones came from the Argentine, right?'

  'From Buenos Aires, to be exact, sir.'

  Acrise nodded, and Snewin scurried out.

  Quarles said, 'Who else knows this story about Gliddon?'

  'Just my wife.'

  'And what does this mean about you playing Santa Claus?'

  'I'm this year's chairman of the Santa Claus Club. We hold our raffle and dinner next Monday.'

  Then Quarles remembered. The Santa Claus Club had been formed by ten rich men. Each year they met, every one of them dressed up as Santa Claus, and held a raffle. The members took it in turn to provide the prize that was raffled—it might be a case of Napoleon brandy, a modest cottage with some exclusive salmon fishing rights attached to it, or a Constable painting. Each Santa Claus bought one ticket for the raffle, at a cost of one thousand guineas. The total often thousand guineas was given to a Christmas charity. After the raffle the assembled Santa Clauses, each accompanied by one guest, ate a traditional English Christmas dinner.

  The whole thing was a combination of various English characteristics: enjoyment of dressing up; a wish to help charities; and the desire also that the help given should not go unrecorded.

  'I want you to find Gliddon,' Lord Acrise said. 'Don't mistake me, Mr Quarles. I don't want to take action against him, I want to help him. I wasn't to blame, don't think I admit that, but it was hard that Jimmy Gliddon should go to jail. I'm a hard man, have been all my life, but I don't think my worst enemies would call me mean. Those who've helped me know that when I die they'll find they're not forgotten. Jimmy Gliddon must be an old man now. I'd like to set him up for the rest of his life.'

  'To find him by next Monday is a tall order,' Quarles said. 'But I'll try.'

  He was at the door when Acrise said, 'By the way, I'd like you to be my guest at the Club dinner on Monday night. . .'

  There were two ways of trying to find Gliddon; by investigation of his career after leaving prison, and through the typewritten letters. Quarles took the job of tracing the past, leaving the letters to his secretary, Molly Player.

  From Scotland Yard he found out that Gliddon had spent nearly four years in prison, from 1913 to late 1916. He had joined a Nottinghamshire regiment when he came out, and the records of this regiment showed that he had been demobilised in August, 1919, with the rank of Sergeant. In 1923 he had been given a sentence of three years for an attempt to smuggle diamonds. Thereafter all trace of him in Britain vanished.

  Quarles made some expensive telephone calls to Buenos Aires, where the letters had come from seven years earlier. He learned that Gliddon had lived in that city from a time just after the Second World War until 1955. He ran an import-export business, and was thought to have been living in other South American Republics during the war. His business was said to have been a cloak for smuggling, both of drugs and of suspected Nazis, whom he got out of Europe into the Argentine. In 1955 a newspaper had accused Gliddon of arranging the entry into the Argentine of a Nazi war criminal named Hermann Breit. Gliddon disappeared. A couple of weeks later a battered body was washed up just outside the city.

  'It was identified as Senor Gliddon,' the liquid voice said over the telephone. 'But you know, Senor Quarles, in such matters the police are sometimes unhappy to close their files.'

  'There was still some doubt?"

  'Yes. Not very much, perhaps. But in these cases there is often a measure of doubt.'

  Molly Player found out nothing useful about the paper and envelopes. They were of the sort that could be bought in a thousand stores and shops in London and elsewhere. She had no more luck with the typewriter.

  Lord Acrise made no comment on Quarles' recital of failure. 'See you on Monday evening, seven-thirty, black tie,' he said, and barked with laughter. 'Your host will be Santa Claus. '

  'I'd like to be there earlier.'

  'Good idea. Any time you like. You know where it is? Robert the Devil Restaurant. . .'

  The Robert the Devil Restaurant is situated inconspicuously in Mayfair. It is not
a restaurant in the ordinary sense of the word, for there is no public dining-room, but simply several private rooms accommodating any number of guests from two to thirty. Perhaps the food is not quite the best in London, but it is certainly the most expensive.

  It was here that Quarles arrived at half-past six, a big, suave man, rather too conspicuously elegant perhaps in a midnight-blue dinner jacket. He talked to Albert, the maitre d’hôtel, whom he had known for some years, took an unobtrusive look at the waiters, went into and admired the sparkling kitchens.

  Albert observed his activities with tolerant amusement.

  'You are here on some sort of business, Mr Quarles?'

  'I am a guest, Albert. I am also a kind of bodyguard. Tell me, how many of your waiters have joined you in the past twelve months?'

  'Perhaps half a dozen. They come, they go—'

  'Is there anybody at all on your staff—waiters, kitchen staff, anybody—who has joined you in the past year, and who is over sixty years old?'

  'No. There is not such a one.'

  The first of the guests came just after a quarter-past seven. This was the brain surgeon Sir James Erdington, with a guest whom Quarles recognized as the Arctic explorer, Norman Endell. After that they came at intervals of a minute or two: a junior minister in the Government; one of the three most important men in the motor industry; a general elevated to the peerage to celebrate his retirement; a theatrical producer named Roddy Davis, who had successfully combined commerce and culture.

  As they arrived, the hosts went into a special robing room to put on their Santa Claus clothes, while the guests drank sherry.