Christmas Is Murder

by Val McDermid

  We watched the rest of the film then decided to go up to bed. As we walked through the hall, I went to switch off the lights on the Christmas tree. ‘Leave them,’ Diana said. ‘Edmund will turn them off when he comes in. It’s tradition – last to bed does the tree.’ She smiled reminiscently. ‘The number of times I’ve come back from parties in the early hours and seen the tree shining down the drive.’

  About an hour later, the storm broke. We were reading in bed when a clap of thunder as loud as a bomb blast crashed over the house. Then a rattle of machine-gun fire against the window. We clutched each other in surprise, though heaven knows we’ve never needed an excuse. Diana slipped out of bed and pulled back one of the heavy damask curtains so we could watch the hail pelt the window and the bolts of lightning flash jagged across the sky. It raged for nearly half an hour. Diana and I played the game of counting the gap between thunderclaps and lightning flashes, which told us the storm seemed to be circling Amberley itself, moving off only to come back and blast us again with lightning and hail.

  Eventually it moved off to the west, occasional flashes lighting up the distant hills. Somehow, it seemed the right time to make love. As we lay together afterwards, revelling in the luxury of satiated sensuality, the lights suddenly went out. ‘Damn,’ Diana drawled. ‘Bloody storm’s got the electrics on the blink.’ She stirred. ‘I’d better go down and check the fuse box.’

  I grabbed her. ‘Leave it,’ I urged. ‘Edmund can do it when he comes in. We’re all warm and sleepy. Besides, I might get lonely.’

  Diana chuckled and snuggled back into my arms. Moments later, the lights came back on again. ‘See?’ I said. ‘No need. Probably a problem at the local sub-station because of the weather.’

  I woke up just after seven the following morning, full of the joys of spring. We were due to go back to London after lunch, so I decided to sneak out for an early morning walk in the copse. I dressed without waking Diana and slipped out of the silent house.

  The path from the house to the copse was well-trodden. There had been no fresh snow since Christmas Eve, and the path was well used, since it was a short cut both to the Dower House and the village. There were even mountain-bike tracks among the scattered boot prints. The trees, an elderly mixture of beech, birch, alder, oak and ash, still held their tracery of snow on the tops of some branches, though following the storm a mild thaw had set in. As I moved into the wood, I felt drips of melting snow on my head.

  In the middle of the copse, there’s a clearing fringed with silver birch trees. When she was little, Diana was convinced this was the place where the fairies came to recharge their magic. There was no magic in the clearing that morning. As soon as I emerged from the trees, I saw Edmund’s body, sprawled under a single silver birch tree by the path on the far side.

  For a moment, I was frozen with shock. Then I rushed forward and crouched down beside him. I didn’t need to feel for a pulse. He was clearly long dead, his right hand blackened and burned.

  I can’t remember the next hours. Apparently, I went to the Dower House and roused Evie. I blurted out what I’d seen and she called the police. I have a vague recollection of her staggering slightly as I broke the news, but I was in shock and I have no recollection of what she said. Diana arrived soon afterwards. When her mother told her what had happened, she stared numbly at me for a moment, then tears poured down her face. None of us seemed eager to be the one to break the news to Jane. Eventually, as if by mutual consent, we waited until the police arrived. We merited two uniformed constables, plus two plain-clothes detectives. In the words of Noël Coward, Detective Inspector Maggie Staniforth would not have fooled a drunken child of two and a half. As soon as Evie introduced me as her daughter’s partner, DI Staniforth thawed visibly. I didn’t much care at that point. I was too numbed even to take in what they were saying. It sounded like the distant mutter of bees in a herb garden.

  DI Staniforth set off with her team to examine the body while Diana and I, after a muttered discussion in the corner, informed Evie that we would go and tell Jane. We found her in the kitchen drinking a mug of coffee. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen my husband,’ she said in tones of utter contempt when we walked in. ‘He didn’t have the courage to come home last night.’

  Diana sat down next to Jane and flashed me a look of panic. I stepped forward. ‘I’m sorry, Jane, but there’s been an accident.’ In moments of crisis, why is it we always reach for the nearest cliché?

  Jane looked at me as if I were speaking Swahili. ‘An accident?’ she asked in a macabre echo of Dame Edith Evans’s ‘A handbag?’

  ‘Edmund’s dead,’ Diana blurted out. ‘He was struck by lightning in the wood. Coming home from the village.’

  As she spoke, a wave of nausea surged through me. I thought I was going to faint. I grabbed the edge of the table. Diana’s words robbed the muscles in my legs of their strength and I lurched into the nearest chair. Up until that point, I’d been too dazed with shock to realise the conclusion everyone but me had come to.

  Jane looked blankly at Diana. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Diana said, the tears starting again, flowing down her cheeks.

  ‘I’m not,’ Jane said. ‘He can’t stop my child growing up in Amberley now.’

  Diana turned white. ‘You bitch,’ she said wonderingly.

  At least I knew then what I had to do.

  Maggie Staniforth arrived shortly after to interview me. ‘It’s just a formality,’ she said. ‘It’s obvious what happened. He was walking home in the storm and was struck by lightning as he passed under the birch tree.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I’m afraid not,’ I said. ‘Edmund was murdered.’

  Her eyebrows rose. ‘You’re still in shock. I’m afraid there are no suspicious circumstances.’

  ‘Maybe not to you. But I know different.’

  Credit where it’s due, she heard me out. But the sceptical look never left her eyes. ‘That’s all very well,’ she said eventually. ‘But if what you’re saying is true, there’s no way of proving it.’

  I shrugged. ‘Why don’t you look for fingerprints? Either in the plug of the Christmas tree lights, or on the main fuse box. When he was electrocuted, the lights fused. At the time, Diana and I thought it was a glitch in the mains supply, but we know better now. Jane would have had to rewire the plug and the socket to cover her tracks. And she must have gone down to the cellar to repair the fuse or turn the circuit breaker back on. She wouldn’t have had occasion to touch those in the usual run of things. I doubt she’d even have good reason to know where the fuse box is. Try it,’ I urged.

  And that’s how Evie came to be charged with the murder of her son. If I’d thought things through, if I’d waited till my brain was out of shock, I’d have realised that Jane would never have risked her baby by hauling Edmund’s body over the crossbar of his mountain bike and wheeling him out to the copse. Besides, she probably believed she could use his love for her to persuade him to change his mind. Evie didn’t have that hope to cling to.

  If I’d realised it was Diana’s mother who killed Edmund, I doubt very much if I’d have shared my esoteric knowledge with DI Staniforth. It’s a funny business, New Age medicine. When I attended a seminar on the healing powers of plants given by a Native American medicine man, I never thought his wisdom would help me prove a murder.

  Maybe Evie will get lucky. Maybe she’ll get a jury reluctant to convict in a case that rests on the inexplicable fact that lightning never strikes birch trees.

  A Wife in a Million

  The woman strolled through the supermarket, choosing a few items for her basket. As she reached the display of sauces and pickles, a muscle in her jaw tightened. She looked around, willing herself to appear casual. No one watched. Swiftly she took a jar of tomato pickle from her large leather handbag and placed it on the shelf. She moved on to the frozen meat section.

  A few minutes later, she passed down the same aisle and paused. She repeated the exercise, this time adding two more
jars to the shelf. As she walked on to the checkout, she felt tension slide from her body, leaving her light-headed.

  She stood in the queue, anonymous among the morning shoppers, another neat woman in a well-cut winter coat, a faint smile on her face and a strangely unfocused look in her pale blue eyes.

  Sarah Graham was sprawled on the sofa reading the Situations Vacant in the Burnalder Evening News when she heard the car pull up the drive. Sighing, she dropped the paper and went through to the kitchen. By the time she had pulled the cork from a bottle of elderflower wine and poured two glasses, the front door had opened and closed. Sarah stood, glasses in hand, facing the kitchen door.

  Detective Sergeant Maggie Staniforth came into the kitchen, took the proffered glass and kissed Sarah perfunctorily. She walked into the living room and slumped in a chair, calling over, ‘And what kind of day have you had?’

  Sarah followed her through and shrugged. ‘Another shitty day in paradise. You don’t want to hear my catalogue of boredom.’

  ‘You never bore me. And besides, it does me good to be reminded that there’s a life outside crime.’

  ‘I got up about nine, by which time you’d probably arrested half a dozen villains. I whizzed through the Guardian job ads, and went down the library to check out the other papers. After lunch I cleaned the bedroom, did a bit of ironing and polished the dining-room furniture. Then down to the newsagent’s for the evening paper. A thrill a minute. And you? Solved the crime of the century?’

  Maggie winced. ‘Nothing so exciting. Bit of breaking and entering, bit of paperwork on the rape case at the blues club. It’s due in court next week.’

  ‘At least you get paid for it.’

  ‘Something will come up soon, love.’

  ‘And meanwhile I go on being your kept woman.’

  Maggie said nothing. There was nothing to say. The two of them had been together since they fell head over heels in love at university eleven years before. Things had been fine while they were both concentrating on climbing their career ladders. But Sarah’s career in personnel management had hit a brick wall when the company that employed her had collapsed nine months previously. That crisis had opened a wound in their relationship that was rapidly festering. Now Maggie was often afraid to speak for fear of provoking another bitter exchange. She drank her wine in silence.

  ‘No titbits to amuse me, then?’ Sarah demanded. ‘No funny little tales from the underbelly?’

  ‘One that might interest you,’ Maggie said tentatively. ‘Notice a story in the News last night about a woman taken to the General with suspected food poisoning?’

  ‘I saw it. I read every inch of that paper. It fills an hour.’

  ‘Well, she’s died. The news came in just as I was leaving. And there have apparently been another two families affected. The funny thing is that there doesn’t seem to be a common source. Jim Bryant from casualty was telling me about it.’

  Sarah pulled a face. ‘Sure you can face my spaghetti carbonara tonight?’

  The telephone cut across Maggie’s smile. She quickly crossed the room and picked it up on the third ring. ‘DS Staniforth speaking . . . Hi, Bill.’ She listened intently. ‘Good God!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ll be with you in ten minutes. OK?’ She stood holding the phone. ‘Sarah . . . that woman we were just talking about. It wasn’t food poisoning. It was a massive dose of arsenic and two of the other so-called food poisoning cases have died. They suspect arsenic there too. I’ve got to go and meet Bill at the hospital.’

  ‘You’d better get a move on, then. Shall I save you some food?’

  ‘No point. And don’t wait up, I’ll be late.’ Maggie crossed to Sarah and gave her a brief hug. She hurried out of the room. Seconds later, the front door slammed.

  The fluorescent strips made the kitchen look bright but cold. The woman opened one of the fitted cupboards and took a jar of greyish-white powder from the very back of the shelf.

  She picked up a filleting knife whose edge was honed to a wicked sharpness. She slid it delicately under the flap of a cardboard pack of blancmange powder. She did the same to five other packets. Then she carefully opened the inner paper envelopes. Into each she mixed a tablespoonful of the powder from the jar.

  Under the light, the grey strands in her auburn hair glinted. Painstakingly, she folded the inner packets closed again and with a drop of glue she resealed the cardboard packages. She put them all in a shopping bag and carried it into the rear porch.

  She replaced the jar in the cupboard and went through to the living room where the television blared. She looked strangely triumphant.

  It was after three when Maggie Staniforth closed the front door behind her. As she hung up her sheepskin, she noticed lines of strain round her eyes in the hall mirror. Sarah appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘I know you’re probably too tired to feel hungry, but I’ve made some soup if you want it,’ she said.

  ‘You shouldn’t have stayed up. It’s late.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing else to do. After all, there’s plenty of opportunity for me to catch up on my sleep.’

  Please God, not now, thought Maggie. As if the job isn’t hard enough without coming home to hassles from Sarah.

  But she was proved wrong. Sarah smiled and said, ‘So do you want some grub?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Whether there’s Higham’s Continental Tomato Pickle in it.’

  Sarah looked bewildered. Maggie went on. ‘It seems that three people have died from arsenic administered in Higham’s Continental Tomato Pickle bought from Fastfare Supermarket.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘Wish I was.’ Maggie went through to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of orange juice as Sarah served up a steaming bowl of lentil soup with a pile of buttered brown bread. Maggie sat down and tucked in, giving her lover a disjointed summary as she ate.

  ‘Victim number one: May Scott, fifty-seven, widow, lived up Warburton Road. Numbers two and three: Gary Andrews, fifteen, and his brother Kevin, thirteen, from Priory Farm Estate. Their father is seriously ill. So are two others now, Thomas and Louise Foster of Bryony Grange. No connection between them except that they all ate pickle from jars bought on the same day at Fastfare.

  ‘Could someone be playing at extortion – you know, pay me a million pounds or I’ll do it again. Could be someone with a grudge against Fastfare. Ditto against Higham’s. So you can bet your sweet life we’re going to be hammered into the ground on this one. Already we’re getting flak.’ Maggie finished her meal. Her head dropped into her hands. ‘What a bitch of a job.’

  ‘Better than no job at all.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You should know better than to ask.’

  Maggie sighed. ‘Take me to bed, Sarah. Let me forget about the battlefield for a few hours, eh?’

  Piped music lulled the shoppers at Pinkerton’s Hypermarket into a drugged acquisitiveness. The woman pushing the trolley was deaf to its bland presence and its blandishments. When she reached the shelf with the instant desserts on display, she stopped and checked that the coast was clear.

  She swiftly put three packs of blancmange on the shelf with their fellows and moved away. A few minutes later she returned and studied several cake mixes as she waited for the aisle to clear. Then she completed her mission and finished her shopping in a leisurely fashion.

  At the checkout she chatted brightly to the bored teenager who rang up her purchases automatically. Then she left, gently humming the song that flowed from the shop’s speakers.

  Three days later, Maggie Staniforth burst into her living room in the middle of the afternoon to find Sarah typing a job application. ‘Red alert, love,’ she announced. ‘I’m only home to have a quick bath and change my things. Any chance of a sandwich?’

  ‘I was beginning to wonder if you still lived here,’ Sarah muttered darkly. ‘If you were having an affair, at least I’d know how to fight back.’

  ‘Not no
w, love, please.’

  ‘Do you want something hot? Soup? Omelette?’

  ‘Soup, please. And a toasted cheese sandwich?’

  ‘Coming up. What’s the panic this time?’

  Maggie’s eyes clouded. ‘Our homicidal maniac has struck again. Eight people on the critical list at the General. This time the arsenic was in Garratt’s Blancmange from Pinkerton’s Hypermarket. Bill’s doing a television appeal right now asking for people to bring in any packets bought there this week.’

  ‘Different manufacturer, different supermarket. Sounds like a crazy rather than a grudge, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And that makes the next strike more impossible to predict. Anyway, I’m going for that bath now. I’ll be down again in fifteen minutes.’ Maggie stopped in the kitchen doorway, ‘I’m not being funny, Sarah. Don’t do any shopping in the supermarkets. Butchers, greengrocers, okay. But no self-service, pre-packaged food. Please.’

  Sarah nodded. She had never seen Maggie afraid in eight years in the force, and the sight did nothing to lift her depressed spirits.

  This time it was jars of mincemeat. Even the Salvation Army band playing carols outside the Nationwide Stores failed to make the woman pause in her mission. Her shopping bag held six jars laced with deadly white powder when she entered the supermarket.

  When she left, there were none. She dropped 50p in the collecting tin as she passed the band because they were playing her favourite carol, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’. She walked slowly back to the car park, not pausing to look at the shop-window Christmas displays. She wasn’t anticipating a merry Christmas.

  Sarah walked back from the newsagent’s with the evening paper, reading the front page as she went. The Burnalder Poisoner was front-page news everywhere by now, but the stories in the local paper seemed to carry an extra edge of fear. They were thorough in their coverage, tracing any possible commercial connection between the three giant food companies that produced the contaminated food. They also speculated on the possible reasons for the week-long gaps between outbreaks. They laid out in stark detail the drastic effect the poisoning was having on the finances of the food-processing companies. And they noted the paradox of public hysteria about the poisoning while people still filled their shopping trollies in anticipation of the festive season.