Murder On Christmas Eve

  MURDER

  ON

  CHRISTMAS EVE

  Mysteries for the Festive Season

  MURDER

  ON

  CHRISTMAS EVE

  Edited by Cecily Gayford

  Ellis Peters • Julian Symons • Michael Innes

  Ian Rankin • John Dickson Carr

  Val McDermid • G. K. Chesterton

  Marjorie Bowen • Lawrence Block

  Margery Allingham

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

  PROFILE BOOKS LTD

  3 Holford Yard

  Bevin Way

  London WC1X 9HD

  www.profilebooks.com

  Selection copyright © Profile Books, 2017

  See p. 234 for individual stories copyright information

  The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN 978 1 78283 387 1

  Contents

  The Trinity Cat

  Ellis Peters

  The Santa Claus Club

  Julian Symons

  The Four Seasons

  Michael Innes

  No Sanity Clause

  Ian Rankin

  The Footprint in the Sky

  John Dickson Carr

  A Wife in a Million

  Val McDermid

  The Dagger with Wings

  G. K. Chesterton

  Cambric Tea

  Marjorie Bowen

  As Dark as Christmas Gets

  Lawrence Block

  On Christmas Day in the Morning

  Margery Allingham

  Credits

  The Trinity Cat

  Ellis Peters

  He was sitting on top of one of the rear gate-posts of the churchyard when I walked through on Christmas Eve, grooming in his lordly style, with one back leg wrapped round his neck, and his bitten ear at an angle of forty-five degrees, as usual. I reckon one of the toms he’d tangled with in his nomad days had ripped the starched bit out of that one, the other stood up sharply enough. There was snow on the ground, a thin veiling, just beginning to crackle in promise of frost before evening, but he had at least three warm refuges around the place whenever he felt like holing up, besides his two houses, which he used only for visiting and cadging.

  He’d been a known character around our village for three years then, ever since he walked in from nowhere and made himself agreeable to the vicar and the verger, and finding the billet comfortable and the pickings good, constituted himself resident cat to Holy Trinity church, and took over all the jobs around the place that humans were too slow to tackle, like rat-catching, and chasing off invading dogs.

  Nobody knows how old he is, but I think he could only have been about two when he settled here, a scrawny, chewed-up black bandit as lean as wire. After three years of being fed by Joel Woodward at Trinity Cottage, which was the verger’s house by tradition, and flanked the lych-gate on one side, and pampered and petted by Miss Patience Thomson at Church Cottage on the other side, he was double his old size, and sleek as velvet, but still had one lop ear and a kink two inches from the end of his tail. He still looked like a brigand, but a highly prosperous brigand. Nobody ever gave him a name, he wasn’t the sort to get called anything fluffy or familiar. Only Miss Patience ever dared coo at him, and he was very gracious about that, she being elderly and innocent and very free with little perks like raw liver, on which he doted. One way and another, he had it made. He lived mostly outdoors, never staying in either house overnight. In winter he had his own little ground-level hatch into the furnace-room of the church, sharing his lodgings matily with a hedgehog that had qualified as assistant vermin-destructor around the churchyard, and preferred sitting out the winter among the coke to hibernating like common hedgehogs. These individualists keep turning up in our valley, for some reason.

  All I’d gone to the church for that afternoon was to fix up with the vicar about the Christmas peal, having been roped into the bell-ringing team. Resident police in remote areas like ours get dragged into all sorts of activities, and when the area’s changing, and new problems cropping up, if they have any sense they don’t need too much dragging, but go willingly. I’ve put my finger on many an astonished yobbo who thought he’d got clean away with his little breaking-and-entering, just by keeping my ears open during a darts match, or choir practice.

  When I came back through the churchyard, around half-past two, Miss Patience was just coming out of her gate, with a shopping bag on her wrist, and heading towards the street, and we walked along together a bit of the way. She was getting on for seventy, and hardly bigger than a bird, but very independent. Never having married or left the valley, and having looked after a mother who lived to be nearly ninety, she’d never had time to catch up with new ideas in the style of dress suitable for elderly ladies. Everything had always been done mother’s way, and fashion, music, and morals had stuck at the period when mother was a carefully-brought-up girl learning domestic skills, and preparing for a chaste marriage.

  There’s a lot to be said for it! But it had turned Miss Patience into a frail little lady in long-skirted black or grey or navy blue, who still felt undressed without hat and gloves, at an age when Mrs Newcombe, for instance, up at the pub, favoured shocking pink trouser suits and red-gold hair-pieces. A pretty little old lady Miss Patience was, though, very straight and neat. It was a pleasure to watch her walk. Which is more than I could say for Mrs Newcombe in her trouser suit, especially from the back!

  ‘A happy Christmas, Sergeant Moon!’ she chirped at me on sight. And I wished her the same, and slowed up to her pace.

  ‘It’s going to be slippery by twilight,’ I said. ‘You be careful how you go.’

  ‘Oh, I’m only going to be an hour or so,’ she said serenely. ‘I shall be home long before the frost sets in. I’m only doing the last bit of Christmas shopping. There’s a cardigan I have to collect for Mrs Downs.’ That was her cleaning-lady, who went in three mornings a week. ‘I ordered it long ago, but deliveries are so slow nowadays. They’ve promised it for today. And a gramophone record for my little errand-boy.’ Tommy Fowler that was, one of the church trebles, as pink and wholesome-looking as they usually contrive to be, and just as artful. ‘And one mustn’t forget our dumb friends, either, must one?’ said Miss Patience cheerfully. ‘They’re all important, too.’

  I took this to mean a couple of packets of some new product to lure wild birds to her garden. The Church Cottage thrushes were so fat they could hardly fly, and when it was frosty she put out fresh water three and four times a day.

  We came to our brief street of shops, and off she went, with her big jet-and-gold brooch gleaming in her scarf. She had quite a few pieces of Victorian and Edwardian jewellery her mother’d left behind, and almost always wore one piece, being used to the belief that a lady dresses meticulously every day, not just on Sundays. And I went for a brisk walk round to see what was going on, and then went home to Molly and high tea, and took my boots off thankfully.

  That was Christmas Eve. Christmas Day little Miss Thomson didn’t turn up for eight o’clock Communion, which was unheard-of. The vicar said he’d call in after matins and see that she was all right, and hadn’t taken cold trotting about in the snow. But somebody else beat us both to it. Tommy Fowler! He was anxious ab
out that pop record of his. But even he had no chance until after service, for in our village it’s the custom for the choir to go and sing the vicar an aubade in the shape of ‘Christians, Awake!’ before the main service, ignoring the fact that he’s then been up four hours, and conducted two Communions. And Tommy Fowler had a solo in the anthem, too. It was a quarter-past twelve when he got away, and shot up the garden path to the door of Church Cottage.

  He shot back even faster a minute later. I was heading for home when he came rocketing out of the gate and ran slam into me, with his eyes sticking out on stalks and his mouth wide open, making a sort of muted keening sound with shock. He clutched hold of me and pointed back towards Miss Thomson’s front door, left half-open when he fled, and tried three times before he could croak out:

  ‘Miss Patience … She’s there on the floor – she’s bad!’

  I went in on the run, thinking she’d had a heart attack all alone there, and was lying helpless. The front door led through a diminutive hall, and through another glazed door into the living-room, and that door was open, too, and there was Miss Patience face-down on the carpet, still in her coat and gloves, and with her shopping-bag lying beside her. An occasional table had been knocked over in her fall, spilling a vase and a book. Her hat was askew over one ear, and caved in like a trodden mushroom, and her neat grey bun of hair had come undone and trailed on her shoulder, and it was no longer grey but soiled, brownish black. She was dead and stiff. The room was so cold, you could tell those doors had been ajar all night.

  The kid had followed me in, hanging on to my sleeve, his teeth chattering. ‘I didn’t open the door – it was open! I didn’t touch her, or anything. I only came to see if she was all right, and get my record.’

  It was there, lying unbroken, half out of the shopping-bag by her arm. She’d meant it for him, and I told him he should have it, but not yet, because it might be evidence, and we mustn’t move anything. And I got him out of there quick, and gave him to the vicar to cope with, and went back to Miss Patience as soon as I’d telephoned for the outfit. Because we had a murder on our hands.

  So that was the end of one gentle, harmless old woman, one of very many these days, battered to death because she walked in on an intruder who panicked. Walked in on him, I judged, not much more than an hour after I left her in the street. Everything about her looked the same as then, the shopping-bag, the coat, the hat, the gloves. The only difference, that she was dead. No, one more thing! No handbag, unless it was under the body, and later, when we were able to move her, I wasn’t surprised to see that it wasn’t there. Handbags are where old ladies carry their money. The sneak-thief who panicked and lashed out at her had still had greed and presence of mind enough to grab the bag as he fled. Nobody’d have to describe that bag to me, I knew it well, soft black leather with an old-fashioned gilt clasp and a short handle, a small thing, not like the holdalls they carry nowadays.

  She was lying facing the opposite door, also open, which led to the stairs. On the writing-desk by that door stood one of a pair of heavy brass candlesticks. Its fellow was on the floor, beside Miss Thomson’s body, and though the bun of hair and the felt hat had prevented any great spattering of blood, there was blood enough on the square base to label the weapon. Whoever had hit her had been just sneaking down the stairs, ready to leave. She’d come home barely five minutes too soon.

  Upstairs, in her bedroom, her bits of jewellery hadn’t taken much finding. She’d never thought of herself as having valuables, or of other people as coveting them. Her gold and turquoise and funereal jet and true-lover’s-knots in gold and opals, and mother’s engagement and wedding rings, and her little Edwardian pendant watch set with seed pearls, had simply lived in the small top drawer of her dressing-table. She belonged to an honest epoch, and it was gone, and now she was gone after it. She didn’t even lock her door when she went shopping. There wouldn’t have been so much as the warning of a key grating in the lock, just the door opening.

  Ten years ago not a soul in this valley behaved differently from Miss Patience. Nobody locked doors, sometimes not even overnight. Some of us went on a fortnight’s holiday and left the doors unlocked. Now we can’t even put out the milk money until the milkman knocks at the door in person. If this generation likes to pride itself on its progress, let it! As for me, I thought suddenly that maybe the innocent was well out of it.

  We did the usual things, photographed the body and the scene of the crime, the doctor examined her and authorised her removal, and confirmed what I’d supposed about the approximate time of her death. And the forensic boys lifted a lot of smudgy latents that weren’t going to be of any use to anybody, because they weren’t going to be on record, barring a million to one chance. The whole thing stank of the amateur. There wouldn’t be any easy matching up of prints, even if they got beauties. One more thing we did for Miss Patience. We tolled the dead-bell for her on Christmas night, six heavy, muffled strokes. She was a virgin. Nobody had to vouch for it, we all knew. And let me point out, it is a title of honour, to be respected accordingly.

  We’d hardly got the poor soul out of the house when the Trinity cat strolled in, taking advantage of the minute or two while the door was open. He got as far as the place on the carpet where she’d lain, and his fur and whiskers stood on end, and even his lop ear jerked up straight. He put his nose down to the pile of the Wilton, about where her shopping bag and handbag must have lain, and started going round in interested circles, snuffing the floor and making little throaty noises that might have been distress, but sounded like pleasure. Excitement, anyhow. The chaps from the CID were still busy, and didn’t want him under their feet, so I picked him up and took him with me when I went across to Trinity Cottage to talk to the verger.

  The cat never liked being picked up, after a minute he started clawing and cursing, and I put him down. He stalked away again at once, past the corner where people shot their dead flowers, out at the lych-gate, and straight back to sit on Miss Thomson’s doorstep. Well, after all, he used to get fed there, he might well be uneasy at all these queer comings and goings. And they don’t say ‘as curious as a cat’ for nothing, either.

  I didn’t need telling that Joel Woodward had had no hand in what had happened, he’d been nearest neighbour and good friend to Miss Patience for years, but he might have seen or heard something out of the ordinary. He was a little, wiry fellow, gnarled like a tree-root, the kind that goes on spry and active into his nineties, and then decides that’s enough, and leaves overnight. His wife was dead long ago, and his daughter had come back to keep house for him after her husband deserted her, until she died, too, in a bus accident. There was just old Joel now, and the grandson she’d left with him, young Joel Barnett, nineteen, and a bit of a tearaway by his grandad’s standards, but so far pretty innocuous by mine. He was a sulky, graceless sort, but he did work, and he stuck with the old man when many another would have lit out elsewhere.

  ‘A bad business,’ said old Joel, shaking his head. ‘I only wish I could help you lay hands on whoever did it. But I only saw her yesterday morning about ten, when she took in the milk. I was round at the church hall all afternoon, getting things ready for the youth social they had last night, it was dark before I got back. I never saw or heard anything out of place. You can’t see her living-room light from here, so there was no call to wonder. But the lad was here all afternoon. They only work till one, Christmas Eve. Then they all went boozing together for an hour or so, I expect, so I don’t know exactly what time he got in, but he was here and had the tea on when I came home. Drop round in an hour or so and he should be here, he’s gone round to collect this girl he’s mashing. There’s a party somewhere tonight.’

  I dropped round accordingly, and young Joel was there, sure enough, shoulder-length hair, frilled shirt, outsize lapels and all, got up to kill, all for the benefit of the girl his grandad had mentioned. And it turned out to be Connie Dymond, from the comparatively respectable branch of the family, along the c
anal-side. There were three sets of Dymond cousins, boys, no great harm in ’em but worth watching, but only this one girl in Connie’s family. A good-looker, or at least most of the lads seemed to think so, she had a dozen or so on her string before she took up with young Joel. Big girl, too, with a lot of mauve eye-shadow and a mother-of-pearl mouth, in huge platform shoes and the fashionable drab granny-coat. But she was acting very prim and proper with old Joel around.

  ‘Half-past two when I got home,’ said young Joel. ‘Grandad was round at the hall, and I’d have gone round to help him, only I’d had a pint or two, and after I’d had me dinner I went to sleep, so it wasn’t worth it by the time I woke up. Around four, that’d be. From then on I was here watching the telly, and I never saw nor heard a thing. But there was nobody else here, so I could be spinning you the yarn, if you want to look at it that way.’

  He had a way of going looking for trouble before anybody else suggested it, there was nothing new about that. Still, there it was. One young fellow on the spot, and minus any alibi. There’d be plenty of others in the same case.

  In the evening he’d been at the church social. Miss Patience wouldn’t be expected there, it was mainly for the young, and anyhow, she very seldom went out in the evenings.

  ‘I was there with Joel,’ said Connie Dymond. ‘He called for me at seven, I was with him all the evening. We went home to our place after the social finished, and he didn’t leave till nearly midnight.’

  Very firm about it she was, doing her best for him. She could hardly know that his movements in the evening didn’t interest us, since Miss Patience had then been dead for some hours.

  When I opened the door to leave, the Trinity cat walked in, stalking past me with a purposeful stride. He had a look round us all, and then made for the girl, reached up his front paws to her knees, and was on her lap before she could fend him off, though she didn’t look as if she welcomed his attentions. Very civil he was, purring and rubbing himself against her coat sleeve, and poking his whiskery face into hers. Unusual for him to be effusive, but when he did decide on it, it was always with someone who couldn’t stand cats. You’ll have noticed it’s a way they have.