Murder Most Merry (71 page)

Mr. Campion, whose hair was standing on end, had a moment of inspiration. “This absurd rigmarole about Taunton getting Sampson to buy him some Christmas gifts wholesale was
your
idea!” he said accusingly.

The dragon stared. “It seemed the best way of getting Maisie’s jewelry back to her without any
one
person being involved.” she said frankly. “I knew we should all recognize the things the moment we saw them and I was certain that after a lot of argument we should decide to pack them up and send them round to her. But, if there
were
any repercussions, we should
all
be in it—quite a formidable array, dear Boy—and the blame could be traced to Mr. Sampson if absolutely necessary. You see. the Brigadier is convinced that Sampson
was
there last night. Mr. Taunton very cleverly left him on the lawn and went behind the tool shed and came back with the box.”

“How completely immoral!” Mr. Campion couldn’t restrain himself.

The dragon had the grace to look embarrassed.

“I don’t think the Sampson angle would ever have arisen,” she said. “But if it had, Sampson was quite a terrible person. Almost a blackmailer. Utterly dishonest and inconsiderate. Think how he has spoiled everything and endangered us all by getting himself killed on the
one
afternoon when we said he was here, so that the police were brought in. Just the
one
thing I was trying to avoid. When the Inspector appeared this morning I was so upset I thought of you!”

In his not unnatural alarm Mr. Campion so far forgot himself as to touch her sleeve. “Where is Taunton now?”

The dragon threshed her train. “Really. Boy! What a fidget you are! If you must know, I gave him his Christmas present—every penny I had in cash for he was broke again, he told me—and sent him for a nice long walk after lunch. Having seen the Inspector here this morning he was glad to go.”

She paused and a granite gleam came into her hooded eyes. “If that Superintendent friend of yours has the stupidity to try to find him once Maisie has her monstrosities back, none of us will be able to identify him. I’m afraid. And there’s another thing. If the Brigadier should be
forced
to give evidence. I am sure he will stick to his guns about Mr. Sampson being down in the garden here at six o’clock last night. That would mean that the man Kroll would have to go unpunished for his revenge murder, wouldn’t it? Sampson was a terrible person—but
no one
should have killed him.”

Mr. Campion was silenced. He glanced fearfully across the room.

The Superintendent was seated at his table wearing the strained yet slap-happy expression of a man with concussion. On his left was a pile of black and gold wrappings, on his right a rajah’s ransom in somewhat specialized form.

From where he stood, Mr. Campion could see two examples amid the rest—a breastplate in gold, pearl, and enamel in the shape of a unicorn and an item which looked like a plover’s egg in tourmaline encased in a ducal coronet. There was also a soapstone monkey and a solid-silver paperknife.

Much later that evening Mr. Campion and the Superintendent drove quietly back to headquarters. Oates had a large cardboard box on his knee. He clasped it tenderly.

He had been silent for a long time when a thought occurred to him. “Why did they take him into the house in the first place?” he said. “An elderly crook looking lost! And no luggage!”

Mr. Campion’s pale eyes flickered behind his spectacles.

“Don’t forget the Duchess’ housekeeping money,” he murmured. “I should think he offered one of the widows who really run that place the first three months’ payment in cash, wouldn’t you? That must be an impressive phenomenon in that sort of business, I fancy.”

Oates caught his breath and fell silent once more. Presently he burst out

again.

“Those people! That woman!” he exploded. “When they were younger they led me a pretty dance—losing things or getting themselves swindled. But now they’re old they take the blessed biscuit! Do you see how she’s tied my hands, Campion?”

Mr. Campion tried not to grin.

“Snapdragons are just permissible at Christmas,” he said. “Handled with extreme caution they burn very few fingers, it seems to me.”

Mr. Campion tapped the cardboard box. “And some of them provide a few plums for retiring coppers, don’t they, Superintendent?”

WHO KILLED FATHER CHRISTMAS? – Patricia Moyes

 “Good morning, Mr. Borrowdale. Nippy out, isn’t it? You’re in early, I see.” Little Miss MacArthur spoke with her usual brisk brightness, which failed to conceal both envy and dislike. She was unpacking a consignment of stout Teddy bears in the stockroom behind the toy department at Barnum and Thrums, the London store. “Smart as ever, Mr. Borrowdale.” she added, jealously.

I laid down my curly-brimmed bowler hat and cane and took off my British warm overcoat. I don’t mind admitting that I do take pains to dress as well as I can, and for some reason it seems to infuriate the Miss MacArthurs of the world.

She prattled on. “Nice looking, these Teddies, don’t you think? Very reasonable, too. Made in Hong Kong, that’ll be why. I think I’ll take one for my sister’s youngest.”

The toy department at Barnum’s has little to recommend it to anyone over the age of twelve, and normally it is tranquil and little populated. However, at Christmastime it briefly becomes the bustling heart of the great shop, and also provides useful vacation jobs for chaps like me who wish to earn some money during the weeks before the university term begins in January. Gone, I fear, are the days when undergraduates were the gilded youth of England. We all have to work our passages these days, and sometimes it means selling toys.

One advantage of the job is that employees—even temporaries like me— are allowed to buy goods at a considerable discount, which helps with the Christmas gift problem. As a matter of fact, I had already decided to buy a Teddy bear for one of my nephews, and I mentioned as much.

“Well, you’d better take it right away,” remarked Miss MacArthur, “because I heard Mr. Harrington say he was taking two, and I think Disaster has her eye on one.” Disaster was the unfortunate but inevitable nickname of Miss Aster, who had been with the store for thirty-one years but still made mistakes with her stockbook. I felt sorry for the old girl. I had overheard a conversation between Mr. Harrington, the department manager, and Mr. Andrews, the deputy store manager, and so I knew—but Disaster didn’t—that she would be getting the sack as soon as the Christmas rush was over.

Meanwhile, Miss MacArthur was arranging the bears on a shelf. They sat there in grinning rows, brown and woolly, with boot-button eyes and red ribbons round their necks.

It was then that Father Christmas came in. He’d been in the cloakroom changing into his costume—white beard, red nose, and all. His name was Bert Denman. He was a cheery soul who got on well with the kids, and he’d had the Father Christmas job at Barnum’s each of the three years I’d been selling there. Now he was carrying his sack, which he filled every morning from the cheap items in the stockroom. A visit to Father Christmas cost 50 pence, so naturally the gift that was fished out of the sack couldn’t be worth more than 20 pence. However, to my surprise, he went straight over to the row of Teddy bears and picked one off the shelf. For some reason, he chose the only one with a blue instead of a red ribbon.

Miss MacArthur was on to him in an instant. “What d’you think you’re doing, Mr. Denman? Those Teddies aren’t in your line at all—much too dear. One pound ninety, they are.”

Father Christmas did not answer, and suddenly I realized that it was not Bert Denman under the red robe. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Who are you? You’re not our Father Christmas.”

He turned to face me, the Teddy bear in his hand. “That’s all right,” he said. “Charlie Burrows is my name. I live in the same lodging house with Bert Denman. He was taken poorly last night, and I’m standing in for him.”

“
Well
.” said Miss MacArthur. “How very odd. Does Mr. Harrington know?”

“Of course he does,” said Father Christmas.

As if on cue, Mr. Harrington himself came hurrying into the stockroom. He always hurried everywhere, preceded by his small black mustache. He said, “Ah, there you are. Burrows. Fill up your sack, and I’ll explain the job to you. Denman told you about the Teddy bear, did he?”

“Yes, Mr. Harrington.”

“Father Christmas can’t give away an expensive bear like that, Mr. Harrington,” Miss MacArthur objected.

“Now, now, Miss MacArthur. it’s all arranged,” said Harrington fussily. “A customer came in yesterday and made a special request that Father Christmas should give his small daughter a Teddy bear this morning. I knew this consignment was due on the shelves, so I promised him one. It’s been paid for. The important thing, Burrows, is to remember the child’s name. It’s... er... I have it written down somewhere.”

“Annabel Whitworth,” said Father Christmas. “Four years old, fair hair, will be brought in by her mother.”

“I see that Denman briefed you well.” said Mr. Harrington, with an icy smile. “Well, now, I’ll collect two bears for myself—one for my son and one for my neighbor’s boy—and then I’ll show you the booth.”

Miss Aster arrived just then. She and Miss MacArthur finished uncrating the bears and took one out to put on display next to a female doll that, among other endearing traits, actually wet its diaper. Mr. Harrington led our surrogate Father Christmas to his small canvas booth, and the rest of us busied and braced ourselves for the moment when the great glass doors opened and the floodtide was let in. The toy department of a big store on December 23 is no place for weaklings.

It is curious that even such an apparently random stream of humanity as Christmas shoppers displays a pattern of behavior. The earliest arrivals in the toy department are office workers on their way to their jobs. The actual toddlers, bent on an interview with Father Christmas, do not appear until their mothers have had time to wash up breakfast, have a bit of a go around the house, and catch the bus from Kensington or the tube from Uxbridge.

On that particular morning it was just twenty-eight minutes past ten when I saw Disaster, who was sitting in a decorated cash desk labeled “The Elfin Grove,” take 50 pence from the first parent to usher her child into Santa’s booth. For about two minutes the mother waited, chatting quietly with Disaster. Then a loudly wailing infant emerged from the booth.

The mother snatched her up, and—with that sixth sense that mothers everywhere seem to develop—interpreted the incoherent screams. “She says that Father Christmas won’t talk to her. She says he’s asleep.”

It was clearly an emergency, even if a minor one, and Disaster was already showing signs of panic. I excused myself from my customer—a middle-aged gentleman who was playing with an electric train set—and went over to see what I could do. By then, the mother was indignant.

“Fifty pence and the old man sound asleep and drunk as like as not, and at half-past ten in the morning. Disgraceful, I call it. And here’s poor little Poppy what had been looking forward to—”

I rushed into Father Christmas’s booth. The man who called himself Charlie Burrows was slumped forward in his chair, looking for all the world as if he were asleep; but when I shook him, his head lolled horribly, and it was obvious that he was more than sleeping. The red robe concealed the blood until it made my hand sticky. Father Christmas had been stabbed in the back, and he was certainly dead.

I acted as fast as I could. First of all, I told Disaster to put up the CLOSED sign outside Santa’s booth. Then I smoothed down Poppy’s mother by leading her to a counter where I told her she could select any toy up to one pound and have it free. Under pretext of keeping records, I got her name and address. Finally I cornered Mr. Harrington in his office and told him the news.

I thought he was going to faint. “Dead? Murdered? Are you sure, Mr. Borrowdale?”

“Quite sure, I’m afraid. You’d better telephone the police, Mr. Harrington.”

“The police! In Barnum’s! What a terrible thing! I’ll telephone the deputy store manager first and
then
the police.”