The Twelve Crimes of Christmas (36 page)

“Nevertheless,” said Pons, his eyes twinkling, “I
fancy we shall have to have a look at that fellow who, you say, is making such
a nuisance of himself.”

Our client made a rapid calculation, as was
evident by the concentration in his face. “Then you had better come back with
me now,” he said, “for if you come at any other time, the price of the conveyance
will surely be added to the bill.”

“That is surely agreeable with me,” said Pons. “If
it will do for Parker.”

Snawley bridled with apprehension. “Does he
come, too?”

“Indeed, he does.”

“Will he be added to the fee?”

“No, Mr. Snawley.”

“Well, then, I will just go below and wait for
you to come down,” said our client, coming to his feet and seizing his hat from
the mantel, where I had put it next to Pons’s unanswered letters, unfolded and
affixed to the mantel by a dagger, a souvenir of one of his adventures.

Our client had hardly taken himself off before
Pons’s laughter burst forth.

When he relieved himself, he turned to me. “What
do you make of that fellow, Parker?”

“I have never seen the like,” I replied. “Parsimonious,
suspicious, and, I suspect, not nearly as poor as he would have us believe.”

“Capital! Capital! It is all too human for the
rich to affect poverty and the poor to affect wealth. We may take it that Mr.
Snawley is not poor. If he has a corner house and room enough for someone to
walk from one end of the property, around the corner, to the other, we may
assume that Mr. Snawley’s ‘bit of land,’ as he puts it, is appreciably more
than what the average individual would take for a ‘bit.’ ”

He was getting into his greatcoat as he spoke,
and I got into mine. As I reached for my bowler, he clapped his deerstalker to
his head, and we were off down the stairs to where our equipage waited at the
curb.

Snawley ushered me into the cab.

Behind me, Pons paused briefly to ask, “How
long does this fellow stay on his beat?”

“Two, three hours a night. Rain, fog, or shine.
And now, with Christmas almost upon us, he has brought along some bells to
ring. It is maddening, sir, maddening,” said our client explosively.

Pons got in, Snawley closed the door and
mounted to the box, and we were off toward Edgware Road, and from there to
Lambeth and Brixton and Dulwich, seeing always before us, from every clear
vantage point, the dome of the Crystal Palace, and at every hand the color and
gayety of the season. Yellow light streamed from the shops into the falling
snow, tinsel and glass globes, aglow with red and green and other colors shone
bright, decorations framed the shop windows, holly and mistletoe hung in sprays
and bunches here and there. Coster’s barrows offered fruit and vegetables,
Christmas trees, fish and meat, books, cheap china, carpets. Street sellers
stood here and there with trays hung from their necks, shouting their wares—Christmas
novelties, balloons, tricks, bonbons, comic-papers, and praising the virtues of
Old Moore’s Almanack.
At the poultry shops turkeys, geese, and game
hung to entice the late shoppers, for it was the day before Christmas Eve, only
a trifle more than two years after the ending of the great conflict, and all
London celebrated its freedom from the austerities of wartime. The dancing snowflakes
reflected the colors of the shops—sometimes red, sometimes yellow or pink or
blue or even pale green—and made great halos around the streetlamps.

Snawley avoided crowded thoroughfares as much
as possible, and drove with considerable skill; but wherever we went, people
turned on the street to look at the hansom cab as it went by—whether they were
children or strollers, policemen on their rounds or shoppers with fowl or
puddings in their baskets—startled at sight of this apparition from the past.

II

Our destination proved to be Upper Norwood.

Ebenezer Snawley’s home was an asymmetric
Jacobean pile, dominated by a small tower, and with Elizabethan bay windows
that faced the street. It rose in the midst of a small park that occupied the
corner of a block and spread over a considerable portion of that block. A dim
glow shone through the sidelights at the door; there was no other light inside.
The entire neighborhood had an air of decayed gentility, but the falling snow
and the gathering darkness sufficiently diminished the glow of the street-lamp
so that it was not until we had descended from the cab, which had driven in
along one side of the property, bound for a small coach house at the rear
corner—directly opposite the street corner—and walked to the door of the house
that it became evident how much the house, too, had decayed for want of
adequate care, though it was of mid-Victorian origin, and not, therefore, an
ancient building—little more than half a century old.

Leaving his steed to stand in the driveway,
where the patient animal stood with its head lowered in resignation born of
long experience, our client forged ahead of us to the entrance to his home, and
there raised his cane and made such a clatter on the door as might have
awakened the neighborhood, had it slept, at the same time raising his voice
petulantly to shout, “Pip! Pip! Pip Scratch! Up and about!”

There was a scurrying beyond the door, the
sound of a bar being lifted, a key in the lock, and the door swung open, to
reveal there holding aloft a bracket of three candles a man of medium height,
clad in tight broadcloth black breeches and black stockings, and a sort of
green-black jacket from the sleeves of which lace cuffs depended. He wore
buckled shoes on his feet. He was stooped and wore on his thin face an
expression of dubiety and resignation that had been there for long enough to
have become engraved upon his features. His watery blue eyes looked anxiously
out until he recognized his master; then he stepped aside with alacrity and
held the candles higher still, so as to light our way into the shadowed hall.

“No songs yet, Pip? Eh? Speak up.”

“None, sir.”

“Well, he will come, he will come,” promised
our client, striding past his man. “Lay a fire in the study, and we will sit by
it and watch. Come along, gentlemen, come along. We shall have a fire by and by,
to warm our bones—and perhaps a wee drop of sherry.”

Pip Scratch stepped forward with a springy gait
and thrust the light of the candles ahead, making the shadows to dance in the
study whither our client led us. He put the bracket of candles up on the wall,
and backed away before Snawley’s command.

“Light up, Pip, light up.” And to us, “Sit
down, gentlemen.” And to Pip Scratch’s retreating back, “And a few drops of
sherry. Bring—yes, yes, bring the Amontillado. It is as much as I can do for my
guest.”

The servant had now vanished into the darkness
outside the study. I was now accustomed to the light, and saw that it was lined
with books from floor to ceiling on three walls, excepting only that facing the
street along which we had just come, for this wall consisted of the two
Elizabethan bay windows we had seen from outside, each of them flanking the
fireplace. Most of the shelves of books were encased; their glass doors
reflected the flickering candles.

“He will be back in a moment or two,” our
client assured us.

Hard upon his words came Pip Scratch, carrying
a seven-branched candelabrum and a salver on which was a bottle of Amontillado
with scarcely enough sherry in it to more than half fill the three glasses
beside it. He bore these things to an elegant table and put them down, then scurried
to the bracket on the wall for a candle with which to light those in the candelabrum,
and, having accomplished this in the dour silence with which his master now
regarded him, poured the sherry, which, true to my estimate, came only to half
way in each of the three glasses—but this, clearly, was approved by Mr.
Snawley, for his expression softened a trifle. This done, Pip Scratch hurried
from the room.

“Drink up, gentlemen,” said our client, with an
air rather of regret at seeing his good wine vanish. “Let us drink to our
success!”

“Whatever that may be,” said Pons
enigmatically, raising his glass.

Down went the sherry, a swallow at a time,
rolled on the tongue—and a fine sherry it proved to be, for all that there was so
little of it, and while we drank, Pip Scratch came in again and laid the fire
and scurried out once more, and soon the dark study looked quite cheerful, with
flames growing and leaping higher and higher, and showing row after row of
books, and a locked case with folders and envelopes and boxes in it, a light
bright enough so that many of the titles of the books could be seen—and most of
them were by Dickens—various editions, first and late, English and foreign, and
associational items.

“And these are your valuables, I take it, Mr.
Snawley,” said Pons.

“I own the finest collection of Dickens in
London,” said our client. After another sip of wine, he added, “In all England.”
And after two more sips, “If I may say so, I believe it to be the best in the
world.” Then his smile faded abruptly, his face darkened, and he added, “There
is another collector who claims to have a better—but it is a lie, sir, a
dastardly lie, for he cannot substantiate his claim.”

“You have seen his collection?” asked Pons.

“Not I. Nor he mine.”

“Do you know him?”

“No, nor wish to. He wrote me three times in as
little as ten days. I have one of his letters here.”

He pulled open a drawer in the table, reached
in, and took out a sheet of plain paper with a few lines scrawled upon it. He handed
it to Pons, and I leaned over to read it, too.

Mr.
Ebenezer Snawley

Dear
Sir,

I
take my pen in hand for the third time to ask the liberty of viewing your
collection of Dickens which, I am told, may be equal to my own. Pray set a
date, and I will be happy to accommodate myself to it. I am sir, gratefully
yours,

Micah Auber

“Dated two months ago, I see,” said Pons.

“I have not answered him. I doubt I would have
done so had he sent a stamp and envelope for that purpose. In his case, stamps
are too dear.”

He drank the last of his sherry, and at that
moment Pip Scratch came in again, and stood there wordlessly pointing to the
street.

“Aha!” cried our client “The fellow is back. A
pox
on him! Pip, remove the light for the nonce.
There is too much of it—it reflects on the panes. We shall have as good a look
at him as we can.”

Out went the light, leaving the study lit only
by the flames on the hearth, which threw the glow away from the bay windows,
toward which our client was now walking, Pons at his heels, and I behind.

“There he is!” cried Snawley. “The rascal! The
scoundrel!”

We could hear him now, jingling his bells, and
singing in a lusty voice which was not, indeed, very musical—quite the
opposite. Singing was not what I would have called it; he was, rather, bawling
lustily.

“Walnuts again!” cried our client in disgust.
We could see the fellow now—a short man, stout, who, when he came under the
streetlamp, revealed himself to be as much of an individualist as Snawley, for
he wore buskins and short trousers, and a coat that reached scarcely to his
waist, and his head was crowned with an absurd hat on which a considerable
amount of snow had already collected. He carried a basket, presumably for his
walnuts.

Past the light he went, bawling about his
walnuts, and around the corner.

“Now, you will see, gentlemen, he goes only to
the line of my property, and then back. So it is for my benefit that he is
about this buffoonery.”

“Or his,” said Pons.

“How do you say that?” asked Snawley, bending
toward Pons so that his slightly curved hawk-like nose almost touched my
companion.

“In all seriousness,” said Pons. “It does not
come from the sherry.”

“It cannot be to his benefit,” answered our
client, “for I have not bought so much as a walnut. Nor shall I!”

Pons stood deep in thought, watching the
streetsinger, fingering the lobe of his left ear, as was his custom when
preoccupied. Now that all of us were silent, the voice came clear despite the
muffling snow.

“He will keep that up for hours,” cried our
host, his dark face ruddy in the glow of the fire. “Am I to have no peace? The
police will do nothing. Nothing! Do we not pay their salaries? Of course, we
do. Am I to tolerate this botheration and sit helplessly by while that fellow
out there bawls his wares?”