Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (69 page)

“No more he did, my dear,”
said the other.

“He was courting the
Linshaw heiress at the time,” she resumed; “and Miss Linshaw was a very proper
young lady who would have been horrified if she had heard about him and Jane
Waycross. She would have broken off the match, naturally. But poor Jane
Waycross meant her to hear. She was much in love with Mr. Wilkes, and she was
going to tell the whole matter publicly: Mr. Wilkes had been trying to persuade
her not to do so.”

“But—”

“Oh, don’t you see what
happened?” cried the other in a pettish tone. “It is so dreadfully simple. I am
not clever at these things, but I should have seen it in a moment: even if I
did not already know. I told you everything so that you should be able to
guess.”

“When Mr. Wilkes and Dr.
Sutton and Mr. Pawley drove past here in the gig that night, they saw a bright
light burning in the windows of this room. I told you that. But the police
never wondered, as anyone should, what caused that light. Jane Waycross never
came into this room, as you know; she was out in the hall, carrying either a
lamp or a candle. But that lamp in the thick blue-silk shade, held out there in
the hall, would not have caused a bright light to shine through this room and
illuminate it. Neither would a tiny candle; it is absurd. And I told you there
were no other lamps in the house except some empty ones waiting to be filled in
the back kitchen. There is only one thing they could have seen. They saw the
great blaze of the paraffin oil round Jane Waycross’s body.”

“Didn’t I tell you it was
dreadfully simple? Poor Jane was upstairs waiting for her lover. From the
upstairs window she saw Mr. Wilkes’s gig drive along the road in the moonlight,
and she did not know there were other men in it; she thought he was alone. She
came downstairs—”

“It is an awful thing
that the police did not think more about that broken medicine-bottle lying in
the hall, the large bottle that was broken in just two long pieces. She must
have had a use for it; and, of course, she had. You knew that the oil in the
lamp was almost exhausted, although there was a great blaze round the body.
When poor Jane came downstairs, she was carrying the unlighted lamp in one
hand; in the other hand she was carrying a lighted candle, and an old
medicine-bottle containing paraffin oil. When she got downstairs, she meant to
fill the lamp from the medicine-bottle, and then light it with the candle.”

“But she was too eager to
get downstairs, I am afraid. When she was more than half-way down, hurrying,
that long nightgown tripped her. She pitched forward down the stairs on her
face. The medicine-bottle broke on the tiles under her, and poured a lake of
paraffin round her body. Of course, the lighted candle set the paraffin blazing
when it fell; but that was not all. One intact side of that broken bottle, long
and sharp and cleaner than any blade, cut into her throat when she fell on the
smashed bottle. She was not quite stunned by the fall. When she felt herself
burning, and the blood almost as hot, she tried to save herself. She tried to
crawl forward on her hands, forward into the hall, away from the blood and oil
and fire.”

“That was what Mr. Wilkes
really saw when he looked in through the window.”

“You see, he had been
unable to get rid of the two fuddled friends, who insisted on clinging to him
and drinking with him. He had been obliged to drive them home. If he could not
go to ‘Clearlawns’ now, he wondered how at least he could leave a message; and
the light in the window gave him an excuse.”

“He saw pretty Jane
propped up on her hands in the hall, looking out at him beseechingly while the
blue flame ran up and turned yellow. You might have thought he would have
pitied, for she loved him very much. Her wound was not really a deep wound. If
he had broken into the house at that moment, he might have saved her life. But
he preferred to let her die; because now she would make no public scandal and
spoil his chances with the rich Miss Linshaw. That was why he returned to his
friends and told a lie about a murderer in a tall hat. It is why, in heaven’s
truth, he murdered her himself. But when he returned to his friends, I do not
wonder that they saw him mopping his forehead. You know now how Jane Waycross
came back for him, presently.”

There was another heavy
silence.

The girl got to her feet,
with a sort of bouncing motion which was as suggestive as it was vaguely
familiar. It was as though she were about to run. She stood there, a trifle
crouched in her prim brown dress, so oddly narrow at the waist after an
old-fashioned pattern; and in the play of light on her face Rodney Hunter
fancied that its prettiness was only a shell.

“The same thing happened
afterwards, on some Christmas Eves,” she explained. “They played Blind Man’s
Buff over again. That is why people who live here do not care to risk it
nowadays. It happens at a quarter-past-seven—”

Hunter stared at the
curtains. “But it was a quarter-past seven when we got here!” he said. “It must
now be—”

“Oh, yes,” said the girl,
and her eyes brimmed over. “You see, I told you you had nothing to fear; it was
all over then. But that is not why I thank you. I begged you to stay, and you
did. You have listened to me, as no-one else would. And now I have told it at
last, and now I think both of us can sleep.”

Not a fold stirred or
altered in the dark curtains that closed the window bay; yet, as though a
blurred lens had come into focus, they now seemed innocent and devoid of harm.
You could have put a Christmas-tree there. Rodney Hunter, with Muriel following
his gaze, walked across and threw back the curtains. He saw a quiet window-seat
covered with chintz, and the rising moon beyond the window. When he turned
round, the girl in the old-fashioned dress was not there. But the front doors
were open again, for he could feel a current of air blowing through the house.

With his arm round
Muriel, who was white-faced, he went out into the hall. They did not look long
at the scorched and beaded stains at the foot of the panelling, for even the
scars of fire seemed gentle now. Instead, they stood in the doorway looking
out, while the house threw its great blaze of light across the frosty Weald. It
was a welcoming light. Over the rise of a hill, black dots trudging in the
frost showed that Jack Bannister’s party was returning; and they could hear the
sound of voices carrying far. They heard one of the party carelessly singing a
Christmas carol for glory and joy, and the laughter of children coming home.

The Boar's head was an important part of the Medieval English
Christmas feast. It was brought in on a charger by a procession of cooks,
huntsmen and retainers who would sing "The Boar's Head Carol." The
custom began to die out about the thirteenth century, although it still is
practiced in some places, where a suckling pig is substituted for the
all-but-extinct boar.

There have been many
prolific authors in the mystery genre, but few have been so completely
identified with the short story as Edward D. Hoch. In a time when writers were
turning short story ideas into novels for greater financial gain, Hoch found
equal success telling his stories in the form to which they are best suited.

Though he has written
four novels, his reputation unquestionably rests on the hundreds of short
stories that have come from his pen. He has created four series characters;
Nick Velvet, the raffish, Rafflish thief; Simon Ark, the 2000-year-old
detective; “Rand”, a British cryptographer and spy, and Captain Leopold, the
protagonist of “Christmas Is For Cops.”

Leopold is representative
of the detective as he has survived the socioeconomic upheaval of the last
twenty years. The police, and the police procedural, became an instrument for
voicing social concern while adhering to the basic outlines of the traditional
mystery story. It had begun in the late 1940’s with the works of Lawrence Treat
and Hillary Waugh, and continues to flourish today in the works of Lawrence
Sanders, Ed McBain and many others. About a decade ago it reached the zenith of
its popularity, both in television
(
Kojak
)
and films
(
The French Connection.)

Hoch’s own durability
comes from his mastery of this form and many others, and the straight-forward,
unaffected way he addresses his reader. No gimmicks, no posturing, just good
honest story-telling.

“
Going to the
Christmas party,
Captain?” Fletcher asked from the doorway. Captain Leopold glanced up from his
eternally cluttered desk. Fletcher was now a lieutenant in the newly
reorganized Violent Crimes Division, and they did not work together as closely
as they once had.

“I’ll be there,” Leopold
said. “In fact, I’ve been invited to speak.”

This news brought a grin
to Fletcher’s face. “Nobody speaks at the Christmas party, Captain. They just
drink.”

“Well, this year you’re
going to hear a speech, and I’m going to give it.”

“Lots of luck.”

“Is your wife helping
with the decorations again this year?”

“I suppose she’ll be
around,” Fletcher chuckled. “She doesn’t trust me at any Christmas party
without her.”

The annual Detective
Bureau party was, by tradition, a stag affair. But in recent years Carol
Fletcher and some of the other wives had come down to Eagles Hall in the
afternoon to trim the tree and hang the holly. Somehow these members of the
unofficial Decorations Committee usually managed to stay on for the evening’s
festivities.

The party was the
following evening, and Captain Leopold was looking forward to it. But he had
one unpleasant task to perform first. That afternoon, feeling he could delay it
no longer, he summoned Sergeant Tommy Gibson to his office and closed the door.