The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Part 98

"It's customary for the Club and guests to sing 'Noel' before we go in to dinner."

"You didn't come to last year's dinner. It was agreed then that we should give it up. Carols after dinner, much better."

"I must say I thought that was just for last year, because we were late," Roddy Davis fluted.

"Suggest we put it to the vote," Erdington said sharply.

Half a dozen of the Santas now stood looking at each other with subdued hostility. Then suddenly the Arctic explorer, Endell, began to sing "Noel, Noel" in a rich ba.s.s. There was the faintest flicker of hesitation, and then the guests and their hosts joined in. The situation was saved.

At dinner Quarles found himself with Acrise on one side of him and Roddy Davis on the other. Endell sat at Acrise's other side, and beyond him was Erdington. Turtle soup was followed by grilled sole, and then three great turkeys were brought in. The helpings of turkey were enormous. With the soup they drank a light, dry sherry, with the sole Cha.s.sagne Montrachet, with the turkey an Aloxe Corton.

"And who are you?" Roddy Davis peered at Quarles's card and said, "Of course, I know your name."

"I am a criminologist." This sounded better, Quarles thought, than "private detective."

"I remember your monograph on criminal calligraphy. Quite fascinating."

So Davis did know who he was. It would be easy, Quarles thought, to underrate the intelligence of this man.

"These beards really do get in the way rather," Davis said. "But there, one must suffer for tradition. Have you known Acrise long?"

"Not very. I'm greatly privileged to be here."

Quarles had been watching, as closely as he could, the pouring of the wine, the serving of the food. He had seen nothing suspicious. Now, to get away from Davis's questions, he turned to his host.

"d.a.m.ned awkward business before dinner," Acrise said. "Might have been, at least. Can't let well alone, Erdington."

He picked up his turkey leg, attacked it with Elizabethan gusto, wiped his mouth and fingers with his napkin. "Like this wine?"

"It's excellent."

"Chose it myself. They've got some good Burgundies here." Acrise's speech was slightly slurred, and it seemed to Quarles that he was rapidly getting drunk.

"Do you have any speeches?"

"No speeches. Just sing carols. But I've got a little surprise for 'em."

"What sort of surprise?"

"Very much in the spirit of Christmas, and a good joke too. But if I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise, would it?"

There was a general cry of pleasure as Albert himself brought in the great plum pudding, topped with holly and blazing with brandy.

"That's the most wonderful pudding I've ever seen in my life," Endell said. "Are we really going to eat it?"

"Of course," Acrise said irritably. He stood up, swaying a little, and picked up the knife beside the pudding.

"I don't like to be critical, but our Chairman is really not cutting the pudding very well," Roddy Davis whispered to Quarles. And indeed, it was more of a stab than a cut that Acrise made at the pudding. Albert took over, and cut it quickly and efficiently. Bowls of brandy b.u.t.ter were circulated.

Quarles leaned towards Acrise. "Are you all right?"

"Of course I'm all right."

The slurring was very noticeable now. Acrise ate no pudding, but he drank some more wine, and dabbed at his lips. When the pudding was finished, he got slowly to his feet again and toasted the Queen. Cigars were lighted. Acrise was not smoking. He whispered something to the waiter, who nodded and left the room. Acrise got up again, leaning heavily on the table.

"A little surprise," he said. "In the spirit of Christmas."

Quarles had thought that he was beyond being surprised by the activities of the Santa Claus Club, but he was astonished at the sight of the three figures who entered the room.

They were led by Snewin, somehow more mouselike than ever, wearing a long, white smock and a red nightcap with a ta.s.sel. He was followed by an older man dressed in a kind of grey sackcloth, with a face so white that it might have been covered in plaster of Paris. This man carried chains, which he shook. At the rear came a young-middle-aged lady who seemed to be completely hung with tinsel.

"I am Scrooge," said Snewin.

"I am Marley," wailed grey sackcloth, clanking his chains vigorously.

"And I," said the young-middle-aged lady, with abominable sprightliness, "am the ghost of Christmas past."

There was a ripple of laughter.

"We have come," said Snewin in a thin, mouse voice, "to perform for you our own interpretation of A Christmas Carol ... Oh, sir, what's the matter?"

Lord Acrise stood up in his robes, tore off his wig, pulled at his beard, tried to say something. Then he clutched at the side of his chair and fell sideways, so that he leaned heavily against Endell and slipped slowly to the floor.

There ensued a minute of confused, important activity. Endell made some sort of exclamation and rose from his chair, slightly obstructing Quarles. Erdington was first beside the body, holding the wrist in his hand, listening for the heart. Then they were all crowding round. Snewin, at Quarles's left shoulder, was babbling something, and at his right were Roddy Davis and Endell.

"Stand back," Erdington snapped. He stayed on his knees for another few moments, looking curiously at Acrise's puffed, distorted face, bluish around the mouth. Then he stood up.

"He's dead."

There was a murmur of surprise and horror, and now they all drew back, as men do instinctively from the presence of death.

"Heart attack?" somebody said.

Quarles moved to his side. "I'm a private detective, Sir James. Lord Acrise feared an attempt on his life, and asked me to come along here."

"You seem to have done well so far," Erdington said drily.

"May I look at the body?"

"If you wish."

As Quarles bent down, he caught the smell of bitter almonds. "There's a smell like prussic acid, but the way he died precludes cyanide, I think. He seemed to become very drunk during dinner, and his speech was slurred. Does that suggest anything to you?"

"I'm a brain surgeon, not a physician." Erdington stared at the floor. "Nitro benzene?"

"That's what I thought. We shall have to notify the police."

Quarles went to the door and spoke to a disturbed Albert. Then he returned to the room and clapped his hands.

"Gentlemen. My name is Francis Quarles, and I am a private detective. Lord Acrise asked me to come here tonight because he had received a threat that this would be his last evening alive. The threat said, 'I shall be there, and I shall watch with pleasure as you squirm in agony.' Lord Acrise has been poisoned. It seems certain that the man who made the threat is in this room."

"Gliddon," a voice said. Snewin had divested himself of the white smock and red nightcap, and now appeared as his customary respectable self.

"Yes. This letter, and others he had received, were signed with the name of James Gliddon, a man who bore a grudge against Lord Acrise which went back nearly half a century. Gliddon became a professional smuggler and crook. He would now be in his late sixties."

"But dammit, man, this Gliddon's not here." That was the General, who took off his wig and beard. "Lot of tomfoolery."

In a shamefaced way the other members of the Santa Claus Club removed their facial trappings. Marley took off his chains and the lady discarded her cloak of tinsel.

Quarles said, "Isn't he here? But Lord Acrise is dead."

Snewin coughed. "Excuse me, sir, but would it be possible for my colleagues from our local dramatic society to retire?"

"Everybody must stay in this room until the police arrive," Quarles said grimly. "The problem, as you will all realize, is how the poison was administered. All of us ate the same food, drank the same wine. I sat next to Lord Acrise, and I watched as closely as possible to make sure of this. After dinner some of you smoked cigars or cigarettes, but not Lord Acrise."

"Just a moment." It was Roddy Davis who spoke. "This sounds fantastic, but wasn't it Sherlock Holmes who said that when you'd eliminated all other possibilities, even a fantastic one must be right? Supposing poison in powder form was put on to Acrise's food? Through the pepper pots, say ..."

Erdington was shaking his head, but Quarles unscrewed both salt and pepper pots and tasted their contents. "Salt and pepper," he said briefly. "h.e.l.lo, what's this."

"It's Acrise's napkin," Endell said. "What's remarkable about that?"

"It's a napkin, but not the one Acrise used. He wiped his mouth half a dozen times on his napkin, and wiped his greasy fingers on it too, when he'd gnawed a turkey bone. He must certainly have left grease marks on it. But look at this napkin."

He held it up, and they saw that it was spotless. Quarles said softly, "The murderer's mistake."

Quarles turned to Erdington. "Sir James and I agree that the poison used was probably nitro benzene. This is deadly as a liquid, but it is also poisonous as a vapour-isn't that so?"

Erdington nodded. "You'll remember the case of the unfortunate young man who used shoe polish containing nitro benzene on damp shoes, put them on and wore them, and was killed by the fumes."

"Yes. Somebody made sure that Lord Acrise had a napkin that had been soaked in nitro benzene but was dry enough to use. The same person subst.i.tuted the proper napkin, the one belonging to the restaurant, after Acrise was dead."

"That means the napkin must still be here," Davis said.

"It does."

"Then I vote that we submit to a search!"

"That won't be necessary," Quarles said. "Only one person here fulfils all the qualifications of the murderer."

"James Gliddon?"

"No. Gliddon is almost certainly dead, as I found out when I made enquiries about him. But the murderer is somebody who knew about Acrise's relations.h.i.+p with Gliddon, and tried to be clever by writing those letters to lead us along a wrong track." He paused. "Then the murderer is somebody who had the opportunity of coming in here before dinner, and who knew exactly where Acrise would be sitting."

There was a dead silence in the room.

Quarles said, "He removed any possible suspicion from himself, as he thought, by being absent from the dinner table, but he arranged to come in afterwards to exchange the napkins. He probably put the poisoned napkin into the clothes he discarded. As for motive, longstanding hatred might be enough, but he is also somebody who knew that he would benefit handsomely when Acrise died ... stop him, will you?"

But the General, with a tackle reminiscent of the days when he had been the best wing three-quarter in the country, had already brought to the floor Lord Acrise's secretary, Snewin.

THE FLYING STARS.

G. K. Chesterton.

THE SECOND GREATEST ENGLISH DETECTIVE in all of literature, surpa.s.sed only by the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, is the gentle and kindly Father Brown. What separates him from most of his crime-fighting colleagues is his view that wrongdoers are souls in need of redemption rather than criminals to be brought to justice. Could there be a better detective to be at the center of a Christmas story? The rather ordinary-seeming Roman Catholic priest possesses a sharp, subtle, sensitive mind, with which he demonstrates a deep understanding of human nature in solving mysteries. "The Flying Stars" was first published in the May 20, 1911, issue of Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, and subsequently published in the June 1911 issue of Ca.s.sell's Magazine; it was first collected in The Innocence of Father Brown (London, Ca.s.sell, 1911).

The Flying Stars.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

"THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CRIME I EVER committed," Flambeau would say in his highly moral old age, "was also, by a singular coincidence, my last. It was committed at Christmas. As an artist I had always attempted to provide crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which I found myself, choosing this or that terrace or garden for a catastrophe, as if for a statuary group. Thus squires should be swindled in long rooms panelled with oak; while Jews, on the other hand, should rather find themselves unexpectedly penniless among the lights and screens of the Cafe Riche. Thus, in England, if I wished to relieve a dean of his riches (which is not so easy as you might suppose), I wished to frame him, if I make myself clear, in the green lawns and grey towers of some cathedral town. Similarly, in France, when I had got money out of a rich and wicked peasant (which is almost impossible), it gratified me to get his indignant head relieved against a grey line of clipped poplars, and those solemn plains of Gaul over which broods the mighty spirit of Millet.

"Well, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English middle-cla.s.s crime; a crime of Charles d.i.c.kens. I did it in a good old middle-cla.s.s house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree. Enough, you know the species. I really think my imitation of d.i.c.kens's style was dexterous and literary. It seems almost a pity I repented the same evening."

Flambeau would then proceed to tell the story from the inside; and even from the inside it was odd. Seen from the outside it was perfectly incomprehensible, and it is from the outside that the stranger must study it. From this standpoint the drama may be said to have begun when the front doors of the house with the stable opened on the garden with the monkey tree, and a young girl came out with bread to feed the birds on the afternoon of Boxing Day. She had a pretty face, with brave brown eyes; but her figure was beyond conjecture, for she was so wrapped up in brown furs that it was hard to say which was hair and which was fur. But for the attractive face she might have been a small toddling bear.

The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and already a ruby light was rolled over the bloomless beds, filling them, as it were, with the ghosts of the dead roses. On one side of the house stood the stable, on the other an alley or cloister of laurels led to the larger garden behind. The young lady, having scattered bread for the birds (for the fourth or fifth time that day, because the dog ate it), pa.s.sed un.o.btrusively down the lane of laurels and into a glimmering plantation of evergreens behind. Here she gave an exclamation of wonder, real or ritual, and looking up at the high garden wall above her, beheld it fantastically bestridden by a somewhat fantastic figure.

"Oh, don't jump, Mr. Crook," she called out in some alarm; "it's much too high."

The individual riding the party wall like an aerial horse was a tall, angular young man, with dark hair sticking up like a hair brush, intelligent and even distinguished lineaments, but a sallow and almost alien complexion. This showed the more plainly because he wore an aggressive red tie, the only part of his costume of which he seemed to take any care. Perhaps it was a symbol. He took no notice of the girl's alarmed adjuration, but leapt like a gra.s.shopper to the ground beside her, where he might very well have broken his legs.

"I think I was meant to be a burglar," he said placidly, "and I have no doubt I should have been if I hadn't happened to be born in that nice house next door. I can't see any harm in it, anyhow."

"How can you say such things?" she remonstrated.

"Well," said the young man, "if you're born on the wrong side of the wall, I can't see that it's wrong to climb over it."

"I never know what you will say or do next," she said.

"I don't often know myself," replied Mr. Crook; "but then I am on the right side of the wall now."

"And which is the right side of the wall?" asked the young lady, smiling.

"Whichever side you are on," said the young man named Crook.

As they went together through the laurels towards the front garden a motor horn sounded thrice, coming nearer and nearer, and a car of splendid speed, great elegance, and a pale green colour swept up to the front doors like a bird and stood throbbing.

"Hullo, hullo!" said the young man with the red tie. "Here's somebody born on the right side, anyhow. I didn't know, Miss Adams, that your Santa Claus was so modern as this."

"Oh, that's my G.o.dfather, Sir Leopold Fischer. He always comes on Boxing Day."

Then, after an innocent pause, which unconsciously betrayed some lack of enthusiasm, Ruby Adams added: "He is very kind."