Christmas Stalkings (12 page)

“What kind of car was he driving?” asked Dubinsky, writing rapidly.

“Uh—” Her eyes slipped around the room, as if the answer might be engraved on a wall somewhere. “A black car. A big black car, I think it was—maybe a Mercedes or something.”

“A big black Mercedes,” said Dubinsky calmly, writing on still.

“Uh—yeah. And the driver was this big black guy, really scary-looking.”

“And you got into the car with him?” asked Sanders, allowing amazement to flood his voice.

Red
blotches
sprang up on
her
pale
cheeks.
“Yeah—
well, he looked really nice at first, and then when he didn’t drive me to the church, but went way out by the lake, I got scared, and I jumped out of the car when he had to slow down and I walked here. It was a long way, but I figured my dad would wait for me.” A tear spilled onto her cheek.

“How old are you, Miss Wallace?” asked Sanders.

“Nineteen.” There was suspicion in her voice. “What difference does it make how old I am?”

“No difference. You seem a bit old for high school, that’s all,” said Sanders mildly.

“I wanted more breadth in my education, so I took an extra year.” Suspicion gave way to hostility. “Is there something wrong with that?”

The inspector smiled peaceably. “Why did you walk all the way up here instead of telephoning the police?”

“I didn’t have any money. I told you that.”

“You don’t need money for emergency calls,” he said. “You might want to remember that. We like to investigate incidents like abduction.”

“Well—he never hurt me, just scared me. And anyway, if I’d caught my bus, I would have been shot. That’s what they told me. I’m really sorry, Mr. Toomey. About your wife. She was a great teacher.”

Jeff Toomey turned away, an expression of agony on his face.

“You can wait out in the church with your father, Miss Wallace,” said Sanders. “But please don’t leave just yet.” With a jerk of his head, Sanders walked out of the room. Dubinsky rose hastily and followed.

“Lousy liar, isn’t she?” said Sanders as he walked back into the chancel. “If she’d said it was a green car, she’d have been abducted by little green men, I suppose.”

“Yeah. But ten to one it doesn’t mean a thing—she was out with a boyfriend or something like that.”

Sanders glanced speculatively at the girl as she walked toward the back of the church. “How old did you say Mrs. Toomey was?”

“I didn’t,” said Dubinsky, flipping back through his notebook. “Thirty-five.”

“And her husband?”

“Thirty-two. Doesn’t look it, does he?”

“Where do you have to be to shoot someone standing on this platform?” he asked, as he scrambled up to the position of the center angel.

Dubinsky backed away between the choir stalls in the chancel, looking up at the grey-suited figure of the inspector. Then he turned and surveyed the church. “Where’s the edge of your line of sight?” he called up.

“Just past that constable over there,” said Sanders, and jumped down. “It’s what I thought—to get a clear shot at the angel you had to be in the balcony or right under it, unless you wanted to be observed by a couple of thousand witnesses. And Toomey was up in the balcony, taking a picture just as the shot was fired, right? They’ve taken his film off to check that?”

“And there were at least four teachers standing under the balcony,” said Dubinsky. “The drama teacher and three more floaters.”

“The balcony,” said Sanders. “Could someone hide up there?”

“
Naw
,” said Dubinsky. “It was the first thing we thought of. Nothing up there but camera equipment, chairs,
 
and some
 
old wooden—”
 
He turned and moved with astonishing speed toward the back of the church.

They found the lightweight assault rifle in a large wooden box that looked as if it had once contained a speaker for the grandfather of all sound systems. It was standing upright, its open side pushed back against the wall, another small wooden box perched inside it. “A stool,” said Dubinsky, giving the small box a kick. “All the time Toomey was fiddling with his equipment, this guy just sat here, waiting for the pageant to start. When Toomey was focusing on the pageant scene, he stood up, and picked her off. Only he got Toomey’s wife, instead of Wallace’s daughter.”

“Why didn’t Toomey hear the shot?”

“No one did. These things aren’t that noisy and he waited until the music was loud before he fired. And then in the confusion, he slipped down the stairs and out the side door. He was pretty safe, really. Toomey was too busy to poke around.”

“Wait there,” said Sanders. “I’ll be right back.”

Dubinsky leaned on the railing of the balcony with a growing sense of irritation. So far, he had been the one to field the flak from the furious Minister of Justice, not to say the equally enraged minister of the church, the chairman of the board, the principal of the school, and everyone else in the building. And what was Sanders doing? Murmuring sweet nothings into the ear of the green-eyed woman sitting in the front pew. It wasn’t that he had any objection to Harriet Jeffries as a human being; so far, she had passed his two tests: she drank beer and she was said to be an expert photographer. He admired expertise, in any field. It was his sense of the fitness of things that was offended. What would Sanders say if he turned up for work with his wife Sally draped over his arm? Not that she’d be fool enough to be here. Sally, thank God, had too much sense.

Now Miss Jeffries was putting down her book and walking back with Sanders. Dubinsky sighed and sat down. Shootings in churches made him very uncomfortable. Especially political ones.

“Hi, Ed,” said Harriet Jeffries, looking slightly embarrassed. “Sorry to barge in, but John wanted me to check for something . . .” She was opening Jeff Toomey’s camera case as she talked, carefully picking up pieces of equipment and putting them to one side. “Here it is,” she said. She pulled out a long grey cord neatly rolled and fastened with a garbage-bag tie, undid it, and brought it over to the camera closest to the center line of the church. She snapped one end into place and began to unroll the cord. “That box?” she asked.

Sanders nodded.

She continued unrolling it until it reached the box with about five inches to spare. There was a grey bulb on the end, lying on the floor. “It’s a cable release. You’ve seen them. Okay—you stand back here— you’ve already focused on the spot in front of the altar where the angels will be—and at the right moment you fire your gun and then just step on the bulb.
Voila
—you have a picture of the woman collapsing, apparently taken while you were standing behind your camera. I’m surprised that you two didn’t think of it earlier. It’s the most obvious thing in the world.”

“So why does Toomey want to shoot Wallace’s daughter?” said Dubinsky, his mind still firmly fixed on politics.

“He doesn’t. He wants to shoot his wife, of course,” said Harriet. “Who else do men shoot? You know that. And since the girl must have been in on it, I would guess you don’t have to look very far for a reason.”

“And the lying little bitch was sitting somewhere drinking coffee until it was time to show up. He knew she wouldn’t be there. But how could they be sure that Cynthia Toomey would take her place?”

Harriet shrugged. “I don’t know, but you might ask how many people there are in the school with long red hair who are over five foot nine. It seemed awfully important to everyone that all the angels look the same.”

“So Toomey keeps her in the balcony chatting until he knows they’ll be panicking, and then reminds her she’s supposed to be helping with the pageant. Down she goes, red hair and all. Ninety percent chance they’ll use her,” said Sanders reflectively. “And if a third redheaded angel turns up onstage, he knows it has to be his wife and he has ten minutes to set up his stunt. Looks good to me. Let’s get him.”

“Do you think they’ll let us cancel the pageant next year, Helen?”

Helen Armstrong shook her head as she finished packing the last of the costumes into their boxes. “No. But I think this is the last year they’re going to expect us to find three girls in the graduating class with long hair all the same
colour
.”

“How about three angels with short curly hair, all different
colours
? Dear Lord,” Annabel muttered suddenly. “They’re trickling in for evensong and the police are still in the vestry talking to ghastly Mr. Wallace. Do you suppose they’ve arrested Ashley as well?”

“I hope so,” said Helen with an enormous yawn. “Then I won’t have to mark her essay on George Eliot over the holidays.” She stuck a long piece of masking tape across the last box to keep it closed during its short trip back to the school. “There. We’re finished. Why don’t you and Rob come back to our place for a drink? We’ll send out for a pizza and start celebrating Christmas. For real, this time.”

What a wonderful surprise this was for a Gilbert and Sullivan fan to find in her Christmas stalking! John Malcolm, whom I’d met at a convention in Philadelphia, was ready to oblige when I asked him to write us a story. He says this one’s been waiting to come forth for a long time. He hopes we like it. How could anyone not?

John Malcolm has written eight crime novels featuring Tim Simpson, an art-investment specialist with a London merchant bank, whose work involves him in the desperate dealings and acquisitive violence of the art and antiques underworld in Europe and North America.

He has also written short stories for Collins Crime Club’s Diamond Jubilee Collection and Macmillan’s
Winter’s Tales 22
and is the author of books and articles on antique furniture. He lives in Sussex, England.

Submit to Fate without unseemly wrangle Such complications frequently occur Life is one complicated tangle Death is the only true unraveller

The Grand Inquisitor

The Gondoliers

by Gilbert and Sullivan

It does not often snow on Christmas Eve in London. Winters have been mild for two or three years, and London has never been a snowy spot. It was very cold that day, however, and as we strolled down the tree-lined central avenue in the
Brompton
Cemetery I was more than a little mystified, when the first flakes began to fall, at why my friend Quentin
Cranbrook
should have been so insistent on this excursion. After all, as afternoon darkness fell, it would have been much more sensible to have remained in the
Cranbrooks
’ comfortable flat just round the corner in Earls Court Square, where his charming wife, Jill, was preparing a succulent turkey and suitable embellishments for our traditional meal the following day.

But
Cranbrook
had insisted, and it had been so kind of him to invite me, knowing that since the death of my dear wife two years previously I had faced my Christmases alone. I had not wished to demur.
Cranbrook
was an old acquaintance and in years past we had often made up a foursome. The death of my wife in childbirth changed all that; I had worked very hard at my small export business to overcome my loss and
Cranbrook
had been much engrossed in his biographies. For once the literary tide seemed to be flowing his way and, with the increasing popularity of biography, he was expecting at last to support his lovely wife fully, without needing the financial resources with which she had loyally sustained their life in London.

“You enjoyed the Gilbert and Sullivan last night, I think?” he queried heavily, rhetorically, as we strolled along the wide path flanked by those plane trees which, in the summer, make the
Brompton
Cemetery a shady place for workers to relax in at lunchtime.

“Indeed I did.” We had gone, the three of us, to a performance of
The Gondoliers
by a company part revived
D’Oyly
Carte and part new. It is the Americans who have re-energized our taste for Gilbert and Sullivan with their wonderful version of
The Pirates of
Penzance
,
performed in London by Pamela Stephenson and George Cole, showing how radical, how fresh the original version must have seemed to Victorian eyes. This, however, had also been a fine performance; the melodies still rang in my ears.

“That is why I have brought you here.”
Cranbrook
flashed me a significant glance. “I have something to show you which will interest and, perhaps, amuse.”

I looked at him in some surprise. He was getting to be a bit of an odd fellow, I thought, so immured in the research which the production of biographies demands. The details of past relationships and actions fascinated him; to him the long hours in libraries and archives, the poring over books, documents and letters were no hardship, no task, but physically the occupation had taken its toll. Looking now at his big frame, wrapped up in a bulky overcoat and muffler against the freezing cold, I saw how it was becoming hunched from hours of study, bent, as it were, into an attitude of seated literary attention. His hair too, always a little wild, had receded from the brow and bore the occasional trace of grey not just temporarily induced there by a melting flake of snow but, alas, more permanently inscribed among his locks.