Cynthia Manson (ed) (28 page)

“It stuck out as plain as your
nose,” Art told him, “but of course my going for the boxes was just a good
guess. Did you pay sixty-two bucks for this?”

Duross’s lips parted, but no words
came. Apparently he had none. He nodded, not vigorously.

Art turned to the girl. “Look, Miss
Lauro. You say you’re through here. You ought to have something to remember it
by. You could make some trouble for Mr. Duross for the dirty trick he tried to
play on you, and if you lay off I expect he’d like to show his appreciation by
giving you this ring. Wouldn’t you, Mr. Duross?”

Duross managed to get it out. “Sure
I would.”

“Shall I give it to her for you?”

“Sure.” Duross’s jaw worked. “Go
ahead.”

Art held out the ring and the girl
took it, but not looking at it because she was gazing incredulously at him. It
was a gaze so intense as to disconcert him, and he covered up by turning to
Duross and proffering the box with an address on it.

“Here,” he said, “you can have this.
Next time you cook up a plan for getting credit with your wife for buying her a
ring, and collecting from the insurance company for its cost, and sending the
ring to a girl friend—all in one neat little operation—don’t do it. And don’t
forget you gave Miss Lauro that ring before witnesses.”

Duross gulped and nodded.

Koenig spoke. “Your name is not
Hippie, officer, it’s Santa Claus. You have given her the ring she would have
given her life for, you have given him an out on a charge of attempted fraud,
and you have given me a crossoff on a claim. That’s the ticket! That’s the old
yuletide spirit! Merry Christmas!”

“Nuts,” Art said contemptuously, and
turned and marched from the room, down the stairs, and out to the sidewalk. As
he headed in the direction of the station house he decided that he would tone
it down a little in his report. Getting a name for being tough was okay, but
not too damn tough. That insurance guy sure was dumb, calling him Santa
Claus—him. Art Ripple, feeling as he did about Christmas.

Which reminded him, Christmas Eve
would be a swell time for the murder.

“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.”

As a matter of fact, the police were
surprisingly quick and discreet. A plainclothes detective superintendent and
his sergeant, a photographer, and the police doctor arrived, not in a posse,
but as individuals, unnoticed among the crowd. They assembled in the booth,
where the deputy manager—Mr. Andrews—and Mr. Harrington and I were waiting for
them.

The superintendent introduced
himself—his name was Armitage—and inspected the body with an expression of cold
fury on his face that I couldn’t quite understand, although the reason became
clear later. He said very little. After some tedious formalities Armitage
indicated that the body might be removed.

“What’s the least conspicuous way to
do it?” he asked.

“You can take him out through the
back of the booth,” I said. “The canvas overlaps right behind Santa’s chair.
The door to the staff quarters and the stockroom is just opposite, and from
there you can take the service lift to the goods entrance in the mews.”

The doctor and the photographer
between them carried off their grim burden on a collapsible stretcher, and
Superintendent Armitage began asking questions about the arrangements in the
Father Christmas booth. I did the explaining, since Mr. Harrington seemed to be
verging on hysteria.

Customers paid their 50 pence to
Disaster in the Elfin Grove, and then the child—usually alone—was propelled
through the door of the booth and into the presence of Father Christmas, who
sat in his canvas-backed director’s chair on a small dais facing the entrance,
with his sack of toys beside him. The child climbed onto his knee, whispered
its Christmas wishes, and was rewarded with a few friendly words and a small
gift from Santa’s sack.

What was not obvious to the
clientele was the back entrance to the booth, which enabled Father Christmas to
slip in and out unobserved. He usually had his coffee break at about 11:15,
unless there was a very heavy rush of business. Disaster would pick a moment
when custom seemed slow, put up the CLOSED notice, and inform Bert that he
could take a few minutes off. When he returned, he pressed a button by his
chair that rang a buzzer in the cashier’s booth. Down would come the notice,
and Santa was in business again.

Before Superintendent Armitage could
comment on my remarks, Mr. Harrington broke into a sort of despairing wait. “It
must have been one of the customers!” he cried.

“I don’t think so. sir.” said
Armitage. “This is an inside job. He was stabbed in the back with a long thin
blade of some sort. The murderer must have opened the back flap and stabbed him
clean through the canvas back of his chair. That must have been someone who
knew the exact arrangements. The murderer then used the back way to enter the
booth—”

“I don’t see how you can say that!”
Harrington’s voice was rising dangerously. “If the man was stabbed from
outside, what makes you think anybody came into the booth?”

“I’ll explain that in a minute,
sir.”

Ignoring Armitage, Harrington went
on. “In any case, he wasn’t our regular Father Christmas! None of us had ever
seen him before. Why on earth would anybody kill a man that nobody knew?”