Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (85 page)

He
turned a hand over. “And in the end they probably won’t believe you. They’ll
think you invented it for some cunning and obscure purpose— as you say, you are
an Oriented—and all you would get for it would be more questions. They might
even suspect that you were somehow involved in the murder itself. They are
quite capable of unreasonable suspicions. So I suggest these considerations as
much on your behalf as on mine. I think you will be wise to forget about Santa
Claus.”

She
was eying him, straight and steady. “I like to be wise,” she said.

“I’m
sure you do, Miss Quon.”

“I
still think you should have done it my way, but it’s done now. Is that all?”

He
nodded. “That’s all.”

She
looked at me, and it took a second for me to realize that she was smiling at
me. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to smile back, and did. She left the chair and
came to me, extending a hand, and I arose and took it. She looked up at me.

“I
would like to shake hands with Mr. Wolfe, but I know he doesn’t like to shake
hands. You know, Mr. Goodwin, it must be a very great pleasure to work for a
man as clever as Mr. Wolfe. So extremely clever. It has been very exciting to
be here. Now I say good-by.”

She
turned and went.

Someone wearing a Santa Claus suit held up Finch's Variety
Store Christmas Eve and made off with $2,000 and three cartons of Butter Rum
Lifesavers. The police have traced the costume back to a local costume
warehouse, and have narrowed their list of suspects to Al, Bob, Charlie, Dave
and Ed, who were employed this season as Santas at the five big local
department stores, Albertson's, Bandecker's, Corson's, Dillingham's, and
Everding's.

From the facts
listed below, can you tell which man worked at which store, and who held up
Finch's Variety Store?

1. The
Santa at Albertson's is married to Ed's sister.

2. The
Santa from Corson's and the Santa from Everding's were being escorted out of
the North Pole Bar full of Christmas spirits at the time of the robbery.

3. Ed
and Charlie used to work at Dillingham's, but didn't go back because the chair
was uncomfortable.

4. The
robber is not married.

5. Dave
never goes into Albertson's, Bandecker's or Dillingham's

because
his wife has had beefs with the sales people there.

6. Al's
wife threatened to leave him when he lost his job at Corson's last year after
it was revealed he was the Christmas Flasher. (He was not rehired.)

7. Bob
was rehired and given a huge raise this year by his father Cuthbert Everding.

Solution:

Al works at Dillinghams's

Bob works at Evending's

Charlie works at Albertson's

Dave works at Corson's

Ed (the guilty party) works at Bandecker's

G. K. Chesterton would be surprised
if he were to return and discover that his reputation rested primarily on his
Father Brown stories. He was, after all, a celebrated critic, social historian,
poet and biographer. He was one of the leading lights of Fabian Socialism, and
an important member of England’s intellectual elite. In 1922 he converted to
Roman Catholicism and began a new career as religious proselytizer and
Anglo-Catholic pundit.

His Father Brown stories, begun in
1911, chronicle his fascination with an institution he sought to portray in
moral and ethical terms. Some critics complained that Chesterton gave his
readers too much of a Sunday School lesson with his stories, but all agreed
that Father Brown was and is one of the most important detectives of all time.

“The Flying Stars” is one of the
earliest of the stories and features Flambeau, the master crook, who functions
primarily as Father Brown ‘s Moriarty (and then as his reformed aide) in the
series of 51 adventures.

Admittedly some of the Father Brown
stories seem a little fustian and talky today, but the great ones, such as “The
Flying Stars,” have a humanity and genuine social concern that transcends all
else. Likewise, it ensures that Chesterton’s tales of the little cleric are
still read and appreciated, and will continue to be, as long as crime continues
to fascinate and challenge readers.

“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 Café 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-class
crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good old middle-class 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
Dickens’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), passed unobtrusively 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 grasshopper 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 godfather, 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.”

John
Crook, journalist, had heard of that eminent City magnate; and it was not his
fault if the City magnate had not heard of him; for in certain articles in
The Clarion
or
The New Age
Sir Leopold had
been dealt with austerely. But he said nothing and grimly watched the unloading
of the motor-car, which was rather a long process. A large, neat chauffeur in
green got out from the front, and a small, neat manservant in grey got out from
the back, and between them they deposited Sir Leopold on the doorstep and began
to unpack him, like some very carefully protected parcel. Rugs enough to stock
a bazaar, furs of all the beasts of the forest, and scarves of all the colours
of the rainbow were unwrapped one by one, till they revealed something
resembling the human form; the form of a friendly, but foreign-looking old
gentleman, with a grey goat-like beard and a beaming smile, who rubbed his big
fur gloves together.