The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  “All right. Tell me about the ghost.” She reached for another cigarette and perched on the arm of a chair.

  I crossed to the window and looked away over the lawn toward the trees silhouetted against the city lights. “It can be traced back, as all ghost stories can, to a story of death and an unquiet spirit. About a hundred and fifty years ago this house was owned by an army officer, a retired colonel by the name of Davenport. He had a daughter called Rosamund, and it was believed in the city that he doted on her. She was dressed fashionably and given a good education, which in those days was beyond the expectation of most young women. Rosamund was a lively, intelligent, and attractive girl. Her hair when she wore it long was very like yours, fine and extremely fair. Not surprisingly, she had admirers. The one she favored most was a young man from Bristol, Luke Robertson, who at that time was an architect. In the conventions of the time they formed an attachment which amounted to little more than a few chaperoned meetings, some letters, poems, and so on. They were lovers in a very old-fashioned sense that you may find difficult to credit. In physical terms it amounted to no more than a few stolen kisses, if that. Somewhere in this house there is supposed to be carved into woodwork the letters L and R linked. I can’t show you. I haven’t found it.”

  Outside, a taxi trundled over the cobbles. I watched it draw up at a house some doors down. Two couples came out of the building, laughing, and climbed into the cab. It was obvious that they were leaving a party. The heavy beat of music carried up to me.

  I said, “I wonder if it’s turned midnight. It might be Christmas Day already.”

  She said, “Please go on with the story.”

  “Colonel Davenport—the father of this girl—was a lonely man. His wife had died some years before. Lately he had become friendly with a neighbor, another resident of the Crescent, a widow approaching fifty years of age by the name of Mrs. Crandley, who lived in one of the houses at the far end of the building. She was a musician, a pianist, and she gave lessons. One of her pupils was Rosamund. So far as one can tell, Mrs. Crandley was a good teacher and the girl a promising pupil. Do you play?”

  “What?”

  I turned to face her. “I said, do you play the piano?”

  “Oh. Just a bit,” said the girl.

  “You didn’t tell me your name.”

  “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind. What happened between the colonel and Mrs. Crandley?”

  “Their friendship blossomed. He wanted her to marry him. Mrs. Crandley was not unwilling. In fact, she agreed, subject to one condition. She had a son of twenty-seven called Justinian.”

  “What was that?”

  “Justinian. There was a vogue for calling your children after emperors. This Justinian was a dull fellow without much to recommend him. He was lazy and overweight. He rarely ventured out of the house. Mrs. Crandley despaired of him.”

  “She wanted him off her hands?”

  “That is what it amounted to. She wanted him married and she saw the perfect partner for him in Rosamund. Surely such a charming, talented girl would bring out some positive qualities in her lumpish son. Mrs. Crandley applied herself diligently to the plan, insisting that Justinian answer the doorbell each time Rosamund came for her music lesson. Then he would be told to sit in the room and listen to her playing. Everything Mrs. Crandley could do to promote the match was done. For his part, Justinian was content to go along with the plan. He was promised that if he married the girl he would be given his mother’s house, so the pattern of his life would alter little, except that a pretty wife would keep him company rather than a discontented, nagging mother. He began to eye Rosamund with increasing favor. So when the colonel proposed marriage to Mrs. Crandley, she assented on the understanding that Justinian would be married to Rosamund at the same time.”

  “How about Rosamund? Was she given any choice?”

  “You have to be aware that marriages were commonly arranged by the parents in those days.”

  “But you said she already had a lover. He was perfectly respectable, wasn’t he?”

  I nodded. “Absolutely. But Luke Robertson didn’t feature in Mrs. Crandley’s plan. He was ignored. Rosamund bowed under the pressure and became engaged to Justinian in the autumn of 1838. The double marriage was to take place in the Abbey on Christmas Eve.”

  “Oh, dear—I think I can guess the rest of the story.”

  “It may not be quite as you expect. As the day of the wedding approached, Rosamund began to dread the prospect. She pleaded with her father to allow her to break off the engagement. He wouldn’t hear of it. He loved Mrs. Crandley and his thoughts were all of her. In despair, Rosamund sent the maidservant with a message to Luke, asking him to meet her secretly on the basement steps. She had a romantic notion that Luke would elope with her.”

  My listener was enthralled. “And did he come?”

  “He came. Rosamund poured out her story. Luke listened with sympathy, but he was cautious. He didn’t see elopement as the solution. Rather bravely, he volunteered to speak to the colonel and appeal to him to allow Rosamund to marry the man of her choice. If that failed, he would remind the colonel that Rosamund could not be forced to take the sacred vows. Her consent had to be freely given in church, and she was entitled to withhold it. So this uncomfortable interview took place a day or two later. The colonel, naturally, was outraged. Luke was banished from the house and forbidden to speak to Rosamund again. The unfortunate girl was summoned by her father and accused of wickedly consorting with her former lover when she was promised to another. The story of the secret note and the meeting on the stairs was dragged from her. She was told that she wished to destroy her father’s marriage. She was said to be selfish and disloyal. Worse, she might be taken to court by Justinian for breach of promise.”

  “Poor little soul! Did it break her?”

  “No. Amazingly, she stood her ground. Luke’s support had given her courage. She would not marry Justinian. It was the colonel who backed down. He went to see Mrs. Crandley. When he returned, it was to tell Rosamund that his marriage would not, after all, take place. Mrs. Crandley had insisted on a double wedding, or nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t have been in Rosamund’s shoes for a million pounds.”

  “She was told by her father that she had behaved no better than a servant, secretly meeting her lover on the basement steps and trifling with another man’s affections, so in future he would treat her as a servant. And he did. He dismissed the housemaid. He ordered Rosamund to move her things to the maid’s room in the attic, and he gave her a list of duties that kept her busy from five-thirty each morning until late at night.”

  “Cruel.”

  “All his bitterness was heaped on her.”

  “Did she kill herself?”

  “No,” I said with only the slightest pause. “She was murdered.”

  “Murdered?”

  “On Christmas Eve, the day that the weddings would have taken place, she was suffocated in her bed.”

  “Horrible!”

  “A pillow was held against her face until she ceased to breathe. She was found dead in bed by the cook on Christmas morning after she failed to report for duty. The colonel was informed and the police were sent for.”

  “Who killed her?”

  “The inspector on the case, a local man without much experience of violent crimes, was in no doubt that Colonel Davenport was the murderer. He had a powerful motive. The animus he felt toward his daughter had been demonstrated by the way he treated her. It seemed that his anger had only increased as the days passed. On the date he was due to have married, it became insupportable.”

  “Was it true? Did he confess to killing her?”

  “He refused to make any statement. But the evidence against him was overwhelming. Three inches of snow fell on Christmas Eve. It stopped about eight-thirty that evening. The time of death was estimated at about eleven p.m. When the inspector and his men arrived next morning no footsteps were visible on the path leading
to the front door except those of the cook, who had gone for the police. The only other person in the house was Colonel Davenport. So he was charged with murdering his own daughter. The trial was short, for he refused to plead. He remained silent to the end. He was found guilty and hanged at Bristol in February 1839.”

  She put out the cigarette. “Grim.”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s more to the story, isn’t there? The ghost. You said something about an unquiet spirit.”

  I said, “There was a feeling of unease about the fact that the colonel wouldn’t admit to the crime. After he was convicted and condemned, they tried to persuade him to confess, to lay his sins before his Maker. A murderer often would confess in the last days remaining to him, even after protesting innocence all through the trial. They all did their utmost to persuade him—the prison governor, the warders, the priest, and the hangman himself. Those people had harrowing duties to perform. It would have helped them to know that the man going to the gallows was truly guilty of the crime. Not one word would that proud old man speak.”

  “You sound almost sorry for him. There wasn’t really any doubt, was there?”

  I said, “There’s a continuous history of supernatural happenings in this house for a century and a half. Think about it. Suppose, for example, someone else committed the murder.”

  “But who else could have?”

  “Justinian Crandley.”

  “That’s impossible. He didn’t live here. His footprints would have shown up in the snow.”

  “Not if he entered the house as you did tonight—along the roof and through the attic window. He could have murdered Rosamund and returned to his own house by the same route.”

  “It’s possible, I suppose, but why—what was his motive?”

  “Revenge. He would have been master in his own house if the marriage had not been called off. Instead, he faced an indefinite future with his domineering and now embittered mother. He blamed Rosamund. He decided that if he was not to have her as his wife, no one else should.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “It is now,” said I.

  “Why didn’t the colonel tell them he was innocent?”

  “He blamed himself. He felt a deep sense of guilt for the way he had treated his own daughter. But for his selfishness the murder would never have taken place.”

  “Do you think he knew the truth?”

  “He must have worked it out. He loved Mrs. Crandley too much to cause her further unhappiness.”

  There was an interval of silence, broken finally by the sound of car tires on the cobbles below.

  She stood up. “Tonight when you saw me at the attic door you thought I was Rosamund’s ghost.”

  I said, “No. Rosamund doesn’t haunt this place. Her spirit is at rest. I didn’t take you for a real ghost any more than I believed your story of escaping from the fellow in the leather jacket.”

  She walked to the window. “It is my taxi.”

  I wasn’t going to let her leave without admitting the truth. “You went to the party two doors along with the idea of breaking into this house. You climbed out onto the roof and forced your way in upstairs, meaning to let your friend in by the front door. You were going to burgle the place.”

  She gasped and swung around. “How did you know that?”

  “When I opened the door he was expecting you. He said ‘What kept you?’ He knew which house to call at, so it must have been planned. If your story had been true, he wouldn’t have known where to come.”

  She stared down at the waiting cab.

  I said, “Until I suggested the taxi, you were quite prepared to go out into the street where this man who had allegedly threatened you was waiting.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “And I noticed that you didn’t want the lights turned on.”

  Her tone altered. “You’re not one of the fuzz, are you? You wouldn’t turn me in? Give me a break, will you? It’s the first time. I’ll never try it again.”

  “How can I know that?”

  “I’ll give you my name and address, if you want. Then you can check.”

  It is sufficient to state here that she supplied the information. I shall keep it to myself. I’m no longer in the business of exposing petty criminals. I saw her to her taxi. She promised to stop seeing her boyfriend. Perhaps you think I let her off too lightly. Her misdemeanor was minor compared with the discovery I had made—and I owed that discovery to her.

  It released me from my obligation, you see. I told you I was once a policeman. An inspector, actually. I made a fatal mistake. I have had a hundred and fifty years to search for the truth and now that I found it I can rest. The haunting of the Royal Crescent is at an end.

  A CHRISTMAS IN CAMP

  Edmund Cox

  WHILE WE ARE ACCUSTOMED to think of Christmas as a Dickensian event in Victorian England, or in a romantic little clapboard house in snowy Connecticut, it is a holiday celebrated in all parts of the world—snowy or not. This story is by Sir Edmund Charles Cox, who served for many years as a member of the Indian Imperial Police and wrote several factual books about that country. He also wrote three rare short story collections: John Carruthers, Indian Policeman (1905), The Achievements of John Carruthers (1911), and The Exploits of Kesho Naik, Dacoit (1912). In the books about his British policeman, Carruthers is at the center of all the stories, but each is narrated by different officers under his command. “A Christmas in Camp” was first published in The Achievements of John Carruthers (London, Constable, 1911).

  A Christmas in Camp

  EDMUND COX

  Told by William Trench, District Superintendent of Police

  MR. CARRUTHERS WAS FURIOUSLY angry. I had seldom seen him angry at all, and never anything approaching this. He glared at me until I felt as if his glance would wither me away.

  “You indescribable idiot,” he thundered. “You hopeless fool! You have ruined yourself for life. I did think that we had one decent young policeman. After all that I have done for you too. Good heavens, it is too monstrous. Ruined utterly! Never a stroke of honest work to be got out of you again! Talk of brains, intellect, enthusiasm, keenness! And all for what? Endless trouble, worry, and annoyance! Damn it, man, it is too intolerable!”

  And what was the cause of all this outburst? Merely this, that I had asked him to congratulate me on my going to be married. I had hoped that he would be pleased, especially when I told him that she was the dearest girl in the world. But this only seemed to add fuel to the flames.

  “The dearest girl in the world!” he snorted. “The fools always say that. They learn in good time what there is dear about it when they have to pay for their idiotcy.”

  I felt unspeakably hurt and indignant. What crime had I committed? I was now twenty-six, and old enough to judge for myself, I thought; and many men married at that age and seemed to be as happy as possible. I had been home on three month’s privilege leave and had become engaged to—well, to the dearest girl in the world, without any possible exception. It was now August, and she was to come out in November, and we were to be married in the Bombay cathedral. I had the greatest regard for Mr. Carruthers, and I was looking forward to his congratulations on my good luck. And now to be treated like this! I felt exceedingly disconcerted. We both stood silent for a while. He had not even offered me a chair.

  “Forgive me if I have been violent, Trench,” he said at last, holding out his hand, which I took. “I was quite upset at this sudden announcement. Why didn’t you have some consideration for me, and let me have a little preliminary warning by letter?”

  “Well, you see, sir,” I replied, “I wanted to give you a surprise and have your congratulations personally.”

  “By the prophets,” he said, “you certainly achieved your object in giving me a surprise; but this sort of surprise is not good for one—not for me at any rate. And as for my congratulations, well, my dear boy, as you have asked for them I am afraid you must have them. This
is the prospect on which I have to congratulate you. A very pretty but evanescent glimpse of fairy land to begin with; then incessant thinking of every rupee, anna, and pie; worries about health; complaints about being in a wretched dull station, a transfer about every two years at ruinous expense, for double first-class fare doesn’t go far with a family; no money to go home on leave when leave is due; instead of investigating a crime at length, as you ought to, scheming how soon you can get back to the mem-sahib; and to pass on for a bit, in fifteen years’ time, when you are forty-one and a generous Government is giving you possibly eight hundred depreciated rupees a month, there will be three youngsters being educated at home and the wife there to look after them. You will be sending the family five hundred rupees a month; you will be in debt for their steamer passages, and paying this off at the rate of fifty rupees a month, leaving you two hundred and fifty to live on, the same as you had when you started life, a nice income on which to keep up the position of Head of the Police in a district; you will be all alone and fagged and worried and unable to do justice to your work; but there will be no going home for you, my boy, unless some old aunt leaves you a legacy; and long before your pension is due, though still comparatively young in years, you will be a despondent, worn-out, useless old man. You asked me for my congratulations and, by the Lord, you have had them.”

  Here was food for reflection. I could have cried. I felt so miserable at this crushing summary of my future circumstances. For I knew that though it was one-sided, and did not say anything about the companionship of married life, and so on, yet truth compelled me to admit that I had seen something of the same kind in other cases. However, if every one, at all events in India, was going to look so far ahead as that, very few people would be married at all; and I cheered up at this reflection, and took a brighter view of the future. In fact, when I thought of the girl who was coming out to be my wife in a few months, and how delightful it would be to be in camp together, and ride together, and dine together in the tents, and breakfast together under the trees, how could I feel anything but overjoyed with life? And Mr. Carruthers, having scolded me to his heart’s content, to my unspeakable satisfaction wished me all the joy in the world, and said that if she was anything like the photograph I was indeed a lucky fellow. He was my best man at the wedding, and he gave us as a present on that occasion, a splendid district tonga, with a pair of fourteen-one ponies that went in saddle as well as in harness.