A Very Murderous Christmas

by Cecily Gayford

  ‘Without your testimony they might try to say I killed him,’ she said. ‘Even though I had no reason to.’

  ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t say that,’ I tried to assure her.

  ‘But no one else is here! Don’t you see how it looks?’

  ‘You were down on the ground with me when he was stabbed. I’ll testify to that.’

  ‘Suppose I rigged up some sort of device to throw the knife at him when he stepped out onto the walkway.’

  I shook my head. ‘I was up there with him shortly before he was killed. And I went up there again a few moments ago. There was no device, and nothing left over from one. There was nothing at all on that walkway.’

  ‘Then what killed him? Who killed him?’

  Before I could respond, we saw the headlights of two police cars and an ambulance cutting through the early darkness. I had plenty of time to tell my story then, and Lisa told hers. They walked around with their flashlights, examining the body, asking questions, going through the motions. But it was clear that they didn’t want to deal with a pirate ghost, much less any sort of impossible crime. I fondly wished for old Sheriff Lens back in Northmont. At least he could keep an open mind about such things.

  ‘Did your brother have any enemies?’ one officer asked Lisa.

  ‘No, none at all. I can’t imagine anyone wishing him harm.’

  ‘Can you tell me why he’s wearing this false beard?’

  ‘He’d been playing Santa Claus for the children. He was changing out of his costume when it happened.’

  The officer, a burly man named Springer, turned to me next. ‘Dr Hawthorne?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘You say you were just passing through, not bound for any particular place?’

  ‘Just a little vacation,’ I explained. ‘I practice in Northmont, near the Connecticut state line. The sign attracted me, and I stopped for an hour or so.’

  ‘Ever know the deceased or his sister before?’

  ‘No.’

  He sighed and glanced at his pocket watch. Perhaps he hadn’t had supper yet. ‘Well, if both of you are telling the truth, it looks like an accident to me. Somehow he slipped and fell on the knife up there, and then toppled off the walkway. Or else he killed himself.’

  ‘That couldn’t—’ Lisa started to say, but I nudged her into silence. The officer seemed not to notice.

  As the body was being taken away, she said, ‘I’ll have to notify Father.’

  ‘How do you go about that? Where’s his prison?’

  ‘Near Boston. I’ll phone a message tonight and go there tomorrow to see him.’

  I made a decision. ‘I’d like to go with you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’ve had a little experience in solving crimes like this. I may be able to help you.’

  ‘But there are no suspects! Where would you begin?’

  ‘With your father,’ I said.

  I slept surprisingly well in my room at the Plymouth Rock, and awoke refreshed. After a quick breakfast, I picked up Lisa at the small house in town she’d shared with her brother. ‘The police called this morning,’ she said. ‘They want us both to come in and make statements about what happened.’

  ‘We’ll do it this afternoon,’ I decided. ‘Let’s see your father first.’

  ‘What do you hope to learn from him?’

  ‘The reason why he’s in prison, among other things. You seem reluctant to talk about it.’

  ‘I’m not reluctant at all!’ she bristled. ‘Until now I didn’t really feel it was any of your business. Daddy brought us up after Mother died. What happened to him was a terrible thing. He’s in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.’

  ‘You said something about a fraud.’

  ‘I’ll let him tell you about it.’

  Because of his son’s death, we were both allowed to see Ronald Quay together. He was a thin man, who looked as if he might have aged overnight. His pale complexion had already taken on the look of endless incarceration, even though Lisa said he’d been locked up for only a year. She cried when he was led into the room, and the guard stood by awkwardly as they embraced.

  ‘This is Dr Sam Hawthorne,’ she told her father. ‘He was at the lighthouse with us when it happened.’

  He wanted details and I told him everything I knew. He sat across the table, merely shaking his head.

  ‘I’ve done a little amateur detective work back in Northmont,’ I told him. ‘I thought I might be able to help out here.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By asking the right questions.’ I paused, sizing up the man almost as I would diagnose a patient’s illness, and then I said, ‘You’re in prison for committing a crime, and now the crime of murder has apparently been committed against your son. I wonder if there could be a relationship between those two crimes.’

  ‘I don’t—’ He shook his head.

  ‘I know it seems impossible that anyone could have killed Harry, but if someone did they had to have a motive.’

  ‘He didn’t have an enemy in the world,’ Lisa insisted.

  ‘Perhaps he was killed not for what he was like but for what he was doing,’ I suggested.

  ‘You mean playing Santa Claus?’

  ‘You said he played a pirate, too. And he was struck down with a pirate’s dagger.’

  ‘Who could possibly—?’

  I interrupted her with another question for her father. ‘Were you engaged in any sort of illegal activity at the lighthouse?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘I’ve maintained my innocence of these charges from the beginning.’

  ‘Then the fraud charges somehow involved the lighthouse?’

  ‘Only in the most general way,’ Lisa replied. ‘At one point we tried to set up a corporation and sell shares of stock. A Boston man went to the police and accused my father of fraud because Daddy claimed he had a million dollars to build an amusement park.’

  ‘Did you ever claim that?’ I asked him.

  ‘No! Harry suggested once that we put in one of those miniature golf courses that are all the rage, but I was against even that. Certainly no one ever mentioned a million dollars.’

  ‘They must have had evidence of fraud.’

  He looked at his hands. ‘A stock prospectus we had printed, just for test purposes. It wasn’t supposed to get out. Lisa can tell you we don’t even own much land around the lighthouse—We couldn’t have built an amusement park there even if we’d wanted to.’

  Lisa sighed. ‘That’s exactly the argument the prosecutor used to convict you, Daddy.’

  I was aware that he’d neatly avoided the main thrust of my question by bringing up the fraud conviction. ‘Forget the fraud charges for the moment, Mr Quay. What about other activities at the lighthouse?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said, but his eyes shifted away.

  ‘The two-way radio. The powerful binoculars. The telescope. They were used to locate and contact ships offshore, weren’t they?’

  ‘Why would I—?’ he began, then changed his mind. ‘All right. You seem to know a great deal.’

  ‘What were they landing at the lighthouse? Illegal whiskey from Canada, I imagine.’

  Lisa’s eyes widened. ‘Daddy!’

  ‘I needed money from somewhere, Lisa. Using that lighthouse for pirates and Santa Clauses was a losing proposition from the beginning.’

  ‘You told Dr Hawthorne there’d been no illegal activity there.’

  ‘Prohibition is an unjust and unpopular law. I don’t consider that I acted illegally in helping to circumvent it.’

  ‘What happened after you went to prison?’ I asked. ‘Did Harry continue the bootlegging activities?’

  ‘He knew nothing about it,’ Quay insisted.

  ‘And yet the radio and telescope are still in place, a year later.’

  ‘He was sentimental about moving them,’ Lisa explained. ‘He wanted everything just as it was for when D
addy came back.’

  ‘You must have dealt with someone on this bootlegging operation, Mr Quay. Couldn’t that man have contacted Harry and struck a deal with him after your imprisonment?’

  Ronald Quay was silent for a moment, considering the possibility. ‘I suppose so,’ he admitted at last. ‘That would be like him. And it would be like Harry to accept the deal without telling anyone.’

  ‘I need the name, Mr Quay.’

  ‘I’m—’

  ‘The name of the man you dealt with. The name of the person who might have contacted your son to continue with the setup. Because that might be the name of his murderer.’

  ‘Paul Lane,’ he said at last. ‘That’s the name you want.’ The words had been an effort for him to speak.

  ‘Who is he? Where can we find him?’

  ‘He owns some seafood restaurants along the coast. I can give you an address in Boston.’

  As we parked my Stutz Torpedo along the Boston docks a few hours later, Lisa said, ‘Sam, how come you’re not married?’

  ‘I’ve never met the right woman at the right time, I guess.’

  ‘I want to ask you something – a very great favour.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Could you stay here with me – until after Harry’s funeral? I don’t think I could get through it alone.’

  ‘When–?’

  ‘Day after tomorrow. You could leave by noon if you wanted to. They’ll let Daddy come down from prison with a guard, and there’ll be some aunts and uncles. That’s all. We’re not a big family.’

  ‘Let me think about it. Maybe I can.’

  Lane’s Lobsters was a seafood restaurant that also sold live lobsters for boiling at home. A grey-haired man behind the lobster tank told us Paul Lane’s office was upstairs. We climbed the rickety steps to the second floor and found him sitting behind a cluttered desk. He puffed on a fat cigar that gave him the look of a minor politician.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked, removing the cigar from his mouth.

  ‘We’re interested in some lobsters,’ I said.

  ‘The retail business is downstairs. I just handle wholesale up here.’ He gestured toward an open ice-chest full of dead lobsters.

  ‘That’s what we want – wholesale.’

  He squinted at Lisa. ‘Don’t I know you?’

  ‘You may know my brother. Harry Quay.’

  Paul Lane was no good at hiding his reaction. After the first shock of surprise he tried to cover it with a denial, but I pressed on. ‘You run a bootlegging operation, Lane, and you involved her father and brother in it.’

  ‘Go to hell! Get outa here!’

  ‘We want to talk. Somebody killed her brother last evening.’

  ‘I read the papers. They say it was an accident.’

  ‘I was there. I call it murder.’

  Paul Lane’s lip twisted in a sneer. ‘Is that so? If you two were alone with him, then you must have killed him.’

  I leaned on the desk between us. ‘We didn’t come here to play games, Mr Lane. I think you approached Harry after his father went to prison on that fraud rap. You wanted to continue bringing your Canadian whiskey ashore at Satan’s Lighthouse, and you needed Harry’s cooperation. Isn’t that right?’

  He got up from his desk and deliberately closed the lid on the ice-chest. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister.’

  As a lobsterman or a bootlegger, he might have been pretty good, but just then he was being a bit too obvious. When he sat down again I lifted the lid and picked up one of the cold lobsters.

  ‘What in hell are you doing?’ he bellowed, coming out of his chair.

  I turned the lobster over. Its insides had been hollowed out to make room for a slim bottle of whiskey. ‘Neat,’ I said. ‘I’ll bet that’s a popular take-out item at your restaurants.’

  Before I realised what was happening, his fist caught me on the side of the head. I stumbled back against the ice-chest as Lisa screamed. Two tough-looking seamen barged in, attracted by the noise. ‘Get them!’ Lane ordered. ‘Both of them!’

  I was still clutching the dead lobster and I shoved it into the nearest man’s face. ‘Run!’ I shouted to Lisa. Lane was out from behind his desk, trying to stop her, when I shoved him aside and followed her out the door. Then all three of them were after us and I felt one beefy hand grab at my shoulder. We made it halfway down the stairs before they caught us, and I tripped and stumbled the rest of the way to the ground floor, landing hard on my chest.

  I looked up and saw one of the men take out a knife. Then I saw someone from the restaurant grab his wrist.

  I recognised Springer, the state police officer who had questioned us. ‘Having a little trouble here, Dr Hawthorne?’ he asked.

  I’d cracked a rib falling down the stairs, and while it was being taped up Springer explained that he’d gone to the prison to question Ronald Quay, arriving just as we were leaving. ‘You seemed in such a hurry I decided to follow along. You led me here.’

  The Boston police and agents of the Prohibition Bureau had taken over Paul Lane’s operation, seizing hundreds of barrels of good Canadian whiskey. My last glimpse of Lane was when a cop led him away in handcuffs. ‘Did he kill my brother?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Not personally, but he probably ordered it done. I can’t name the actual killer, but I can give you a description of him and tell you how I think the murder was committed.’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to say somebody threw the knife from the rocks all the way to the top of that lighthouse,’ Springer said.

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘It’s much too tall for that. And that pirate dagger is too unbalanced to have been fired from a crossbow or anything similar. The killer was right there with Harry when he died.’

  ‘But that’s impossible!’ Lisa insisted.

  ‘No, it isn’t. There was one place in that lighthouse we never searched, one place where the killer could have been hidden – the rolltop desk in the office on the top floor.’

  ‘But that’s absurd!’ Lisa said. ‘It’s hardly big enough for a child!’

  ‘Exactly – a child. Or someone dressed as a child. Remember that carload of children that arrived just before me? Didn’t you think it odd the parents remained in the car – especially since the lighthouse offered a family rate? Four children came out, but I’m willing to bet that five children went in.’

  Lisa’s eyes widened. ‘My lord, I think you’re right!’

  ‘One stayed behind, hidden in that rolltop desk. And when Harry came back upstairs to close up, he did his job. He was a hit man hired by Paul Lane, who’d had a falling-out with your brother over the bootlegging business. I think we’ll find enough evidence in Lane’s records to verify that.’

  Springer was frowning. ‘You’re telling us a child was the hit man?’

  ‘Or someone dressed as a child,’ I said. ‘Someone small – maybe a midget.’

  ‘A midget!’

  ‘What better hit man to kill a Santa Claus than a midget dressed as a small child? Five children entered the lighthouse but only four came out. No one thought of the missing child. The supposed parents drove away, leaving a hidden killer awaiting his opportunity.’

  ‘All right,’ Springer said with a nod. ‘If Lane has a midget on his payroll it should be easy enough to discover.’ He started out and then paused at the door with a slight smile. ‘I checked up on you. Sheriff Lens back in Northmont says you’re a pretty fair detective.’

  When he had gone, Lisa Quay said simply, ‘Thank you. It won’t bring him back, but at least I know what happened.’

  Two days later I was at Lisa Quay’s side as her brother was buried beneath the barren December trees of the Plymouth cemetery. As we were walking to the car, Springer intercepted us. ‘I thought you’d like to know that we have a line on a very short man who worked as a waiter last year in Paul Lane’s New Bedford lobster house. We’re trying to locate him now.’

  ‘Good luck,’ I said. ‘I�
��m heading home today.’

  My car was back at the funeral parlour and I said goodbye to Lisa Quay there. ‘Thanks again,’ she said. ‘For everything, Sam.’

  I’d been driving about an hour when I saw the boy fishing off a bridge over a narrow creek. My first thought was that December wasn’t likely to be a good fishing month.

  My second thought was that I’d made a terrible mistake. I pulled the car off the road and sat for a long time staring at nothing at all. Finally I started the motor and made a U-turn, heading back the way I had come.

  It was late afternoon when Santa’s Lighthouse came into view, much as it had been that first day I saw the place. Lisa’s car was parked nearby, but no others. The lighthouse was still closed to visitors. I pulled in next to her car and got out, walking up the path to the doorway. She must have heard the car and seen me from the window, because she opened the door with a smile.

  ‘You’ve come back, Sam.’

  ‘Just for a little bit,’ I told her. ‘Can we talk?’

  ‘About what?’ She was flirting, seductive.

  ‘About Harry’s murder.’

  Her face changed. ‘Have they found the midget?’

  I shook my head. ‘They’ll never find the midget because there never was one. I made a mistake.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘We kept saying there were no suspects, but of course there always was one suspect. Not the least likely person but the most likely one. You killed your brother, Lisa.’

  ‘You’re insane!’ she flared, trying to close the door on me. I easily blocked it with my foot, and after a moment she relaxed and I stepped inside.

  ‘The more I thought about it, the more impossible the midget hit man became. Those kids were raising a fuss, pulling Santa’s beard and otherwise calling attention to themselves. That’s hardly the sort of thing our killer would have allowed. The success of his scheme as I imagined it depended upon their group being unnoticed and uncounted.’ Lisa stood with her arms folded, pretending to humour me.

  ‘Then, too, there was the matter of the murder weapon. A hit man would certainly bring his own weapon, not rely on finding a pirate dagger in a storeroom.’