“You must admit that we shall all have a very Happy Christmas, doctor.”
Bevis Holroyd was looking at the secretary, who stood at the other side of the bed, cringing, yet somehow in the attitude of a man ready to pounce; Dr. Holroyd wondered if this was the murderer.
“Why,” he asked quietly to gain time, “did you hatch this plan to ruin a man you had never seen before?”
“I always hated you,” replied the sick man faintly. “Mollie never forgot you, you see, and she never allowed me to forget that she never forgot you. And then I found those letters she had cherished.”
“You are a very wicked man,” said the doctor dryly, “but it will all come to nothing, for I am not going to allow you to die.”
“You won’t be able to help yourself,” replied the patient. “I’m dying, I tell you. I shall die on Christmas Day.”
He turned his head towards the secretary and added:
“Send my wife up to me.”
“No,” interrupted Dr. Holroyd strongly. “She shall not come near you again.”
Sir Harry Strangeways ignored this.
“Send her up,” he repeated.
“I will bring her, sir.”
The secretary left, with a movement suggestive of flight, and Bevis Holroyd stood rigid, waiting, thinking, looking at the ugly man who now had closed his eyes and lay as if insensible. He was certainly very ill, dying perhaps, and he certainly had been poisoned by arsenic given in cambric tea, and, as certainly, a terrible scandal and a terrible danger would threaten with his death; the letters were not dated, the marriage was notoriously unhappy, and he, Bevis Holroyd. was associated in every one’s mind with a murder case in which this form of poison, given in this manner, had been used.
Drops of moisture stood out on the doctor’s forehead; sure that if he could clear himself it would be very difficult for Mollie to do so; how could even he himself in his soul swear to her innocence!
Of course he must get the woman out of the house at once, he must have another doctor from town, nurses—but could this be done in time; if the patient died on his hands would he not be only bringing witnesses to his own discomfiture? And the right people, his own friends, were difficult to get hold of now, at Christmas time.
He longed to go in search of Mollie—she must at least be got away, but how, without a scandal, without a suspicion?
He longed to have the matter out with this odious secretary, but he dared not leave his patient.
Lady Strangeways returned with Garth Deane and seated herself, mute, shadowy, with eyes full of panic, on the other side of the sombre bed.
“Is he going to live?” she presently whispered as she watched Bevis Holroyd ministering to her unconscious husband.
“We must see that he does,” he answered grimly.
All through that Christmas Eve and the bitter night to the stark dawn when the church bells broke ghastly on their wan senses did they tend the sick man who only came to his senses to grin at them in malice.
Once Bevis Holroyd asked the pallid woman:
“What was that white packet you had in your work box?”
And she replied:
“I never had such a packet.”
And he:
“I must believe you.”
But he did not send for the other doctors and nurses, he did not dare.
The Christmas bells seemed to rouse the sick man from his deadly swoon.
“You can’t save me,” he said with indescribable malice. “I shall die and put you both in the dock—”
Mollie Strangeways sank down beside the bed and began to cry, and Garth Deane, who by his master’s express desire had been in and out of the room all night, stopped and looked at her with a peculiar expression. Sir Harry looked at her also.
“Don’t cry,” he gasped, “this is Christmas Day. We ought all to be happy—bring me my cambric tea—do you hear?”
She rose mechanically and left the room to take in the tray with the fresh milk and water that the housekeeper had placed softly on the table outside the door; for all through the nightmare vigil, the sick man’s cry had been for “cambric tea.”
As he sat up in bed feebly sipping the vapid and odious drink the tortured woman’s nerves slipped her control.
“I can’t endure those bells, I wish they would stop those bells!” she cried and ran out of the room.
Bevis Holroyd instantly followed her; and now as suddenly as it had sprung on him, the fell little drama disappeared, fled like a poison cloud out of the compass of his life.
Mollie was leaning against the closed window, her sick head resting against the mullions; through the casement showed, surprisingly, sunlight on the pure snow and blue sky behind the withered trees.
“Listen, Mollie,” said the young man resolutely. “I’m sure he’ll live if you are careful—you mustn’t lose heart—”
The sick room door opened and the secretary slipped out.
He nervously approached the two in the window place.
“I can’t stand this any longer,” he said through dry lips. “I didn’t know he meant to go so far, he is doing it himself, you know; he’s got the stuff hidden in his bed, he puts it into the cambric tea, he’s willing to die to spite you two, but I can’t stand it any longer.”
“You’ve been abetting this!” cried the doctor.
“Not abetting,” smiled the secretary wanly. “Just standing by. I found out by chance—and then he forced me to be silent—I had his will, you know, and I’ve destroyed it.”
With this the strange creature glided downstairs.
The doctor sprang at once to Sir Harry’s room; the sick man was sitting up in the sombre bed and with a last effort was scattering a grain of powder into the glass of cambric tea.
With a look of baffled horror he saw Bevis Holroyd but the drink had already slipped down his throat; he fell back and hid his face, baulked at the last of his diabolic revenge.
When Bevis Holroyd left the dead man’s chamber he found Mollie still leaning in the window; she was free, the sun was shining, it was Christmas Day.
Ceremony upon Candlemas Eve
Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and mistletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dressed the Christmas Hall:
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind:
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected, there (maids, trust to me)
So many Goblins you shall see.
The Ceremonies for Candlemas Day
Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
Till Sunset let it burn;
Which quench'd, then lay it up again
Till Christmas next return.
Part must be kept wherewith to teend
The Christmas log next year,
And where 'tis safely kept, the fiend
Can do no mischief there.
Upon Candlemas Day
End now the white loaf and the pie,
And let all sports with Christmas die.
Robert Herrick.
Death on Christmas Eve - Stanley Ellin
It is unusual to see the name Stanley Ellin without a word like brilliant or great preceeding it. He has been synonymous with quality in the mystery field for some 34 years. In 1981 the Mystery Writers of America honored him as one of their Grand Masters.
A story such as “Death on Christmas Eve” is an instructive joy to any student interested in the art of writing. The pacing, the characterization, the description and plot development all mesh like the parts of a Swiss watch to produce a work of art that really “ticks.”
He started his career with a bang back in 1948 with the much-admired story “The Specialty of the House.” He has been delivering new small masterpieces at the rate of one a year to a grateful readership ever since.
Perhaps this deliberation explains his success, for an Ellin story is never out
of print for long. Anthologists would be hard pressed to put together a first-rate collection without him. Fortunately, they seldom try.
In 1979, his first 35 stories were assembled into a collection called The Specialty of the House and Other Stories. Like Chopin’s nocturnes, Escoffier’s recipes, and Hitchcock’s suspense films, it is an assemblage of work so distinguished as to redefine the word greatness in that art.
As a child I had been vastly impressed by the Boerum house. It was fairly new then, and glossy; a gigantic pile of Victorian rickrack, fretwork, and stained glass, flung together in such chaotic profusion that it was hard to encompass in one glance. Standing before it this early Christmas Eve, however, I could find no echo of that youthful impression. The gloss was long since gone; woodwork, glass, metal, all were merged to a dreary gray, and the shades behind the windows were drawn completely so that the house seemed to present a dozen blindly staring eyes to the passerby.
When I rapped my stick sharply on the door, Celia opened it.
“There is a doorbell right at hand,” she said. She was still wearing the long outmoded and badly wrinkled black dress she must have dragged from her mother’s trunk, and she looked, more than ever, the image of old Katrin in her later years: the scrawny body, the tightly compressed lips, the colorless hair drawn back hard enough to pull every wrinkle out of her forehead. She reminded me of a steel trap ready to snap down on anyone who touched her incautiously.
I said, “I am aware that the doorbell has been disconnected, Celia,” and walked past her into the hallway. Without turning my head, I knew that she was glaring at me; then she sniffed once, hard and dry, and flung the door shut. Instantly we were in a murky dimness that made the smell of dry rot about me stick in my throat. I fumbled for the wall switch, but Celia said sharply, “No! This is not the time for lights.”
I turned to the white blur of her face, which was all I could see of her. “Celia,” I said, “spare me the dramatics.”
“There has been a death in this house. You know that.”
“I have good reason to,” I said, “but your performance now does not impress me.”
“She was my own brother’s wife. She was very dear to me.”
I took a step toward her in the murk and rested my stick on her shoulder. “Celia,” I said, “as your family’s lawyer, let me give you a word of advice. The inquest is over and done with, and you’ve been cleared. But nobody believed a word of your precious sentiments then, and nobody ever will. Keep that in mind, Celia.”
She jerked away so sharply that the stick almost fell from my hand. “Is that what you have come to tell me?” she said.
I said, “I came because I knew your brother would want to see me today. And if you don’t mind my saying so, I suggest that you keep to yourself while I talk to him. I don’t want any scenes.”
“Then keep away from him yourself!” she cried. “He was at the inquest. He saw them clear my name. In a little while he will forget the evil he thinks of me. Keep away from him so that he can forget.”
She was at her infuriating worst, and to break the spell I started up the dark stairway, one hand warily on the balustrade. But I heard her follow eagerly behind, and in some eerie way it seemed as if she were not addressing me, but answering the groaning of the stairs under our feet.
“When he comes to me,” she said, “I will forgive him. At first I was not sure, but now I know. I prayed for guidance, and I was told that life is too short for hatred. So when he comes to me I will forgive him.”
I reached the head of the stairway and almost went sprawling. I swore in annoyance as I righted myself. “If you’re not going to use lights, Celia, you should, at least, keep the way clear. Why don’t you get that stuff out of here?”
“Ah,” she said, “those are all poor Jessie’s belongings. It hurts Charlie to see anything of hers, I knew this would be the best thing to do—to throw all her things out.”
Then a note of alarm entered her voice. “But you won’t tell Charlie, will you? You won’t tell him?” she said, and kept repeating it on a higher and higher note as I moved away from her, so that when I entered Charlie’s room and closed the door behind me it almost sounded as if I had left a bat chittering behind me.
As in the rest of the house, the shades in Charlie’s room were drawn to their full length. But a single bulb in the chandelier overhead dazzled me momentarily, and I had to look twice before I saw Charlie sprawled out on his bed with an arm flung over his eyes. Then he slowly came to his feet and peered at me.
“Well,” he said at last, nodding toward the door, “she didn’t give you any light to come up, did she?”
“No,” I said, “but I know the way.”
“She’s like a mole,” he said. “Gets around better in the dark than I do in the light. She’d rather have it that way too. Otherwise she might look into a mirror and be scared of what she sees there.”
“Yes,” I said, “she seems to be taking it very hard.”
He laughed short and sharp as a sea-lion barking. “That’s because she’s still got the fear in her. All you get out of her now is how she loved Jessie, and how sorry she is. Maybe she figures if she says it enough, people might get to believe it. But give her a little time and she’ll be the same old Celia again.”
I dropped my hat and stick on the bed and laid my overcoat beside them. Then I drew out a cigar and waited until he fumbled for a match and helped me to a light. His hand shook so violently that he had hard going for a moment and muttered angrily at himself. Then I slowly exhaled a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and waited.
Charlie was Celia’s junior by five years, but seeing him then it struck me that he looked a dozen years older. His hair was the same pale blond, almost colorless so that it was hard to tell if it was graying or not. But his cheeks wore a fine, silvery stubble, and there were huge blue-black pouches under his eyes. And where Celia was braced against a rigid and uncompromising backbone, Charlie sagged, standing or sitting, as if he were on the verge of falling forward. He stared at me and tugged uncertainly at the limp mustache that dropped past the corners of his mouth.
“You know what I wanted to see you about, don’t you?” he said.
“I can imagine,” I said, “but I’d rather have you tell me.”
“I’ll put it to you straight,” he said. “It’s Celia. I want to see her get what’s coming to her. Not jail. I want the law to take her and kill her, and I want to be there to watch it.”
A large ash dropped to the floor, and I ground it carefully into the rug with my foot. I said, “You were at the inquest, Charlie; you saw what happened. Celia’s cleared, and unless additional evidence can be produced, she stays cleared.”
“Evidence! My God, what more evidence does anyone need! They were arguing hammer and tongs at the top of the stairs. Celia just grabbed Jessie and threw her down to the bottom and killed her. That’s murder, isn’t it? Just the same as if she used a gun or poison or whatever she would have used if the stairs weren’t handy?”
I sat down wearily in the old leather-bound armchair there and studied the new ash that was forming on my cigar. “Let me show it to you from the legal angle,” I said, and the monotone of my voice must have made it sound like a well-memorized formula. “First, there were no witnesses.”
“I heard Jessie scream and I heard her fall,” he said doggedly, “and when I ran out and found her there, I heard Celia slam her door shut right then. She pushed Jessie and then scuttered like a rat to be out of the way.”
“But you didn’t see anything. And since Celia claims that she wasn’t on the scene, there were no witnesses. In other words, Celia’s story cancels out your story, and since you weren’t an eyewitness you can’t very well make a murder out of what might have been an accident.”
He slowly shook his head.
“You don’t believe that,” he said. “You don’t really believe that. Because if you do, you can get out now and never come near me again.”
&
nbsp; “It doesn’t matter what I believe; I’m showing you the legal aspects of the case. What about motivation? What did Celia have to gain from Jessie’s death? Certainly there’s no money or property involved; she’s as financially independent as you are.”
Charlie sat down on the edge of his bed and leaned toward me with his hands resting on his knees. “No,” he whispered, “there’s no money or property in it.”
I spread my arms helplessly. “You see?”
“But you know what it is,” he said. “It’s me. First, it was the old lady with her heart trouble any time I tried to call my soul my own. Then when she died and I thought I was free, it was Celia. From the time I got up in the morning until I went to bed at night, it was Celia every step of the way. She never had a husband or a baby—but she had me!”
I said quietly, “She’s your sister, Charlie. She loves you,” and he laughed that same unpleasant, short laugh.
“She loves me like ivy loves a tree. When I think back now, I still can’t see how she did it, but she would just look at me a certain way and all the strength would go out of me. And it was like that until I met Jessie... I remember the day I brought Jessie home, and told Celia we were married. She swallowed it, but that look was in her eyes the same as it must have been when she pushed Jessie down those stairs.”
I said, “But you admitted at the inquest that you never saw her threaten Jessie or do anything to hurt her.”
“Of course I never saw! But when Jessie would go around sick to her heart every day and not say a word, or cry in bed every night and not tell me why, I knew damn well what was going on. You know what Jessie was like. She wasn’t so smart or pretty, but she was good-hearted as the day was long, and she was crazy about me. And when she started losing all that sparkle in her after only a month, I knew why. I talked to her and I talked to Celia, and both of them just shook their heads. All I could do was go around in circles, but when it happened, when I saw Jessie lying there, it didn’t surprise me. Maybe that sounds queer, but it didn’t surprise me at all.”
“I don’t think it surprised anyone who knows Celia,” I said, “but you can’t make a case out of that.”
Thomas Godfrey (Ed) Page 14
