Thomas Godfrey (Ed)

by Murder for Christmas

  To Ghote’s prejudiced eyes, at the first moment of their encounter, the man’s features seemed grotesquely distorted, as if in some distant time some god had taken one of the Head Constable’s ancestors and had wrenched his whole head sideways between two omnipotent god-hands.

  But, as the fellow supplied him with the details of the affair, Ghote forced himself to regard him with an open mind, and he then had to admit that the facial twist which had seemed so pronounced was in fact no more than a drooping corner of the mouth and of one ear being oddly longer than the other.

  Ghote had to admit, too, that the chap was efficient. He had all the circumstances of the affair at his fingertips. The girl, named D’Mello, now in a hospital for her own safety, had been rigorously questioned both before and after the birth, but she had steadfastly denied that she had ever been with any man. She was indeed not the sort, the sole daughter of a Goan railway waiter on the Madras Express, a quiet girl, well brought up though her parents were poor enough; she attended Mass regularly with her mother, and the whole family kept themselves to themselves.

  “But with those Christians you can never tell,” Head Constable Mudholkar concluded.

  Ghote felt inwardly inclined to agree. Fervid religion had always made him shrink inwardly, whether it was a Hindu holy man spending 20 years silent and standing upright or whether it was the Catholics, always caressing lifeless statues in their churches till glass protection had to be installed, and even then they still stroked the thick panes. Either manifestation rendered him uneasy.

  That was the real reason, he now acknowledged to himself, why he did not want to go and see Miss D’Mello in the hospital where she would be surrounded by nuns amid all the trappings of an alien religion, surrounded with all the panoply of a newly found goddess.

  Yet go and see the girl he must.

  But first he permitted himself to do every other thing that might possibly be necessary to the case. He visited Mrs. D’Mello, and by dint of patient wheedling, and a little forced toughness, confirmed from her the names of the only two men that Head Constable Mudholkar—who certainly proved to know inside-out the particular chawl where the D’Mellos lived—had suggested as possible fathers. They were both young men—a Goan, Charlie Lobo, and a Sikh, Kuldip Singh.

  The Lobo family lived one floor below the D’Mellos. But that one flight of dirt-spattered stairs, bringing them just that much nearer the courtyard tap that served the whole crazily leaning chawl, represented a whole layer higher in social status. And Mrs. Lobo, a huge, tightly fat woman in a brightly flowered Western-style dress, had decided views about the unexpected fame that had come to the people upstairs.

  “Has my Charlie been going with that girl?” she repeated after Ghote had managed to put the question, suitably wrapped up, to the boy. “No, he has not. Charlie, tell the man you hate and despise trash like that.”

  “Oh, Mum,” said Charlie, a teen-age wisp of a figure suffocating in a necktie beside his balloon-hard mother.

  “Tell the man, Charlie.”

  And obediently Charlie muttered something that satisfied his passion-filled parent. Ghote put a few more questions for form’s sake, but he realized that only by getting hold of the boy on his own was he going to get any worthwhile answers. Yet it turned out that he did not have to employ any cunning. Charlie proved to have a strain of sharp slyness of his own, and hardly had Ghote climbed the stairs to the floor above the D’Mellos where Kuldip Singh lived when he heard a whispered call from the shadow-filled darkness below.

  “Mum’s got her head over the stove,” Charlie said. “She don’t know I slipped out.”

  “There is something you have to tell me?” Ghote said, acting the indulgent uncle. “You are in trouble—that’s it, isn’t it?”

  “My only trouble is Mum,” the boy replied. “Listen, mister, I had to tell you. I love Miss D’Mello—yes, I love her. She’s the most wonderful girl ever was.”

  “And you want to marry her, and because you went too far before—”

  “No, no, no. She’s far and away too good for me. Mister, I’ve never even said ‘Good morning’ to her in the two years we’ve lived here. But I love her, mister, and I’m not going to have Mum make me say different.”

  Watching him slip cunningly back home, Ghote made his mental notes and then turned to tackle Kuldip Singh, his last comparatively easy task before the looming interview at the nun-ridden hospital he knew he must have.

  Kuldip Singh, as Ghote had heard from Head Constable Mudholkar, was different from his neighbors. He lived in this teeming area from choice not necessity. Officially a student, he spent all his time in a series of antisocial activities—protesting, writing manifestoes, drinking. He seemed an ideal candidate for the unknown and elusive father.

  Ghote’s suspicions were at once heightened when the young Sikh opened his door. The boy, though old enough to have a beard, lacked this status symbol. Equally he had discarded the obligatory turban of his religion. But all the Sikh bounce was there, as Ghote discovered when he identified himself.

  “Policewallah, is it? Then I want nothing at all to do with you. Me and the police are enemies, bhai. Natural enemies.”

  “Irrespective of such considerations,” Ghote said stiffly, “it is my duty to put to you certain questions concerning one Miss D’Mello.”

  The young Sikh burst into a roar of laughter.

  “The miracle girl, is it?” he said. “Plenty of trouble for policemen there, I promise you. Top-level rioting coming from that business. The fellow who fathered that baby did us a lot of good.”

  Ghote plugged away a good while longer—the hospital nuns awaited— but for all his efforts he learned no more than he had in that first brief exchange. And in the end he still had to go and meet his doom.

  Just what he had expected at the hospital he never quite formulated to himself. What he did find was certainly almost the exact opposite of his fears. A calm reigned. White-habited nuns, mostly Indian but with a few Europeans, flitted silently to and fro or talked quietly to the patients whom Ghote glimpsed lying on beds in long wards. Above them swung frail but bright paper chains in honor of the feast day, and these were all the excitement there was.

  The small separate ward in which Miss D’Mello lay in a broad bed all alone was no different. Except that the girl was isolated, she seemed to be treated in just the same way as the other new mothers in the big maternity ward that Ghote had been led through on his way in. In the face of such matter-of-factness he felt hollowly cheated.

  Suddenly, too, to his own utter surprise he found, looking down at the big calm-after-storm eyes of the Goan girl, that he wanted the story she was about to tell him to be true. Part of him knew that, if it were so, or if it was widely believed to be so, appalling disorders could result from the feverish religious excitement that was bound to mount day by day. But another part of him now simply wanted a miracle to have happened.

  He began, quietly and almost diffidently, to put his questions. Miss D’Mello would hardly answer at all, but such syllables as she did whisper were of blank inability to name anyone as the father of her child. After a while Ghote brought himself, with a distinct effort of will, to change his tactics. He banged out the hard line. Miss D’Mello went quietly and totally mute.

  Then Ghote slipped in, with adroit suddenness, the name of Charlie Lobo. He got only a small puzzled frown.

  Then, in an effort to make sure that her silence was not a silence of fear, he presented, with equal suddenness, the name of Kuldip Singh. If the care-for-nothing young Sikh had forced this timid creature, this might be the way to get an admission. But instead there came something approaching a laugh.

  “That Kuldip is a funny fellow,” the girl said, with an out-of-place and unexpected offhandedness.

  Ghote almost gave up. But at that moment a nun nurse appeared carrying in her arms a small, long, white-wrapped, minutely crying bundle— the baby.

  While she handed the hungry scrap to its mother G
hote stood and watched. Perhaps holding the child she would—?

  He looked down at the scene on the broad bed, awaiting his moment again. The girl fiercely held the tiny agitated thing to her breast and in a moment or two quiet came, the tiny head applied to the life-giving nipple. How human the child looked already, Ghote thought. How much a man at two days old. The round skull, almost bald, as it might become again toward the end of its span. The frown on the forehead that would last a lifetime, the tiny, perfectly formed, plainly asymmetrical ears—

  And then Ghote knew that there had not been any miracle. It was as he surmised, but with different circumstances. Miss D’Mello was indeed too frightened to talk. No wonder, when the local bully, Head Constable Mudholkar with his slewed head and its one ear so characteristically longer than the other, was the man who had forced himself on her.

  A deep smothering of disappointment floated down on Ghote. So it had been nothing miraculous after all. Just a sad case, to be cleared up painfully. He stared down at the bed.

  The tiny boy suckled energetically. And with a topsy-turvy welling up of rose-pink pleasure, Ghote saw that there had after all been a miracle. The daily, hourly, every-minute miracle of a new life, of a new flicker of hope in the tired world.

  “That’s enough—you don’t have to carry the ball any further!”

  Maigret’s Christmas - Georges Simenon

  Translated by Lawrence G. Blochman

  Perhaps the greatest of Georges Simenon’s considerable achievements has been his mastery of a literary form that had become almost the exclusive province of English-speaking writers. When one considers that Simenon’s art has constantly been at the mercy of translators, it becomes apparent that his stories in their original French must be durable stuff indeed.

  This Belgian born writer now has over 200 novels to his credit in a career that spans over sixty years. By far the most popular of these works are the Inspector Maigret adventures which constitute a hefty percentage of his production.

  Maigret’s success gives cause for consideration, too. He is neither flamboyant nor eccentric, just an average middle class government worker earning a living, and getting by, in a simple, honest fashion.

  Simenon’s style is likewise clean and “sec,” in a way that is agreeably Gallic. Like the great wines of France, the Maigret stories are an acquired taste. But also, like those wines, a taste well worth the acquisition.

  The translator of this version of “Maigret’s Christmas” was himself a notable mystery writer, known best for his series about Dr. Daniel Coffee, a forensic pathologist. Blochman’s translation captures both the meaning of the words and the spirit of the story most admirably.

  The routine never varied. When Maigret went to bed he must have muttered his usual, “Tomorrow morning I shall sleep late.” And Mme. Maigret, who over the years should have learned to pay no attention to such casual phrases, had taken him at his word this Christmas day.

  It was not quite daylight when he heard her stirring cautiously. He forced himself to breathe regularly and deeply as though he were still asleep. It was like a game. She inched toward the edge of the bed with animal stealth, pausing after each movement to make sure she had not awakened him. He waited anxiously for the inevitable finale, the movement when the bedspring, relieved of her weight, would spring back into place with a faint sigh.

  She picked up her clothing from the chair and turned the knob of the bathroom door so slowly that it seemed to take an eternity. It was not until she had reached the distant fastness of the kitchen that she resumed her normal movements.

  Maigret had fallen asleep again. Not deeply, nor for long. Long enough, however, for a confused and disturbing dream. Waking, he could not remember what it was, but he knew it was disturbing because he still felt vaguely uneasy.

  The crack between the window drapes which never quite closed became a strip of pale, hard daylight. He waited a while longer, lying on his back with his eyes open, savoring the fragrance of fresh coffee. Then he heard the apartment door open and close, and he knew that Mme. Maigret was hurrying downstairs to buy him hot croissants from the bakery at the corner of the Rue Amelot.

  He never ate in the morning. His breakfast consisted of black coffee. But his wife clung to her ritual: on Sundays and holidays he was supposed to lie in bed until mid-morning while she went out for croissants.

  He got up, stepped into his slippers, put on his dressing gown, and drew the curtains. He knew he was doing wrong. His wife would be heartbroken. But while he was willing to make almost any sacrifice to please her, he simply could not stay in bed longer than he felt like it.

  It was not snowing. It was nonsense, of course, for a man past 50 to be disappointed because there was no snow on Christmas morning; but then middle-aged people never have as much sense as young folks sometimes imagine.

  A dirty, turbid sky hung low over the rooftops. The Boulevard Richard-Lenoir was completely deserted. The words Fils et Cie., Bonded Warehouses on the sign above the porte-cochére across the street stood out as black as mourning crêpe. The F, for some strange reason, seemed particularly dismal.

  He heard his wife moving about in the kitchen again. She came into the dining room on tiptoe, as though he were still asleep instead of looking out the window. He glanced at his watch on the night table. It was only ten past 8.

  The night before the Maigrets had gone to the theatre. They would have loved dropping in for a snack at some restaurant, like everyone else on Christmas Eve, but all tables were reserved for Réveillon supper. So they had walked home arm in arm, getting in a few minutes before midnight. Thus they hadn’t long to wait before exchanging presents.

  He got a pipe, as usual. Her present was an electric coffee pot, the latest model that she had wanted so much, and, not to break with tradition, a dozen finely embroidered handkerchiefs.

  Still looking out the window, Maigret absently filled his new pipe. The shutters were still closed on some of the windows across the boulevard. Not many people were up. Here and there a light burned in a window, probably left by children who had leaped out of bed at the crack of dawn to rush for their presents under the Christmas tree.

  In the quiet Maigret apartment the morning promised to be a lazy one for just the two of them. Maigret would loiter in his dressing gown until quite late. He would not even shave. He would dawdle in the kitchen, talking to his wife while she put the lunch on the stove. Just the two of them.

  He wasn’t sad exactly, but his dream—which he couldn’t remember— had left him jumpy. Or perhaps it wasn’t his dream. Perhaps it was Christmas. He had to be extra-careful on Christmas Day, careful of his words, the way Mme. Maigret had been careful of her movements in getting out of bed. Her nerves, too, were especially sensitive on Christmas.

  Oh, well, why think of all that? He would just be careful to say nothing untoward. He would be careful not to look out the window when the neighborhood children began to appear on the sidewalks with their Christmas toys.

  All the houses in the street had children. Or almost all. The street would soon echo to the shrill blast of toy horns, the roll of toy drums, and the crack of toy pistols. The little girls were probably already cradling their new dolls.

  A few years ago he had proposed more or less at random: “Why don’t we take a little trip for Christmas?”

  “Where?” she had replied with her infallible common sense.

  Where, indeed? Whom would they visit? They had no relatives except her sister who lived too far away. And why spend Christmas in some second-rate country inn, or at a hotel in some strange town?

  Oh, well, he’d feel better after he had his coffee. He was never at his best until he’d drunk his first cup of coffee and lit his first pipe.

  Just as he was reaching for the knob, the door opened noiselessly and Mme. Maigret appeared carrying a tray. She looked at the empty bed, then turned her disappointed eyes upon her husband. She was on the verge of tears.

  “You got up!” She looked as t
hough she had been up for hours herself, every hair in place, a picture of neatness in her crisp clean apron. “And I was so happy about serving your breakfast in bed.

  He had tried a hundred times, as subtly as he could, to make her understand that he didn’t like eating breakfast in bed. It made him uncomfortable. It made him feel like an invalid or a senile old gaffer. But for Mme. Maigret breakfast in bed was the symbol of leisure and luxury, the ideal way to start Sunday or a holiday.

  “Don’t you want to go back to bed?”

  No, he did not. Decidedly not. He hadn’t the courage.

  “Then come to breakfast in the kitchen. And Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas!... You’re not angry?”

  They were in the dining room. He surveyed the silver tray on a corner of the table, the steaming cup of coffee, the golden-brown croissants. He put down his pipe and ate a croissant to please his wife, but he remained standing, looking out the window.

  “It’s snowing.”

  It wasn’t real snow. It was a fine white dust sifting down from the sky, but it reminded Maigret that when he was a small boy he used to stick out his tongue to lick up a few of the tiny flakes.

  His gaze focused on the entrance to the building across the street, next door to the warehouse. Two women had just come out, both bareheaded. One of them, a blonde of about 30, had thrown a coat over her shoulders without stopping to slip her arms into the sleeves. The other, a brunette, older and thinner, was hugging a shawl.