Murder under the Christmas Tree

by Cecily Gayford

  ‘Fireplace, two windows, a crudely painted ceiling – crude in subject as well as in execution – a canvas chair, an unlit electric torch, festoons of cobwebs, and on everything except the chair and the torch dust, layers of it. Sir Lucas was lying on the floor beneath one of the windows, quite close to the bell-push; and an old stiletto, later discovered to have been stolen from the house, had been stuck into him under the left shoulder-blade (no damning fingerprints on it, by the way; or on anything else in the vicinity). Sir Lucas was still alive, and just conscious. Wilburn bent over him to ask who was responsible. And a queer smile crossed Sir Lucas’ face, and he was just able to whisper’ – here Humbleby produced and consulted a notebook – ‘to whisper: “Wrote it – on the window. Very first thing I did when I came round. Did it before I rang the bell or anything else, in case you didn’t get here in time – in time for me to tell you who – ”

  ‘His voice faded out then. But with a final effort he moved his head, glanced up at the window, nodded and smiled again. That was how he died.

  ‘They had all heard him, and they all looked. There was bright moonlight outside, and the letters traced on the grimy pane stood out clearly.

  ‘Otto.

  ‘Well, it seems that then Otto started edging away, and Sir Charles made a grab at him, and they fought, and presently a wallop from Sir Charles sent Otto clean through the tell-tale window, and Sir Charles scrambled after him, and they went on fighting outside, trampling the glass to smithereens, until Wilburn and company joined in and put a stop to it. Incidentally, Wilburn says that Otto’s going through the window looked contrived to him – a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence; though of course, so many people saw the name written there that it remains perfectly good evidence in spite of having been destroyed.’

  ‘Motive?’ Fen asked.

  ‘Good enough. Jane Welsh was wanting to marry Otto – had fallen quite dementedly in love with him, in fact – and her father didn’t approve; partly on the grounds that Otto was a German, and partly because he thought the boy wanted Jane’s prospective inheritance rather than Jane herself. To clinch it, moreover, there was the fact that Otto had been in the Luftwaffe and that Jane’s mother had been killed in 1941 in an air-raid. Jane being only eighteen years of age – and the attitude of magistrates, if appealed to, being in the circumstances at best problematical – it looked as if that was one marriage that would definitely not take place. So the killing of Sir Lucas had, from Otto’s point of view, a double advantage: it made Jane rich, and it removed the obstacle to the marriage.’

  ‘Jane’s prospective guardian not being against it.’

  ‘Jane’s prospective guardian being an uncle she could twist round her little finger…. But here’s the point.’ Humbleby leaned forward earnestly. ‘Here is the point: windows nailed shut; no secret doors – emphatically none; chimney too narrow to admit a baby; and in the dust on the hall floor, only one set of footprints, made unquestionably by Sir Lucas himself…. If you’re thinking that Otto might have walked in and out on top of those prints, as that page-boy we’ve been hearing so much about recently did with King Wenceslaus, then you’re wrong. Otto’s feet are much too large, for one thing, and the prints hadn’t been disturbed, for another: so that’s out. But then, how on earth did he manage it? There’s no furniture in that hall whatever – nothing he could have used to crawl across, nothing he could have swung himself from. It’s a long, bare box, that’s all; and the distance between the door and the circular room (in which room, by the way, the dust on the floor was all messed up by the rescue-party) is miles too far for anyone to have jumped it. Nor was the weapon the sort of thing that could possibly have been fired from a bow or an air-gun or a blow-pipe, or any nonsense of that sort; nor was it sharp enough or heavy enough to have penetrated as deeply as it did if it had been thrown. So ghosts apart, what is the explanation? Can you see one?’

  Fen made no immediate reply. Throughout this narrative he had remained standing, draped against the mantelpiece. Now he moved, collecting Humbleby’s empty glass and his own and carrying them across to the decanter; and it was only after they were refilled that he spoke.

  ‘Supposing,’ he said, ‘that Otto had crossed the entrance hall on a tricycle –’

  ‘A tricycle!’ Humbleby was dumbfounded. ‘A –’

  ‘A tricycle, yes,’ Fen reiterated firmly. ‘Or supposing, again, that he had laid down a carpet, unrolling it in front of him as he entered and rolling it up again after him when he left….’

  ‘But the dust!’ wailed Humbleby. ‘Have I really not made it clear to you that apart from the footprints the dust on the floor was undisturbed? Tricycles, carpets….’

  ‘A section of the floor at least,’ Fen pointed out, ‘was trampled on by the rescue-party.’

  ‘Oh, that. … Yes, but that didn’t happen until after Wilburn had examined the floor.’

  ‘Examined it in detail?’

  ‘Yes. At that stage they still didn’t realize anything was wrong; and when Wilburn led them in they were giggling behind him while he did a sort of parody of detective work, throwing the beam of his torch over every inch of the floor in a pretended search for bloodstains.’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ said Fen puritanically, ‘sound the sort of performance which would amuse me very much.’

  ‘I dare say not. Anyway, the point about it is that Wilburn’s ready to swear that the dust was completely unmarked and undisturbed except for the footprints…. I wish he weren’t ready to swear that,’ Humbleby added dolefully, ‘because that’s what’s holding me up. But I can’t budge him.’

  ‘You oughtn’t to be trying to budge him, anyway,’ retorted Fen, whose mood of self-righteousness appeared to be growing on him. ‘It’s unethical. What about blood, now?’

  ‘Blood? There was practically none of it. You don’t get any bleeding to speak of from that narrow type of wound.’

  ‘Ah. Just one more question, then; and if the answer’s what I expect, I shall be able to tell you how Otto worked it.’

  ‘If by any remote chance,’ said Humblebly suspiciously, ‘it’s stilts that you have in mind –’

  ‘My dear Humbleby, don’t be so puerile.’

  Humbleby contained himself with an effort. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘The name on the window.’ Fen spoke almost dreamily. ‘Was it written in capital letters?’

  Whatever Humbleby had been expecting, it was clearly not this. ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘But –’

  ‘Wait.’ Fen drained his glass. ‘Wait while I make a telephone call.’

  He went. All at once restless, Humbleby got to his feet, lit a cheroot, and began pacing the room. Presently he discovered an elastic-driven aeroplane abandoned behind an armchair, wound it up and launched it. It caught Fen a glancing blow on the temple as he reappeared in the doorway, and thence flew on into the hall, where it struck and smashed a vase. ‘Oh, I say, I’m sorry,’ said Humbleby feebly. Fen said nothing.

  But after about half a minute, when he had simmered down a bit: ‘Locked rooms,’ he remarked sourly. ‘Locked rooms – I’ll tell you what it is, Humbleby: you’ve been reading too much fiction; you’ve got locked rooms on the brain.’

  Humbleby thought it politic to be meek. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Gideon Fell once gave a very brilliant lecture on The Locked-Room Problem, in connection with that business of the Hollow Man; but there was one category he didn’t include.’

  ‘Well?’

  Fen massaged his forehead resentfully. ‘He didn’t include the locked-room mystery which isn’t a locked-room mystery: like this one. So that the explanation of how Otto got into and out of that circular room is simple: he didn’t get into or out of it at all.’

  Humbleby gaped. ‘But Sir Lucas can’t have been knifed before he entered the circular room. Sir Charles said –’

  ‘Ah yes. Sir Charles saw him go in – or so he asserts. And –’

  ‘Stop a bit.’ Humbleby was much perturbed.
‘I can see what you’re getting at, but there are serious objections to it.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, Sir Lucas named his murderer.’

  ‘A murderer who struck at him from behind…. Oh, I’ve no doubt Sir Lucas acted in good faith: Otto, you see, would be the only member of the house party whom Sir Lucas knew to have a motive. In actual fact, Sir Charles had one too – as I’ve just discovered. But Sir Lucas wasn’t aware of that; and in any case, he very particularly didn’t want Otto to marry his daughter after his death, so that the risk of doing an ex-Luftwaffe man an injustice was a risk he was prepared to take. Next objection?’

  ‘The name on the window. If, as Sir Lucas said, his very first action on recovering consciousness was to denounce his attacker, then he’d surely, since he was capable of entering the pavilion after being knifed, have been capable of writing the name on the outside of the window, which would be nearest, and which was just as grimy as the inside. That objection’s based, of course, on your assumption that he was struck before he ever entered the pavilion.’

  ‘I expect he did just that – wrote the name on the outside of the window, I mean.’

  ‘But the people who saw it were on the inside. Inside a bank, for instance, haven’t you ever noticed how the bank’s name –’

  ‘The name Otto,’ Fen interposed, ‘is a palindrome. That’s to say, it reads the same backwards as forwards. What’s more, the capital letters used in it are symmetrical – not like B or P or R or S, but like A or H or M. So write it on the outside of a window, and it will look exactly the same from the inside.’

  ‘My God, yes.’ Humbleby was sobered. ‘I never thought of that. And the fact that the name was on the outside would be fatal to Sir Charles, after his assertion that he’d seen Sir Lucas enter the pavilion unharmed, so I suppose that the “contriving” Wilburn noticed in the fight was Sir Charles’ not Otto’s: he’d realize that the name must be on the outside – Sir Lucas having said that the writing of it was the very first thing he did – and he’d see the need to destroy the window before anyone could investigate closely. … Wait, though: couldn’t Sir Lucas have entered the pavilion as Sir Charles said, and later emerged again, and –’

  ‘One set of footprints,’ Fen pointed out, ‘on the hall floor. Not three.’

  Humbleby nodded. ‘I’ve been a fool about this. Locked rooms, as you said, on the brain. But what was Sir Charles’ motive – the motive Sir Lucas didn’t know about?’

  ‘Belchester,’ said Fen. ‘Belchester Cathedral. As you know, it was bombed during the war, and a new one’s going to be built. Well, I’ve just rung up the Dean, who’s an acquaintance of mine, to ask about the choice of architect; and he says that it was a toss-up between Sir Charles’ design and Sir Lucas’, and that Sir Lucas’ won. The two men were notified by post, and it seems likely that Sir Charles’ notification arrived on the morning of Christmas Eve. Sir Lucas’ did too, in all probability; but Sir Lucas’ was sent to his home, and even forwarded it can’t, in the rush of Christmas postal traffic, have reached him at Rydalls before he was killed. So only Sir Charles knew; and since with Sir Lucas dead Sir Charles’ design would have been accepted. …’ Fen shrugged. ‘Was it money, I wonder? Or was it just the blow to his professional pride? Well, well. Let’s have another drink before you telephone. In the hangman’s shed it will all come to the same thing.’

  A Traditional Christmas

  Val McDermid

  Last night, I dreamed I went to Amberley. Snow had fallen, deep and crisp and even, garlanding the trees like tinsel sparkling in the sunlight as we swept through the tall iron gates and up the drive. Diana was driving, her gloved hands assured on the wheel in spite of the hazards of an imperfectly cleared surface. We rounded the coppice, and there was the house, perfect as a photograph, the sun seeming to breathe life into the golden Cotswold stone. Amberley House, one of the little jobs Vanbrugh knocked off once he’d learned the trade with Blenheim Palace.

  Diana stopped in front of the portico and blared the horn. She turned to me, eyes twinkling, smile bewitching as ever. ‘Christmas begins here,’ she said. As if on cue, the front door opened and Edmund stood framed in the doorway, flanked by his and Diana’s mother, and his wife Jane, all smiling as gaily as daytrippers.

  I woke then, rigid with shock, pop-eyed in the dark. It was one of those dreams so vivid that when you waken, you can’t quite believe it has just happened. But I knew it was a dream. A nightmare, rather. For Edmund, sixth Baron Amberley of Anglezarke had been dead for three months. I should know. I found the body.

  Beside me, Diana was still asleep. I wanted to burrow into her side, seeking comfort from the horrors of memory, but I couldn’t bring myself to be so selfish. A proper night’s sleep was still a luxury for her and the next couple of weeks weren’t exactly going to be restful. I slipped out of bed and went through to the kitchen to make a cup of camomile tea.

  I huddled over the gas fire and forced myself to think back to Christmas. It was the fourth year that Diana and I had made the trip back to her ancestral home to celebrate. As our first Christmas together had approached, I’d worried about what we were going to do. In relationships like ours, there isn’t a standard formula. The only thing I was sure about was that I wanted us to spend it together. I knew that meant visiting my parents was out. As long as they never have to confront the physical evidence of my lesbianism, they can handle it. Bringing any woman home to their tenement flat in Glasgow for Christmas would be uncomfortable. Bringing the daughter of a baron would be impossible.

  When I’d nervously broached the subject, Diana had looked astonished, her eyebrows raised, her mouth twitching in a half-smile. ‘I assumed you’d want to come to Amberley with me,’ she said. ‘They’re expecting you to.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Diana grabbed me in a bear-hug. ‘Of course I’m sure. Don’t you want to spend Christmas with me?’

  ‘Stupid question,’ I grunted. ‘I thought maybe we could celebrate on our own, just the two of us. Romantic, intimate, that sort of thing.’

  Diana looked uncertain. ‘Can’t we be romantic at Amberley? I can’t imagine Christmas anywhere else. It’s so … traditional. So English.’

  My turn for the raised eyebrows. ‘Sure I’ll fit in?’

  ‘You know my mother thinks the world of you. She insists on you coming. She’s fanatical about tradition, especially Christmas. You’ll love it,’ she promised.

  And I did. Unlikely as it is, this Scottish working-class lesbian feminist homeopath fell head over heels for the whole English country-house package. I loved driving down with Diana on Christmas Eve, leaving the motorway traffic behind, slipping through narrow lanes with their tall hedgerows, driving through the chocolate-box village of Amberley, fairy lights strung round the green, and, finally, cruising past the Dower House where her mother lived and on up the drive. I loved the sherry and mince pies with the neighbours, even the ones who wanted to regale me with their ailments. I loved the elaborate Christmas Eve meal Diana’s mother cooked. I loved the brisk walk through the woods to the village church for the midnight service. I loved most of all the way they simply absorbed me into their ritual without distance.

  Christmas Day was champagne breakfast, stockings crammed with childish toys and expensive goodies from the Sloane Ranger shops, church again, then presents proper. The gargantuan feast of Christmas dinner, with free-range turkey from the estate’s home farm. Then a dozen close family friends arrived to pull crackers, wear silly hats and masks, drink like tomorrow was another life and play every ridiculous party game from sardines to charades. I’m glad no one’s ever videotaped the evening and threatened to send a copy to the women’s alternative health co-operative where I practise. I’d have to pay the blackmail. Diana and I lead a classless life in London, where almost no one knows her background. It’s not that she’s embarrassed. It’s just that she knows from bitter experience how many barriers it builds for her. But at
Amberley, we left behind my homeopathy and her Legal Aid practice, and for a few days we lived in a time warp that Charles Dickens would have revelled in.

  On Boxing Day night, we always trooped down to the village hall for the dance. It was then that Edmund came into his own. His huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ persona slipped from him like the masks we’d worn the night before when he picked up his alto sax and stepped onto the stage to lead the twelve-piece Amber Band. Most of his fellow members were professional session musicians, but the drummer doubled as a labourer on Amberley Farm and the keyboard player was the village postman. I’m no connoisseur, but I reckoned the Amber Band was one of the best live outfits I’ve ever heard. They played everything from Duke Ellington to Glenn Miller, including Miles Davis and John Coltrane pieces, all arranged by Edmund. And of course, they played some of Edmund’s own compositions, strange haunting slow-dancing pieces that somehow achieved the seemingly impossible marriage between the English countryside and jazz.

  There was nothing different to mark out last Christmas as a watershed gig. Edmund led the band with his usual verve. Diana and I danced with each other half the night and took it in turns to dance with her mother the rest of the time. Evangeline (‘call me Evie’) still danced with a vivacity and flair that made me understand why Diana’s father had fallen for her. As usual, Jane sat stolidly nursing a gin and tonic that she made last the whole night. ‘I don’t dance,’ she’d said stiffly to me when I’d asked her up on my first visit. It was a rebuff that brooked no argument. Later, I asked Diana if Jane had knocked me back because I was a dyke.

  Diana roared with laughter. ‘Good God, no,’ she spluttered. ‘Jane doesn’t even dance with Edmund. She’s tone deaf and has no sense of rhythm.’