Murder under the Christmas Tree

by Cecily Gayford

  ‘“I had observed by the nature of the wide, gaping wounds that some such blade as a broad knife had inflicted them, or the like. But what had done this was a puzzle, for every inch of the room did we search, high, low and turnover; and still not so much as a pin in crack or crevice.

  ‘“Mr Vanning deposed that as he was speaking with Mr Oakley, something struck out the light, and overthrew Mr Oakley, and knelt on his chest. But who or what this was, or where it had gone when the light was brought, he could not say.”’

  * * *

  Bending close to the firelight, our host finished reading the notes from the sheet of paper in his hands. He folded up the paper, put it back in his pocket, and looked at us.

  The historian’s wife, who had drawn closer to her husband, shifted uneasily. ‘I wish you wouldn’t tell us these things,’ she complained. ‘But tell us, anyway. I still don’t understand. What was the man killed with, then?’

  ‘That,’ said our host, lighting his pipe, ‘is the question. If you accept natural laws as governing this world, there wasn’t anything that could have killed him. Look here a moment!’

  (For we were all looking at the ceiling.)

  ‘The Squire begged Mistress Mary to tell him what had happened. First she began to whimper a little, and for the first time in her life she fainted. The Squire wanted to throw some water over her, but Vanning carried her downstairs and they forced brandy between her teeth. When she recovered she was a trifle wandering, with no story at all.

  ‘Something had put out the light. There had been a sound like a fall and a scuffling. Then the noise of moving about, and the smell of blood in a close, confined room. Something seemed to be plucking or pulling at her skirts. She does not appear to have remembered anything more.

  ‘Of course, Vanning was put under restraint, and a magistrate sent for. They gathered in this room, which was a good deal bleaker and barer than it is today; but they pinned Vanning in the chimney corner of that fire-place. The Squire drew his sword and attempted to run Vanning through: while both of them wept, as the fashion was. But Poynter ordered two of the lads to hold the Squire back, quoting himself later as saying: “This must be done in good order.”

  ‘Now, what I want to impress on you is that these people were not fools. They had possibly a cruder turn of thought and speech; but they were used to dealing with realities like wood and beef and leather. Here was a reality. Oakley’s wounds were six inches deep and an inch wide, from a thick, flat blade that in places had scraped the bone. But there wasn’t any such blade, and they knew it.

  ‘Four men stood in the door and held lights while they searched for that knife (if there was such a thing): and they didn’t find it. They pulled the room to pieces; and they didn’t find it. Nobody could have whisked it out, past the men in the door. The windows didn’t open, being set into the wall like panels, so nobody could have got rid of the knife there. There was only one door, outside which the servants had been standing. Something had cut a man to pieces; yet it simply wasn’t there.

  ‘Vanning, pale but calmer, repeated his account. Questioned as to why he had come to the house that night, he answered that there had been a matter to settle with Oakley. Asked what it was, he said he had not liked the conditions in his own home for the past month: he would beg Mr Oakley to mend them. He had done Mr Oakley no harm, beyond trying to take a bride from him, and therefore he would ask Mr Oakley to call off his dogs. What dogs? Vanning explained that he did not precisely mean dogs. He meant something that had got into his bedroom cupboard, but was only there at night; and he had reasons for thinking Mr Oakley had whistled it there. It had been there only since he had been paying attentions to Mistress Mary.

  ‘These men were only human. Poynter ordered the steward to go up and search the little room again – and the steward wouldn’t go.

  ‘That little seed of terror had begun to grow like a mango-tree under a cloth, and push up the cloth and stir out tentacles. It was easy to forget the broad, smiling face of Richard Oakley, and to remember the curious “shifting” of his eyes. When you recalled that, after all, Oakley was twice Mistress Mary’s age, you might begin to wonder just whom you had been entertaining at bread and meat.

  ‘Even Squire Radlow did not care to go upstairs again in his own house. Vanning, sweating and squirming in the chimney corner, plucked up courage as a confident young man and volunteered to go. They let him. But no sooner had he got into the little room than the door clapped again, and he came out running. It was touch-and-go whether they would desert the house in a body.’

  Again our host paused. In the silence it was the Inspector who spoke, examining his cigar and speaking with some scepticism. He had a commonsense voice, which restored reasonable values.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘are you telling us local bogy-tales, or are you seriously putting this forward as evidence?’

  ‘As evidence given at a coroner’s inquest.’

  ‘Reliable evidence?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘I don’t,’ returned the Inspector, drawing the air through a hollow tooth. ‘After all, I suppose we’ve got to admit that a man was murdered, since there was an inquest. But if he died of being hacked or slashed with thirteen wounds, some instrument made those wounds. What happened to that weapon? You say it wasn’t in the room; but how do we know that? How do we know it wasn’t hidden away somewhere, and they simply couldn’t find it?’

  ‘I think I can give you my word,’ said our host slowly, ‘that no weapon was hidden there.’

  ‘Then what the devil happened to it? A knife at least six inches in the blade, and an inch broad –’

  ‘Yes. But the fact is, nobody could see it.’

  ‘It wasn’t hidden anywhere, and yet nobody could see it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘An invisible weapon?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered our host, with a curious shining in his eyes. ‘A quite literally invisible weapon.’

  ‘How do you know?’ demanded his wife abruptly.

  Hitherto she had taken no part in the conversation. But she had been studying him in an odd way, sitting on a hassock; and, as he hesitated, she rose at him in a glory of accusation.

  ‘You villain!’ she cried. ‘Ooh, you unutterable villain! You’ve been making it all up! Just to make everybody afraid to go to bed, and because I didn’t know anything about the place, you’ve been telling us a pack of lies –’

  But he stopped her.

  ‘No. If I had been making it up, I should have told you it was a story.’ Again he hesitated, almost biting his nails. ‘I’ll admit that I may have been trying to mystify you a bit. That’s reasonable, because I honestly don’t know the truth myself. I can make a guess at it, that’s all. I can make a guess at how those wounds came there. But that isn’t the real problem. That isn’t what bothers me, don’t you see?’

  Here the historian intervened. ‘A wide acquaintance with sensational fiction,’ he said, ‘gives me the line on which you’re working. I submit that the victim was stabbed with an icicle, as in several tales I could mention. Afterwards the ice melted – and was, in consequence, an invisible weapon.’

  ‘No,’ said our host.

  ‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘that it’s not feasible. You would hardly find an icicle in such unnaturally warm weather as they were having. And icicles are brittle: you wouldn’t get a flat, broad icicle of such steel-strength and sharpness that thirteen stabs could be made and the bone scraped in some of them. And an icicle isn’t invisible. Under the circumstances, this knife was invisible – despite its size.’

  ‘Bosh!’ said the historian’s wife. ‘There isn’t any such thing.’

  ‘There is if you come to think about it. Of course, it’s only an idea of mine, and it may be all wrong. Also, as I say, it’s not the real problem, though it’s so closely associated with the real problem that –

  ‘But you haven’t heard the rest of the story. Shall I conclude it?’


  ‘By all means.’

  ‘I am afraid there are no great alarms or sensations,’ our host went on, ‘though the very name of Richard Oakley became a nightmare to keep people indoors at night. “Oakley’s friend” became a local synonym for anything that might get you if you didn’t look sharp. One or two people saw him walking in the woods afterwards, his head was on one side and the stab wounds were still there.

  ‘A grand jury of Sussex gentlemen, headed by Sir Benedict Skene, completely exonerated Gerald Vanning. The coroner’s jury had already said “persons or things unknown”, and added words of sympathy with Mistress Mary to the effect that she was luckily quit of a dangerous bargain. It may not surprise you to hear that eighteen months after Oakley’s death she married Vanning.

  ‘She was completely docile, though her old vivacity had gone. In those days young ladies did not remain spinsters through choice. She smiled, nodded, and made the proper responses, though it seems probable that she never got over what had happened.

  ‘Matters became settled, even humdrum. Vanning waxed prosperous and respectable. His subsequent career I have had to look up in other sources, since Poynter’s diary breaks off at the end of ’64. But a grateful Government made him Sir Gerald Vanning, Bart. He became a leading member of the Royal Society, tinkering with the toys of science. His cheeks filled out, the slyness left his eyes, a periwig adorned his head, and four Flanders mares drew his coach to Gresham House. At home he often chose this house to live in when Squire Radlow died; he moved between here and Mallingford with the soberest grace. The little room, once such a cause of terror, he seldom visited; but its door was not locked.

  ‘His wife saw to it that these flagstones were kept scrubbed, and every stick of wood shining. She was a good wife. He for his part was a good husband: he treated her well and drank only for his thirst, though she often pressed him to drink more than he did. It is at this pitch of domesticity that we get the record of another coroner’s inquest.

  ‘Vanning’s throat was cut on the night of the 5th October, ’67.

  ‘On an evening of high winds, he and his wife came here from Mallingford. He was in unusually good spirits, having just done a profitable piece of business. They had supper together, and Vanning drank a great deal. His wife kept him company at it. (Didn’t I tell you she once drank off a pint of wine at a draught, for a wager?) She said it would make him sleep soundly; for it seems to be true that he sometimes talked in his sleep. At eight o’clock, she tells us, she went up to bed, leaving him still at the table. At what time he went upstairs we do not know, and neither do the servants. Kitts, the steward, thought he heard him stumbling up that staircase out there at a very late hour. Kitts also thought he heard someone crying out, but a high October gale was blowing and he could not be sure.

  ‘On the morning of the 6th October, a cowherd named Coates was coming round the side of this house in a sodden daybreak from which the storm had just cleared. He was on his way to the west meadow, and stopped to drink at a rain-water barrel under the eaves just below the little room at the head of the stairs. As he was about to drink, he noticed a curious colour in the water. Looking up to find out how it had come there, he saw Sir Gerald Vanning’s face looking down at him under the shadow of the yellow trees. Sir Gerald’s head was sticking out of the window, and did not move; neither did the eyes. Some of the glass in the window was still intact, though his head had been run through it, and –’

  It was at this point that the Inspector uttered an exclamation.

  It was an exclamation of enlightenment. Our host looked at him with a certain grimness, and nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You know the truth now, don’t you?’

  ‘The truth?’ repeated the historian’s wife, almost screaming with perplexity. ‘The truth about what?’

  ‘About the murder of Oakley,’ said our host. ‘About the trick Vanning used to murder Oakley seven years before.

  ‘I’m fairly sure he did it,’ our host went on, nodding reflectively. ‘Nothing delighted the people of that time so much as tricks and gadgets of that very sort. A clock that ran by rolling bullets down an inclined plane; a diving bell; a burglar-alarm; the Royal Society played with all of them. And Vanning (study his portrait one day) profited by the monkey-tricks he learned in exile. He invented an invisible knife.’

  ‘But see here – !’ protested the historian.

  ‘Of course he planned the whole thing against Oakley. Oakley was no more a necromancer or a consorter with devils than I am. All those rumours about him were started with a definite purpose by Vanning himself. A crop of whispers, a weak-minded lad to be bribed, the whole power of suggestion set going; and Vanning was ready for business.

  ‘On the given night he rode over to this house, alone, with a certain kind of knife in his pocket. He made a great show of pretending he was chased by imaginary monsters, and he alarmed the steward. With the servants for witnesses, he went upstairs to see Oakley and Mistress Mary. He bolted the door. He spoke pleasantly to them. When he had managed to distract the girl’s attention, he knocked out the light, tripped up Oakley, and set upon him with that certain kind of knife. There had to be many wounds and much blood, so he could later account for blood on himself. The girl was too terrified in the dark to move. He had only to clean his knife on a soft but stiff-brocaded gown, and then put down the knife in full view. Nobody noticed it.’

  The historian blinked. ‘Admirable!’ he said. ‘Nobody noticed it, eh? Can you tell me the sort of blade that can be placed in full view without anybody noticing it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said our host. ‘A blade made of ordinary plain glass, placed in the large glass jug full of water standing on a sideboard table.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘I told you about that glass water jug. It was a familiar fixture. Nobody examines a transparent jug of water.

  ‘Vanning could have made a glass knife with the crudest of cutting tools; and glass is murderous stuff – strong, flat, sharp-edged, and as sharp-pointed as you want to make it. There was only candle-light, remember. Any minute traces of blood that might be left on the glass knife would sink as sediment in the water, while everybody looked straight at the weapon in the water and never noticed it. But Vanning (you also remember?) prevented Squire Radlow from throwing water on the girl when she fainted. Instead he carried her downstairs. Afterwards he told an admirable series of horror-tales; he found an excuse to go back to the room again alone, slip the knife into his sleeve, and get rid of it in the confusion.’

  The Inspector frowned thoughtfully. ‘But the real problem –’ he said.

  ‘Yes. If that was the way it was done, did the wife know? Vanning talked in his sleep, remember.’

  We looked at each other. The historian’s wife, after a glance round, asked the question that was in our minds.

  ‘And what was the verdict of that inquest?’

  ‘Oh, that was simple,’ said our host. ‘Death by misad-venture, from falling through a window while drunk and cutting his throat on the glass. Somebody observed that there were marks of heels on the board floor as though he might have been dragged there; but this wasn’t insisted on. Mistress Mary lived on in complete happiness, and died at the ripe age of eighty-six, full of benevolence and sleep. These are natural explanations. Everything is natural. There’s nothing wrong with that little room at the head of the stairs. It’s been turned into a bedroom now; I assure you it’s comfortable; and anyone who cares to sleep there is free to do so. But at the same time –’

  ‘Quite,’ we said.

  The Case is Altered

  Margery Allingham

  Mr Albert Campion, sitting in a first-class smoking compartment, was just reflecting sadly that an atmosphere of stultifying decency could make even Christmas something of a stuffed-owl occasion, when a new hogskin suitcase of distinctive design hit him on the knees. At that same moment a golf bag bruised the shins of the shy young man opposite, an armful of assorted magazines burst over the
pretty girl in the far corner, and a blast of icy air swept round the carriage. There was the familiar rattle and lurch which indicates that the train has started at last, a squawk from a receding porter, and Lance Feering arrived before him apparently by rocket.

  ‘Caught it,’ said the newcomer with the air of one confidently expecting congratulations, but as the train bumped jerkily he teetered back on his heels and collapsed between the two young people on the opposite seat.

  ‘My dear chap, so we noticed,’ murmured Campion, and he smiled apologetically at the girl, now disentangling herself from the shellburst of newsprint. It was his own disarming my-poor-friend-is-afflicted variety of smile that he privately considered infallible, but on this occasion it let him down.

  The girl, who was in the early twenties and was slim and fair, with eyes like licked brandy-balls, as Lance Feering inelegantly put it afterwards, regarded him with grave interest. She stacked the magazines into a neat bundle and placed them on the seat opposite before returning to her own book. Even Mr Feering, who was in one of his more exuberant moods, was aware of that chilly protest. He began to apologise.

  Campion had known Feering in his student days, long before he had become one of the foremost designers of stage decors in Europe, and was used to him, but now even he was impressed. Lance’s apologies were easy but also abject. He collected his bag, stowed it on a clear space on the rack above the shy young man’s head, thrust his golf things under the seat, positively blushed when he claimed his magazines, and regarded the girl with pathetic humility. She glanced at him when he spoke, nodded coolly with just enough graciousness not to be gauche, and turned over a page.

  Campion was secretly amused. At the top of his form Lance was reputed to be irresistible. His dark face with the long mournful nose and bright eyes were unhandsome enough to be interesting and the quick gestures of his short painter’s hands made his conversation picturesque. His singular lack of success on this occasion clearly astonished him and he sat back in his corner eyeing the young woman with covert mistrust.