Mr Campion stood before them for a long time but at length he turned away. He had to stoop to avoid the beam and yet he towered over the old woman who stood watching him.
Something had happened. It had suddenly become very still in the house. The gentle hissing of the kettle sounded unnaturally loud. The recollection of their loneliness returned to chill the cosy room.
The old lady had lost her smile and there was wariness in her eyes.
‘Tell me,’ Mr Campion spoke very gently. ‘How do you do it? Do you put them all down there on the mat in their envelopes before you go to bed on Christmas Eve?’
While the point of his question was dawning upon Leo, there was complete silence. It was breathless and unbearable until old Mrs Fyson pierced it with a laugh of genuine naughtiness.
‘Well,’ she said devastatingly, ‘It does make it more fun, doesn’t it?’ She glanced back at Leo whose handsome face was growing scarlet.
‘Then …’ He was having difficulty with his voice.
‘Then the postman did not call this morning, ma’am?’
‘The postman never calls here except when he brings something from the Government,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Everybody gets letters from the Government nowadays, don’t they? But he doesn’t call here with personal letters because, you see, I’m the last of us.’ She paused and frowned very faintly. It rippled like a shadow over the smoothness of her quiet, careless brow. ‘There’s been so many wars,’ she said.
‘But, dear Lady …’ Leo was completely overcome.
She patted his arm to comfort him.
‘My dear man,’ she said kindly. ‘Don’t be distressed. This isn’t sad. It’s Christmas. They sent me their love at Christmas and I’ve still got it. At Christmas I remember them and they remember me I expect – wherever they are.’ Her eyes strayed to the ivorine card with the coach on it. ‘I do sometimes wonder about poor George,’ she remarked seriously. ‘He was my husband’s elder brother and he really did have quite a shocking life. But he sent me that remarkable card one year and I kept it with the others … after all, we ought to be charitable, oughtn’t we? At Christmas.’
As the four men plodded back through the fields, Pussey was jubilant.
‘That’s done the trick,’ he said. ‘Cleared up the mystery and made it all plain sailing. We’ll get those two crooks for doing in poor old Noakes. The old girl was just cheering herself up and you fell for it, eh, constable? Oh, don’t worry, my boy. There’s no harm done and it’s a thing that might have deceived anybody. Just let it be a lesson to you. I know how it happened. You didn’t want to worry the old thing with the tale of a death on Christmas morning so you took the sight of the letters as evidence and didn’t go into it. As it turned out, you were wrong. That’s life.’
He thrust the young man on ahead of him and waited for Campion.
‘What beats me is how you cottoned to it,’ he confided. ‘What gave you the idea?’
‘I merely read it, I’m afraid,’ Mr Campion was apologetic. ‘All the envelopes were there, sticking out from behind the clock. The top one had a ha’penny stamp on it so I looked at the postmark. It was 1914.’
Pussey laughed. ‘Given to you!’ he chuckled. ‘Still I bet you had a job to trust your own eyes.’
‘Ah.’ Mr Campion’s voice was thoughtful in the dusk. ‘That, Super, that was the really difficult bit.’
Credits
‘The Footprints in the Sky’ by John Dickson Carr, from The Department of Queer Complaints, reprinted by permission of David Higham Ltd and William Heinemann.
‘The Trinity Cat’ by Ellis Peters, reprinted by permission of United Agents.
‘On Christmas Day in the Morning’ by Margery Allingham reprinted by permission of Rights Limited on behalf of the Estate of Margery Allingham.
‘Four Seasons’ by Michael Innes reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the Estate of Michael Innes.
‘No Sanity Clause’ by Ian Rankin, from The Beat Goes On, reprinted by permission of The Orion Publishing Group. ‘No Sanity Clause’ © Ian Rankin, 2000.
‘A Wife in a Million’ by Val McDermid, 1989, reprinted by permission of the Gregory and Company Authors’ Agents. Copyright © Val McDermid, 1989
‘The Santa Claus Club’ by Julian Symons, 1960, reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of The Estate of Julian Symons. Copyright © Julian Symons, 1995.
‘As Dark as Christmas Gets’ by Lawrence Block, 1997, reprinted by permission of Baror International, on behalf of the Author.
While every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders of each story, the author and publishers would be grateful for information where they have been unable to trace them, and would be glad to make amendments in further editions.
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