Cynthia Manson (ed)

by Merry Murder

  “I just wanted to keep my store. That’s all!” He wrung his hands despairingly. “I pleaded with Everett for two months, but he wouldn’t listen. Said he wanted this land for a parking lot.” Morris’ shoulders sagged and he began to weep.

  Madigan moved to the man’s side. “Go on,” he said in a hard voice.

  “When I went to his house that night, I took the gun just to frighten him. But he still wouldn’t change his mind. I went crazy, I guess, and—” He halted and looked pleadingly at the priest. “I didn’t really mean to kill him, Father. Honest!”

  “What about his wallet?” Madigan prodded him.

  “It fell out of his pocket. There was a lot of money in it—almost a thousand dollars. I—I just took it.”

  “And then hid it along with the gun in the room of a poor innocent man,” Father Crumlish said, trying to contain his anger. “And to make sure that Charley would be charged with your crime, you called the police.”

  “But the police would have come after me,” Herbie protested, as if to justify his actions. “I read in the papers that they were checking Everett’s properties and all his tenants. I was afraid—” The look on Father’s face caused Herbie’s voice to trail away.

  “Not half as afraid as Charley when you kept warning him that the police would accuse him because of his mental record, because he worked in the Liberty Building and was going to lose his job. That’s what you did, didn’t you?” Father asked in a voice like thunder. “You deliberately put fear into his befuddled mind, told him he’d be put away—”

  The priest halted and gazed at the little storekeeper’s bald bowed head. There were many more harsh words on the tip of his tongue that he might have said. But, as a priest, he knew that he must forego the saying of them.

  Instead he murmured, “God have mercy on you.”

  Then he turned away and walked out into the night. It had begun to snow again—soft, gentle flakes. They fell on Father Crumlish’s cheeks and mingled with a few drops of moisture that were already there.

  It was almost midnight before Big Tom Madigan rang St. Brigid’s doorbell. Under the circumstances Father wasn’t surprised by the policeman’s late visit.

  “How did you know, Father?” Madigan asked as he sank into a chair.

  Wearily Father related the incident at the crib. “After what I heard at the Swansons and what Casey told me, a crying child was on my mind. And then, when I saw what looked like tears on the Infant’s face, I got to thinking about all the homeless—” He paused for a long moment.

  “Only a few hours before, Herbie had told me how hard it was, particularly at Christmas, to be lonely and without a real home. Charley was suspected of murder because he was going to lose his job. But wasn’t it more reasonable to suspect a man who was going to lose his life’s work? His whole world?” Father sighed. “I knew Herbie never could have opened another store in a new location. He would have had to pay much higher rent, and he was barely making ends meet where he was.”

  It was some moments before Father spoke again.

  “Tom,” he said brightly, sitting upright in his chair. “I happen to know that the kitchen table is loaded down with Christmas cookies.”

  The policeman chuckled. “And I happen to know that Emma Catt counts every one of ’em. So don’t think you can sneak a few.”

  “Follow me, lad,” Father said confidently as he got to his feet. “You’re on the list for a dozen for Christmas. Is there any law against my giving you your present now?”

  “Not that I know of, Father,” Madigan replied, grinning.

  “And in the true Christmas spirit, Tom,” Father Crumlish’s eyes twinkled merrily, “I’m sure you’ll want to share and share alike.”

  Father Crumlish’s Christmas Cookies

  3

  tablespoons butter

  ¾

  cup very finely chopped

  ½

  cup sugar

  candied fruit and peels

  ½

  cup heavy cream

  ¼

  teaspoon ground cloves

  ⅓

  cup sifted flour

  ¼

  teaspoon ground

  1¼

  cup very finely

  nutmeg

  chopped blanched

  ¼

  teaspoon ground

  almonds

  cinnamon

  (1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

  (2) Combine butter, sugar, and cream in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat.

  (3) Stir in other ingredients to form a batter.

  (4) Drop batter by spoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet, spacing them about three inches apart.

  (5) Bake ten minutes or until cookies begin to brown around the edges. Cool and then remove to a flat surface. If desired, while cookies are still warm, drizzle melted chocolate over tops.

  YIELD: About 24 cookies

  —Courtesy of the author

  THE PLOT AGAINST SANTA CLAUS – James Powell

  Rory Bigtoes, Santa’s Security Chief, was tall for an elf, measuring almost seven inches from the curly tips of his shoes to the top of his fedora. But he had to stride to keep abreast of Garth Hardnoggin, the quick little Director General of the Toyworks, as they hurried, beards streaming back over their shoulders, through the racket and bustle of Shop Number 5, one of the many vaulted caverns honeycombing the undiscovered island beneath the Polar icecap.

  Director General Hardnoggin wasn’t pleased. He slapped his megaphone, the symbol of his office (for as a member of the Board he spoke directly to Santa Claus), against his thigh. “A bomb in the Board Room on Christmas Eve!” he muttered with angry disbelief.

  “I’ll admit that Security doesn’t look good,” said Bigtoes.

  Hardnoggin gave a snort and stopped at a construction site for Dick and Jane Doll dollhouses. Elf carpenters and painters were hard at work, pipes in their jaws and beards tucked into their belts. A foreman darted over to show Hardnoggin the wallpaper samples for the dining room.

  “See this unit, Bigtoes?” said Hardnoggin. “Split-level ranch type. Wall-to-wall carpeting. Breakfast nook. Your choice of Early American or French Provincial furnishings. They said I couldn’t build it for the price. But I did. And how did I do it?”

  “Cardboard,” said a passing elf, an old carpenter with a plank over his shoulder.

  “And what’s wrong with cardboard? Good substantial cardboard for the interior walls!” shouted the Director General striding off again. “Let them bellyache, Bigtoes. I’m not out to win any popularity contests. But I do my job. Let’s see you do yours. Find Dirk Crouchback and find him fast.”

  At the automotive section the new Lazaretto sports cars (1/32 scale) were coming off the assembly line. Hardnoggin stopped to slam one of the car doors. “You left out the kachunk,” he told an elf engineer in white coveralls.

  “Nobody gets a tin door to go kachunk,” said the engineer.

  “Detroit does. So can we,” said Hardnoggin, moving on. “You think I don’t miss the good old days, Bigtoes?” he said. “I was a spinner. And a damn good one. Nobody made a top that could spin as long and smooth as Garth Hardnoggin’s.”

  “I was a jacksmith myself,” said Bigtoes. Satisfying work, building each jack-in-the-box from the ground up, carpentering the box, rigging the spring mechanism, making the funny head, spreading each careful coat of paint.

  “How many could you make in a week?” asked Director General Hardnoggin.

  “Three, with overtime,” said Security Chief Bigtoes.

  Hardnoggin nodded. “And how many children had empty stockings on Christmas morning because we couldn’t handcraft enough stuff to go around? That’s where your Ghengis Khans, your Hitlers, and your Stalins come from, Bigtoes—children who through no fault of their own didn’t get any toys for Christmas. So Santa had to make a policy decision: quality or quantity? He opted for quantity.”

  Crouchback, at that time one of Santa’s r
ighthand elves, had blamed the decision on Hardnoggin’s sinister influence. By way of protest he had placed a bomb in the new plastic machine. The explosion had coated three elves with a thick layer of plastic which had to be chipped off with hammers and chisels. Of course they lost their beards. Santa, who was particularly sensitive about beards, sentenced Crouchback to two years in the cooler, as the elves called it. This meant he was assigned to a refrigerator (one in Ottawa, Canada, as it happened) with the responsibility of turning the light on and off as the door was opened or closed.

  But after a month Crouchback had failed to answer the daily roll call which Security made by means of a two-way intercom system. He had fled the refrigerator and become a renegade elf. Then suddenly, three years later, Crouchback had reappeared at the North Pole, a shadowy fugitive figure, editor of a clandestine newspaper, The Midnight Elf, which made violent attacks on Director General Hardnoggin and his policies. More recently, Crouchback had become the leader of SHAFT—Santa’s Helpers Against Flimsy Toys—an organization of dissident groups including the Anti-Plastic League, the Sons and Daughters of the Good Old Days, the Ban the Toy-Bomb people and the Hippie Elves for Peace...

  “Santa opted for quantity,” repeated Hardnoggin. “And I carried out his decision. Just between the two of us it hasn’t always been easy.” Hardnoggin waved his megaphone at the Pacification and Rehabilitation section where thousands of toy bacteriological warfare kits (JiffyPox) were being converted to civilian use (The Freckle Machine). After years of pondering Santa had finally ordered a halt to war-toy production. His decision was considered a victory for SHAFT and a defeat for Hardnoggin.

  “Unilateral disarmament is a mistake, Bigtoes,” said Hardnoggin grimly as they passed through a door marked Santa’s Executive Helpers Only and into the carpeted world of the front office. “Mark my words, right now the tanks and planes are rolling off the assembly lines at Acme Toy and into the department stores.” (Acme Toy, the international consortium of toymakers, was the elves’ greatest bugbear. ) “So the rich kids will have war toys, while the poor kids won’t even have a popgun. That’s not democratic.”

  Bigtoes stopped at a door marked Security. Hardnoggin strode on without slackening his pace. “Sticks-and-stones session at five o’clock,” he said over his shoulder. “Don’t be late. And do your job. Find Crouchback!”

  Dejected, Bigtoes slumped down at his desk, receiving a sympathetic smile from Charity Nosegay, his little blonde blue-eyed secretary. Charity was a recent acquisition and Bigtoes had intended to make a play for her once the Sticks-and-Stones paperwork was out of the way. (Security had to prepare a report for Santa on each alleged naughty boy and girl. ) Now that play would have to wait.

  Bigtoes sighed. Security looked bad. Bigtoes had even been warned. The night before, a battered and broken elf had crawled into his office, gasped, “He’s going to kill Santa,” and died. It was Darby Shortribs who had once been a brilliant doll designer. But then one day he had decided that if war toys encouraged little boys to become soldiers when they grew up, then dolls encouraged little girls to become mothers, contributing to overpopulation. So Shortribs had joined SHAFT and risen to membership on its Central Committee.

  The trail of Shortribs’ blood had led to the Quality Control lab and the Endurance Machine which simulated the brutal punishment, the bashing, crushing, and kicking that a toy receives at the hands of a four-year-old (or two two-year-olds). A hell of a way for an elf to die!

  After Shortribs’ warning, Bigtoes had alerted his Security elves and sent a flying squad after Crouchback. But the SHAFT leader had disappeared. The next morning a bomb had exploded in the Board Room.

  On the top of Bigtoes’ desk were the remains of that bomb. Small enough to fit into an elf’s briefcase, it had been placed under the Board Room table, just at Santa’s feet. If Owen Brassbottom, Santa’s Traffic Manager, hadn’t chosen just that moment to usher the jolly old man into the Map Room to pinpoint the spot where, with the permission and blessing of the Strategic Air Command, Santa’s sleigh and reindeer were to penetrate the DEW Line, there wouldn’t have been much left of Santa from the waist down. Seconds before the bomb went off, Director General Hardnoggin had been called from the room to take a private phone call. Fergus Bandylegs, Vice-President of Santa Enterprises, Inc., had just gone down to the other end of the table to discuss something with Tom Thumbskin, Santa’s Creative Head, and escaped the blast. But Thumbskin had to be sent to the hospital with a concussion when his chair—the elves sat on high chairs with ladders up the side like those used by lifeguards— was knocked over backward by the explosion.

  All this was important, for the room had been searched before the meeting and found safe. So the bomb must have been brought in by a member of the Board. It certainly hadn’t been Traffic Manager Brassbottom who had saved Santa, and probably not Thumbskin. That left Director General Hardnoggin and Vice-President Bandylegs...

  “Any luck checking out that personal phone call Hardnoggin received just before the bomb went off?” asked Bigtoes.

  Charity shook her golden locks. “The switchboard operator fainted right after she took the call. She’s still out cold.”

  Leaving the Toyworks, Bigtoes walked quickly down a corridor lined with expensive boutiques and fashionable restaurants. On one wall of Mademoiselle Fanny’s Salon of Haute Couture some SHAFT elf had written: Santa, Si! Hardnoggin, No! On one wall of the Hotel St. Nicholas some Hardnoggin backer had written: Support Your Local Director General! Bigtoes was no philosopher and the social unrest that was racking the North Pole confused him. Once, in disguise, he had attended a SHAFT rally in The Underwood, that vast and forbidding cavern of phosphorescent stinkhorn and hanging roots. Gathered beneath an immense picture of Santa were hippie elves with their beards tied in outlandish knots, matron-lady elves in sensible shoes, tweedy elves and green-collar elves.

  Crouchback himself had made a surprise appearance, coming out of hiding to deliver his now famous “Plastic Lives!” speech. “Hardnoggin says plastic is inanimate. But I say that plastic lives! Plastic infects all it touches and spreads like crab grass in the innocent souls of little children. Plastic toys make plastic girls and boys!” Crouchback drew himself up to his full six inches. “I say: quality— quality now!” The crowd roared his words back at him. The meeting closed with all the elves joining hands and singing “We Shall Overcome.” It had been a moving experience...

  As he expected, Bigtoes found Bandylegs at the Hotel St. Nicholas bar, staring morosely down into a thimble-mug of ale. Fergus Bandylegs was a dapper, fast-talking elf with a chestnut beard which he scented with lavender. As Vice-President of Santa Enterprises, Inc., he was in charge of financing the entire Toyworks operation by arranging for Santa to appear in advertising campaigns, by collecting royalties on the use of the jolly old man’s name, and by leasing Santa suits to department stores.

  Bandylegs ordered a drink for the Security Chief. Their friendship went back to Rory Bigtoes’ jacksmith days when Bandylegs had been a master sledwright. “These are topsy-turvy times, Rory,” said Bandylegs. “First there’s that bomb and now Santa’s turned down the Jolly Roger cigarette account. For years now they’ve had this ad campaign showing Santa slipping a carton of Jolly Rogers into Christmas stockings. But not any more. ‘Smoking may be hazardous to your health,’ says Santa.”

  “Santa knows best,” said Bigtoes.

  “Granted,” said Bandylegs. “But counting television residuals, that’s a cool two million sugar plums thrown out the window.” (At the current rate of exchange there are 4. 27 sugar plums to the U. S. dollar. ) “Hardnoggin’s already on my back to make up the loss. Nothing must interfere with his grand plan for automating the Toyworks. So it’s off to Madison Avenue again. Sure I’ll stay at the Plaza and eat at the Chambord, but I’ll still get homesick.”

  The Vice-President smiled sadly. “Do you know what I used to do? There’s this guy who stands outside Grand Central Station selling those little
mechanical men you wind up and they march around. I used to march around with them. It made me feel better somehow. But now they remind me of Hardnoggin. He’s a machine, Rory, and he wants to make all of us into machines.”

  “What about the bomb?” asked Bigtoes.

  Bandylegs shrugged. “Acme Toy, I suppose.”

  Bigtoes shook his head. Acme Toy hadn’t slipped an elf spy into the North Pole for months. “What about Crouchback?”

  “No,” said Bandylegs firmly. “I’ll level with you, Rory. I had a get-together with Crouchback just last week. He wanted to get my thoughts on the quality-versus-quantity question and on the future of the Toyworks. Maybe I’m wrong, but I got the impression that a top-level shake-up is in the works with Crouchback slated to become the new Director General. In any event I found him a very perceptive and understanding elf.”

  Bandylegs smiled and went on, “Darby Shortribs was there, prattling on against dolls. As I left, Crouchback shook my hand and whispered, ‘Every movement needs its lunatic fringe, Bandylegs. Shortribs is ours.’ “ Bandylegs lowered his voice. “I’m tired of the grown-up ratrace, Rory. I want to get back to the sled shed and make Blue Streaks and High Flyers again. I’ll never get there with Hardnoggin and his modern ideas at the helm.”

  Bigtoes pulled at his beard. It was common knowledge that Crouchback had an elf spy on the Board. The reports on the meetings in The Midnight Elf were just too complete. Was it his friend Bandylegs? But would Bandylegs try to kill Santa?

  That brought Bigtoes back to Hardnoggin again. But cautiously. As Security Chief, Bigtoes had to be objective. Yet he yearned to prove Hardnoggin the villain. This, as he knew, was because of the beautiful Carlotta Peachfuzz, beloved by children all around the world. As the voice of the Peachy Pippin Doll, Carlotta was the most envied female at the North Pole, next to Mrs. Santa. Girl elves followed her glamorous exploits in the press. Male elves had Peachy Pippin Dolls propped beside their beds so they could fall asleep with Carlotta’s sultry voice saying: “Hello, I’m your talking Peachy Pippin Doll. I love you. I love you. I love you. . .”