by Merry Murder
He was a certain six hours ahead of Brooks, he felt sure, possibly more. Probably he had until tomorrow morning. He skipped his lunch and set to work.
Inspector Brooks got the report from the lab that evening, and the answer to his problem came to him as completely as it had done to Tom Meadows in Mrs. Fairlands’ drawing room. His first action was to ring up Olympia. This proving fruitless, he sighed. Too late now to contact the big stores; they would all be closed and the employees of every kind gone home.
But in the morning some very extensive telephone calls to managers told him where he must go. He organized his forces to cover all the exits of a big store not very far from Mrs. Fairlands’ house. With his sergeant he entered modestly by way of the men’s department.
They took a lift from there to the third floor, emerging among the toys. It was the tenth day of Christmas, with the school holidays in full swing and eager children, flush with Christmas money, choosing long-coveted treasures. A Father Christmas, white-bearded, in the usual red, hooded gown, rather too short for him, was moving about trying to promote a visit to the first of that day’s performances of “Snowdrop and the Seven Dwarfs.” As his insistence seeped into the minds of the abstracted young, they turned their heads to look at the attractive cardboard entrance of the little “theater” at the far end of the department. A gentle flow towards it began and gathered momentum. Inspector Brooks and the sergeant joined the stream.
Inside the theater there were small chairs in rows for the children. The grownups stood at the back. A gramophone played the Disney film music.
The early scenes were brief, mere tableaux with a line thrown in here and there for Snowdrop. The queen spoke the famous doggerel to her mirror.
The curtain fell and rose again on Snowdrop, surrounded by the Seven Dwarfs. Two of them had beards, real beards. Dopey rose to his feet and began to sing.
“Okay,” whispered Brooks to the sergeant. “The child who sang and ran away.”
The sergeant nodded. Brooks whispered again. “I’m going round the back. Get the audience here out quietly if the balloon goes up before they finish.”
He tiptoed quietly away. He intended to catch the dwarfs in their dressing room immediately after the show, arrest the lot, and sort them out at the police station.
But the guilty ones had seen him move. Or rather Dopey, more guilt-laden and fearful than the rest, had noticed the two men who seemed to have no children with them, had seen their heads close together, had seen one move silently away. As Brooks disappeared, the midget’s nerve broke. His song ended in a scream; he fled from the stage.
In the uproar that followed, the dwarf’s scream was echoed by the frightened children. The lights went up in the theater, the shop assistants and the sergeant went into action to subdue their panic and get them out.
Inspector Brooks found himself in a maze of lathe and plaster backstage arrangements. He found three bewildered small figures, with anxious, wizened faces, trying to restrain Dopey, who was still in the grip of his hysteria. A few sharp questions proved that the three had no idea what was happening.
The queen and Snowdrop appeared, highly indignant. Brooks, now holding Dopey firmly by the collar, demanded the other three dwarfs. The two girls, subdued and totally bewildered, pointed to their dressing room. It was empty, but a tumbled heap of costumes on the floor showed what they had done. The sergeant appeared, breathless.
“Take this chap,” Brooks said, thrusting the now fainting Dopey at him. “Take him down. I’m shopping him. Get onto the management to warn all departments for the others.”
He was gone, darting into the crowded toy department, where children and parents stood amazed or hurried towards the lifts, where a dense crowd stood huddled, anxious to leave the frightening trouble spot.
Brooks bawled an order.
The crowd at the lift melted away from it, leaving three small figures in overcoats and felt hats, trying in vain to push once more under cover.
They bolted, bunched together, but they did not get far. Round the corner of a piled table of soft toys Father Christmas was waiting. He leaped forward, tripped up one, snatched another, hit the third as he passed and grabbed him, too, as he fell.
The tripped one struggled up and on as Brooks appeared.
“I’ll hold these two,” panted Tom Meadows through his white beard, which had fallen sideways.
The chase was brief. Brooks gained on the dwarf. The latter knew it was hopeless. He snatched up a mallet lying beside a display of camping equipment and, rushing to the side of the store, leaped on a counter, from there clambered up a tier of shelves, beat a hole in the window behind them, and dived through. Horrified people and police on the pavement below saw the small body turning over and over like a leaf as it fell.
“All yours,” said Tom Meadows, handing his captives, too limp now to struggle, to Inspector Brooks and tearing off his Father Christmas costume. “See you later.”
He was gone, to shut himself in a telephone booth on the ground floor of the store and hand his favorite editor the scoop. It had paid off, taking over from the old boy, an ex-actor like himself, who was quite willing for a fiver to write a note pleading illness and sending a substitute.
“Your reporter, Tom Meadows, dressed as Father Christmas, today captured and handed over to the police two of the three murderers of Mrs. Fairlands—”
Inspector Brooks, with three frantic midgets demanding legal aid, scrabbling at the doors of their cells, took a lengthy statement from the fourth, the one with the treble voice whose nerve had broken on the fatal night, as it had again that day. Greasepaint had betrayed the little fiends, Brooks told him, privately regretting that Meadows had been a jump ahead of him there. Greasepaint left on in the rush to get at their prey. One of the brutes must have fallen against the wall, pushed by the old woman herself perhaps. He hoped so. He hoped it was her own action that had brought these squalid killers to justice.
This page is an extension of the copyright page.
We are grateful to the following for permission to reprint their copyrighted material:
“The Carol Singers” by Josephine Bell, copyright © by the Executors of the Estate of the late Josephine Bell, reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.: “Murder At Christmas” by C. M. Chan, copyright © 1990 by Davis Publications, Inc., reprinted by permission of the author; “Kelso’s Christmas” by Malcolm McClintick, copyright © 1984 by Davis Publications, Inc., reprinted by permission of the author; “The Christmas Bear” by Herbert Resnicow. copyright © 1989 by Davis Publications, Inc., reprinted by permission of the author; all stories have previously appeared in ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE, published by BANTAM DOUBLEDAY DELL MAGAZINES.
“Christmas Cop” by Thomas Adcock. copyright © 1986 by Davis Publications, Inc., reprinted by permission of the author; “On Christmas Day in the Morning” by Margery Allingham, copyright © 1952 by P. and M. Youngman Carter Ltd., reprinted by permission of the Estate: “I Saw Mommy Killing Santa Claus” by George Baxt. copyright © 1990 by Davis Publications. Inc.. reprinted by permission of the author; “Mystery for Christmas” by Anthony Boucher, copyright © 1942 by Anthony Boucher, reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.: “The Spy and the Christmas Cipher” by Edward D. Hoch. copyright © 1990 by Davis Publications, Inc., reprinted by permission of the author: “Supper with Miss Shivers” by Peter Lovesey, copyright © 1991 by Peter Lovesey, reprinted by permission of John Farquharson. Ltd.: “Dead on Christmas Street” by John D. MacDonald, copyright © Dorothy P. MacDonald Trust, reprinted by permission of Diskant Associates; “Rumpole and the Spirit of Christmas” by John Mortimer, copyright © 1988 by Advanpress Limited, reprinted by permission of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.; “Who Killed Father Christmas?” by Patricia Moyes, copyright © 1980 by Laura W. Haywood & Isaac Asimov, first appeared in WHO DONE IT?, reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown. Ltd.; “But Once a Year... Thank God!” by Joyce Porter, copyright © 1991 by Davis Publications, Inc., rep
rinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.; “The Plot Against Santa Claus” by James Powell, copyright © 1970 by James Powell, reprinted by permission of Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.; “Father Crumlish Celebrates Christmas” by Alice Scanlan Reach, copyright © 1967 by Davis Publications, Inc., reprinted by permission of Samuel French, Inc.; “A Matter of Life and Death” by Georges Simenon, copyright © 1952 by Georges Simenon, reprinted by the Author’s Estate; “Santa Claus Beat” by Rex Stout, copyright © 1953 by Rex Stout, reprinted by permission of the Estate; “Twixt the Cup and the Lip” by Julian Symons, copyright © 1963 by Julian Symons, reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.; “Christmas Party” by Martin Werner, copyright © 1991 by Davis Publications, Inc., reprinted by permission of the author; all stories have previously appeared in ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, published by BANTAM DOUBLEDAY DELL MAGAZINES.
“Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story” by Paul Auster, copyright © 1990 by the New York Times, reprinted by permission.
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[i] Ed. note: A joyful note to anachronism—shortly after this story was written.
