The Twelve Crimes of Christmas

by Martin H. Greenberg et al (Ed)

  The lights and music emanating from the north wing clearly marked it a ballroom of immense size. The front entrance to the main house had a large raised enclosure which people in these parts call a stoop. The interior was as rich and well appointed as any manse I have ever seen. The main hall was a gallery of statuary of the Greek and Roman cast, collected, I assumed, when the family took the mandatory Grand Tour.

  Our outer clothes were taken at the main door, and we were escorted through a sculptured archway across a large salon towards the ballroom proper. We had purposely come late to avoid the reception line and any possible discovery by Dame van Schooner. We need not have bothered. There were more than two-hundred people there, making individual acquaintance impossible. Not that some of the guests were without celebrity. The Royal Governor was in attendance, and I saw General Seaton and Solomon deSilva, the fur king, talking with Reeves, the shipping giant.

  It was difficult to determine the identity of the majority of the people, for most wore masks, although not all, including Cork and myself. Tell fluttered off on his social duties, and Cork fell to conversation with a man named Downs, who had recently returned from Spanish America and shared common friends there with the Captain.

  I helped myself to some hot punch and leaned back to take in the spectacle. It would be hard to say whether the men or the women were the more lushly bedizened. The males were adorned in the latest fashion with those large and, to my mind, cumbersome rolled coat cuffs. The materials of their plumage were a dazzling mixture of gold and silver stuffs, bold brocades, and gaudy flowered velvets. The women, not to be outdone by their peacocks, were visions in fan-hooped gowns of silks and satins and fine damask. Each woman’s tête-de-mouton back curls swung gaily as her partner spun her around the dance floor to madcap tunes such as “Roger de Coverly,” played with spirit by a seven-piece ensemble. To the right of the ballroom entrance was a long table with three different punch bowls dispensing cheer.

  The table was laden with all manner of great hams, glistening roast goose, assorted tidbit meats and sweets of unimaginable variety. Frothy syllabub was cupped up for the ladies by liveried footmen, while the gentlemen had their choice of Madeira, rum, champagne, or Holland gin, the last served in small crystal thimbles which were embedded and cooled in a silver bowl mounded with snow.

  “This is most lavish,” I said to Cork when he disengaged himself from conversation with Downs. “It’s a good example of what diligent attention to industry can produce.”

  “Whose industry, Oaks? Wealth has nothing more to do with industry than privilege has with merit. Our hostess, over there, does not appear to have ever perspired in her life.”

  He was true to the mark in his observation, for Dame van Schooner, who stood chatting with the Governor near the buffet, was indeed as cold as fine-cut crystal. Her well formed face was sternly beautiful, almost arrogantly defying any one to marvel at its handsomeness and still maintain normal breathing.

  “She is a fine figure of a woman, Captain, and, I might add, a widow.”

  He gave me a bored look and said, “A man would die of frostbite in her bedchamber. Ah, Major Tell, congratulations! You are a master at the jig!”

  “It’s a fantastical do, but good for the liver, I’m told. Has the mysterious sender of your invitation made herself known to you?”

  “Not as yet. Is that young lady now talking with the Dame one of her daughters?”

  “Both of them are daughters. The one lifting her mask is Gretchen, and I might add, the catch of the year. I am told she has been elected Queen of the Ball, and will be crowned this evening.”

  The girl was the image of her mother. Her sister, however, must have followed the paternal line.

  “The younger one is Wilda,” Tell went on, “a dark pigeon in her own right, but Gretchen is the catch.”

  “Catch, you say.” I winked at Cork. “Perhaps her bedchamber would be warmer?”

  “You’ll find no purchase there, gentlemen,” Tell told us. “Along with being crowned Queen, her betrothal to Brock van Loon will probably be announced this evening.”

  “Hand-picked by her mother, no doubt?” Cord asked.

  “Everything is hand-picked by the Dame. Van Loon is a stout fellow, although a bit of a tailor’s dummy. Family is well landed, across the river, in Brueckelen. Say, they’re playing ‘The Green Cockade,’ Captain. Let me introduce you to Miss Borden, one of our finest steppers.”

  I watched them walk over to a comely piece of frippery, and then Cork and the young lady stepped onto the dance floor. “The Green Cockade” is one of Cork’s favorite tunes, and he dances it with gusto.

  I drifted over to the serving table and took another cup of punch, watching all the time for some sign from our mysterious “hostess,” whoever she was. I mused that the calamity mentioned in the note might well have been pure hyperbole, for I could not see how any misfortune could befall this wealthy, joyous home.

  With Cork off on the dance floor, Tell returned to my side and offered to find a dance partner for me. I declined, not being the most nimble of men, but did accept his bid to introduce me to a lovely young woman named Lydia Daws-Smith. The surname declared her to be the offspring of a very prominent family in the fur trade, and her breeding showed through a delightfully pretty face and pert figure. We were discussing the weather when I noticed four footmen carrying what appeared to be a closed sedan chair into the hall and through a door at the rear.

  “My word, is a sultan among the assemblage?” I asked my companion.

  “The sedan chair?” She giggled from behind her fan. “No, Mr. Oaks, no sultan. It’s our Queen’s throne. Gretchen will be transported into the hall at the stroke of midnight, and the Governor will proclaim her our New Year’s Sovereign.” She stopped for a moment, the smile gone. “Then she will step forward to our acclaim, and of course, mandatory idolatry.”

  “I take it you do not like Gretchen very much, Miss Daws-Smith.”

  “On the contrary, sir. She is one of my best friends. Now you will have to excuse me, for I see Gretchen is getting ready for the crowning, and I must help her.”

  I watched the young girl as she followed Gretchen to the rear of the hall, where they entered a portal and closed the door behind them. Seconds later, Lydia Daws-Smith came back into the main hall and spoke with the Dame, who then went through the rear door.

  Cork had finished his dance and rejoined me. “This exercise may be good for the liver,” he said, “but it plays hell with my thirst. Shall we get some refills?”

  We walked back to the buffet table to slake his thirst, if that were ever possible. From the corner of my eye I caught sight of the Dame reentering the hall from the rear door. She crossed over to the Governor and was about to speak to him, when the orchestra struck up another tune. She seemed angry at the intrusion into what was obviously to have been the beginning of the coronation. But the Dame was ladylike and self-contained until the dancing was over. She then took a deep breath and nervously adjusted the neckline of her dress, which was shamefully bare from the bodice to the neck.

  “Looks like the coronation is about to begin,” Major Tell said, coming up to us. “I’ll need a cup for the toast.”

  We were joking at the far end of the table when a tremendous crash sounded. We turned to see a distraught Wilda van Schooner looking down at the punch bowl she had just dropped. The punch had splashed down her beautiful velvet dress, leaving her drenched and mortified.

  “Oh-Oh,” Tell said under his breath. “Now we’ll hear some fireworks from Dame van Schooner.”

  True to his prediction, the Dame sailed across the floor and gave biting instructions to the footmen to bring mops and pails. A woman, who Tell told me in a whisper was Hetta van der Malin, the Dame’s sister, came out of the crowd of tittering guests to cover her niece’s embarrassment.

  “She was only trying to help, Ilsa,” the aunt said as she dabbed the girl’s dress with a handkerchief.

  The Dame glared a
t them. “You’d better help her change, Hetta, if she is going to attend the coronation.”

  The aunt and niece quickly left the ballroom, and the Dame whirled her skirts and returned to the Governor’s side. I overheard her say her apologies to him, and then she added, “My children don’t seem to know what servants are for. Well, shall we begin?”

  At a wave of her hand, the orchestra struck up the “Grenadier’s March,” and six young stalwarts lined up in two ranks before the Governor. At his command, the lads did a left turn and marched off towards the rear portal in the distinctive long step of the regiment whose music they had borrowed for the occasion.

  They disappeared into the room where Gretchen waited for transport, and within seconds they returned bearing the ornate screened sedan chair. “Aah’s” filled the room over the beauty and pageantry of the piece. I shot a glance at Dame van Schooner and noted that she was beaming proudly at the impeccably executed production.

  When the sedan chair had been placed before the Governor, he stepped forward, took the curtain drawstrings, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our New Year’s Queen.”

  The curtains were pulled open, and there she sat in majesty. More “aah’s” from the ladies until there was a screech and then another and, suddenly, pandemonium. Gretchen van Schooner sat on her portable throne, still beautiful, but horribly dead, with a French bayonet through her chest.

  “My Lord!” Major Tell gasped and started forward toward the sedan chair. Cork touched his arm.

  “You can do no good there. The rear room, man, that’s where the answer lies. Come, Oaks.” He moved quickly through the crowd, and I followed like a setter’s tail on point. When we reached the door, Cork turned to Tell.

  “Major, use your authority to guard this door. Let no one enter.” He motioned me inside and closed the door behind us.

  It was a small room, furnished in a masculine manner. Game trophies and the heads of local beasts protruded from the walls and were surrounded by a symmetrical display of weaponry such as daggers, blunderbusses, and swords.

  “Our killer had not far to look for his instrument of death,” Cork said, pointing to an empty spot on the wall about three feet from the fireplace and six feet up from the floor. “Move with care, Oaks, lest we disturb some piece of evidence.”

  I quickly looked around the rest of the chamber. There was a door in the south wall and a small window some ten feet to the left of it.

  “The window!” I cried. “The killer must have come in—”

  “I’m afraid not, Oaks,” Cork said, after examining it.

  “The snow on the sill and panes is undisturbed. Besides, the floor in here is dry. Come, let’s open the other door.”

  He drew it open to reveal a short narrow passage that was dimly lit with one sconced candle and had another door at its end. I started toward it and found my way blocked by Cork’s outthrust arm.

  “Have a care, Oaks,” he said. “Don’t confound a trail with your own spore. Fetch a candelabrum from the table for more light.”

  I did so, and to my amazement he got down on his hands and knees and inched forward along the passageway. I, too, assumed this stance and we crept along like a brace of hounds.

  The polished planked floor proved dry and bare of dust until we were in front of the outer door. There, just inside the portal, was a pool of liquid.

  “My Lord, it is blood!” I said.

  “Mostly water from melted snow.”

  “But, Captain, there is a red stain to it.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Bloody snow, and yet the bayonet in that woman’s breast was driven with such force that no blood escaped from her body.”

  Cork got to his feet and lifted the door latch, opening the passageway to pale white moonlight which reflected off the granules of snow. He carefully looked at the doorstoop and then out into the yard.

  “Damnation,” he muttered, “it looks as if an army tramped through here.”

  Before us, the snow was a mass of furrows and upheavals with no one set of footprints discernible.

  “Probably the servants coming and going from the wood yard down by the gate,” I said, as we stepped out into the cold. At the opposite end of the house, in the left wing, was another door, obviously leading to the kitchen, for a clatter of plates and pots could be heard within the snug and frosty windowpanes. I turned to Cork and found myself alone. He was at the end of the yard, opening a slatted gate in the rear garden wall.

  “What ho, Captain,” I called ahead, as I went to meet him.

  “The place abounds in footprints,” he snarled in frustration.

  “Then the killer has escaped us,” I muttered. “Now we have the whole population of this teeming port to consider.”

  He turned slowly, the moonlight glistening off his barba, his eyes taking on a sardonic glint. “For the moment, Oaks, for the moment. Besides, footprints are like empty boots. In the long run we would have had to fill them.”

  I started to answer, when a voice called from our backs, at the passage doorway. It was Major Tell.

  “Hello, is that you there, Cork? Have you caught the dastard?”

  “Some gall,” I said to the captain. “As if we could pull the murderer out of our sleeves like a magician.”

  “Not yet, Major,” Cork shouted and then turned to me. “Your powers of simile are improving, Oaks.”

  “Well,” I said, with a bit of a splutter. “Do you think magic is involved?”

  “No, you ass. Sleight of hand! The quick flick that the eye does not see nor the mind inscribe. We’ll have to use our instincts on this one.”

  He strode off towards the house, and I followed. I have seen him rely on instinct over hard evidence only two times in our years together, and in both cases, although he was successful, the things he uncovered were too gruesome to imagine.

  The shock that had descended on the van Schooner manse at midnight still lingered three hours later, when the fires in the great fireplaces were reduced to embers, the shocked guests had been questioned, and all but the key witnesses had been sent homeward. Cork, after consultation with the Royal Governor, had been given a free hand in the investigation, with Major Tell stirred in to keep the manner of things official.

  Much to my surprise, the captain didn’t embark on a flurry of questions of all concerned, but rather drew up a large baronial chair to the ballroom hearth and brooded into its sinking glow.

  “Two squads of cavalry are in the neighbourhood,” Major Tell said. “If any stranger were in the vicinity, he must have been seen.”

  “You can discount a stranger, Major,” Cork said, still gazing into the embers.

  “How so?”

  “Merely a surmise, but with stout legs to it. If a stranger came to kill, he would have brought a weapon with him. No, the murderer knew the contents of the den’s walls. He also seems to have known the coronation schedule.”

  “The window,” I interjected. “He could have spied the bayonet, and when the coast was clear, entered and struck.”

  “Except for the singular fact that the snow on the ground in front of the window is undisturbed.”

  “Well, obviously someone entered by the back passage,” Tell said. “We have the pool of water and the blood.”

  “Then where are the wet footprints into the den, Major?”

  “Boots!” I shouted louder than I meant to. “He took off his boots and then donned them again on leaving.”

  “Good thinking, Oaks,” Tell complimented me. “And in the process, his bloody hands left a trace in the puddle.”

  “And what, pray, was the motive?” Cork asked. “Nothing of value was taken that we can determine. No, we will look within this house for an answer.”

  Tell was appalled. “Captain Cork, I must remind you that this is the home of a powerful woman, and she was hostess tonight to the cream of New York society. Have a care how you cast aspersions.”

  “The killer had best have a care, Major. For a moment, le
t us consider some facts. Mistress Gretchen went into the den to prepare for her coronation with the aid of—ah—”

  “Lydia Daws-Smith,” I supplied.

  “So we have one person who saw her before she died. Then these six society bucks who were to transport her entered, and among their company was Brock van Loon, her affianced. Seven people involved between the time we all saw her enter the den and the time she was carried out dead.”