Murder Most Merry

by ed. Abigail Browining

  Jill had been quite taken with him. He’d struck her as a man appreciating female company for its own sake. If he’d been ten years younger or she a decade older, she might have tried making something of it. As things were, when the event finished he’d wrapped her in a foil blanket and trotted away to help somebody else.

  “You’re a police, um, person,” he said, returning Inspector Tierce’s warrant card. “I wondered what you did for a living, never thought of that. Come on in.”

  The living room contrived to be homely and pristine, sealed woodblock floor reflecting carefully tended plants. “Passes inspection, huh? I lost my wife five years ago, but I try to maintain her standards. Must have known you were coming, that’s the coffee perking, not my tummy rumbling. Take a pew, I’ll get it—black, white, sugar, no sugar?”

  He was just as he’d been on the charity run, chatting as if resuming a relationship after minutes instead of years. Some people did it naturally, and in her experience, the majority were as uncomplicated as their manner. He made reasonable coffee, as well... “What’s the problem? Can’t be anything too shattering, but you’re a senior rank.”

  Disingenuous, Jill thought; he must have a shrewd idea what brought her.

  “You’ve been seen in Grand Drive for extended periods over the last two years. Watching, hanging about. Spare me the stuff about a free country; you put the wind up the neighborhood, and no wonder. It’s no-hawkers-no-lurkers territory. Storm in a teacup is your comeback, but the snag is a woman was done to death at your favorite haunt three years ago.”

  “Two and two makes me a murder suspect, is that it?” His tone was even. Sensing that Noel Sarum savored debate, she gained a better understanding of his newspaper column.

  “No, you invited suspicion all on your own.” she replied calmly. “Gave my uniformed colleagues some guff about wanting to confirm the presence of a rare bird in Grand Drive, a... can’t read PC Harris’s writing, but he told me the name and I remembered it long enough to make a phone call.

  “It’s your bad luck that a cousin of mine is an ornithologist—the bird you chose hasn’t touched England since 1911, and even that sighting was doubted. However, it’s something an intelligent amateur might pick to blind the cops with science. According to my expert.” And she smiled cheekily.

  Noel Sarum’s mouth curved up at the corners, too. “Got me.” Then his jaw set. “As a matter of fact, that was my third Christmas of going to Grand Drive. Breaking no law, causing no nuisance. Which is all you need from me.”

  “Believe it or not I’d agree if it weren’t for Mitzi Field. The dead girl. Worthless girl, some might say, squalid little life, good riddance. But we don’t agree, do we. I’ve got to account for loose ends, and you’re flapping about in the wind, Mr. Sarum.”

  “Noel.” he corrected abstractedly. “The kids call me First Noel, this time of year. Every class thinks it’s being brilliantly original....” Stubborn streak resurfacing, he grumbled. “After your pals pounced on me, I went to the Gazaette office and researched the murder in the back numbers. That winter I was supply-teaching at Peterborough, didn’t get back to the city until the week after it happened. The night she was killed, I was chaperoning a Sixth Form dance more than a hundred miles away from Grand Drive.”

  “Bloody hell,” Jill muttered. “What’s the matter with you, why not tell the uniforms that?”

  Taken aback by her impatience and the subtext of disgust, he shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t think of it at the time.”

  Fair enough, Inspector Tierce granted. People didn’t remember their whereabouts a week ago, let alone years later. Though Noel Sarum might be lying . . . .

  Guessing the reaction, he brightened. “Hang on, I’m not escaping, just looking in the glory-hole.”

  She watched him delve in a cupboard under the stairs. Soon he returned, waving a pamphlet. “Here you are, Beacon School newsletter, date at the top of every page.”

  It was a slim, computer printed magazine. Sarum’s finger jabbed at a poorly reproduced photograph in which he was recognizable, arm round the shoulders of a jolly, overweight woman in owl spectacles.” ‘First Noel’ got the Christmas spirit. Mrs. May got the grope, and the Sixth ‘got down’ with a vengeance last Thursday night.” ran the disrespectful caption.

  “Mrs. May’s the head teacher, the kids loved that snap,” he chuckled. Tuning him out, Jill found the first page of her notebook. Yes, the date was right, Mitzi Field had died at about nine p.m. that faraway Thursday night when Noel Sarum was hugging the head teacher. His tone hardened. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Oh, drop it,” she said crossly. “I liked you on that stupid run, I still like you, though what I’d really like is to shake you till your stupid teeth rattle.”

  Taken aback, he fiddled with the school magazine.

  “You’ve got a bee in your bonnet about the police, fine. But that’s no excuse for wasting two uniformed officers’ time, and mine. Heaven knows what it is with you and Grand Drive, I don’t care.”

  She broke off, eyes narrowing. “Hey! I think this was a setup. You have an ironclad alibi, so why not encourage the dim coppers to hassle you? Weeks and weeks of columns to be wrung out of that. Cancel the liking-you bit, you’re sick. Feel free to complain about my attitude. I’ll be happy to defend it, on the record.”

  Appalled, Noel Sarum protested. “It’s not like that... setup? It never crossed my mind!” Cracking his knuckles, he glowered at the carpet. “It’s strictly personal, can’t you people get that through your heads?” After which, perversely (not only coppers are human), he told her the whole story.

  Fifteen minutes later, Inspector Tierce said, “Why the heck didn’t you press every bell and find her that way? Can’t be that many flats in half a dozen houses.”

  “What would I say when each door opens?” Sarum demanded. “I don’t even know if she’s married, she was wearing gloves, I couldn’t see if she had a wedding ring. Supposing her husband answered, imagine the trouble I could cause.”

  “I still can’t make out how you chatted her up and didn’t have the gumption to get her name, even a first name.”

  Still high-colored from enthusiasm and embarrassment, Sarum sputtered, “I didn’t chat her up. It was... idyllic, a little miracle. We looked at each other and started talking as if we’d known each other forever. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to ask her name or give mine, it might have broken the spell.”

  “Yes, you told me,” Jill butted in, lips tingling from the strain of keeping a straight line. The copper-bashing demon she had pictured snarling over his columns turned out to be a hopeless, helpless romantic. Noel Sarum, a widower well into middle age, patrolled Grand Drive once a year because he was suffering belated pangs of puppy love.

  Having met his ideal woman one Christmas Eve, driven her home, and departed on air, he’d been unable to decide which house in Grand Drive was hers. Similar period and the same architect, and they looked different by daylight.

  She could understand why he hadn’t confided in a couple of constables patently ready to take him for some kind of weirdo. After all, he was the Know Your Rights fanatic, worried that they’d turn his romantic vigil into a mocking anecdote to belittle him. Inevitably he’d been combative.

  It was already dark when Jill Tierce left Larkspur Crest. Fresh snow crunched under the tires. She slowed as her lights picked up a group of children crossing the road, dragging a muffled-up baby on the improvised sledge of a tin tray. At the foot of the hill a Rotary Club float blared canned carols, a squad of executive Santas providing harness-bells sound effects with their collecting tins.

  Everything went a little scatty in this season, though nicely so, Inspector Tierce mused. She’d bought no presents so far, that was scatty, dooming her to Christmas Eve panic.

  Not the least of her scattiness, either. She thought: I can’t believe I’m doing this, but stayed on course towards Grand Drive.

  By six that evening, bad leg nagging sav
agely—it disapproved of stairs, and she had climbed a number of flights—Jill was showing her warrant card and saying with the glibness of practice, “This may sound odd, but bear with me.... Two Christmases ago, if you remember that far back, did you go Christmas Eve shopping at the Hi-Save in City Center?”

  “I expect so.” The woman’s voice was unexpectedly deep and hoarse from such a slim body. “I use Hi-Save for all but deli stuff, it’s loads cheaper.”

  “I mustn’t lead you, put ideas in your head, but that Christmas Eve did you have help with your shopping, like your bags carried to the car?”

  “I don’t take the c— Oh. him, the knight errant!” She opened the door wider and stood aside. “Come in, you look chilled.”

  Constance—”Connie, please, the other’s so prissy”—French remembered Noel Sarum, all right.

  “He picked me up in the checkout line that Christmas Eve. Well, I picked him up, had he but known.” Brown, almond eyes sparkled wickedly. “It was such a scrum, the line was endless, all the trolleys were taken so I was lugging three or four of those wretched baskets, and he did the polite, offered to share the load while we waited.”

  “Single men who aren’t teenagers are so pathetic, aren’t they? And he was kind and clean and cuddly, I really took to him.” She’d insisted on making them mugs of hot chocolate (“with the teeniest spike of brandy to cheer it up”) after Jill Tierce refused a cocktail.

  And I could take to a pad like this, Inspector Tierce reflected a shade drowsily. Connie French had two floors of one of Grand Drive’s former mansions. Her living room was spacious yet cosy, elegant antique pieces to dress it, costly modern furniture for wallowing.

  Ms. French sat a little straighten “What’s this about, dear?”

  “I’m glad you asked that.” Jill pulled a face. “Officially I’m eliminating a loose end, confirming somebody’s reason for... never mind, confirming a story. Don’t quote me, but I was curious. A witness was terribly impressed by you and...”

  Connie waited, and Jill said, “It’s just that you knocked him for six, he hasn’t got over it—and call it the Christmas syndrome, or downright nosiness, but I wondered if you’d felt the same.”

  “I have thought about him since.” Connie smiled weakly, blushing. “A lot, on and off. Look, there is always enough for two when it’s a casserole, and a glass of wine can’t put you over the limit for driving. Terrible thing to tell a woman, but you look exhausted. Stay for a meal.”

  They got on famously. A long while later, table cleared, dishwasher loaded, they’d put the world to rights and compared Most Terrible Male Traits (nasal fur, aggressive driving, and pointless untruths topping the painstakingly compiled list).

  Inspector Tierce was deciding that she’d better go home by cab and pick her car up tomorrow—should have known she was unable to drink one glass of wine—when Connie French became fretful.

  “What is it with that chap, Jill? I could tell he fancied me. Oh, not the flared nostrils and ripping the thin silk from my creamy shoulders, he wasn’t that sort, but we really hit it off. Greek gods and toy boys are all very well, but what you need is a man who’s comfy as old shoes. I’ve only met two or three, one was my brother and the others were friends’ husbands....

  “Tell me his name, I’ll ring him.” Connie reached for the phonebook on the end table at her side.

  “I can’t do that, I shouldn’t be here anyway, certainly not gossiping. Christmas has a lot to answer for.” It struck Jill that they were talking animatedly but with a certain precision over trickier words; perhaps the Beaujolais Villages in easy reach on the coffee table between them was not the first bottle.

  “Wouldn’t ring him anyway. My late husband, as in divorced, not RIP, said I had no pride but... is he gay? My supermarket chap, not the ex.”

  “Sarum? Certainly not.” Frowning at the alliteration as much as the slip, Jill muttered, “I must make tracks.”

  “Night’s young,” Connie said on a pleading note. “He drove me home, I nearly asked him up for a drink—but something stopped me. I wanted him to at least introduce himself first, and after all that, he just took himself off.”

  “You’d stunned him,” Jill said.

  “Bull,” Ms. French countered. But she was thoughtful. “Honest injun?”

  “That’s the impression I got. The twit’s been keeping a vigil out there in the run-up to Christmas, ever since, hoping to pull the fancy-seeing-you-here bit.”

  Connie went to the bay window. “Typical of my luck, I never saw him.”

  “He stayed in his car, from up here he’d be an anonymous roof.” Joining her, Inspector Tierce asked, “Were you questioned in the house-to-house sweep after Mitzi Field’s body was found?”

  “I was playing bridge that night, didn’t get home till it was all over.” Connie hugged herself. “Just as well. I couldn’t bear it if I’d been up here watching some silly TV show while... ugh!”

  “Looks pretty now.” Snow crusted high walls and hedges, whiteness and moonlight giving Grand Drive a luminous quality.

  “Christmas card,” Connie French suggested, making the comment bleak. “I spend hours at this window sometimes, it’s like a box seat for the seasonal stuff—carol singers from St. Stephen’s in full Dickens costume, crinolines and caped coats and candle-lanterns. Then there are the children returning to the nest, back from boarding school, or a bit older, very proud of The Car and their university scarves.”

  “My daughter lives in California, she might ring on Christmas Day, probably will before New Year’s.... Mummy’s an afterthought.”

  To Jill’s dismay, Connie French was crying silently, a single, fat tear sliding down the side of her elegant nose.

  Inspector Tierce woke the next morning with the mildest of hangovers, little more than a nasty taste in the mouth, and a flinching sensation at the memory of her hostess.

  The provoking thing was that she didn’t pity Connie French. The sorrow had been alcohol-based and transitory; minutes afterwards they’d played an old Dory Previn album, whooping approval of the bitchy lyrics. Connie might have been briefly maudlin, but she was too sparky for extensive self-pity.

  No, this was not about Connie, but something she had said or done kept niggling and scratching in the subconscious. Every time Jill recollected the profile etched against the window, decorated by a crystal tear—and the image was persistent, like that pop tune you cannot stop humming—an alarm went off.

  ‘Think of something else,” Inspector Tierce advised out loud, competing against the hair dryer’s breathy roar. Nearly too late to post greetings cards, not that she’d bought them yet. She had bought some in good time one year. They were in A Safe Place to this day, waiting to be found.

  Oh dear, she was better off thinking about the Mitzi Field case. Very well, Noel Sarum was in the clear. He could have printed that school magazine himself, or altered the date, but only in a Golden Age detective story. He’d been far away, and Connie French had confirmed his reason for haunting Grand Drive at a particular time of year. Further, while everyone was a potential life-taker, Noel Sarum belonged at the safest, last-resort end of the spectrum.

  And that revived Superintendent Haggard’s imperfect crime. She could picture a man on perhaps his first and last sojourn in the city, stopping at a street woman’s signal and unrecognized, very likely unseen, driving away with her. To drive on, soon afterwards, taking care to stay away.

  “Hopeless,” Jill mumbled and, skipping breakfast, went off to her broom closet, cardboard-flavored coffee, and the case file.

  It assured her that everything needful had been done. A fruitless check for witnesses to the crime, an unrewarding search for tire tracks, footprints, any physical evidence apart from Mitzi Field’s body. Local and then regional sexual offenders interrogated. Other prostitutes questioned, fellow tenants of her last known address, the demolished squat, traced and interviewed.

  Nothing to go on; conscientious Detective-Inspector Poole, exa
ctly the breed of plodder who catches most criminals, had demonstrated that if nothing else. Or had he?

  Inspector Tierce stood up awkwardly, massaging scar tissue through her skirt. She hadn’t thought the location significant, merely incongruous, when Superintendent Haggard told her of it. Previous reading of the file had left her cold. But now it was different because... because of Connie French. Something—what?—that she’d said last night.

  She’d said so much, that was the snag. Squinting, lips moving silently, Jill talked herself through a lengthy and meandering conversation. Until reaching the point where Connie had lamented an uncaring daughter... bingo.

  Children coming home for the holidays, of course. That’s what families did at Christmas, families and friends of the family. Driven by nostalgia, tradition, the chance to purge year-long offenses during the annual truce, or (if mercenary souls) simply to collect presents, they headed for hearth and home.

  She leafed through to a terse section of the dossier, the London end. A few discreet sentences covered Mitzi’s life from just before her ninth birthday until she absconded from the council home six years later.

  Lots of digging needed. Inspector Tierce felt sorry for Len Poole, and profoundly grateful that she did not have to follow up her idea.

  Inspector Poole, a careworn, resigned character, took one look at the name on the file and groaned, “Haggard’s got you at it as well, has he? Wish he’d mind his own business.”

  “Amen to that, but I’m stuck with it. Len, what was that girl doing on Grand Drive? Haggard thinks she took a client to a road full of snobs and busy-bodies because she didn’t know any better. Or the punter was ignorant and Mitzi Field didn’t care. Did you buy that?”

  “No opinion—I’d need facts to form one, and the only certainty was that she was killed there.” He wasn’t being awkward, that was how his mind worked. “Long way to go for a quickie in a motor, right enough. Then again, Vice was chasing street prozzies at the time, she might have wanted to get well away from the redlight area.”