Miracle and Other Christmas Stories

by Connie Willis

  “Inspector Touffét’s come to solve a mystery for us, Father,” Lady Charlotte said.

  “Yes,” Touffét said, “I am interested to know more of this mystery.”

  There was a knock at the door behind us. “Shall I?” I asked Lady Charlotte.

  “Please,” she said, and I unlocked and opened it. It was Heidi, bearing a tray with a toddler’s lidded cup and a plate of graham biscuits on it.

  I stepped back so she could enter, and as soon as she did, Lord Alastair exploded. His left arm came up sharply, clipping Nurse Parchtry on the chin, and she reeled back, cradling her jaw. He began pounding on the glass with both hands and hooting wildly. Heidi watched him, clutching the tray, her eyes wide with fright.

  “Oh, dear,” Lady Charlotte said. “Heidi, set the tray down on the counter.”

  Heidi did, her eyes still on Lord Alastair, then bobbed a curtsey and ran awkwardly out on all fours. Lord Alastair continued pounding for a moment and then walked over to the plastic bowl, sat down on the floor, and began licking the inside of the bowl.

  Rutgers shook his head sadly. “Ten years,” he murmured.

  Nurse Parchtry disappeared and then reappeared at the door, her jaw and cheek scarlet.

  “He doesn’t like Heidi,” she said unnecessarily. “Or D’Artagnan.” She put her hand wincingly up to her cheek. “He threw the rocking chair the last time D’Artagnan brought in his lunch.”

  “I think you’d best put some ice on that,” Lady Charlotte said. “And with Father so upset, I think perhaps you’d better eat up here tonight.”

  “Oh, no!” Nurse Parchtry said desperately. “He’ll quiet down now. He always does after—”

  There was a banging on the door, and Touffét moved to open it. James burst in, clutching his thumb. “You will not believe what that monster just did!”

  I wheeled and looked at the partition, thinking Lord Alastair must have gotten out somehow, but he was still sitting in the middle of the floor. He’d put the bowl on his head.

  “He grabbed my hand and tried to tear it off. Look!” He thrust it at Lady Charlotte. “I think it’s broken!”

  I couldn’t see any telltale redness like that on Nurse Parchtry’s jaw.

  “The brute tried to kill me!” he said.

  “What brute?” Lady Charlotte asked.

  “What brute? That ape of yours! I was walking down the corridor, and he suddenly reached out and grabbed me.”

  He turned to us. “I’ve tried to tell my sister her apes are dangerous, but she won’t listen!”

  “I thought that gorillas had very gentle natures,” Rutgers said.

  “That’s what the so-called scientists at my sister’s Institute say, that they’re all harmless as kittens, that they wouldn’t hurt a fly! Well, what about this?” he said, shaking his hand at us again. “When we’re all murdered in our beds some morning, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

  He stormed out, but his ragings had roused Lord Alastair, who was pounding on the glass again.

  “He’ll go to sleep as soon as he’s had his cocoa,” Nurse Parchtry said pleadingly. “He always does, and today he didn’t have a nap. And I’d have the monitor with me. I’d be able to hear him if he woke up. And it’s Christmas Eve!”

  “All right,” Lady Charlotte said, relenting. “But if he wakes up, you’ll have to come straight back up here.”

  “I will, I promise,” she said, as giddily as if she were Cinderella promising to leave the ball by midnight. “Oh, this will be such fun!”

  “It’s hardly my idea of fun,” I told Touffét as we were going down for dinner. “I’d much rather be at my sister’s. And I’ll wager Lady Charlotte would rather be, too. It’s obvious why she prefers apes, with a father and a brother like that.”

  “The father is a millionaire,” Touffét said thoughtfully. “Is that not so?”

  “Billionaire,” I said.

  “Ah. I wonder who is it that inherits his estate when he dies? I wonder also what makes Nurse Parchtry stay with such a disagreeable patient?” He rubbed his hands, obviously enjoying himself. “So many mysteries. And perhaps there will be more at dinner.”

  There were, the first one being whether Lady Charlotte was even aware it was Christmas. There were no decorations on the table, no holly or pine garlands decking the dining room, and no heat. Leda, who had changed into a fetching little strapless dress, was shivering with cold.

  And the dinner was utterly ordinary, no boar’s head, no goose, no turkey, only some underseasoned cod and some overdone beef, all served by D’Artagnan, in new gloves, and Heidi. Hardly a festive holiday feast.

  Lady Charlotte didn’t appear to notice. She was well launched on the subject of primate intelligence, apparently grateful that her brother, James, hadn’t come down to dinner. Nurse Parchtry wasn’t there either. Apparently her patient hadn’t gone off to sleep as easily as she’d hoped.

  “One of the prejudices we’re working to overcome is that primate behavior is instinctive,” Lady Charlotte said. “We’ve done research that demonstrates conclusively their behavior is intentional. Primates are capable of conscious thought, of planning, and learning from experience, and of having insights.”

  Just after the soup course (tinned), Nurse Parchtry hurried in and sat down between Leda and me. She had changed out of her uniform into a gray chiffon thing with floating draperies, and she was all smiles.

  “He’s finally asleep,” she said breathlessly, setting a white plastic box on the table. A series of wheezes and gasping noises came from it. “It’s a baby monitor. So I can hear Lord Alastair if he wakes up.”

  How nice, I thought. Midway through dinner we shall be treated to a stream of animal screams and obscenities.

  “What is it that Lord Alastair suffers from?” I asked.

  “Dementia,” she said, “and hatefulness, neither one of which is fatal, unfortunately. He could live for years. Thank you, Heidi,” she said, as the chimpanzee set a plate of fish in front of her. “Isn’t this exciting, Heidi, having Inspector Touffét here?”

  Heidi nodded.

  “Heidi and I are both mystery fans. We’ve been reading The Case of the Crushed Skull, haven’t we?”

  Heidi nodded again and signed something to Nurse Parchtry.

  “She says she thinks the vicar did it,” she said. She signed rapidly to Heidi. “I think it was the ex-wife. Which of us is right, Colonel Bridlings?”

  Neither, as a matter of fact, though I had to give Heidi credit. I had thought it was the vicar, too. “I don’t want to spoil the ending,” I said, and Heidi bobbed her head in approval.

  “He was always a dreadful man,” Nurse Parchtry said, returning to the topic of Lord Alastair. “And, unfortunately, his son’s just like him.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Which is why he left everything to him in his will, I suppose. A pity. He’ll only gamble it away.”

  “He gambles?” I said.

  “He’s horribly in debt,” she whispered. “I heard him on the phone only this morning, pleading with his tout. You see, Lord Alastair arranged his money so it can’t be touched until his death, which I suppose is a good thing. Otherwise there’d be nothing left.” She shook her head. “It’s Lady Charlotte I feel sorry for.”

  She leaned closer, her draperies drifting across my arm. “Did you know Lord Alastair stopped her from marrying her true love? She fell in love with one of his AI scientists, Phillip Davidson—Phillip was the one who got her interested in primate intelligence—and when Lord Alastair found out, he trumped up charges of industrial espionage against him, ruined his reputation, forced him to emigrate. Lady Charlotte never married.”

  Touffét would be interested in knowing that, I thought. I glanced at him, but he was watching Mick Rutgers, who was listening to Lady Charlotte talk of her apes’ accomplishments.

  “D’Artagnan has learned eight hundred words, and over fifty sentences,” she said. “We work for two hours a day on vocabulary.” She smiled at D’Art
agnan, who was removing the fish course. “And for an hour on serving skills.”

  Heidi began serving the roast beef. The snores and wheezes from the baby monitor subsided to a heavy, even breathing.

  “Heidi and I work on her reading for two hours a day, and she reads on her own for another hour. Heidi,” Lady Charlotte said, stopping her as she set a plate of roast beef down in front of Leda. “Tell Inspector Touffét what your favorite case is.”

  Heidi signed rapidly, grinning widely.

  “The Case of the Cat’s Paw,” Lady Charlotte translated.

  Touffét looked pleased. “Ah, yes, a most satisfying case,” he said, and launched into an account of it.

  “What’s a cat’s paw?” Leda whispered to me. “It’s not like a rabbit’s foot, is it?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s when someone uses another person for their own ends. It comes from an old tale about a monkey who used a cat’s paw to pull chestnuts out of the fire.”

  “That’s cruel,” Nurse Parchtry said.

  “No crueler than keeping apes captive and dressing them up in human clothes,” Leda hissed.

  “You don’t approve of Lady Charlotte’s work?” Nurse Parchtry said, shocked.

  “N-no, of course I didn’t mean that,” Leda said, looking flustered. She took a forkful of roast beef and then laid it back down on her plate.

  “Lady Charlotte has only the primates’ best interests at heart in all her work,” Nurse Parchtry said firmly. “She’s utterly devoted to them, and they’d do anything for her. She saved them, you know, from terrible fates. Heidi was being experimented on.”

  Lady Charlotte had apparently heard the last part of that. “Experiments?” she said, interrupting Touffét in the middle of his case. “Primates are still being experimented on, in spite of our having proved they’re conscious creatures and can feel pain just as we do. Our research has shown that they can acquire knowledge, solve complex problems, use tools, and manipulate language. Everything that humans can do.”

  “Not quite,” Sergeant Eustis said. “They can’t commit crimes or tell lies. Or cheat at cards.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Mick Rutgers said, “primates can.”

  “Cheat at cards?” Sergeant Eustis said. “Don’t tell me D’Artagnan plays poker, too?”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Various studies have shown that apes are capable of deception,” Rutgers said. “Apes in the wild frequently hide food and then retrieve it when the rest of the troop is asleep, and signing apes who have done something naughty will lie when asked whether they did it. Several times Lucy hid a key in her mouth and waited until her owners were gone, and then let herself out. Their ability to lie and deceive is proof of their capability for higher forms of thinking, since it involves determining what another creature thinks and how it can be fooled.”

  Lady Charlotte was looking curiously at Rutgers. “You seem to know a great deal about primates, for a reporter,” she said.

  “It was in the informational packet you sent,” he said.

  “And you’re quite right, they are capable of deception,” she said. “But they are also capable of affection, fear, grief, gentleness, and devotion. They are far better creatures than we are.”

  “Is that why they attack people for no reason?” James said, coming in and sitting down next to his sister. He snapped his fingers, and Heidi hurried to bring him a plate of roast beef, looking frightened. “Is that why the University of Oklahoma had to shut down their research program after one of their apes bit the finger off a visiting surgeon? Because they’re better creatures?”

  He snatched the plate away from Heidi. “Has my sister told you about Lucy yet? Poor Lucy, who got sent back to the jungle to be killed by poachers? Did she tell you why Lucy got sent back? Because she attacked her owner.” He smiled maliciously at Heidi. “That could happen to you, too, you know. And your friend D’Artagnan.”

  “I’d attack my owner, too, if I were an intelligent creature being treated like a slave,” Mick Rutgers said, and Lady Charlotte gave him a grateful look, and then frowned, as if she were trying to place something.

  I’d hoped there would at least be a plum pudding in honor of Christmas, but there was only vanilla custard, which reminded me unpleasantly of Lord Alastair’s tapioca, but at least it meant an end to the meal. When Lady Charlotte said, “Shall we adjourn to the solarium?” I practically leaped out of my chair.

  “Not yet,” Touffét said. “Madam, you still have not informed me of the mystery you wished me to solve.”

  “All in good time,” she said. “We must play a game first. No Christmas Eve is complete without games. Who wants to play Hunt the Slipper?”

  “I do,” Nurse Parchtry piped up and then looked nervous, as if she should not have called attention to herself.

  “I have no intention of hunting all over the house for someone’s smelly shoe,” James said, and Touffét shot him an approving glance.

  “How about Musical Chairs?”

  “No. That’s as bad as Hunt the Slipper,” James said. “I think we should play Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral.”

  “That’s because you’re so good at it,” Lady Charlotte said, but some of the bitterness seemed to have gone out of both their voices, perhaps because it was, after all, Christmas Eve.

  Lady Charlotte led the way to the library. “I’m so glad Lord Alastair is still asleep,” Nurse Parchtry said to me as we followed Lady Charlotte. She held the monitor up close to my ear. I could barely hear his faint, even breathing. “He won’t wake up for hours,” she said happily. “I love Christmas games.”

  “You should have come with me to my sister’s, Touffét,” I whispered to him. “You would only have had to play charades.”

  “Who shall be first?” Lady Charlotte said after we’d settled ourselves in the canvas chairs. “Sergeant Eustis? You must go and stand out in the corridor while we decide on an object.”

  Sergeant Eustis obligingly went out of the room and shut the door behind him.

  “All right, what shall it be?” Lady Charlotte said brightly.

  “Vegetable,” Leda said.

  “A Christmas tree,” Nurse Parchtry said eagerly.

  “He’d guess that in a minute,” James said. “A literary character. It always takes them at least a dozen questions to determine it’s fictional.”

  “Father Christmas!” Nurse Parchtry said.

  Everyone ignored her.

  “What do you think it should be, Inspector Touffét?” Lady Charlotte asked.

  “The mystery which you asked me here to solve,” Touffét said.

  “No, that’s too complicated,” Lady Charlotte said. “I’ve got it! Fingerprints! It’s perfect for a police officer.”

  A spirited discussion ensued over whether fingerprints were animal, vegetable, or mineral, and, unable to decide, they chose Goldilocks instead.

  “She’s a fictional character, and she committed a crime.”

  Sergeant Eustis was called in and began guessing. As predicted, he used thirteen of his twenty questions to determine that it was a fictional character, and then astonished everyone by guessing “Goldilocks” immediately.

  “How did you guess?” Leda asked.

  “It’s always Goldilocks,” he said. “Because I’m a police detective. Breaking and entering, you know.”

  One by one, everyone except Touffét took their turn at standing in the corridor and attempting to guess—a plum pudding (Nurse Parchtry’s suggestion), the slipper in Hunt the Slipper, a map of Borneo, and a pair of embroidery scissors.

  When it was James’s turn, he demanded to be allowed to take a chair with him out into the corridor. “I don’t intend to stand there forever while you all try to pick something that will fool me. I must warn you, I have never failed to guess the answer.”

  “He’s quite right,” Lady Charlotte said, smiling. “Last Christmas he guessed it in four.”

  “Mistletoe,” Nurse Parchtry said.

>   “It’s got to be a fictional character,” Rutgers said. “He admitted himself it’s the hardest to guess.”

  “No, his is always a fictional character. It needs to be someone real. And someone obscure. Anastasia!”

  “I would hardly call Anastasia obscure,” I said.

  “No, but if he asks ‘Is the person living?’ we can say we don’t know, and he’ll think it’s a fictional character.”

  “What if he’s already asked if it’s a fictional character and we’ve said no?”

  “But it was a fictional character,” Leda said. “I saw the Disney film when I was little.”

  “And when he asks if it’s animal, vegetable, or mineral,” Sergeant Eustis said. “We can say mineral. Because her body was burned to ashes.”

  “We don’t know that,” Lady Charlotte said. “Her bones have never been found.”

  It was a good thing James had insisted on the chair. It took us nearly fifteen minutes to decide, during which time Touffét looked increasingly as if he were going to explode.

  “But, if he knows we know he always guesses fictional characters,” Sergeant Eustis said, “then he’ll think we won’t choose one, so we should.”

  “King Kong,” Nurse Parchtry said.

  There was an embarrassed silence.

  “I think perhaps we should avoid any references to primates,” Lady Charlotte said finally.

  We finally decided on R2D2, who was both mineral and animal (the actor inside him) and fictional and real (the actual tin can), and had the advantage of being from an old movie, which Lady Charlotte said her brother never watched.

  James guessed it in four questions.

  “All right,” Lady Charlotte said, looking round the room. “Who hasn’t gone yet? Mr. Rutgers?”

  “I was a pair of embroidery scissors, remember?”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Touffét, you’re the only one left. Come along. I’m sure you’ll solve it even more quickly than my brother.”

  “Madam,” Touffét said and his voice was deadly quiet. “I did not come to Marwaite Manor to play at games. I came in response to your request to solve a mystery. I wish to know what it is.”

  Either Lady Charlotte was tired of thinking up things, or she sensed the deadliness in Touffét’s voice.