Miracle and Other Christmas Stories

by Connie Willis

  “The motive?” James shouted. “You don’t ask a bear what his motive is for biting off someone’s head, do you? It’s a wild animal!”

  Touffét lit his pipe and took several long puffs on it. “So I begin by asking myself,” he went on implacably, “who had a motive for killing Lord Alastair? Your father’s will left everything to you, Lord James, did it not?”

  “Yes,” James said. “You’re not suggesting I put that gorilla up to—”

  “I do not suggest anything. I say only that you had a motive.” He picked up his monocle and surveyed the crowd. “As does Miss Fox.”

  “What?” Leda said, twitching her dress down over her thighs. “I never even met Lord Alastair.”

  “What you say is the truth,” Touffét said, “though it is the only true thing you have said since your arrival, that is. You have even lied about your name, is that not so? You are not Leda Fox, the reporter. You are Genevieve Wrigley.”

  Lady Charlotte gasped.

  “Who’s Genevieve Wrigley?” I asked.

  “The head of the ARA,” Touffét said, looking steadily at her. “The Animal Rescue Army.”

  Lady Charlotte had jumped up. “You’re here to steal D’Artagnan and Heidi from me!” She turned beseechingly to Touffét. “You mustn’t let her. The ARA are terrorists.”

  I looked wonderingly at Leda, or rather Genevieve. Lady Charlotte was right about the ARA, it was a terrorist organization, a sort of IRA for animals. I’d seen them on television, blowing up cosmetics companies and holding zookeepers hostage, but Leda—Genevieve didn’t look like them at all.

  Touffét said sternly, “You came here in disguise with the intention of liberating Lady Charlotte’s animals, no matter what violent means were necessary.”

  “That’s right,” Leda, or rather, Genevieve, said, rearing back dangerously, and I was grateful there wasn’t room anywhere for a bomb in that dress. “But I wouldn’t have killed animals. I love animals!”

  “Releasing pets into a wilderness they can’t survive in?” Lady Charlotte said bitterly. “Sending primates back into the jungle to be killed by poachers? You don’t love animals. You don’t love anyone but yourselves. Well, now you’ve gone too far. You’ve murdered my father, and I’ll see you convicted.”

  “Why would I murder your father?” Genevieve sneered. “You’re the one I wanted to murder!”

  At her words, D’Artagnan and Heidi both moved protectively toward Lady Charlotte.

  “Dressing primates up like servants, holding them captive here. You’re slaves!” she said to D’Artagnan. “She tells you she loves you, but she just wants to enslave you!”

  D’Artagnan took a threatening step toward her, his huge white-gloved fist raised. “It’s all right, D’Artagnan,” Lady Charlotte said. “Inspector Touffét won’t let her hurt me.”

  Genevieve slumped back in her chair and glared at Touffét. “I can’t believe you found me out,” she said. “I even ate a piece of that disgusting meat at dinner.”

  “We were discussing your motive,” Touffét said. “Terrorists do not murder secretly. Their crimes are of no use unless they take credit for them. And by killing Lord Alastair, you might have given the Institute bad publicity, but you would not necessarily have succeeded in closing the Institute. Sympathetic donations might have poured in. How much better to blow up the Institute’s buildings. It is true, you might have killed primates, but your organization has been known to kill animals before, in the name of saving them.”

  “You can’t prove that!” she said sullenly.

  “There are wire and detonating caps in your luggage.” He turned to Sergeant Eustis. “Ms. Wrigley was out at the compound this afternoon. When we have concluded our business here, I would suggest searching it for plastic explosives.”

  Sergeant Eustis nodded and came over to stand behind Genevieve’s chair. She rolled her eyes in disgust and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Ms. Wrigley had a motive for murder, but she is not the only one.” He took several puffs on his pipe. “Everyone in this room has a motive. Yes, even you, Colonel Bridlings.”

  “I?” I said.

  “You long to spend Christmas at your sister’s house, do you not? If Lord Alastair is murdered, the Christmas celebration at Marwaite Manor will be cancelled, and you will be free to attend your sister’s celebration instead.”

  “If I’m not detained for questioning,” I said. “And I hardly think wanting to spend Christmas with my sister is an adequate motive for murdering a harmless, helpless old man.”

  Touffét held up an objecting finger. “Helpless, perhaps, but not harmless. But I quite agree with you, Bridlings, your motive is not adequate. People, though, have often murdered for inadequate motives. But you, Bridlings, are incapable of murder, and that is why I do not suspect you of the crime.”

  “Thank you,” I said dryly.

  “But. It is a motive,” Touffét said. “As for Lady Charlotte, she has told all of us her motive this very evening at dinner. She has no money for her Institute. She is in danger of losing D’Artagnan and Heidi and all her other primates unless she obtains a large sum of money. And she loves them even more than she loves her father.”

  “But her father’s will left all his money to her brother,” I blurted out.

  “Exactly,” Touffét said, “so her brother must be eliminated as well, and what better method than to have him convicted of murder?”

  “But Charlotte would never—” Rutgers said, rising involuntarily to his feet.

  She looked at him in surprise.

  “That is the conclusion to which I came also. Do not excite yourself, Mr. Rutgers,” he said, giving the word “Rutgers” a peculiar emphasis. “I do not believe Lady Charlotte committed the murder, even though as the one who invited me here to Marwaite Manor, she was the first person I suspected.”

  He stopped and lit his pipe again for at least five minutes. “I said, I do not believe Lady Charlotte committed the murder, but not because I do not believe her capable of murder. I believe her desire to protect her primates could easily have driven her to murder. But that same desire would never have allowed her to let her primates be suspected of murder, even with a great detective on hand to uncover the true murderer. She would never have endangered them, even for a few hours.” He turned and looked at Mick Rutgers. “You do not need to worry about Lady Charlotte, Mr. Davidson.”

  Now Lady Charlotte was the one who had risen involuntarily to her feet. “Phillip?” she said. “Is it really you?”

  “Yes, it is Phillip Davidson,” Touffét said smugly. “Who was ruined by Lord Alastair, who was kept from marrying Lady Charlotte and forced to emigrate to Australia.” He paused dramatically. “Who came here determined to murder Lord Alastair for revenge.”

  “To murder …” Lady Charlotte put her hand to her bosom. “Is that true, Phillip?”

  “Yes, it’s true,” Rutgers, or rather Davidson, said. Good Lord, just when I’d learned everyone’s names. Now I was going to have to memorize them all over again.

  “How did you know?” Rutg—Davidson asked.

  “You called Lord Alastair ‘Al,’ though no one else had called him by that name,” Touffét said. “It was also obvious from the way you looked at Lady Charlotte that you were still in love with her.”

  “It’s true. I am,” he said, looking at Lady Charlotte.

  She was staring at him in horror. “You killed my father?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s true, I came here to. I even brought a pistol with me. But when I saw him, I realized … He was a terrible man, but brilliant. To be reduced to that … that … was a worse revenge than any I could have devised.” He looked at Touffét. “You have to believe me. I didn’t kill him.”

  “I know you did not,” Touffét said. “This murder required a knowledge of the house and of the people in it which you did not possess. And a revenge killer does not sedate his victim.”

  “Sedate?” Nurse Parchtry said.
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  “Yes,” Touffét said. “When Sergeant Eustis completes his analysis of the cocoa, he will find the presence of sleeping medication.”

  I remembered the snoring on the baby monitor, subsiding into heavy, even breathing. Drugged breathing.

  “Someone who murders for revenge,” Touffét continued, “wishes his victim to know why he is being murdered. And you had worked with primates, Mr. Davidson, it was your interest in their intelligence that had sparked Lady Charlotte’s. You would not have attempted to frame them for murder.”

  “Well, who would have?” Sergeant Eustis blurted.

  “An excellent question,” Touffét said. “And one which I will address shortly. But first we shall deal with your motive for murder, Sergeant.”

  “Mine?” Sergeant Eustis said, astonished. “What possible motive could I have had for murdering anyone?”

  “Exactly,” Touffét said, and everyone looked bewildered. “You had no motive for murdering Lord Alastair in particular, but you did have a motive for murdering someone.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting he’s a police officer?” James said nastily. “Or are you saying you have a motive for murdering my father, too?”

  “No,” Touffét said calmly. “For I am a great detective, with many solved cases to my credit, and none that I have failed to solve through my own incompetence. That is not, however, true of Sergeant Eustis, is it?”

  Leda—Genevieve gasped.” ‘Useless’ Eustis. I thought you looked familiar.”

  “Indeed,” Touffét said. “Captain Eustis, who had charge of the Tiffany Levinger case.”

  Tiffany Levinger. Now I remembered. It had been all over the television and the on-line tabloids. The pretty little girl who had been murdered in her own house, obviously by her own parents, but they had been acquitted because Captain Eustis had bungled the investigation so badly that it was impossible to attain a conviction. Nicknamed Useless Eustis and pilloried in the press, he had been forced to resign. And had apparently ended up here, in this remote area, demoted and disgraced.

  “Another murder, the celebrated murder of a billionaire in a country manor, a sensational murder that you solved, could have redeemed your reputation, could it not?” Touffét said. “Especially with the press on the premises to record it all.”

  “It certainly could have,” Sergeant Eustis said. “But even someone as stupid as the press claimed I was wouldn’t be stupid enough to commit a murder with Inspector Touffét on the premises, now would he?”

  “Exactly the conclusion I came to, Sergeant,” Touffét said. “Which leaves Nurse Parchtry and James Valladay.”

  “Oh,” Nurse Parchtry said, distressed, “you don’t think I did it, do you? What motive could I have?”

  “A cruel and abusive patient.”

  “But in that case why would I not simply have resigned?”

  “That is what I asked myself,” Touffét said. “You were obviously subjected to daily indignities, yet Lady Charlotte said you had been here over a year. Why? I asked myself.”

  “Because if she left she would forfeit the bonus I had promised her,” Lady Charlotte said. She wrung her hands. “Oh, don’t tell me I’m responsible for her…. I was so desperate. We’d been through seven nurses in less than a month. I thought if I offered her an incentive to stay …”

  “What was the incentive?” Touffét asked Nurse Parchtry.

  “Ten thousand pounds, if I stayed a full year,” the nurse said dully. “I didn’t think it would be so bad. I’d had difficult patients before, and it was the only way I could ever get out of debt. I didn’t think it would be so bad. But I was wrong.” She glared at Charlotte. “A million dollars wouldn’t have been enough for taking care of that brute. I’m glad he’s dead,” she burst out. “I wish I’d killed him myself!”

  “But you did not,” Touffét said. “You are a nurse. You had at your disposal dozens of undetectable drugs, dozens of opportunities. You could have deprived him of his oxygen, given him a lethal dose of lidocaine or insulin, and it would have been assumed that he had died of natural causes. There would not even have been an autopsy. And you liked Heidi. You and she shared a passion for my cases. You would not have committed a murder that implicated her.”

  “No, I wouldn’t have,” Nurse Parchtry said tearfully. “She’s a dear little thing.”

  “There is in fact only one person here who had a motive not only to murder Lord Alastair but also to see D’Artagnan charged with it, and that is Lord James Valladay.”

  “What?” James said, spilling his drink in his surprise.

  “You were in considerable debt. Your father’s death would mean that you would inherit a fortune. And you hated your sister’s primates. You had every reason to murder your father and frame D’Artagnan.”

  “B-but …” he spluttered. “This is ridiculous.”

  “You put sleeping tablets in your father’s cocoa when you were in the nursery, using an attack by D’Artagnan as a distraction. During the game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral, you went out into the corridor, having convinced everyone that they must take considerable time in choosing your object, and you took the lift up to the nursery, putting on the gloves you had stolen from D’Artagnan earlier, and strangled your sleeping father. Then you switched off the baby monitor and overturned the bed and placed objects around the room to look as if someone had flung them violently. Then you hid the key and the gloves, and came back downstairs, where you cold-bloodedly continued playing the game.”

  “Oh, James, you didn’t—” Lady Charlotte cried.

  “Of course I didn’t. You haven’t any proof of any of this, Touffét. You said yourself there weren’t any fingerprints.”

  “Ah,” Touffét said, pulling a bottle of sleeping tablets out of his pocket. “This was found in your medicine cabinet, and these”—he produced a key and a pair of white gloves—“under your mattress, where you hid them, intending later to put them in the pantry to implicate D’Artagnan.” He handed them to Sergeant Eustis. “I think you will find that the sleeping tablets match the residue in the cocoa cup.”

  “Under my mattress?” James said, doing a very good job of looking bewildered. “I don’t understand—How would I have got into the nursery? I don’t have a key.”

  “Ah,” Touffét said. “D’Artagnan, come here.” The gorilla lumbered forward from where he and Heidi had been watching all this and thinking God knows what. “D’Artagnan, what happened after Lady Charlotte gave you the keys?”

  “Unlock,” he said. “Get gloves.”

  “And then what?”

  D’Artagnan looked fearfully at James and then back at Touffét.

  “I won’t let him hurt you,” Sergeant Eustis said.

  Lady Charlotte nodded at him. “Go ahead, D’Artagnan. Tell the truth. You won’t get in trouble.”

  The gorilla glanced worriedly at James again and then said, “James say. Give me,” pantomiming handing over a bunch of keys.

  “That’s a lie!” James said. “I did no such thing!”

  “Then why was this under your mattress inside one of the gloves?” Touffét said, producing a key from his pocket and handing it to Sergeant Eustis.

  “But I didn’t—!” James said, turning to his sister. “He’s lying!”

  “How is that possible?” Lady Charlotte said coldly. “He’s only an animal.”

  “A satisfying case,” Touffét said as we waited for the train.

  We had been driven to the station by a hairy orange orangutan named Sven. “He doesn’t have a driver’s license,” Lady Charlotte had said, bidding us goodbye. She smiled up at Phillip Davidson, who had his arm around her. “But every policeman in the county’s upstairs collecting evidence,” she said, “so you won’t have to worry about being ticketed.”

  It was easy to see why the police refused to issue Sven a driver’s license. He was positively wild, and after he had nearly driven us off the road, he slapped the steering wheel with his hairy hands and grinned a teeth-baring
smile at me. But he had gotten us there nearly ten minutes before train time.

  Touffét was still preoccupied with the case. “It is a pity James would not confess to the murder when I confronted him. Now the police must spend Christmas Day examining evidence.”

  “I’m sure Sergeant Eustis won’t mind,” I told him. He had seemed pathetically eager to look for everything Touffét told him to, even writing it all down. “You’ve redeemed his reputation. And, at any rate, no one confesses these days, even when they’ve been caught redhanded.”

  “That is true,” he said, checking his pocket watch. “And all has turned out well,” Touffét said. “Lady Charlotte’s Institute is safe, the apes no longer have to fear being homeless, and you shall arrive at your sister’s in time to burn your fingers on the raisins.”

  “Aren’t you going with me?”

  “I have already endured one evening of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral. My constitution cannot withstand another. I will disembark in London. You will convey my regrets to your sister, yes?”

  I nodded absently, thinking of what he had said about the apes no longer having to fear being homeless. It was true. Until the murder, Lady Charlotte’s Institute had been in great financial difficulty. She had said it might have to close. And if it did, the ARA and the other animal rights groups would have insisted on D’Artagnan and Heidi’s being sent back to the wilds. Like Lucy.

  Touffét had said everyone in the room had a motive, and he was right, but there were two suspects in the room he had overlooked.

  James had even accused D’Artagnan of the murder, and D’Artagnan would certainly have done anything to save Lady Valladay’s Institute—he was utterly devoted to her. Like D’Artagnan and the other Musketeers, who would have done anything to protect their queen. And he and Heidi were in danger of losing their home.

  But killing Lord Alastair would not have saved the Institute. James would have inherited the estate. James, who had threatened to shut down the Institute, who had threatened to sell the apes to the zoo. Killing Lord Alastair would only have made the apes’ situation worse.