The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Part 70

Mrs. Crosland spoke confusedly and the bell rang again.

"Oh, do go, like a good child," she added. She was rather glad of the distraction. She tried to think of the name of the people who had lived in the house on the opposite corner. Inglis-was not that it? And one of the family had been a nun, a very cheerful, smiling nun, or had she recalled it all wrongly?

She sat s.h.i.+vering over the fire, thinking of those past musty Christmas Days, when the beauty and magic of the season had seemed far away, as if behind a dense wall of small bricks. That had always been the worst of it, that somewhere, probably close at hand, people had really been enjoying themselves.

She heard Lucy talking with a man in the pa.s.sage. The accomplice, perhaps? She was inclined to be jealous, hostile.

But the middle-aged and sober-looking person who followed Lucy into the parlour could not have any romantic complications.

He wore a pepper-and-salt-pattern suit and carried a bowler hat. He seemed quite sure of himself, yet not to expect any friendliness.

"I am sorry to disturb you again," he said.

"I am sorry that you should," agreed Mrs. Crosland. "But on the other hand, my memories of this house are by no means pleasant."

"Name of Teale, Henry Teale," said the stranger.

"Pray be seated," said Mrs. Crosland.

The stranger, this Mr. Teale, took the edge of the seat, as if very diffident. Mrs. Crosland was soon fascinated by what he had to say.

He was a policeman in private clothes. Mrs.

Crosland meditated on the word "private"-"private life," "private means." He had come about the Inglis affair, at the corner house.

"Oh, yes, I recall that was the name, but we never knew anyone-who are they now-the Inglis family?"

"I've already told Miss Bayward here-it was an old lady, for several years just an old lady living with a companion-"

"And found dead, you told me, Mr. Teale," remarked Lucy.

"Murdered, is what the surgeon says and what was suspected from the first."

"I forgot that you said that, Mr. Teale. At her age it does not seem to matter very much-you said she was over eighty years of age, did you not?" asked Lucy, pouring the detective a gla.s.s of wine.

"Very old, nearly ninety years of age, I understand, Miss Bayward. But murder is murder."

Mrs. Crosland felt this affair to be an added weariness. Murder in Roscoe Square on Christmas Eve. She felt that she ought to apologise to Lucy. "I suppose that was what the crowd had gathered for," she remarked.

"Yes, such news soon gets about, Ma'am. A nephew called to tea and found her-gone."

Mr. Teale went over, as if it were a duty, the circ.u.mstances of the crime. The house had been ransacked and suspicion had fallen on the companion, who had disappeared. Old Mrs. Inglis had lived so much like a recluse that no one knew what she possessed. There had been a good deal of loose money in the house, the nephew, Mr. Clinton, thought. A good deal of cash had been drawn every month from the Inglis bank account, and very little of it spent. The companion was a stranger to Islington. Veiled and modest, she had flitted about doing the meagre shopping for the old eccentric, only for the last few weeks.

The woman she had replaced had left in tears and temper some months ago. No one knew where this creature had come from-probably an orphanage; she must have been quite friendless and forlorn to have taken such a post.

"You told me all this," protested Lucy.

"Yes, Miss, but I did say that I would have to see Mrs. Crosland when she arrived-"

"Well, you are seeing her," remarked that lady. "And I cannot help you at all. One is even disinterested. I lived, Mr. Teale, so cloistered a life when I was here, that I knew nothing of what was going on-even in the Square."

"So I heard from Miss Bayward here, but I thought you might have seen someone; I'm not speaking of the past, but of the present-"

"Seen someone here-on Christmas Eve-?"

Mr. Teale sighed, as if, indeed, he had been expecting too much. "We've combed the neighbourhood, but can't find any trace of her-"

"Why should you? Of course, she has fled a long way off-"

"Difficult, with the railway stations and then the ports all watched."

"You may search again through the cellars if you wish," said Lucy. "I am sure that my aunt won't object-"

Mrs. Crosland put no difficulties in the way of the detective, but she felt the whole situation was grotesque.

"I hope she escapes," Mrs. Crosland, increasingly tired and confused by the wine she had drunk without eating, spoke without her own volition. "Poor thing-shut up-caged-"

"It was a very brutal murder," said Mr. Teale indifferently.

"Was it? An over-draught of some sleeping potion, I suppose?"

"No, Ma'am, David and Goliath, the surgeon said. A rare kind of murder. A great round stone in a sling, as it might be a lady's scarf, and pretty easy to get in the dusk round the river ways."

Mrs. Crosland laughed. The picture of this miserable companion, at the end of a dismal day lurking round the dubious dockland streets to find a target for her skill with sling and stone, seemed absurd.

"I know what you are laughing at," said Mr. Teale without feeling. "But she found her target-it was the s.h.i.+ning skull of Mrs. Inglis, nodding in her chair-"

"One might understand the temptation," agreed Mrs. Crosland. "But I doubt the skill."

"There is a lovely walled garden," suggested the detective. "And, as I said, these little by-way streets. Anyway, there was her head smashed in, neatly; no suffering, you understand."

"Oh, very great suffering, for such a thing to be possible," broke out Mrs. Crosland. "On the part of the murderess, I mean-"

"I think so, too," said Lucy soberly.

"That is not for me to say," remarked the detective. "I am to find her if I can. There is a fog and all the confusion of Christmas Eve parties, and waits, and late services at all the churches."

Mrs. Crosland impulsively drew back the curtains. Yes, there was the church, lit up, exactly as she recalled it, light streaming from the windows over the graveyard, altar tombs, and headstones, sliding into oblivion.

"Where would a woman like that go?" asked Lucy, glancing over Mrs. Crosland's shoulder at the churchyard.

"That is what we have to find out," said Mr. Teale cautiously. "I'll be on my way again, ladies, just cautioning you against any stranger who might come here, on some pretext. One never knows."

"What was David's stone? A polished pebble? I have forgotten." Mrs. Crosland dropped the curtains over the view of the church and the dull fog twilight of evening in the gas-lit Square.

"The surgeon says it must have been a heavy stone, well aimed, and such is missing. Mr. Clinton, the nephew, her only visitor and not in her confidence, remarked on such a weapon, always on each of his visits on the old lady's table."

"How is that possible?" asked Mrs. Crosland.

Mr. Teale said that the object was known as the Chinese apple. It was of white jade, dented like the fruit, with a leaf attached, all carved in one and beautifully polished. The old lady was very fond of it, and it was a most suitable weapon.

"But this dreadful companion," said Mrs. Crosland, now perversely revolted by the crime, "could not have had time to practise with this-suitable weapon-she had not been with Mrs. Inglis long enough."

"Ah," smiled Mr. Teale. "We don't know where she was before, Ma'am. She might have had a deal of practice in some lonely place-birds, Ma'am, and rabbits. Watching in the woods, like boys do."

Mrs. Crosland did not like this picture of a woman lurking in coverts with a sling. She bade the detective "Good-evening" and Lucy showed him to the door.

In the moment that she was alone, Mrs. Crosland poured herself another gla.s.s of wine. When Lucy returned, she spoke impulsively.

"Oh, Lucy, that is what results when people are driven too far-they kill and escape with the spoils, greedily. I do wish this had not happened. What sort of woman do you suppose this may have been? Harsh, of course, and elderly-"

"Mr. Teale, when he came before, said she might be in almost any disguise."

"Almost any disguise," repeated Mrs. Crosland, thinking of the many disguises she had herself worn until she had found herself in the lovely blue of Italy, still disguised, but pleasantly enough. She hoped that this mask was not now about to be torn from her; the old house was very oppressive, it had been foolish to return. A relief, of course, that Lucy seemed to have her own plans. But the house was what really mattered: the returning here and finding everything the same, and the memories of that dreadful childhood.

Lucy had suffered also, it seemed. Odd that she did not like Lucy, did not feel any sympathy with her or her schemes.

At last she found her way upstairs and faced the too-familiar bedroom. Her own was at the back of the house; that is, it had been. She must not think like this: her own room was in the charming house of the villa in Fiesole, this place had nothing to do with her at all.

But it had, and the knowledge was like a lead cloak over her. Of course it had. She had returned to meet not Lucy, but her own childhood.

Old Mrs. Inglis-how did she fit in?

Probably she had always been there, even when the woman who was now Isabelle Crosland had been a child. Always there, obscure, eccentric, wearing out a succession of companions until one of them brained her with the Chinese apple, the jade fruit, slung from a lady's scarf.

"Oh, dear," murmured Mrs. Crosland, "what has that old, that very old woman got to do with me?"

Her cases were by her bedside. She was too tired to examine them. Lucy had been scrupulous in putting out her toilet articles. She began to undress. There was nothing to do but to rest; what was it to her that a murderess was being hunted round Islington-what had Mr. Teale said? The stations, the docks ... She was half-undressed and had pulled out her wrapper when the front-door bell rang.

Hastily covering herself up, she was out on the landing. At least this was an excuse not to get into the big, formal bed where her parents had died, even if this was only Mr. Teale returned. Lucy was already in the hall, speaking to someone. The gas-light in the pa.s.sage illuminated the girl in the stone-coloured satin and the man on the threshold to whom she spoke.

It was not Mr. Teale.

Isabelle Crosland, half-way down the stairs, had a glance of a sharp face, vividly lit. A young man, with his collar turned up and a look of expectation in his brilliant eyes. He said something that Isabelle Crosland could not hear, and then Lucy closed the heavy front door.

Glancing up at her aunt, she said: "Now we are shut in for the night."

"Who was that?" asked Mrs. Crosland, vexed that Lucy had discerned her presence.

"Only a neighbour; only a curiosity-monger."

Lucy's tone was rea.s.suring. She advised her aunt to go to bed.

"Really, it is getting very late. The church is dark again. All the people have gone home."

"Which room have you, Lucy, dear?"

"That which you had, I suppose; the large room at the back of the house."

"Oh, yes-that-"

"Well, do not concern yourself-it has been rather a disagreeable evening, but it is over now."

Lucy, dark and pale, stood in the doorway, hesitant for a second. Mrs. Crosland decided, unreasonably, not to kiss her and bade her a quick good-night of a forced cheerfulness.

Alone, she pulled the chain of the gas-ring and was at once in darkness. Only wheels of light across the ceiling showed the pa.s.sing of a lonely hansom cab.

Perhaps Mr. Teale going home.

Mrs. Inglis, too, would have gone home by now; the corner house opposite would be empty.

Isabelle Crosland could not bring herself to sleep on the bed after all. Wrapped in travelling rugs, s.n.a.t.c.hed up in the dark, she huddled on the couch. Presently she slept, but with no agreeable dreams. Oppressive fancies lay heavily on her and several times she woke, crying out.

It was with a dismal sense of disappointment that she realised each time that she was not in Florence.

With the dawn she was downstairs. Christmas morning; how ridiculous!

No sign of Lucy, and the cold, dismal house was like a trap, a prison.

Almost crying with vexation, Mrs. Crosland was forced to look into the room that once had been her own. The bed had not been slept in. On the white honeycomb coverlet was a package and a note.

This, a single sheet of paper, covered an opened letter. Mrs. Crosland stared at this that was signed "Lucy Bayward." It was a childish sort of scrawl, the writer excused herself from reaching London until after the holidays.

The note was in a different hand: I promised to let you know my plans. I am away down the river with my accomplice. Taking refuge in your empty house I found this note. The whole arrangement was entirely useful to me. I left the Roman pearls for Lucy, as I had those of my late employer, but I took the gold. No one will ever find us. I leave you a Christmas present.

Mrs. Crosland's cold fingers undid the package. In the ghastly half-light she saw the Chinese apple.

AND ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE.

Ed McBain.

EVAN HUNTER, UNDER THE PSEUDONYM OF ED MCBAIN, created the iconic 87th Precinct series, the best and most famous series of police procedurals ever written, with a unique concept: The entire squad room was intended to be the hero, rather than a single police officer, though Steve Carella took center stage more often than not. Fifty-four novels succeeded Cop Hater (1956), the first book in the series. Under his own name, Hunter wrote The Blackboard Jungle (1954), the first significant book to deal with juvenile delinquents and gang violence in New York. "And All Through the House" was first published in Playboy, then issued as a chapbook for members of the Mystery Guild in 1984.

And All Through the House.

ED MCBAIN.

DETECTIVE STEVE CARELLA WAS alone in the squad room. It was very quiet for a Christmas Eve.

Normally, all h.e.l.l broke loose the moment the stores closed. But tonight the squad room and the entire station house seemed unusually still. No phones ringing. No typewriters clacking away. No patrolmen popping upstairs to ask if any coffee was brewing in the clerical office down the hall. Just Carella, sitting at his desk and rereading the D. D. report he'd just typed, checking it for errors. He'd misspelled the "armed" in "armed robbery." It had come out "aimed robbery." He overscored the I with a ballpoint pen, giving the felony its true t.i.tle. Armed robbery. Little liquor store on Culver Avenue. Guy walked in with a .357 Magnum and an empty potato sack. The owner hit a silent alarm and the two uniforms riding Boy One apprehended the thief as he was leaving the store.

Carella separated the carbons and the triplicate pages-white one in the uppermost basket, pink one in the basket marked for Miscolo in clerical, yellow one for the lieutenant. He looked up at the clock. Ten-thirty. The graveyard s.h.i.+ft would be relieving at a quarter to twelve, maybe a bit earlier, since it was Christmas Eve.