Murder Most Merry (34 page)

“Any sign of the weapon?” asked the detective.

“It’s not my job to look for one.” replied the examiner testily.

So others were dispatched to look for a weapon. Knowing Mom, it wouldn’t be in her handbag, but where, I wondered, could she have stashed it? I stopped in mid-wonder when I heard her say, “It might have been Laurette.”

“Who’s she?” asked the detective.

Mom folded her hands, managing to look virtuous and sound scornful. “She was the professor’s girl friend, if you know what I mean. He broke it off with her last week and she wasn’t about to let him off so easy. She’s been phoning and making threats, and this morning he told me she might be coming around to give him his Christmas present.” She added darkly, “That Christmas present was called—
death!”

“Did you see her here today?” the detective asked. Mom said she hadn’t. He asked us all if we’d seen a strange lady come into the house. I was tempted to tell him the only strange lady I saw come into the house was my mother, but I thought of that formula and how wealthy we’d become and I became a truly loving son.

“She could have come in by the cellar door,” I volunteered.

It was the first time I saw my mother look at me with love and admiration. “It’s on the other side of the house, and with all the noise we were making—”

“And I had the radio on in the kitchen, listening to the
Make Believe Ballroom
,” was the fuel Mother added to the fire I had ignited. The arson was successful. The police finally left—without finding the weapon—taking the body with them, and Mom proceeded with Christmas dinner as though killing a man was an everyday occurrence.

The dinner was delicious, although some of us kids noted the turkey had a slightly strange taste to it.

“Turkey can be gamey.” Mama trilled—and within the next six months she was on her way to becoming one of the most powerful names in the cosmetics industry.

I remained a bachelor. I worked alongside Mother and her associates and watched as, one by one over the years, she got rid of all of them. She destroyed the Sibonay people in Mexico by proving falsely and at great cost, that they were the front for a dope-running operation. She thought it would be fun if I could become a mayor of New York City, but a psychic told me to forget about it and go into junk bonds—which I did and suffered staggering losses. (The psychic died a mysterious death, which she obviously hadn’t foretold herself.)

Year after year, Christmas after Christmas, I was sorely tempted to tell Mama I saw her kill Santa Claus. Year after year, Christmas after Christmas, I was aching to know where she had hidden the weapon.

And then I found out. It was Christmas Day fourteen years ago.

The doctors, after numerous tests, had assured me that Mom was showing signs of Alzheimer’s. Such as when applying lipstick, she ended up covering her chin with rouge. And wearing three dresses at the same time. And filing her shoes and accessories in the deep freeze. It was sad, really, even for a murderess who deserved no mercy. Yet she insisted on cooking the Christmas dinner herself that year.

“It’s going to be just like that Christmas Day when we had that wonderful dinner with the neighborhood kiddies,” she said. “And Professor Tester dressed up as Santa Claus and brought in that big bag of games and toys. And he gave me the wonderful gift of the exclusive rights to the formula for the Desiree Rejuvenating Lotion.”

There were twenty for dinner and, believe it or not, Mother cooked it impeccably. The servants were a bit nervous, but the guests were too drunk to notice. Then, while eating the turkey, Mother asked me across the table. “Does the turkey taste the same way it did way back when, Sonny?”

And then I remembered how the turkey had tasted that day forty years ago when Mama had said something about turkey sometimes tasting gamey. I looked at her and, ill or not, there was mockery in her eyes. It was then that I said to her, not knowing if she would understand what I meant: “Mama. I saw what you did.”

There was a small smile on her face. Slowly her head began to bob up and down. “I had a feeling you did,” she said. “But you haven’t answered me. Does the turkey taste the same way it did then?”

I spoke the truth. “No. Mama, it doesn’t. It’s very good.”

She was laughing like a madwoman. Everyone at the table looked embarrassed and there was nowhere for me to hide. “Is this a private joke between you and your mother?” the man at my right asked me. But I couldn’t answer. Because my mother had reached across the table and shoved her hand into the turkey’s cavity, obscenely pulling out gobs of stuffing and flinging it at me.

“Don’t you know why the turkey tasted strange? Can’t you guess why. Sonny? Can’t you guess what I hid in the stuffing so those damn fool cops wouldn’t find it? Can’t you guess, Sonny? Can’t you?”

SUPPER WITH MISS SHIVERS – Peter Lovesey

The door was stuck. Something inside was stopping it from opening, and Fran was numb with cold. School had broken up for Christmas that afternoon—”Lord dismiss us with Thy blessing”— and the jubilant kids had given her a blinding headache. She’d wobbled on her bike through the London traffic, two carriers filled with books suspended from the handlebars. She’d endured exhaust fumes and maniac motorists, and now she couldn’t get into her own flat. She cursed, let the bike rest against her hip, and attacked the door with both hands.

“It was quite scary, actually.” she told Jim when he got in later. “I mean, the door opened perfectly well when we left this morning. We could have been burgled. Or it could have been a body lying in the hall.”

Jim, who worked as a systems analyst, didn’t have the kind of imagination that expected bodies behind doors. “So what was it—the doormat?”

“Get knotted. It was a great bundle of Christmas cards wedged under the door. Look at them. I blame you for this, James Palmer.”

“Me?”

Now that she was over the headache and warm again, she enjoyed poking gentle fun at Jim. “Putting our address book on your computer and running the envelopes through the printer. This is the result. We’re going to be up to our eyeballs in cards. I don’t know how many you sent, but we’ve heard from the plumber, the dentist, the television repairman, and the people who moved us in, apart from family and friends. You must have gone straight through the address book. I won’t even ask how many stamps you used.”

“What an idiot,” Jim admitted. “I forgot to use the sorting function.”

“I left some for you to open.”

“I bet you’ve opened all the ones with checks inside,” said Jim. “I’d rather eat first.”

“I’m slightly mystified by one,” said Fran. “Do you remember sending to someone called Miss Shivers?”

“No. I’ll check if you like. Curious name.”

“It means nothing to me. but she’s invited us to a meal.”

Fran handed him the card—one of those desolate, old-fashioned snow scenes of someone dragging home a log. Inside, under the printed greetings, was the signature
E.
Shivers (Miss)
followed by
Please make my Christmas
—
come for supper seven next Sunday, 23rd.
In the corner was an address label.

“Never heard of her,” said Jim. “Must be a mistake.”

“Maybe she sends her cards by computer,” said Fran, and added, before he waded in. “I don’t think it’s a mistake, Jim. She named us on the envelope. I’d like to go.”

“For crying out loud—Didmarsh is miles away. Berkshire or somewhere. We’re far too busy.”

“Thanks to your computer, we’ve got time in hand,” Fran told him with a smile.

The moment she’d seen the invitation, she’d known she would accept. Three or four times in her life she’d felt a similar impulse and each time she had been right. She didn’t think of herself as psychic or telepathic, but sometimes she felt guided by some force that couldn’t be explained scientifically. A good force, she was certain. It had convinced her that she should marry no one else but Jim, and after three years together she had no doubts. Their love was unshakable. And because he loved her. he would take her to supper with Miss Shivers. He wouldn’t understand
why
she was so keen to go, but he would see that she was in earnest, and that would be enough...

“By the way, I checked the computer,” he told her in front of the destinations board on Paddington Station next Sunday. “We definitely didn’t send a card to anyone called Shivers.”

“Makes it all the more exciting, doesn’t it?” Fran said, squeezing his arm.

Jim was the first man she had trusted. Trust was her top requirement of the opposite sex. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t particularly tall and that his nose came to a point. He was loyal. And didn’t Clint Eastwood have a pointed nose?

She’d learned from her mother’s three disastrous marriages to be ultra-wary of men. The first—Fran’s father. Harry—had started the rot. He’d died in a train crash just a few days before Fran was born. You’d think he couldn’t be blamed for that, but he could. Fran’s mother had been admitted to hospital with complications in the eighth month, and Harry, the rat, had found someone else within a week. On the night of the crash he’d been in London with his mistress, buying her expensive clothes. He’d even lied to his pregnant wife, stuck in hospital, about working overtime.

For years Fran’s mother had fended off the questions any child asks about a father she has never seen, telling Fran to forget him and love her step father instead. Stepfather the First had turned into a violent alcoholic. The divorce had taken nine years to achieve. Stepfather the Second—a Finn called Bengt (Fran called him Bent)—had treated their Wimbledon terraced house as if it were a sauna, insisting on communal baths and parading naked around the place. When Fran was reaching puberty, there were terrible rows because she wanted privacy. Her mother had sided with Bengt until one terrible night when he’d crept into Fran’s bedroom and groped her. Bengt walked out of their lives the next day, but, incredibly to Fran, a lot of the blame seemed to be heaped on her, and her relationship with her mother had been damaged forever. At forty-three, her mother, deeply depressed, had taken a fatal overdose.

The hurts and horrors of those years had not disappeared, but marriage to Jim had provided a fresh start. Fran nestled against him in the carriage and he fingered a strand of her dark hair. It was supposed to be an Intercity train, but B. R. were using old rolling-stock for some of the Christmas period and Fran and Jim had this compartment to themselves.

“Did you let this Shivers woman know we’re coming?”

She nodded. “I phoned. She’s over the moon that I answered. She’s going to meet us at the station.”

“What’s it all about, then?”

“She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t? Why not, for God’s sake?”

“It’s a mystery trip—a Christmas mystery. I’d rather keep it that way.”

“Sometimes, Fran, you leave me speechless.”

“Kiss me instead, then.”

A whistle blew somewhere and the line of taxis beside the platform appeared to be moving forward. Fran saw no more of the illusion because Jim had put his lips to hers.

Somewhere beyond Westbourne Park Station, they noticed how foggy the late afternoon had become. After days of mild, damp weather, a proper December chill had set in. The heating in the carriage was working only in fits and starts and Fran was beginning to wish she’d worn trousers instead of opting decorously for her corduroy skirt and boots.

“Do you think it’s warmer farther up the train?”

“Want me to look?”

Jim slid aside the door. Before starting along the corridor, he joked, “If I’m not back in half an hour, send for Miss Marple.”

“No need,” said Fran. “I’ll find you in the bar and mine’s a hot cuppa.”

She pressed herself into the warm space Jim had left in the corner and rubbed a spy-hole in the condensation. There wasn’t anything to spy. She shivered and wondered if she’d been right to trust her hunch and come on this trip. It was more than a hunch, she told herself. It was intuition.

It wasn’t long before she heard the door pulled back. She expected to see Jim. or perhaps the man who checked the tickets. Instead, there was a fellow about her own age. twenty-five, with a pink carrier bag containing something about the size of a box file. “Do you mind?” he asked. “The heating’s given up altogether next door.”