@Xmas
On Christmas Day in the Morning
by Margery Allingham
Sir Leo Pursuivant, the Chief Constable, had been sitting in his comfortable study after a magnificent lunch and talking heavily of the sadness of Christmas, while his guest, Mr Campion, most favoured of his large house-party, had been laughing at him gently.
It was true, the younger man had admitted, his pale eyes sleepy behind his horn-rimmed spectacles, that, however good the organization, the festival was never quite the same after one was six and a half, but then, what sensible man would expect it to be, and meanwhile, what a truly remarkable bird that had been!
At that point the Superintendent had arrived with his grim little story and the atmosphere was spoiled altogether.
The policeman sat in a highbacked chair, against a panelled wall festooned with holly and tinsel, his round black eyes hard and preoccupied under his short grey hair. Superintendent Pussey was one of those lean and urgent countrymen who never quite lose their innate fondness for a wonder. Despite years of experience the thing that simply could not have happened and yet indubitably had retained a place in his cosmos. He was holding forth about the latest example. It had already ruined his Christmas and had kept a great many other people out in the sleet all day, but nothing would induce him to leave it alone even for five minutes. A heap of turkey sandwiches was disappearing as he talked and a glass of scotch and soda stood untasted at his side.
‘You can see I had to come at once,’ he was saying. ‘I had to. I don’t see what happened and that’s a fact. It’s a sort of miracle. Besides, fancy killing a poor old postman on Christmas morning! That’s inhuman isn’t it? Unnatural?’
Sir Leo nodded his white head. ‘Let me get this clear: the dead man appears to have been run down at the Benham cross roads …’
Pussey took a handful of cigarettes from the box at his side and arranged them in a cross on the shining surface of the table.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘here is the Ashby road with a slight bend in it and here, running at right angles, slap through the curve, is the Benham road. You know as well as I do, sir, they’re both good wide main thoroughfares as roads go in these parts. This morning the Benham postman, old Fred Noakes, came along the Benham Road loaded down with mail.’
‘On a bicycle,’ murmured Campion.
‘Naturally. On a bicycle. He called at the last farm before the cross roads and left just about ten o’ clock. We know that because he had a cup of tea there. Then his way led him over the crossing and on towards Benham proper.’
He paused and looked up from his cigarettes.
‘There was very little traffic early today, terrible weather all the time, and quite a bit of activity later, so we’ve got no skid marks to help us. Well, no one seems to have seen old Noakes until close on half an hour later. Then the Benham constable, who lives some three hundred yards from the crossing, came out of his house and walked down to his gate. He saw the postman at once, lying in the middle of the road across his machine. He was dead then.’
‘He had been trying to carry on?’
‘Yes. He was walking, pushing the bike, and he’d dropped in his tracks. There was a depressed fracture in the side of his skull where something – say a car mirror – had struck him. I’ve got the doctor’s report. Meanwhile there’s something else.’
He returned to his second line of cigarettes.
‘Just about ten o’clock there were a couple of fellows walking here on the Ashby road. They report that they were almost run down by a saloon car which came up behind them. It missed them and careered off out of their sight round the bend towards the crossing.
‘A few minutes later, half a mile farther on, on the other side of the cross roads, a police car met and succeeded in stopping, the same saloon. There was a row and the driver, getting the wind up suddenly, started up again, skidded and smashed the vehicle on the nearest telephone pole. The car turned out to be stolen and there were four half full bottles of gin in the back. The two occupants were both fighting drunk and are now detained.’
Mr Campion took off his spectacles and blinked at the speaker.
‘You suggest that there was a connection, do you? Fred and the gin drinkers met at the cross roads, in fact. Any signs on the car?’
Pussey shrugged his shoulders. ‘Our chaps are at work on that now. The second smash has complicated things a bit but last time I ’phoned they were hopeful.’
‘But my dear fellow!’ Sir Leo was puzzled. ‘If you can get expert evidence of a collision between the car and the postman, your worries are over. That is, of course, if the medical evidence permits the theory that the unfortunate fellow picked himself up and struggled the three hundred yards towards the constable’s house.’
Pussey hesitated.
‘There’s the trouble,’ he admitted. ‘If that was all we’d be sitting pretty, but it’s not and I’ll tell you why. In that three hundred yards of Benham Road, between the crossing and the spot where old Fred died, there is a stile which leads to a footpath. Down the footpath, the best part of a quarter of a mile away, there is one small cottage and at that cottage letters were delivered this morning. The doctor says Noakes might have staggered the three hundred yards up the road leaning on his bike but he puts his foot down and says the other journey, over the stile, would have been plain impossible. I’ve talked to him. He’s the best man in the world on the job and we shan’t shake him on that.’
‘All of which would argue,’ observed Mr Campion brightly, ‘that the postman met the car after he came back from the cottage – between the stile and the policeman’s house.’
‘That’s what the constable thought.’ Pussey’s black eyes were snapping. ‘As soon as he’d telephoned for help he slipped down to the cottage to see if Noakes had called there. When he found he had, he searched the road. He was mystified though because both he and his missus had been at their window for an hour watching for the mail and they hadn’t seen a vehicle of any sort go by either way. If a car did hit the postman where he fell it must have turned and gone back afterwards and that’s impossible, for the patrol would have seen it.’
Leo frowned at him. ‘What about the other witnesses? Did they see any second car?’
‘No.’ Pussey’s face shone with honest wonder. ‘I made sure of that. Everybody sticks to it that there was no other car or cart about and a good job too, they say, considering the way the saloon was being driven. As I see it, it’s a proper mystery, a kind of not very nice miracle, and those two beauties are going to get away with murder on the strength of it. Whatever our fellows find on the car they’ll never get past the doctor’s evidence.’
Mr Campion got up sadly. The sleet was beating on the windows and from inside the house came the more cheerful sound of teacups. He nodded to the Chief Constable.
‘I fear we shall have to see that footpath before it gets utterly dark, you know,’ he said. ‘In this weather conditions may have changed by tomorrow.’
Leo sighed.
They stopped their freezing journey at the Benham police station to pick up the constable, who proved to be a pleasant youngster who had known and liked the postman and was anxious to serve as their guide.
They inspected the cross roads and the bend and the spot where the saloon had come to grief. By the time they reached the stile the world was grey and dismal and all trace of Christmas had vanished.
Mr Campion climbed over and the others followed him on to the path which was narrow and slippery. It wound out into the mist before them, apparently without end.
The procession slid and scrambled in silence for what seemed a mile only to encounter yet another stile and a plank bridge over a stream leading to a patch of bog. As he struggled out of it Pussey pushed back his dripping hat and gazed at the constable.
‘You’re not having a game I suppose?’ he enquired briefly.
‘No, sir, no. The little house is just here. You can’t make it out because it’s a little bit low. There it is, sir.’
He pointed to a hump in the near distance which they had all taken to be a haystack and which now emerged as the roof of a hovel with its back towards them in the wet waste.
‘Good Heavens!’ Leo regarded its desolation with dismay. ‘Does anybody actually live here?’
‘Oh yes, sir. An old widow lady. Mrs Fyson’s the name.’
‘Alone? How old?’
‘I don’t rightly know, sir. Over seventy five, must be.’
Leo grunted and a silence fell on the company. The scene was so forlorn and so unutterably quiet in its loneliness that the world might have died.
Mr Campion broke the spell.
‘This is definitely no walk for a dying man,’ he said firmly. ‘The doctor’s evidence is completely convincing, don’t you think? Now we’re here perhaps we should drop in and see the householder.’
‘We can’t all get in,’ Leo objected. ‘Perhaps the Superintendent …?’
‘No. You and I will go.’ Mr Campion was obstinate, and taking the Chief Constable’s arm led him firmly round to the front of the cottage. There was a yellow light in the single window on the ground floor and as they slid up a narrow brick path to a very small door, Leo hung back.
‘I hate this,’ he muttered. ‘Oh – all right, go on. Knock if you must.’
Mr Campion obeyed, stooping so that his head might miss the lintel. There was a movement inside and, at once, the door was opened very wide so that he was startled by the rush of warmth from within.
A little old woman stood before him, peering up without astonishment. He was principally aware of bright eyes.
‘Oh dear,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘You are damp. Come in.’ And then, looking past him at the skulking Leo. ‘Two of you! Well, isn’t that nice. Mind your poor heads.’
The visit became a social occasion before they were well in the room. Her complete lack of surprise or question coupled with the extreme lowness of the ceiling gave her an advantage from which the interview never entirely recovered.
From the first she did her best to put them at their ease.
‘You’ll have to sit down at once,’ she said, waving them to two chairs, one on either side of the small black kitchener. ‘Most people have to. I’m all right, you see, because I’m not tall. This is my chair here. You must undo that,’ she went on touching Leo’s coat, ‘otherwise you may take cold when you go out. It is so very chilly isn’t it? But so seasonable and that’s always nice.’
Afterwards it was Mr Campion’s belief that neither he nor the Chief Constable had a word to say for themselves for the first five minutes.
They were certainly seated and looking round the one downstair room the house contained before anything approaching conversation took place.
It was not a sordid interior yet the walls were discoloured, the furniture old without being in any way antique and the place could hardly have been called neat. But at the moment it was festive. There was holly over the two pictures and on the mantel, above the stove, a crowd of bright Christmas cards.
Their hostess sat between them, near the table. It was set for a small tea party and the oil lamp with the red and white frosted glass shade which stood in the centre of it shed a comfortable light on her serene face.
She was a short plump old person whose white hair was brushed tightly to her little round head. Her clothes were all knitted and of an assortment of colours and with them she wore, most unsuitably, a Maltese silk lace collarette and a heavy gold chain. It was only when they noticed she was blushing that they realized she was shy.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed at last, making a move which put their dumbness to shame. ‘I quite forgot to say it before! A Merry Christmas to you. Isn’t it wonderful how it keeps coming round? It’s such a happy time, isn’t it?’
Leo took himself in hand.
‘I do apologize,’ he began. ‘This is an imposition on such a day.’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Visitors are a great treat. Not every body braves my footpath in the winter.’
‘But some people do, of course?’ ventured Mr Campion.
‘Of course.’ She shot him her shy smile. ‘Always once a week. They send down from the village every Friday and only this morning a young man, the policeman to be exact, came all the way over the fields to wish me the compliments of the season and to know if I’d got my post!’
‘And you had!’ Leo glanced at the array of cards with relief. He was a kindly, sentimental, family man with a horror of loneliness.
She nodded at the brave collection with deep affection.
‘It’s lovely to see them all up there again, it’s one of the real joys of Christmas, isn’t it? Messages from people you love and who love you and all so pretty, too.’
‘Did you come down bright and early to meet the postman?’ The Chief Constable’s question was disarmingly innocent but she looked ashamed and dropped her eyes.
‘I wasn’t up! Wasn’t it dreadful? I was late this morning. In fact, I was only just picking the letters off the mat there when the policeman called. He helped me gather them, the nice boy. There were such a lot. I lay lazily in bed this morning thinking of them instead of moving.’
‘Still, you knew they were there.’
‘Oh yes.’ She sounded content. ‘I knew they were there. May I offer you a cup of tea? I’m waiting for my Christmas party to arrive, just a woman and her dear greedy little boy; they won’t be long. In fact, when I heard your knock I thought they were here already.’
Mr Campion, who had risen to inspect the display of cards on the mantel shelf more closely, helped her to move the kettle so that it should not boil too soon.
The cards were splendid. There were nearly thirty of them in all, and the envelopes which had contained them were packed in a neat bundle and tucked behind the clock.
In design they were mostly conventional. There were robins and firesides, saints and angels, with a secondary line in pictures of gardens in unseasonable bloom, and Scots terriers in tam o’ shanter caps. One magnificent affair was entirely in ivorine with a cut-out disclosing a coach and horses surrounded with roses and forget-me-nots. The written messages were all warm and personal – all breathing affection and friendliness and the outspoken joy of the season:
‘The very best to you Darling from All at the Limes’; ‘To dear Auntie from Little Phil’; ‘Love and Memories. Edith and Ted’; ‘There is no wish like the old wish. Warm regards George’; ‘For dearest Mother’; ‘Cheerio. Lots of love. Just off. Writing. Take care of yourself. Sonny’; ‘For dear little Agnes with love from US ALL’.
Mr Campion stood before them for a long time but at length he turned away. He had to stoop to avoid the beam and yet he towered over the old woman who stood watching him.
Something had happened. It had suddenly become very still in the house. The gentle hissing of the kettle sounded unnaturally loud. The recollection of their loneliness returned to chill the cosy room.
The old lady had lost her smile and there was wariness in her eyes.
‘Tell me,’ Mr Campion spoke very gently. ‘How do you do it? Do you put them all down there on the mat in their envelopes before you go to bed on Christmas Eve?’
While the point of his question was dawning upon Leo, there was complete silence. It was breathless and unbearable until old Mrs Fyson pierced it with a laugh of genuine naughtiness.
‘Well,’ she said devastatingly, ‘It does make it more fun, doesn’t it?’ She glanced back at Leo whose handsome face was growing scarlet.
‘Then…’ He was having difficulty with his voice.
‘Then the postman did not call this morning, ma’am?’
‘The postman never calls here except when he brings something from the Government,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Everybody gets letters from the Government nowadays, don’t they? But he doesn’t call here with personal letters because, you see, I’m the last of us.’ She paused and frowned very faintly. It rippled like a shadow over the smoothness of her quiet, careless brow. ‘There’s been so many wars,’ she said.
‘But, dear Lady…’ Leo was completely overcome.
She patted his arm to comfort him.
‘My dear man,’ she said kindly. ‘Don’t be distressed. This isn’t sad. It’s Christmas. They sent me their love at Christmas and I’ve still got it. At Christmas I remember them and they remember me I expect – wherever they are.’ Her eyes strayed to the ivorine card with the coach on it. ‘I do sometimes wonder about poor George,’ she remarked seriously. ‘He was my husband’s elder brother and he really did have quite a shocking life. But he sent me that remarkable card one year and I kept it with the others… after all, we ought to be charitable, oughtn’t we? At Christmas.’
As the four men plodded back through the fields, Pussey was jubilant.
‘That’s done the trick,’ he said. ‘Cleared up the mystery and made it all plain sailing. We’ll get those two crooks for doing in poor old Noakes. The old girl was just cheering herself up and you fell for it, eh, constable? Oh, don’t worry, my boy. There’s no harm done and it’s a thing that might have deceived anybody. Just let it be a lesson to you. I know how it happened. You didn’t want to worry the old thing with the tale of a death on Christmas morning so you took the sight of the letters as evidence and didn’t go into it. As it turned out, you were wrong. That’s life.’
He thrust the young man on ahead of him and waited for Campion.
‘What beats me is how you cottoned to it,’ he confided. ‘What gave you the idea?’
‘I merely read it, I’m afraid,’ Mr Campion was apologetic. ‘All the envelopes were there, sticking out from behind the clock. The top one had a ha’penny stamp on it so I looked at the postmark. It was 1914.’
Pussey laughed. ‘Given to you!’ he chuckled. ‘Still I bet you had a job to trust your own eyes.’
‘Ah.’ Mr Campion’s voice was thoughtful in the dusk. ‘That, Super, that was the really difficult bit.’
0 notes