Murder Most Merry

“I learned earlier today that Bajon might have been involved in a shoplifting ring. And I also have a letter here that the second victim sent to Bajon two weeks ago. Not only did they know each other, but Averly had arranged for Bajon to take over some money-making enterprise from him. I think you’ll find that Averly used to act as a Santa Claus for the Outreach Center. This year he passed the job on to Bajon, who became involved with the shoplifting.”

“You’re telling me that a man dressed in a bulky and highly visible Santa Claus costume was shoplifting?”

“No. I’m telling you that Santa stood on the corner with his collection chimney and the shoplifters came out of the stores with watches, rings, and other jewelry, and dropped them in the chimney. If the man was caught, there was no evidence on him, and the store detectives never considered Santa as an accessory.”

“It’s just wild enough to be true. But why would Stover kill them?”

“Bajon must have been skimming off the loot, or threatening to blackmail Stover. Once he decided to kill Bajon. he knew he had to kill Averly too, because the older man knew what was going on. When I guessed about Santa’s chimney being used for shoplifting loot, Chris Stover became the most likely brains behind the operation. After all, he was the one who picked up the Santas and chimneys each night. He was the one who told them where to stand. Only Monday night he parked the van in the next block and walked up and strangled Bajon, then hurried back to the van and acted like he was just driving up.”

“Maybe,” Sergeant Rynor said thoughtfully. “It could have been like that. The extortion letter was just a red herring to cover the real motive. He never had any intention of going after that money on the Staten Island ferry.”

“Can you prove all this?” Aarons asked, his legal mind in gear.

“We’ll get a search warrant for Stover’s office and room at the Center. If we find any shoplifted items there, I think he’ll be ready to talk, and name the rest of the gang.”

Nick knew he wasn’t off the hook unless they found what they were looking for, but he came up lucky. The police uncovered dozens of jewelry items, along with a spool of wire that matched the wire used to kill the two Santas. After that, Chris Stover ceased his denials.

The way things turned out, Nick never did collect the balance of his fee from Grady Culhane. Some people just didn’t have any Christmas spirit.

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH – Georges Simenon

“At home we always used to go to Midnight Mass. I can’t remember a Christmas when we missed it, though it meant a good half hour’s drive from the farm to the village.”

The speaker, Sommer, was making some coffee on a little electric stove.

“There were five of us,” he went on. “Five boys, that is. The winters were colder in those days. Sometimes we had to go by sledge.”

Lec?ur, on the switchboard, had taken off his earphones to listen. “In what part of the country was that?”

“Lorraine.”

“The winters in Lorraine were no colder thirty or forty years ago than they are now—only, of course, in those days the peasant had no cars. How many times did you go to Midnight Mass by sledge?”

“Couldn’t say, exactly.”

“Three times? Twice? Perhaps no more than once. Only it made a great impression on you, as you were a child.”

“Anyhow, when we got back, we’d all have black pudding, and I’m not exaggerating when I tell you I’ve never had anything like it since. I don’t know what my mother used to put in them, but her boudins were quite different from anyone else’s. My wife’s tried, but it wasn’t the same thing, though she had the exact recipe from my eldest sister—at least, my sister swore it was.”

He walked over to one of the huge, uncurtained windows, through which was nothing but blackness, and scratched the pane with a fingernail.

“Hallo, there’s frost forming. That again reminds me of when I was little. The water used to freeze in our rooms and we’d have to break the ice in the morning when we wanted to wash.”

“People didn’t have central heating in those days.” answered Lec?ur coolly.

There were three of them on night duty. Les nuiteux, they were called. They had been in that vast room since eleven o’clock, and now, at six on that Christmas morning, all three were looking a bit jaded. Three or four empty bottles were lying about, with the remains of the sandwiches they had brought with them.

A lamp no bigger than an aspirin tablet lit up on one of the walls. Its position told Lec?ur at once where the call came from.

“Thirteenth Arrondissement, Croulebarbe,” he murmured, replacing his earphones. He seized a plug and pushed it into a hole.

“Croulebarbe? Your car’s been called out—what for?”

“A call from the Boulevard Massena. Two drunks fighting.”

Lec?ur carefully made a little cross in one of the columns of his notebook.

“How are you getting on down your way?”

“There are only four of us here. Two are playing dominoes.”

“Had any boudin tonight?”

“No. Why?”

“Never mind. I must ring off now. There’s a call from the Sixteenth.”

A gigantic map of Paris was drawn on the wall in front of him and on it each police station was represented by a little lamp. As soon as anything happened anywhere, a lamp would light up and Lec?ur would plug into the appropriate socket.

“Chaillot? Hallo! Your car’s out?”

In front of each police station throughout the twenty arrondissements of Paris, one or more cars stood waiting, ready to dash off the moment an alarm was raised.

“What with?”

“Veronal.”

That would be a woman. It was the third suicide that night, the second in the smart district of Passy.

Another little cross was entered in the appropriate column of Lec?ur’s notebook. Mambret, the third member of the watch, was sitting at a desk filling out forms.

“Hallo! Odeon? What’s going on? Oh, a car stolen.”

That was for Mambret, who took down the particulars, then phoned them through to Piedb?uf in the room above. Piedb?uf, the teleprinter operator, had such a resounding voice that the others could hear it through the ceiling. This was the forty-eighth car whose details he had circulated that night.

An ordinary night, in fact—for them. Not so for the world outside. For this was the great night, la nuit de Noel. Not only was there the Midnight Mass, but all the theaters and cinemas were crammed, and at the big stores, which stayed open till twelve, a crowd of people jostled each other in a last-minute scramble to finish off their Christmas shopping.

Indoors were family gatherings feasting on roast turkey and perhaps also on boudins made, like the ones Sommer had been talking about, from a secret recipe handed down from mother to daughter.

There were children sleeping restlessly while their parents crept about playing the part of Santa Claus. arranging the presents they would find on waking.

At the restaurants and cabarets every table had been booked at least a week in advance. In the Salvation Army barge on the Seine, tramps and paupers queued up for an extra special.

Sommer had a wife and five children. Piedb?uf, the teleprinter operator upstairs, was a father of one week’s standing. Without the frost on the window-panes, they wouldn’t have known it was freezing outside. In that vast, dingy room they were in a world apart, surrounded on all sides by the empty offices of the Prefecture de Police,