Candied Crime (2 page)

“Teddy says we can´t see what
you have in that satchel, can we? Under my mummy´s old forks. If
you want forks, why don´t you take some of the new ones from the
kitchen? Those old things taste funny when you put them in your
mouth.”

“
I´m taking
them away cause your mother asked me to polish them.” Again I was
quite pleased with my quick repartee.

Annabella had
babysat in this particular house a few nights ago. She had assured
me there was no alarm and plenty of old silver. What she had
forgotten to tell me about was this ticking bomb. If ever there was
a terrorist… Kids. How does one handle them? Theft and burglary is
one thing, but strangling a horrid little monster no matter how
much he has provoked you! They´d lock me up for so long I´d have
forgotten what money was for anyway.

He stuck his fist down into the
drawer and stirred the remaining silverware around, laughing like a
maniac at the loud, metallic clangs.

In my increasing panic I
continued stashing away this and that without paying the least
attention to the hallmarks. If only Annabella had been here. I was
the one who planned, she was the one who improvised when things
were going wrong.

“Tommy? Tommy, is that you down
there?” A high, querulous voice penetrated the air from
upstairs.

The grating RP accent gave me
gooseflesh. Well, that settled it. Now I would have to clear out. I
picked up my rattling bag, ready to run for dear life.

“
Hey, mister,
that is the wrong …” They boy listened intensely for a second.
“Teddy, I think he has figgered out it´s the basement
door.”

6
. End of Christmas – a tragic tale in approximately four
parts

I
Very early in the morning of
December 24th, Constable Archibald Primrose found a
red-and-grey-clad old man in a huge snowdrift right outside
Knavesborough (though the village seems to have been mislaid
somewhere in Scandinavia in this story).

Dead?
Primrose pulled off one of his woollen gloves and prodded and
probed cautiously, fearing a local alky would jump up and accuse
him of harassment. Well, one could not be as cold and stiff as this
old geezer and be alive, could one? Primrose looked around him,
wondering what to do. Thieves, rogues and drunkards could be put in
detention overnight to keep them off the streets, but an ice-cold,
thickset corpse? No one had quite prepared him for a situation like
this. And right now, with Christmas looming up and all his
superiors gallivanting in Copenhagen to guard top politicians and
arrest hotheaded demonstrators during the climate
conference.

First of all,
Primrose put his glove back on as it was really disagreeably cold.
He looked around him again, but everybody else in the little
village seemed to be sound asleep. Second, he pulled his mobile
phone out of his pocket and took a few photos of the crime scene.
That was what the CSI guys always did.

What next? Fingerprints?
Primrose had never heard of anyone lifting fingerprints off cold
and wet snow, so maybe this was his chance of fame and a medal
(promotion had been phased out years ago). Looking around him, he
could not see any signs of fingerprints. Yet there were several
traces of hoofs. Again, Primrose secured the evidence as best he
could. Not horses, surely, more like roe or deer. Wasn´t that a bit
odd, really? Well, not the missing fingerprints, as anybody would
wear gloves or mittens tonight, like the old guy in the heap of
snow, but odd that he could not see any footprints apart from his
own? Ill at ease he looked around him, certain that now he would
have to take himself into custody.

“But I can´t even remember the
caution,” he muttered.

II
Arnold Kickinbottom let the
living room curtain fall back. What was the local hillbilly
trampling around in the snow for? A mysterious death right outside
his windows was not good for his indigestion. Mildred would babble
about too many samples of the schnapps and sweets, but Arnold knew
his tummy was easily upset when something unpleasant and dramatic
happened right under his nose.

“Mildred, where is my porridge?”
He checked his watch. Already five minutes past seven. His wife was
getting so slovenly, and it wasn´t even Christmas yet. He drummed
his fingers on the table. The oilcloth had lost most of its vivid
colours in front of him though it could hardly be more than ten or
fifteen years old.

“
Mildred!” He
enjoyed seeing her scuttle in with his bowl and glass, but his
heart was not really in it. Why wouldn´t the old fuddy-duddy
listen? Arnold had told him to stay away from them so many times.
This was a respectable home, and Christmas with Mildred´s catty old
aunts around the house was already more than most human beings
could bear. You couldn´t fart without their smelling it. He
shuddered at the idea of several days with this petticoat regime.
But Arnold Kickinbottom refused to surrender to their pins and
needles.

He raised his
spoon and his weak chin like a shrivelled Churchill, until he
remembered another of Mildred´s insane relatives. Trying to enter a
modern house via the chimney. Talk about embarrassment. A fat,
middle-aged man trying to get into a house with central heating
through the chimney! So he was Mildred´s half-demented old uncle,
but why couldn´t he ring the bell like any decent visitor? Arnold
had had to take the whole system to pieces before they could tug
him out of a heating pipe in the boiler room together with his huge
sack of silly presents. Arnold´s spoon trembled when he thought of
those presents. How could anyone…?

“Arnold, dear, are you okay? It
seems as if your eyes are bulging.”

III
In spite of all the trouble
he had caused, Arnold Kickinbottom had generously let Uncle into
the house for a short break and a glass of water, smudged and
unkempt as he was. But what was intended as a flying visit in the
kitchen had escalated into a ridiculous charade with Uncle Nick and
Aunt Augusta playing dominoes and drinking Arnold´s best sherry
while Aunt Beryl swallowed pills in various sizes and colours and
sang naughty Carols. No one knew what was in her arsenal of
bottles, but some of them certainly had a stimulating effect on the
ancient hag who used to sit quietly in a corner, crocheting pink
doilies. When Aunt Augusta had tried to lure Uncle Nick under the
mistletoe to encourage improper behaviour, Arnold had had enough.
Not in his house!

As usual,
Mildred was very far from the rock of support and stability a
husband could wish for. In between decorating the house from top to
toe in tinsel and paper chains, baking twelve sorts of cookies,
cooking mince pies and stuffing the turkey, she just sat about,
knitting her scratchy sweaters. At least they had no electric
Christmas candles. Arnold had put his foot down firmly; he would
not tolerate such waste.

Single-handed, Arnold had
marched the aunts off to bed and requested Uncle Nick to leave the
premises. And that had been the horrible moment when Uncle had
handed him the gift. Arnold nearly wet his pants, but he had a
life-long training in disciplining his upper lip and his bladder,
so without turning a hair, he had received the large parcel and
tucked it safely away underneath a huge pile of hand-knitted
sweaters.

But he had known immediately
that this was the point of no return! Uncle Nick had turned into an
encumbrance Arnold would have to remove immediately.

“
You´d better
leave now, dear Nicholas, or you´ll be late for your round, but do
come into the kitchen for a bite before you go.” He had grabbed a
moth-eaten sleeve and dragged Uncle off to the kitchen. His hands
shook, and he was sorely tempted to strangle Uncle in some of
Mildred´s tinsel, but instead he had put a plateful of her nasty
mushroom hotchpotch and some of his really advanced homebrewed
schnapps in front of the old guy.

“Now, off you go like a good old
Santa.“ He patted Uncle Nick on the shoulder and saw him off,
certain that no one could survive a sledge trip in that
condition.

IV
After a perfunctory
investigation Constable Archibald Primrose gave up solving the
murder of St Nicholas. He did the next-best thing by selling the
whole story to BBC, CNN and the Danish prime minister who was
grateful that now the press would run off to Knavesborough instead
of harping on his none-too successful climate conference. “It´s
gonna be a cold, cold Christmas” he hummed dejectedly. The prime
minister that is, not Constable Primrose, who had pocketed a wad of
good, American dollars.

The world
press renounced hordes of demonstrators sitting on their freezing
behinds in Copenhagen and gathered around the corpse like
bluebottles smelling … well, a corpse. They informed a gawping
world that Santa had died in a sensational accident, dropping off
his high-flying sleigh into a snowdrift, apparently drunk as a
skunk.

“
Christmas
cancelled,” cried meter-high headlines. “World Wide Christmas
Crisis.” “No Christmas presents.” “Obama promises help if China
will chip in.”

Meanwhile Arnold kept the
aunties preoccupied by making sure they had plenty of schnapps on
the table so he could sneak down the basement and open Uncle Nick´s
Christmas present. How could Mildred´s old uncle know anything
about his obsession? As if Arnold had ever admitted to anyone alive
that this was his greatest wish. This was sheer Christmas
magic!

On Christmas morning Arnold had
finished boarding up the basement windows. He had rigged up a huge
table on trestles and built a wonderful model railway for his
teeny-weeny model train, and the cute, little station was a perfect
replica of the ivy-covered train station of Knavesborough.

“Arnold, your turkey is
ready.”

“
Did you
remember that I like plenty of gravy? You can leave it on the
threshold. Merry Christmas, Mildred.” He grabbed the plate and shut
the door tight before he blew the whistle of the tiny train that
was puffing merrily round and round.

“
Arnold.
Arnoooold? My Christmas present?” Timidly, Mildred knocked on the
door.

“
How can you
worry about petty details like that when Christmas has been
cancelled worldwide and all the little children must go without?
Really, Mildred …”

Relieved, he heard her slippers
shuffle off and bent over his railway. Perhaps he should take a
peep at the other presents in Uncle Nick´s sack later?

7. Spring Cleaning

“What are you doing?” Our
neighbour´s little son suddenly appears in the yard with his
collie.

“
I´m just
clearing up a bit.” The dog sniffs at me, and I let him lick my
hands. If I had known they would pop in, I could have left a titbit
for him. “Old junk, you know.”

“What have you used that one
for?” He bends over the chain saw.

“
I
f you want to throw out really
large items, it´s much simpler if you take them apart first and
carry them out in pieces.” I show him the last bag before I throw
it into the boot of our old estate car.

”Where´s Larry?”

”Larry? He´s moving out.”

”Are you going to move too?” He
picks at a scab on his mud-brown knee.

”No, I like it here.” I pause
for a second to take a look around me. I love the sight of the red
farm buildings in the spring sun.

At the
rubbish dump I sort out my boxes and bags carefully before putting
them in the proper containers. I wave at a farmer who lives in our
neighbourhood.

I have a feeling the men at the
dump are sending me curious looks. Is it still a novelty that women
can handle their own rubbish? Or do they think I could have taken a
bath and changed my clothes before my trip to the dump? Actually, I
remembered protecting the driver´s seat with a plastic bag!

Well, whatever they think that
is hardly my problem. I honk an optimistic salute on my way out the
drive. That was the first item on my list. Scrap superfluous
luggage. What was point two, now?

8
. Shots

Annabella
Kickinbottom took a sip of the cooking sherry. How weary, stale,
flat and unprofitable seemed to her all the uses of this world. Her
mother had been after her again yesterday, claiming she had a
regular drink problem, and this morning the cook had threatened to
count the bottles in the pantry. As if that wasn´t enough, the
gardener had refused to save her sorry arse again after last week.
And if she was fired from this job, there wouldn´t be anyone left
in Knavesborough who didn´t know her reputation. She had been so
lucky that her new employer, Sir Bellini, had not asked for
references or anything.

Lazily she
cocked the butler´s shotgun at the cook´s ugly tomcat that had
flung itself like a dead crow on the garden wall. She loathed Mrs
McVities´ pretentious food anyway. Tasted like cat crap. She took
another sip. If they fired her, she would have to move back home.
Not that she minded her mother´s scones or her father´s whisky, but
actually living in the middle of the battlefield?

Overcome by a spirit of
perverseness, she closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. A split
second later she saw that she had not been aiming at the mangy cat
after all, but at the butler´s moth-eaten wig. Lipton jumped up
from his deckchair behind the low wall, shouting terms of abuse
even Annabella hadn´t heard before.