Cynthia Manson (ed) (57 page)

He would kill him in the basement.
No one would hear the shot over this bedlam. They walked through the crowd.

“Keep walking,” he said.

It was taking too long. He couldn’t
shoot Kelso here in the middle of the main floor. If they didn’t get to the
basement before something happened, he’d have to turn and run from the store.
He felt confused. The plan no longer seemed nearly as workable as when he’d
first thought of it. Kelso is the only one who’s sure, Briggs had thought. Get
rid of Kelso and everything will be all right. But now it occurred to him that
some of those women and children might remember him, remember that he’d gone
off with Santa. He’d have to kill Kelso, if he could, and leave town
immediately with what money he had. His chances were limited. He was sweating.

It was too late to turn back now. He’d
made his move.

Briggs held one of Santa’s arms,
steering him around a corner and along a narrow corridor that led to a basement
stairway, aiming the gun with his other hand. Briggs was short; for some reason
Kelso seemed shorter than he had earlier. Just as his face went hot with the
realization that something was wrong, a hand came from nowhere and gripped his
wrist painfully, twisting it so that he dropped the pistol. Powerful hands
grabbed him and shoved him hard against the wall of the corridor.

“You’re under arrest,” said George
Kelso. Kelso stood in the middle of the hall in his corduroy suit, flanked by
three uniformed cops with drawn revolvers. “The charges are embezzlement and
murder.”

Briggs stared. “Kelso! Then who the
hell...”

The Santa person pulled the beard
and mustache away and removed the hat. Briggs saw a smiling, attractive girl
with blonde hair and brown eyes.

“Are you all right, Susan?” Kelso
asked.

“Ho ho ho,” said the girl.

Kelso, Meyer, and Susan Overstreet
sat at a table in the store’s cafeteria. “Silver Bells” played from the
speakers, and shoppers at neighboring tables laughed and rustled their
packages.

“Look at this meatloaf,” said Meyer,
poking at it with his fork. “Now they’ve practically burned it.”

“Actually, mine’s not too bad.” Kelso
took a bite. “I was starving.”

“So how did you make the switch with
Susan?” Meyer asked.

“I went to the men’s room,” Kelso
said. “When I was sure nobody else was in there, I let Susan in and we put the
Santa outfit on her.”

“Incredible,” Meyer shook his head. “You’re
lucky nobody walked in on you.”

“I was leaning against the door.”

“Sergeant Meyer?” Susan smiled at
the detective. “Would you like to come over to my aunt’s house tonight for some
eggnog? If you wouldn’t be uncomfortable. I mean, we won’t sing any carols or
anything, and Aunt Eleanor doesn’t have a tree this year, just a few lights in
the window.”

“Trees are too expensive for people
on fixed incomes,” Kelso said, trying not to sound angry.

“So, will you come? We’d like to
have you.”

Meyer put down his fork and cleared
his throat. “Nobody’s ever invited me to have eggnog before,” he said quietly. “Tell
your aunt I’d like to come.” He stood up. “I can’t eat this stuff. I’ll leave
you two alone.” He started away, then added: “Take the rest of the afternoon
off, Kelso.”

“Gee, thanks.” Kelso glanced at his
watch. “All forty-three minutes, huh?”

“Well,” Susan said, eyeing him
closely, “are you going to tell me how you knew?”

“Knew what?”

“Don’t do that. How you knew it was
Briggs.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “Briggs made a
couple of mistakes. He tried to convince me that Anderson, the store manager,
had gone down to gift wrap at nine thirty. He kept emphasizing nine thirty. But
why? I was the first one to question him, and only the other cops knew about
the coroner’s estimate of nine thirty as the time of the stabbing. But the
murderer would have known. That was one thing.”

“Hmm. What else?”

“He was too eager to tell me about
the embezzlement, and to blame it on Arnold Wundt. If he’d been so certain, why
hadn’t he exposed Wundt himself, earlier? So I wondered if maybe Briggs was the
embezzler, and not Wundt. Maybe Wundt had found him out, and Briggs had killed
him to keep him quiet.” Kelso shrugged. “Turns out I was right.”

Susan blinked and folded her arms
across her chest. “That’s it? That’s all? I put on a Santa suit and risked my
life for nine thirty and some talk about an embezzlement?”

“Well, there was one other thing...”

“Tell me.”

“Well, when I visited Briggs in
Anderson’s office, he was eating a sandwich of some kind. He kept dabbing at
his shirtsleeve and complaining about how the cafeteria always put too much
ketchup on the bread. But after I left him in the hall, I went back to the
office and found his sandwich in the trash. There wasn’t any ketchup on it.” Kelso
paused. “That stuff on his sleeve was blood.”

“Yuk.”

“Incidentally, can’t your aunt
really afford a tree this year?”

“It’d be tough. She buys a lot of
presents. You’re coming tonight, aren’t you? Do you think Meyer will come?”

“Sergeant Kelso—” A tall,
well-dressed man hurried up to their table. It was Anderson, the store manager,
looking breathless. “Finally found you.”

“Don’t tell me something else has
happened,” Kelso said.

“We’re supposed to have another
Santa session in fifteen minutes, sergeant. With Wundt dead and Briggs in
custody, there’s nobody to do it. So I was wondering...”

It wasn’t fair, he thought. He was
almost off duty. He was tired. He wanted to go home and relax. He needed a bath,
and he was sick to death of the chatter of mothers and children, the tinny
music, the announcements of sales in this or that department.

Susan had done it once. She’d looked
cute in the padded red suit and whiskers. He turned a pleading glance in her direction,
trying to look desperate. She smiled, but slowly shook her head no.

“What do you say, sergeant? Will you
help out? Please?”

It wasn’t fair. He sighed heavily in
resignation. He nodded.

“Good man,” said Anderson.

“That’s the Christmas spirit,” Susan
said.

Kelso scowled.

Kelso met Meyer at the door. Outside
it was snowing. “Come in. You’re late.”

“I could leave,” said Meyer testily.

“Nonsense. Susan’s aunt wants to
meet you, and there’s still plenty of eggnog. You’re letting in the snow.”

Meyer came in dragging a small,
well-shaped tree and a paper bag.

“What’s this?” Kelso asked
suspiciously.

“Some sort of festive plant.” Meyer
frowned. “Silly lights and ornaments to hang on it. Somebody killed a tree so
you people could celebrate.”

Kelso was moved. He stood for a
moment, feeling a little of the old magic.

“Happy holidays, Meyer,” he said.

Meyer nodded. “Merry Christmas,
Kelso.”

There was much cheer in the house
that night.

It was just a few days before the
Christmas recess at the University of Reading when Rand’s wife Leila said to
him over dinner, “Come and speak to my class on Wednesday, Jeffrey.”

“What? Are you serious?” He put down
his fork and stared at her. “I know nothing about archaeology.”

“You don’t have to. I just want you
to tell them a Christmas story of some sort. Remember last year? The Canadian
writer Robertson Davies was over here on a visit and he told one of his ghost
stories.”

“I don’t know any good ghost
stories.”

“Then tell them a cipher story from
before you retired. Tell them about the time you worked through Christmas Eve
trying to crack the St. Ives cipher.”

Ivan St. Ives. Rand hadn’t thought
of him in years.

Yes, he supposed it was a Christmas
story of sorts.

It was Christmas Eve morning in
1974, when Rand was still head of Concealed Communications, operating out of
the big old building overlooking the Thames. He remembered his superior,
Hastings, making the rounds of the offices with an open bottle of sherry and a stack
of paper cups, a tradition that no one but Hastings ever looked forward to. A
cup of government sherry before noon was not something to warm the heart or put
one in the Christmas spirit.

“It promises to be a quiet day,”
Hastings said, pouring the ritual drink. “You should be able to leave early and
finish up your Christmas shopping.”

“It’s finished. I have no one but
Leila to buy for.” Rand accepted the cup and took a small sip.

“Sometimes I wish I was as well
organized as you, Rand.” Hastings seemed almost disappointed as he sat down in
the worn leather chair opposite Rand’s desk. “I was going to ask you to pick up
something for me.”

“On the day before Christmas? The
stores will be crowded.”

Hastings decided to abandon the
pretense. “They say Ivan St. Ives is back in town.”

“Oh? Surely you weren’t planning to
send him a Christmas gift?”

St. Ives was a double agent who’d
worked for the British, the Russians, and anyone else willing to pay his price.
There were too many like him in the modern world of espionage, where national
loyalties counted for nothing against the lure of easy money.

“He’s back in town and he’s not
working for us.”

“Who, then?” Rand asked. “The
Russians?”

“Perkins and Simplex, actually.”

“Perkins and Simplex is a department
store.”

“Exactly. Ivan St. Ives has been
employed over the Christmas season as their Father Christmas—red suit, white
beard, and all. He holds little children on his knee and asks them what they
want for Christmas.”

Rand laughed. “Is the spying
business in some sort of depression we don’t know about? St. Ives could always
pick up money from the Irish if nobody else would pay him.”

“I just found out about it last
evening, almost by accident. I ran into St. Ives’s old girlfriend. Daphne
Sollis, at the Crown and Piper. There’s no love lost between the two of them
and she was quite eager to tell me of his hard times.”

“It’s one of his ruses, Hastings. If
Ivan St. Ives is sitting in Perkins and Simplex wearing a red suit and a beard
it’s part of some much more complex scheme.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, this is
his last day on the job. Why don’t you drop by and take a look for yourself?”

“Is that what this business about
last-minute shopping has been leading up to? What about young Parkinson—isn’t
this more his sort of errand?”

“Parkinson doesn’t know St. Ives.
You do.”

There was no disputing the logic of
that. Rand drank the rest of his sherry and stood up. “Do I have to sit on his
lap?”

Hastings sighed. “Just find out what
he’s up to, Jeff.”

The day was unseasonably warm, and
as Rand crossed Oxford Street toward the main entrance of Perkins and Simplex
he was aware that many in the lunchtime crowd had shed their coats or left them
back at the office. The department store itself was a big old building that
covered an entire block facing Oxford Street. It dated from Edwardian times,
prior to World War I, and was a true relic of its age. Great care had been
taken to maintain the exterior just as it had been, though the demands of
modern merchandising had taken their toll with the interior. During the
previous decade the first two floors had been gutted and transformed into a
pseudo-atrium, surrounded by a balcony on which some of the store’s regular
departments had become little shops. The ceiling was frosted glass, lit from
above by fluorescent tubes to give the appearance of daylight.

It was in this main atrium, near the
escalators, that Father Christmas had been installed on his throne amidst
sparkly white mountains of ersatz snow that was hardly in keeping with the
outdoor temperature. The man himself was stout, but not as fat as American
Santa Clauses. His white beard and the white-trimmed cowl of his red robe
effectively hid his identity. It might have been Ivan St. Ives, but Rand wasn’t
prepared to swear to it. He had to get much closer if he wanted to be sure.

He watched for a time from the
terrace level as a line of parents and tots wound its way up the carpeted ramp
to Father Christmas’s chair. There he listened carefully to each child’s
request, sometimes boosting the smallest of them to his knee and patting their
heads, handing each one a small brightly wrapped gift box from a pile at his
elbow.

After observing this for ten or
fifteen minutes, Rand descended to the main floor and found a young mother
approaching the end of the line with her little boy. “Pardon me. ma’am,” Rand
said. “I wonder if I might borrow your son and take him up to see Father
Christmas.”

She stared at him as if she hadn’t
heard him correctly. ‘No. I can take him myself.”