The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Part 43

Without answering, Banner galumphed across the carpet and out of the library. He went into the dining room. Verl followed.

The Christmas fir was there. The gifts underneath its tinseled boughs were undisturbed. Beryl, the little brat, had hung some of her soiled underwear on the tree. Caroline was nowhere in sight.

Banner plumped down on his well-padded knees and sorted out all the packages meant for Woolfolk. He ripped open the smaller ones like a ghoulish vandal. It wasn't until he reached the fifth package. When he tore it open a small black automatic fell out and clattered on the parquet floor.

"The devil!" cried Verl. "How'd that get there?"

Banner's head shot around, his eyes probing. "You've seen it before?"

"Yes. It's Woolfolk's."

"Tell Ora and Caroline to come to the library."

"But, Senator, what's the gun doing there?"

"That's where Ora hid it and that's the one place the police neglected to look."

"Ora!"

"Find her and Caroline! Skeedaddle!"

Verl ran upstairs.

Banner stuck a pencil into the pistol-barrel and picked it up. He pranced into the library and looked thoughtfully at the victrola. Then he opened the records cabinet and hunted. Finally he held up a record to the dull light from the window. He chuckled. The label said: Selections from La Somnambula. Pianist, Caspar Woolfolk.

He heard the other three coming.

"Ora," he said to her in his bullfrog voice as she came faltering in, "your story didn't fuse. If you'd walked out to the li'l house on the lawn in your sleep, you'd've left tracks in the snow. And when you told me how you killed Woolfolk you used the word shots."

"I did," she said frantically. "I kept shooting over and over. I don't know how many times."

"Woolfolk was shot only once. He was killed with a single loader. You can't fire the horse pistol more than once without jamming in another round."

Ora stared. "You mean I didn't shoot-"

Banner held up the black automatic. "This's the gun you shot at him with."

"Then I killed him after all," she cried in bewildered despair.

Banner chuckled. "With blanks!"

"Blanks!" exploded Verl. "What kind of games were they playing last night?"

"Mighty deep ones," said Banner seriously. "Woolfolk was hipped on psychology. What started him off we'll go into later. Woolfolk tried an ign.o.ble experiment on Ora. Would she-hypnotized-be compelled to commit murder!"

"Hypnotism!" Verl snapped his fingers with elation.

"Sure," said Banner. "Woolfolk babbled about the magic mirror, Carl Saxtus's zinc b.u.t.ton, and Father h.e.l.l's magnet. It's all hypnotism!"

"I was hypnotized?" said Ora dully. "Oh no. No. Mr. Woolfolk never hypnotized me. He couldn't do that against my will. n.o.body can."

"You walk in your sleep, duck," said Banner. "Somnambulism's the nearest thing to a hypnotic trance. Woolfolk would meet you and gently suggest-"

"He saw me-he saw me in my night clothes!" She was mortified. This was worse than being accused of murder.

Banner grinned and continued: "Bug doctors call it post-hypnotic suggestion. You tell a person to do something the next day and to forget they've done it."

"That's why she didn't remember being with me in town yesterday afternoon," said Verl.

"Ya.s.s. At his suggestion, Ora, you put notations in your diary. He was experimenting with you, as I said. He was conditioning your mind for a pseudo murder. He wanted to see how far a gentle-natured woman, like yourself, would go. And he'd selected himself as the victim. Finally Woolfolk was ready for the experiment. He told you to come where you could hear him playing."

"I remember that," she said.

Caroline Spires, in the background, was drinking it all in greedily, not making a sound.

Banner said: "Last night, Ora, you woke up about 3:30, under post-hypnotic compulsion. The little black automatic, loaded with blanks, had been laid on your night table by your bed by Woolfolk himself. You couldn't help but see it when you woke. You took the gun in your hand and started downstairs. You could hear Woolfolk's arrangement of La Somnambula. But the music wasn't coming from outside the house. It came from right here in the library. Woolfolk had considered the cold and the snow and your scanty nightdress. So he duplicated the Music Box here in the library. All he needed was piano music and a piano. He built up this square table with books and threw the large Spanish shawl over all of it. You thought it was the piano, cuz the shawl always covered the piano. The music you heard was from one of Woolfolk's own recordings being played on the victrola." He jabbed a dynamic forefinger at it. "He turned it off when he heard you coming. He rose up, then goaded you till you fired the harmless automatic at him. That's how you murdered Woolfolk."

She sobbed with relief.

"But somebody did kill Woolfolk in the Music Box!" cried Verl.

"I'm coming to that. After Ora fled back to her room, he put the record and books away-probably with mixed emotions over what'd just occurred-and threw the Spanish shawl over his arm. He went to the door. It was nearly four o'clock. It'd stopped snowing some time before. Carrying the shawl, he walked across the snow to the Music Box, leaving the only tracks."

The others were breathlessly silent.

"The murderer was waiting in the little house-had been waiting there for hours ..."

"Ah," said Verl. It was as soft as a prayer.

Caroline cleared her throat raspingly. "How did the murderer know that Caspar was going out there at all?"

"Cuz," said Banner, "the murderer overheard Woolfolk telling Ora to come where he would be playing. And where else would that be but the Music Box where the piano is?" There was a light dawning in Verl's eyes, but Banner went on evenly: "Woolfolk came in and arranged the shawl and sheet music on the piano, putting everything back in its proper place, y'see. The murderer was hiding behind the grandfather's clock, the horse pistol c.o.c.ked, the fingers that held it stiff from waiting. As Woolfolk sat down on the bench to run his fingers over the keys, the murderer stepped out into view and fired. Woolfolk, a bullet in his skull, fell forward onto the piano."

"My G.o.d," breathed Ora, her hand fluttering at her white throat.

Verl was excited. "But now you've got the murderer trapped out there!"

"For the moment. To walk back across the snow would leave distinctive, incriminating footprints. There had to be another way." Banner looked into Verl's luminous eyes. "You told me the answer at the orphanage, in your first recital of your discovery of the crime. There's only one way out."

"I?" said Verl incredulously. "I know?"

Banner nodded grimly. "You said that when you came into the little house the day was so gloomy that you had to switch on the light. Later I also called attention to the tipped-over table lamp. That means electricity!"

"No, I can't-" puzzled Verl.

"And electricity means wires!"

"Oh," said Verl, like a deflated balloon.

"The insulated wire runs at a long slant up from under the eaves to the cross-armed pole thirty feet away. You can reach the wire from one of the windows. It ain't slippy. It hasn't been cold enough for ice. More poles carry the wire across the snow to the trampled road, where all footprints're lost." Banner shrugged. "That's all there is to know."

Caroline whispered: "Then the murderer is someone who would have no trouble climbing. Like a little monkey."

"Ya.s.s," said Banner gloomily. "Someone who can climb things like radio aerials. That should've given you an idea. A tomboy-"

Ora had her hands up to her mouth in shocked horror.

Someone screamed in the hall and dashed in furiously to spit and tear at Banner.

"He was going to send me away!" Beryl screeched at him. "I heard him tell Caroline! He wanted to marry her and send me away! And he liked Ora even better than me!"

Ora sat horrified listening to a child's confession of murder.

Later a psychiatrist said to Banner: "So Woolfolk took up psychology to study his own child's case. His layman's diagnosis was correct. She is schizophrenic."

Another psychiatrist interrupted: "I think, in this particular case, that dementia praec.o.x is the more precise term."

Banner waggled his big speckled hand at both of them and grunted: "Gentlemen, she was just plain nuts."

THE HAUNTED CRESCENT.

Peter Lovesey.

FEW CONTEMPORARY MYSTERY WRITERS have been as beloved by their fans as Peter Lovesey, and fewer still have received a similar degree of the accolades of reviewers and his peers. His first book, Wobble to Death (1970), won the first prize in a contest sponsored by Macmillan for a best first mystery. The wonderfully funny novel The False Inspector Dew (1982) won the (British) Crime Writers' a.s.sociation Gold Dagger. Rough Cider (1986) and The Summons (1995) were nominated for Edgars. Waxwork (1978), The Summons, and Bloodhounds (1996) all won CWA Silver Daggers, and Lovesey was given the CWA's Carter Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 2000. There have been many other awards from all around the world, but you get the idea. "The Haunted Crescent" was first published in Mistletoe Mysteries, edited by Charlotte MacLeod (New York, Mysterious Press, 1989).

The Haunted Crescent.

PETER LOVESEY.

A GHOST WAS SEEN LAST CHRISTMAS in a certain house in the Royal Crescent. Believe me, this is true. I speak from personal experience, as a resident of the City of Bath and something of an authority on psychic phenomena. I readily admit that ninety-nine percent of so-called hauntings turn out to have been hallucinations of one sort or another, but this is the exception, a genuine haunted house. Out of consideration for the present owners (who for obvious reasons wish to preserve their privacy), I shall not disclose the exact address, but if you doubt me, read what happened to me on Christmas Eve, 1988.

The couple who own the house had gone to Norfolk for the festive season, leaving on Friday, December twenty-third. Good planning. The ghost was reputed to walk on Christmas Eve. Knowing of my interest, they had generously placed their house at my disposal. I am an ex-policeman, by the way, and it takes a lot to frighten me.

For those who like a ghost story with all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs-deep snow and howling winds outside-I am sorry. I must disappoint you. Christmas, 1988, was not a white one in Bath. It was unseasonably warm. There wasn't even any fog. All I can offer in the way of atmospheric effects are a full moon that night and an owl that hooted periodically in the trees at the far side of the sloping lawn that fronts the Crescent. It has to be admitted that this was not a spooky-looking barn owl, but a tawny owl, which on this night was making more of a high-pitched "kee-wik" call than a hoot, quite cheery, in fact. Do not despair, however. The things that happened in the house that night more than compensated for the absence of werewolves and banshees outside.

It is vital to the story that you are sufficiently informed about the building in which the events occurred. Whether you realize it or not, you have probably seen the Royal Crescent, if not as a resident, or a tourist, then in one of the numerous films in which it has appeared as a backdrop to the action. It is in a quiet location northwest of the city and comprises thirty houses in a semielliptical terrace completed in 1774 to the specification of John Wood the Younger. It stands comparison with any domestic building in Europe. I defy anyone not to respond to its uncomplicated grandeur, the majestic panorama of 114 Ionic columns topped by a portico and bal.u.s.trade; and the roadway at the front where Jane Austen and Charles d.i.c.kens trod the cobbles. But you want me to come to the ghost.

My first intimation of something unaccountable came at about twenty past eleven that Christmas Eve. I was in the drawing room on the first floor. I had stationed myself there a couple of hours before. The door was ajar and the house was in darkness. No, that isn't quite accurate. I should have said simply that none of the lights were switched on; actually the moonlight gave a certain amount of illumination, silver-blue rectangles projected across the carpet and over the base of the Christmas tree, producing an effect infinitely prettier than fairy lights. The furniture was easily visible, too, armchairs, table, and grand piano. One's eyes adjust. It didn't strike me as eerie to be alone in that unlit house. Anyone knows that a spirit of the departed is unlikely to manifest itself in electric light.

No house is totally silent, certainly no centrally heated house. The sounds produced by expanding floorboards in so-called haunted houses up and down the land must have fooled ghost-hunters by the hundred. In this case, as a precaution against a sudden freeze, the owners had left the system switched on. It was timed to turn off at eleven, so the knocks and creaks I was hearing now ought to have been the last of the night.

As events turned out, it wasn't a sound that alerted me first. It was a sudden draft against my face and a flutter of white across the room. I tensed. The house had gone silent. I crossed the room to investigate.

The disturbance had been caused by a Christmas card falling off the mantelpiece into the grate. Nothing more alarming than that. Cards are always falling down. That's why some people prefer to suspend them on strings. I stooped, picked up the card, and replaced it, smiling at my overactive imagination.

Yet I had definitely noticed a draft. The house was supposed to be free of drafts. All the doors and windows were closed and meticulously sealed against the elements. Strange. I listened, holding my breath. The drawing room where I was standing was well placed for picking up any unexplained sound in the house. It was at the center of the building. Below me were the ground floor and the cellar, above me the second floor and the attic.

Hearing nothing, I decided to venture out to the landing and listen there. I was mystified, yet unwilling at this stage to countenance a supernatural explanation. I was inclined to wonder whether the cut-off of the central heating had resulted in some trick of convection that gave the impression or the reality of a disturbance in the air. The falling card was not significant in itself. The draft required an explanation. My state of mind, you see, was calm and a.n.a.lytical.

Ten or fifteen seconds pa.s.sed. I leaned over the banisters and looked down the stairwell to make sure that the front door was firmly shut, and so it proved to be. Then I heard a rustle from the room where I had been. I knew what it was-the card falling into the grate again-for another distinct movement of air had stirred the curtain on the landing window, causing a shift in the moonlight across the stairs. I was in no doubt anymore that this was worth investigating. My only uncertainty was whether to start with the floors above me, or below.

I chose the latter, reasoning that if, as I suspected, someone had opened a window, it was likely to be at the ground or bas.e.m.e.nt levels. My a.s.sumption was wrong. I shall not draw out the suspense. I merely wish to record that I checked the cellar, kitchen, scullery, dining room, and study and found every window and external door secure and bolted from inside. No one could have entered after me.

So I began to work my way upstairs again, methodically visiting each room. And on the staircase to the second floor, I heard a sigh.

Occasionally in Victorian novels a character would "heave" a sigh. Somehow the phrase had always irritated me. In real life I never heard a sigh so weighty that it seemed to involve muscular effort-until this moment. This was a sound hauled up from the depths of somebody's inner being, or so I deduced. Whether it really originated with somebody or some thing was open to speculation.

The sound had definitely come from above me. Unable by now to suppress my excitement, I moved up to the second-floor landing, where I found three doors, all closed. I moved from one to the other, opening them rapidly and glancing briefly inside. Two bedrooms and a bathroom. I hesitated. A bathroom. Had the "sigh," I wondered, been caused by some aberration of the plumbing? Air locks are endemic in the complicated systems installed in these old Georgian buildings. The houses were not built with valves and cisterns. The efficiency of the pipework depended on the variable skill of generations of plumbers.

The sound must have been caused by trapped air.

Rationality rea.s.serted itself. I would finish my inspection and prove to my total satisfaction that what I had heard was neither human nor spectral in origin. I closed the bathroom door behind me and crossed the landing to the last flight of stairs, more narrow than those I had used so far. In times past they had been the means of access to the servants' quarters in the attic. I glanced up at the white-painted door at the head of these stairs and observed that it was slightly ajar.

My foot was on the first stair and my hand on the rail when I stiffened. That door moved.

It was being drawn inward. The movement was slow and deliberate. As the gap increased, a faint glow of moonlight was cast from the interior onto the paneling to my right. I stared up and watched the figure of a woman appear in the doorway.

She was in a white gown or robe that reached to her feet. Her hair hung loose to the level of her chest-fine, gently shifting hair so pale in color that it appeared to merge with the dress. Her skin, too, appeared bloodless. The eyes were flint black, however. They widened as they took me in. Her right hand crept to her throat and I heard her give a gasp.

The sensations I experienced in that moment of confrontation are difficult to convey. I was convinced that nothing of flesh and blood had entered that house in the hours I had been there. All the entrances were bolted-I had checked. I could not account for the phenomenon, or whatever it was, that had manifested itself, yet I refused to be convinced. I was unwilling to accept what my eyes were seeing and my rational faculties could not explain. She could not be a ghost.

I said, "Who are you?"

The figure swayed back as if startled. For a moment I thought she was going to close the attic door, but she remained staring at me, her hand still pressed to her throat. It was the face and form of a young woman, not more than twenty.

I asked, "Can you speak?"

She appeared to nod.

I said, "What are you doing here?"

She caught her breath. In a strange, half-whispered utterance she said, as if echoing my words, "Who are you?"

I took a step upward toward her. It evidently frightened her, for she backed away and became almost invisible in the shadowy interior of the attic room. I tried to dredge up some rea.s.suring words. "It's all right. Believe me, it's all right."

Then I twitched in surprise. Downstairs, the doorbell chimed. After eleven on Christmas Eve!

I said, "What on earth ...?"

The woman in white whimpered something I couldn't hear.

I tried to make light of it. "Santa, I expect."