Elizabeth Duncan - A Killer's Christmas in Wales

Florence took off her glasses and contemplated the smudged lenses. “Really, Evelyn, I’m surprised at you. You have a big, kind heart, and to begrudge an elderly man who’s confined to a wheelchair a bit of pleasure on Christmas Day is just not like you.” She put her glasses back on and peered at Mrs. Lloyd over the top of them.

“Yes, Florence, you’re right. We must do everything we can to make him feel welcome. I wonder what he likes to drink.”

Victoria tied a pale green bow around a small parcel covered in shiny paper and tucked it under the small tree in Penny’s living room. “There,” she said, “that’s the last of them. Who’s it for?”

“It’s for you,” Penny replied with a grin.

“You didn’t!” Victoria exclaimed. “You’ve just had me wrap my own present? What kind of person does that?”

“It’s just a little something for the flat. It’s not your main present. You’ll see tomorrow. And anyway, you offered to make yourself useful, and the wrapping needed doing, so…”

Victoria took a sip of wine, sighed, and sat back in her chair.

“I must say, I thought you’d be spending Christmas Eve with Gareth, not here on your own.”

“I’m not on my own. You’re here.” She shrugged. “He did ask me if I fancied going away with him for Christmas, and then the murders happened, so we’re staying in town. He’s spending this evening with his son and daughter-in-law, and we’ll see each other tomorrow.”

She looked at her friend. “What about you? Do you miss having someone special in your life at this time of year?”

Victoria thought for a moment. “In a way, yes, I do. It can be difficult on your own. But you were alone for a few years before you met Gareth, so you’d know all about that.”

Penny nodded. “There was someone once, a long time ago. Another policeman, in fact. Tim. I still think of him, but it doesn’t hurt the way it used to.” They fell silent, each remembering the lovers’ ghosts of Christmases past. A few minutes later Victoria brought them back to the present.

“Are you all ready for the big day?”

“I think so. I’ve got everything in that Gwennie told me to get. She’s coming over early in the morning to put the turkey in the oven and start on the vegetables. She said she’d be here about eight. I gave her a key so she could let herself in. She said it would be very helpful if I could peel and parboil the potatoes and set the table tonight.” She raised a hopeful eyebrow.

“Right. You set the table, I’ll start on the potatoes,” Victoria said, hauling herself out of the chair and heading for the kitchen. “I hate these winter nights when it gets dark so early,” she said a few minutes later as she picked up another potato. “It always feels so much later than it is.”

Beside her, Penny reached into the cupboard and with her fingers counted out the number of plates she needed.

“How many?” Victoria asked.

“You, me, Gareth, Bethan, and Jimmy. Five.”

“And Gwennie. Six.”

“Gwennie said she’d walk to church with me but will sit with her sister and brother-in-law. And she said she won’t eat with us. She prefers to eat afterward in the kitchen, by herself.”

“Yes, I can see that. It’ll be what she got used to at the Hall.” Victoria dropped another peeled potato into the pot.

Penny awoke Christmas morning to the sound of someone moving about downstairs. At first panicked, thinking she was being burgled, she started up in bed. When she realized it must be Gwennie, who had let herself in with the key Penny had given her, arriving to start work on the lunch, she shrank back into her comforting bedclothes. She checked the time on her bedside clock. The luminescent numbers winked back at her: 7:34. She would enjoy a few more minutes in her warm bed, going over all the things that still needed doing, and then…

An hour later she groaned and sat up, just as Gwennie knocked on her door.

“You’d better think about getting up, Miss Penny, if you want to make morning service on time,” she said, opening the door slightly. “I’ve just put the coffee on. Would you like a boiled egg?”

“That would be great, thanks, Gwennie,” Penny replied, and then added, “Happy Christmas.”

“And to you,” called Gwennie from halfway down the stairs.

The damp fogginess of the last two days had dissipated, replaced by a crisp, sunlit morning.

Frost glittered on the stone fences and added sparkle to the holly bushes in the hedgerows, bursting with red bright berries displayed against their backdrop of glossy, pointed leaves. There had been an abundance of holly berries this year, and the townsfolk who had strolled along the country lanes over the past few days, taking small cuttings off the holly to adorn their Christmas puddings, had made not the slightest dent in their numbers.

Warmly dressed against the cold, Penny and Gwennie walked together through the quiet streets. Smoke from wood and coal fires curled from the chimneys, wafting skyward and drifting up and away, then disappearing into a bright blue sky. They parted company on the steps of the church, as Gwennie left to sit with her sister and brother-in-law and Penny, meeting Victoria, made her way to a pew on the right side of the church. At Penny’s suggestion they chose a pew near the back, Penny turning occasionally to see if Davies and Bethan had arrived. She smiled as Mrs. Lloyd made her entrance, Florence trailing along behind her like a doleful bridesmaid.

She waved to Davies when she spotted him with Bethan and Jimmy at the entrance to the church and then slid along in her seat so they could squeeze in.

Everyone seemed to arrive at once, and soon the church was as full as Penny had ever seen it. Bronwyn Evans took her place in the front row and Reverend Thomas Evans appeared in front of them.

“ Bore da, bawb. Nadolig Llawen, ” he greeted them in Welsh. “Good morning, everyone. Merry Christmas.”

The service began with voices raised in joyful song as the familiar words of a timeless carol rang through the church.

When the rustling of the congregation settling into their seats had subsided, Reverend Evans began his Christmas sermon.

“I was browsing the Internet the other day,” Reverend Evans began, “and I came across a website that promised to help me write a Christmas sermon in just a few minutes that would sound as if I’d spent a lot of time on it. And that got me thinking about how we do things today. Everything has to be fast. We want a recipe for a five-minute meal made from three ingredients that looks as if it took a Cordon Bleu chef all day to prepare. If we can find the time to read at all, we are looking for a book with well-developed characters and a complicated plot that still promises to be a fast, easy read. We have learned to be multitaskers. We talk on the phone while we draft an e-mail. We eat and text while we drive.

“So I would ask you on this beautiful Christmas morning to consider those three wise men who made that journey to Bethlehem two thousand years ago and…”

Penny’s attention drifted away. She shifted in her seat and gazed slowly around the church. I wonder if this person is here this morning, she thought, this person who killed two people. She spotted a few members of her art group, sitting with their husbands and grown-up children. One reached over to comfort a bored grandchild who struggled to get down out of his father’s tight hold. Her eyes moved on to Huw Bowen, the bank manager, staring stiffly ahead while his wife, Glynnis, stifled a yawn behind a black-gloved hand. I wonder how her manicure’s holding up, Penny thought. Behind the Bowens, her friend Alwynne reached over to pick up a hymnbook and began leafing through it, turning the pages slowly. When she reached the place she was looking for, she stuck a marker between the pages and returned the book to the rack in front of her. She smiled at her husband then turned her face toward the raised lecturn where Reverend Evans was wrapping up his sermon.