Марджери Аллингем - Mystery for Christmas and Other Stories

All this was important, for the room had been searched before the meeting and found safe. So the bomb must have been brought in by a member of the Board. It certainly hadn’t been Traffic Manager Brassbottom who had saved Santa, and probably not Thumbskin. That left Director General Hardnoggin and Vice-President Bandylegs...

“Any luck checking out that personal phone call Hardnoggin received just before the bomb went off?” asked Bigtoes.

Charity shook her golden locks. “The switchboard operator fainted right after she took the call. She’s still out cold.”

Leaving the Toyworks, Bigtoes walked quickly down a corridor lined with expensive boutiques and fashionable restaurants. On one wall of Mademoiselle Fanny’s Salon of Haute Couture some SHAFT elf had written: Santa, Si! Hardnoggin, No! On one wall of the Hotel St. Nicholas some Hardnoggin backer had written: Support Your Local Director General! Bigtoes was no philosopher and the social unrest that was racking the North Pole confused him. Once, in disguise, he had attended a SHAFT rally in The Underwood, that vast and forbidding cavern of phosphorescent stinkhorn and hanging roots. Gathered beneath an immense picture of Santa were hippie elves with their beards tied in outlandish knots, matron-lady elves in sensible shoes, tweedy elves and green-collar elves.

Crouchback himself had made a surprise appearance, coming out of hiding to deliver his now famous “Plastic Lives!” speech. “Hardnoggin says plastic is inanimate. But I say that plastic lives! Plastic infects all it touches and spreads like crab grass in the innocent souls of little children. Plastic toys make plastic girls and boys!” Crouchback drew himself up to his full six inches. “I say: quality — quality now!” The crowd roared his words back at him. The meeting closed with all the elves joining hands and singing “We Shall Overcome.” It had been a moving experience...

As he expected, Bigtoes found Bandylegs at the Hotel St. Nicholas bar, staring morosely down into a thimble-mug of ale. Fergus Bandylegs was a dapper, fast-talking elf with a chestnut beard which he scented with lavender. As Vice-President of Santa Enterprises, Inc., he was in charge of financing the entire Toyworks operation by arranging for Santa to appear in advertising campaigns, by collecting royalties on the use of the jolly old man’s name, and by leasing Santa suits to department stores.

Bandylegs ordered a drink for the Security Chief. Their friendship went back to Rory Bigtoes’ jacksmith days when Bandylegs had been a master sledwright. “These are topsy-turvy times, Rory,” said Bandylegs. “First there’s that bomb and now Santa’s turned down the Jolly Roger cigarette account. For years now they’ve had this ad campaign showing Santa slipping a carton of Jolly Rogers into Christmas stockings. But not any more. ‘Smoking may be hazardous to your health,’ says Santa.”

“Santa knows best,” said Bigtoes.

“Granted,” said Bandylegs. “But counting television residuals, that’s a cool two million sugar plums thrown out the window.” (At the current rate of exchange there are 4.27 sugar plums to the U.S. dollar.) “Hardnoggin’s already on my back to make up the loss. Nothing must interfere with his grand plan for automating the Toyworks. So it’s off to Madison Avenue again. Sure I’ll stay at the Plaza and eat at the Chambord, but I’ll still get homesick.”

The Vice-President smiled sadly. “Do you know what I used to do? There’s this guy who stands outside Grand Central Station selling those little mechanical men you wind up and they march around-1 used to march around with them. It made me feel better somehow. But now they remind me of Hardnoggin. He’s a machine, Rory, and he wants to make all of us into machines.”

“What about the bomb?” asked Bigtoes.

Bandylegs shrugged. “Acme Toy, I suppose.”

Bigtoes shook his head. Acme Toy hadn’t slipped an elf spy into the North Pole for months. “What about Crouchback?”

“No,” said Bandylegs firmly. “I’ll level with you, Rory. I had a get-together with Crouchback just last week. He wanted to get my thoughts on the quality-versus-quantity question and on the future of the Toyworks. Maybe I’m wrong, but I got the impression that a top-level shake-up is in the works with Crouchback slated to become the new Director General. In any event I found him a very perceptive and understanding elf.”

Bandylegs smiled and went on, “Darby Short-ribs was there, prattling on against dolls. As I left, Crouchback shook my hand and whispered, ‘Every movement needs its lunatic fringe, Bandylegs. Shortribs is ours.’” Bandylegs lowered his voice. “I’m tired of the grown-up ratrace, Rory. I want to get back to the sled shed and make Blue Streaks and High Flyers again. I’ll never get there with Hardnoggin and his modern ideas at the helm.”

Bigtoes pulled at his beard. It was common knowledge that Crouchback had an elf spy on the Board. The reports on the meetings in The Midnight Elf were just too complete. Was it his friend Bandylegs? But would Bandylegs try to kill Santa?

That brought Bigtoes back to Hardnoggin again. But cautiously. As Security Chief, Bigtoes had to be objective. Yet he yearned to prove Hardnoggin the villain. This, as he knew, was because of the beautiful Carlotta Peachfuzz, beloved by children all around the world. As the voice of the Peachy Pippin Doll, Carlotta was the most envied female at the North Pole, next to Mr. Santa. Girl elves followed her glamorous exploits in the press. Male elves had Peachy Pippin Dolls propped beside their beds so they could fall asleep with Carlotta’s sultry voice saying: “Hello, I’m your talking Peachy Pippin Doll. I love you. I love you. I love you...”

But once it had just been Rory and Carlotta, Charlotta and Rory — until the day Bigtoes had introduced her to Hardnoggin. “You have a beautiful voice, Miss Peachfuzz,” the Director General had said. “Have you ever considered being in the talkies?” So Carlotta had dropped Bigtoes for Hardnoggin and risen to stardom in the talking-doll industry. But her liaison with Director General Hardnoggin had become so notorious that a dutiful Santa — with Mrs. Santa present — had had to read the riot act about executive hanky-panky. Hardnoggin had broken off the relationship. Disgruntled, Carlotta had become active with SHAFT, only to leave after a violent argument with Shortribs over his anti-doll position.

Today Bigtoes couldn’t care less about Carlotta. But he still had that old score to settle with the Director General.

Leaving the fashionable section behind, Bigtoes turned down Apple Alley, a residential corridor of modest, old-fashioned houses with thatched roofs and carved beams. Here the mushrooms were in full bloom — the stropharia, inocybe, and chanterelle — dotting the corridor with indigo, vermilion, and many yellows. Elf householders were out troweling in their gardens. Elf wives gossiped over hedges of gypsy pholiota. Somewhere an old elf was singing one of the ancient work songs, accompanying himself on a concertina. Until Director General Hardnoggin discovered that it slowed down production, the elves had always sung while they worked, beating out the time with their hammers; now the foremen passed out song sheets and led them in song twice a day. But it wasn’t the same thing.

Elf gardeners looked up, took their pipes from their mouths, and watched Bigtoes pass. They regarded all front-office people with suspicion — even this big elf with the candy-strip rosette of the Order of Santa, First Class, in his buttonhole.

Bigtoes had won the decoration many years ago when he was a young Security elf, still wet behind his pointed ears. Somehow on that fateful day, Billy Roy Scoggins, President of Acme Toy, had found the secret entrance to the North Pole and appeared suddenly in parka and snowshoes, demanding to see Santa Claus, Santa arrived, jolly and smiling, surrounded by Bigtoes and the other Security elves. Scoggins announced he had a proposition “from one hard-headed businessman to another.”