Марджери Аллингем - Mystery for Christmas and Other Stories

Bob Cratchit discovered Ebenezer Scrooge the next morning, slumped back against his chair, and exclaimed, “Oh, my God!” After recovering from the shock, the short, skinny clerk pulled a coarse cap over his brittle hair and went to notify the police. Within the hour an officer arrived at the countinghouse, buttoned up in a heavy blue coat and blue vested suit. Cratchit showed him in. Inspector Ignatius Grabbe was a narrow-shouldered man with a wide red mustache and tiny, black, suspicious eyes. As the inspector snooped and sniffed around the chamber and cell for several minutes, the clerk, still shaken, watched in silence, his eyes avoiding the heap of humanity at the desk.

Grabbe, who was rather vain when it came to his powers of deduction, noted out loud that the stiffness of the deceased’s skin indicated he had been dead for some hours. “It would appear,” the inspector theorized, “that your employer had stopped by his office last night to pick up something important he had forgotten.”

“What could he have forgotten, sir?” Cratchit asked, knowing that his master had possessed a powerful memory.

“Well, it could be almost anything,” Inspector Grabbe hedged, eyeing the cane in the corner. “How dependent was he on that stick?”

“Oh, that belonged to his partner, Jacob Marley, who is long dead,” Cratchit said with a quaver in his throat.

“I see,” Grabbe grumbled. “Well, then, perhaps it was for some vital business papers.”

“On Christmas night? I should think not.”

Annoyed at being foiled, the inspector declared irascibly: “Certainly the deceased did not intend to stop for very long, for he hadn’t removed his coat and the ashes in the stove are quite cold.”

Cratchit refrained from mentioning that Scrooge hated to burn his coal.

Having finally silenced the clerk, Grabbe proceeded with his investigation. He lifted the rusty lid of a small square box on the desk, leafed through a ledger, opened a drawer, flipped through a stack of bills. Then he noticed that the daily calendar was turned to December 26, and that there were no appointments listed. “Hmmm.”

Cratchit’s eyebrows rose, but his lips remained shut.

Now the inspector looked closely at the latch on the window, which had rusted solid from years of non-use. “Have you keys of your own to these rooms?”

“No one but his own self was permitted to possess keys.”

“How did you gain entry this morning, Mr. Cratchit?”

“Upon my arrival the door was unbolted.”

Inspector Grabbe looked at Cratchit sadly. “Did you and your employer have... harmonious relations?”

Surprised by the directness of the question, the clerk stammered, “Why only yesterday Mr. Scrooge sent a giant turkey to my home for Christmas dinner.”

“Would that be the one that had been filling out the window of the poulterer’s on the next street?”

“The very bird,” Cratchit conceded.

A low whistle emitted from the inspector’s lips, and he suddenly did a right-face turn on his heel and moved beside the slumped form of Ebenezer Scrooge, looking over the deceased’s head, neck, face. Apparently dissatisfied with his findings, he began reviewing the objects on the desk again. At last he stopped, and put one finger of thought under his chin. The chamber was dense with silence for a few moments.

“Is anything wrong?” Cratchit asked guardedly.

“Not precisely, Mr. Cratchit, but I do find it odd that the cash box is empty.”

“Mr. Scrooge would never leave cash in the office. Never.”

The conviction with which this statement was delivered did not go unnoticed, and the inspector, taking a deep breath of frustration, suddenly felt compelled make some display of conclusiveness. “It would appear,” he proposed grandly, “it would appear the gentleman known as Ebenezer Scrooge returned to his office to look up his appointment calendar for the following day, suffered an internal malfunction, and expired in his chair.”

“Poor, poor Mr. Scrooge,” said Cratchit.

Because the clerk had not seemed terribly impressed with the mental process that had led to his deduction, the inspector added, “Of course, there is the lamp to consider.”

“The lamp?”

“Either the oil should have all burned out,” observed the inspector, “or it should have been lit.” At this moment he whipped out the burnt match. “Voila!”

His eyes widening at this new evidence, Cratchit said, “Is it possible a draft had blown it out, sir?”

“Anything is possible,” Grabbe admitted, raising one sharp eyebrow doubtfully.

The inspector did an abrupt left-face turn on his heel, and resumed nosing about the premises. But it was clear to Cratchit, who stood hard by in modest silence, that no new evidence was being uncovered. At long last two men wearing white gloves and white faces arrived at Scrooge & Marley. Without a word they loaded the remains of Ebenezer Scrooge onto a wooden plank and carried their leaden cargo, with some unsteadiness, down the front steps. Here the body was dumped into a wooden box supported by four iron wheels with wooden spokes. Along the street the men pushed their earthly burden, as the curious drew closer to learn which of their number had been called to account for his life. The coarse gray shroud flapped grimly in the smoky breeze, and with a distinct smear of disappointment in his tight face, Inspector Ignatius Grabbed joined in the solemn procession.

At the doorway of the countinghouse stood Cratchit, head slightly bowed, in respect. But something caught his eye. Across the way, the pale visage of Gladnought Pennerpinch had appeared in a window, watching the proceedings intensely; and even at that distance, or so it seemed to Cratchit, there was an expression of pleasure discernible upon the wizened face of Scrooge’s fiercest competitor.

For all the inspector’s deductions, Bob Cratchit had his own theory. When he’d arrived at the countinghouse, as he’d revealed to the police, the door had been left unlocked. What he did not mention was that this was extremely unlike his master. Moreover, Scrooge’s hand was clenched tightly about Jacob Marley’s cane, and lying on the blotter was the collection note on the Jonathan Wurdlewart account. This debt, Cratchit knew, was due on Christmas night; this debt would ruin a man and his family. And most telling of all was the smudge of rust that Cratchit had noticed across the old sinner’s chest, as if he’d been struck by a blunt metal object. Cratchit quickly came to some conclusions, and then he did something strange: The clerk unpried Mr. Scrooge’s fingers from the cane and stood it in the corner, and placed the Wurdlewart bill in the stove and set it afire. He mixed the new ashes with the old, and left the door of the office ajar a few minutes to clear the scent of smoke. Finally he brushed away the rust on Scrooge’s coat. Only then did Cratchit go to the police. But he never mentioned these clues to them, nor to anyone else — not even to Mrs. Cratchit. After the coroner had reviewed the corpse at the London morgue, and following a period of customary bureaucratic procrastination, the incident went down in police records as “Death by natural causes.” When this news reached Cratchit, the humble clerk thought: You’re not so smart as you think, Inspector Grabbe.

Upon the death of Jacob Marley seven years hence, the countinghouse of Scrooge & Marley had passed into the hands of Ebenezer Scrooge, although he’d never gotten around to painting over Marley’s name on the sign. Now that Scrooge was gone, these assets, considerably greater by 1844, became the lawful property of the only blood survivor the authorities could locate. However, Scrooge’s nephew Fred had no talents or interests in this direction, nor any wish to benefit from the misery of others. Not long after his uncle had been laid out and returned to his Maker, the young man visited the bare, chilly abode of Mr. Bob Cratchit and his family. The children were frail and seemed frightened, and one of them, he noticed, leaned on a crutch. Little Mrs. Cratchit, too poor to offer a cup of tea to their guest, said not a word as she sat woodenly on the rough-hewn chair in a black dress washed so often it had turned gray.