Peter Lovesey - Murder on the Short List

“Where are the visitors?” I demanded.

“Sir, there’s a gentleman in the ballroom with Her Royal Highness.”

Fearful for Alix, I dashed in that direction, pursued by Knollys and Garrard. The moment I entered the ballroom I saw my darling wife standing in front of the Christmas tree with a brown-suited fellow holding a bowler hat.

“Don’t move, my man!” I shouted. “Alix, step away from him at once.”

To my amazement and confusion she simply laughed and said, “Oh, Bertie, don’t make an exhibition of yourself. This is Sergeant Cribb, the famous detective. Come and shake his hand.”

“What’s a detective doing in my house?”

“Detecting,” she said. “I invited him here. The presents for the servants haven’t arrived and I thought we should find out why. I was just explaining about the tree and our custom of giving presents on Christmas Eve.”

“Fine tree, sir,” Sergeant Cribb said.

Ignoring him, I crossed the room and addressed my wife. “You invited this man here without consulting me? I don’t want a police investigation. That’s the last thing we want after the year we’ve had.”

“He’s an ex-policeman, dear, and very discreet.”

“Retired on a modest pension, sir,” Cribb said. He didn’t look old apart from a few silver hairs, but policemen retire younger than most.

“And he comes highly recommended by the Chief Constable,” Alix said. “We have to deal with this matter expeditiously.”

“But you didn’t speak to me about this.”

“Because you were off doing other things. It’s such a busy time.”

I looked at Francis Knollys and rolled my eyes. “Well, Sergeant Cribb, what do you have to tell us apart from the fact that we have a fine tree?”

“I’d like to speak to the estate manager, sir.”

“To Hammond? He’s got nothing to do with it.”

There was a silence that would have done for a lying-in-state.

Eventually Cribb glanced towards Alix. She gestured to the footman. “Find Mr Hammond and tell him he’s wanted here.”

I said, “It’s the missing jewellery we’re exercised about, not the damned Christmas tree.”

“There may be a connection, sir,” Cribb said.

“And I’m a Dutchman.”

Presently Hammond made his entry. He was looking mightily perturbed, and I was perturbed, too, when I saw the state of his boots. Containing my displeasure, I gestured to Cribb to ask his questions.

“Fine tree,” he parroted.

“Thank you, sir,” Hammond said.

I told him he had no need to address Cribb as if he was a gentleman.

“I think it’s the biggest I’ve seen,” Cribb said.

Alix intervened to say it was a living tree still attached to its roots.

“Capital, ma’am,” Cribb said, and turned back to Hammond. “When I was being driven through the grounds I noticed a small group of evergreens not far from the carriage path. Was this tree dug from there?”

“Yes.”

“A home-grown tree. How charming.”

Alix lavished a sweet smile on Cribb. I was starting to doubt her loyalty.

“And now, Mr Hammond,” Cribb said, “I’m going to ask you to show me precisely where the tree was growing.”

“I can do that.”

“You’ll ruin your shoes,” Alix said. “The snow’s quite deep. Bertie, have you got some galoshes to protect Sergeant Cribb’s shoes?”

What next? I thought. Gritting my teeth, I clicked my fingers and sent a flunkey for enough overshoes for the four of us men. Alix elected not to come. She hates the cold.

Suitably attired, we left the house, Hammond leading. Before we’d gone a few yards Cribb left the party and trotted over to the cab still waiting near the entrance. Attached to the front below the driver’s seat was a spade.

“You might care to look at this, sir,” Cribb called out.

The insolence of the man. I know what a spade is. I’ve turned enough first sods in my time. But the other two went to look, so I joined them, not wishing to seem churlish.

Cribb said, “A necessary tool for a cabman in the depths of winter, a spade. You never know when you’ll need to dig yourself out.”

Then he held it horizontally towards me as if he was passing across a stuffed salmon for my inspection. “Take a close look at the dried mud attaching to the shoulder. I’ll pick some off for you.”

He scraped some off and I found myself constrained to look at fragments of dried mud lying in his palm.

“Do you see the pine needles?”

Now that he mentioned the fact, I did. I gave a nod.

“That’s all right, then,” Cribb said, taking back the spade and shouldering it like a rifle. “We’ll have a use for this, I think.”

Hammond had by now got some way ahead. We stepped out and caught up with him a short distance from the evergreen copse.

“Now, Mr Hammond,” Cribb said, “kindly show us precisely where the Christmas tree was growing.”

Hammond started to point and then drew back his hand and scratched his head instead. “Well, I’ll be jiggered.”

To borrow the words of the carol, the snow lay deep and crisp and even .

Even was the operative word.

“You dug out a large tree,” Cribb said to him, “so where’s the large hole?”

“Caught out, Mr Hammond,” I said. “In spite of all the instructions to the contrary, you sawed the thing off at the base.”

“I swear I didn’t, sir. It took six of us a morning and an afternoon to dig under the roots.”

“Perhaps you filled in the hole?” Knollys suggested.

“I wouldn’t do that. Not when the tree has to be put back after Twelfth Night. May I borrow that spade?”

He started scraping away the layer of snow. Below it, the ground was even, but the soil was soft. “Someone else filled it in.”

“Keep at it, Mr Hammond,” Cribb said. “Dig out the soft stuff.”

Hammond went at it with a will. We all had to stand back as the spadefuls of earth flew about us.

Cribb said, “Wait. What’s that dark material?”

“It’s fabric.” Hammond bent down and scraped with his fingers and unearthed a brown bowler hat.

“Just the beginning,” Cribb said. “Dig some more, Mr Hammond.”

In only a few minutes Hammond exclaimed, “Oh, my Lord.”

He’d uncovered a human hand and part of a sleeve of yellow and green tweed.

“Horace Digby, poor fellow,” Garrard said.

In the warmth of the house I treated them to hot punch. We’d left some gardeners outside to warm themselves by extracting the rest of the corpse from the hole.

I waited for Alix to join us, and then said, “This is all very remarkable, Sergeant Cribb, but it hasn’t brought back the missing jewels unless they’re in the hole as well.”

“No, they’re not, sir. I recovered them earlier. Excuse me a moment.” He left the room.

We were lost for words. We simply stared at each other until he returned carrying a valise and a large silver object that I recognised as an inkstand, Alix’s Christmas present.

“What’s that ugly thing?” Alix said.

“The murder weapon, ma’am,” Cribb said.

All my good intentions dashed in a couple of sentences.

“Then who is the murderer?”

“Gripper, the cabman,” Cribb said. “I have him cuffed, hand and foot. He’s quite secure, lying on the floor of his own cab. It was a crime of opportunity and it happened on the 21st, before the snow came. Digby got into his cab at Lynn station and said he wanted to be driven to Sandringham. It was pretty obvious that the valise contained something valuable. All the way here the cabman planned the robbery. Inside the gates where it was quiet, he stopped and told Digby to hand over the booty. Digby put up a fight, but the cabbie grabbed something heavy — and I think it was that silver object — and brained him with it. He may not have intended murder, but that’s what it became. It was his good luck that a hole big enough for a grave had been dug nearby. He dropped the body in and used his own spade to cover it with the excess soil beside the hole. That’s how he got the pine needles in the mud. And there was more good luck for him when the snow came, levelling everything.”