Carol-Lynn Waugh - The Twelve Crimes of Christmas

“I still think you should have done it my way, but it’s done now. Is that all?”

He nodded. “That’s all.”

She looked at me, and it took a second for me to realize that she was smiling at me. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to smile back, and did. She left the chair and came to me, extending a hand, and I arose and took it. She looked up at me.

“I would like to shake hands with Mr. Wolfe, but I know he doesn’t like to shake hands. You know, Mr. Goodwin, it must be a very great pleasure to work for a man as clever as Mr. Wolfe. So extremely clever. It has been very exciting to be here. Now I say good-by.”

She turned and went.

Robert Somerlott is a versatile writer who has published numerous novels and short stories under his own name and under several pen names, including two novels that were alternate selections of the Book-of-the-Month Club. His shorter fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, several college textbooks and in both the mystery-genre and “slick” magazines. Novels published under his own name include The Flamingos, The Inquisitor’s House, and most recently, Blaze.

Shortly after Mrs. Whistler retired from the stage, she discovered her true genius for escapades bordering on crime. But with modesty astounding in an actress, she has always managed to stay in the background. No one-except her son, Johnny Creighton-has ever suspected that Mrs. Whistler was the secret force behind several headline events that startled the country in the last few years.

For instance, millions of newspaper readers are aware that 267 animals staged a mass breakout from the St. Louis pound on Thanksgiving Day, 1959. Only Johnny Creighton knows that Mrs. Whistler engineered the escape. (The incident, headlined by newspapers as “Dog Days in Missouri,” triggered pound reform laws in that state.)

Johnny was also the only one to know every detail of how Mrs. Whistler brought the powerful MacTavish Department Store of Los Angeles to its knees in less than 24 hours. There exists no court transcript, and the only memento of this case is an unflattering mug shot of Mrs. Whistler taken at the Los Angeles jail. Despite the atrocious lighting, Mrs. Whistler looks exactly as she did in her farewell performance on Broadway as the artist’s mother in Arrangement in Gray, a role she became so identified with that she legally adopted the name of the character. In the photo she wears a dark dress; her white round collar is visible, but her lace cuffs are not. Her sweet expression of sublime patience was not marred by the ordeal she was suffering-an ordeal for which others would soon pay heavily.

Mrs. Whistler had no intention of getting involved in “The Affair of the Capricorn Brooch.” When she descended, unannounced, from the smoggy skies of Southern California on Friday, December 18, it was for the innocent purpose of spending the Christmas holiday with Johnny.

Still, the moment he heard the voice on the phone he had a premonition of trouble. Oddly enough, he was thinking about his mother when her call came through. He had been sitting in his two-by-four law office, daydreaming of pretty Joyce Gifford, who had almost, but not quite, agreed to marry him. How, he wondered, could he explain his mother to Joyce? Just then the phone rang.

“Johnny, dear,” said a gentle voice. “Surprise! It’s Mother.”

“Mother?” His first reaction was panic. “Where are you? What have you done?”

“I’m at the airport. I’ve come for Christmas.”

“Don’t make a move till I get there. And, Mother,” he pleaded, “don’t do anything!”

“Whatever do you mean, dear?” Mrs. Whistler was faintly reproachful.

As he battled through the freeway traffic, Johnny could not rid himself of the suspicion that his mother was up to something. But at the airport, and later in his apartment, her manner was so subdued that Johnny was totally unprepared for the events that followed. She’s getting old, he thought, she’s settling down at last. The idea brought relief-and a little sadness.

At 6:30 Joyce Gifford, her usually calm face white with anger, knocked at Johnny’s door.

Johnny greeted her with a quick hug. “Hi, darling. Merry Christmas!” He lowered his voice. “I want you to meet my mother. She just arrived from New York.”

In the living room an elderly lady was seated on the couch. Vainly, Joyce tried to remember where she’d seen her before-there was something hauntingly familiar about the black dress, the folded hands, the sad-sweet face.

“How do you do?” said the old lady. “I’m Mrs. Whistler.” Joyce nearly dropped her purse. “You’re upset, my dear,” she said. “I could tell the moment you came in.”

“Does it show that much? I’ve-I’ve had a horrible day!”

“Good Lord,” said Johnny, “what’s the matter?”

“Tomorrow I’m quitting my job at MacTavish’s. Mr. Schlag can find himself a secretary-if anybody alive can stand him! It was the most terrible scene! All over this poor pathetic woman they caught shoplifting.”

“Shoplifting?” Mrs. Whistler leaned forward. “Isn’t that interesting!”

Johnny saw the intent expression on his mother’s face. A danger signal flashed through him and he tried to interrupt. But it was too late.

“I just can’t tell you how horrible the whole thing was,” said Joyce.

“Try, my dear,” said Mrs. Whistler gently. “Try.”

During the first thirty-three years of its existence, MacTavish’s (“A Wee Penny Saved Is a Big Penny Earned”) had dealt with petty shoplifters in a routine way: first offenders were usually dismissed with threats of embarrassment. Otherwise respectable kleptomaniacs were delivered to their humiliated relatives. Suspected professionals were prosecuted relentlessly.

Then Dudley P. Schlag, nephew of a large stockholder, became manager, and things changed.

“Once a thief, always a thief!” he declared, beating his bony little fist on the desk top. He assumed personal charge of store security and would neglect any other duty for the pleasure of watching a terrified teen-ager squirm under his merciless, watery eye.

“There are no extenuating circumstances at MacTavish’s!” By political influence and exaggerated statistics he induced several local judges to cooperate in his crusade, and after each arrest Schlag called the newspapers to make sure the suspect was well publicized.

“He’s inhuman!” said Joyce Gifford, close to tears. “Of course, thieves should go to jail. But two weeks ago there was a teen-age girl-really a nice kid-who took a little piece of costume jewelry on a high-school dare. Mr. Schlag went to Juvenile Court himself and swore he’d seen her around the store several times-that this wasn’t really her first theft. And I’m sure that wasn’t true! A month ago they caught this old woman, a doctor’s wife. She’s been taking little things for years, and her husband always pays for them. She’s really pathetic. And Mr. Schlag had her taken to jail!”

Mrs. Whistler clucked sympathetically. “The quality of mercy is not strained,” she said.

“Today Miss Vought-she’s the meanest store detective-dragged in a woman who tried to take a cotton sweater from Infants’ Wear. Her name is Mrs. Blainey. She has an invalid husband, and she’s trying to support him and four children by doing domestic work. I just know she’d never stolen anything before. When Miss Vought searched her purse it was enough to make you cry. She had exactly forty-three cents. There was an unpaid gas bill and a notice that a mortgage payment on their house was overdue.”

“What happened to her?” asked Mrs. Whistler.