Carol-Lynn Waugh - The Twelve Crimes of Christmas

He hung up quickly as Johnny entered the office, followed by a smiling Joyce Gifford and a tense Miss Vought.

Taking the phone, Johnny dialed a number. “Police Headquarters? Missing Property, please… Yes, I’m calling about a black leather purse with identification for a Mrs. Whistler… Oh, it’s been turned in? Fine!”

Johnny smiled at the store manager. “It was turned in an hour ago. By a child-a mere street urchin. A touching development, I think.”

“Lemme talk to them!” Schlag snatched the phone. “That purse-is there a store sales slip in it?” During the moment’s pause the receiver trembled against Schlag’s ash-colored ear. “Yes? From Teague’s? For $8.85?” His voice sank to a hopeless whisper. “Officer, at the bottom of that slip has a special tax been added…like for jewelry.”

Fifteen seconds later the phone was in its cradle and Dudley P. Schlag had collapsed in his swivel chair.

Johnny Creighton spoke softly but menacingly. “No doubt you’ll soon learn that Mrs. Whistler reported the theft of her purse. Perhaps the officers didn’t report to headquarters immediately. And I’m sure a clerk at Teague’s will remember Mrs. Whistler’s buying a brooch this morning. We are charging you with false arrest and imprisonment, slander, physical assault-”

“Assault? No one touched her!”

“You’re lying!” Joyce Gifford slammed her notebook shut. “You both attacked her! I saw the whole brutal thing. You twisted her arm until she screamed and Mr. Schlag tried to kick her. It’s a wonder the poor old lady isn’t dead!” She stepped close to Johnny. “And I’ll swear to that, Mr…is it Leighton?”

At 6:10 four people sat in Schlag’s office. Joyce Gifford was not present. She had left MacTavish’s, never to return. Next to the store manager was Walter Matson, legal counsel for MacTavish’s. Johnny Creighton was seated beside Mrs. Whistler, whose hands were folded in her lap. A faraway look on her sweet face revealed signs of recent suffering.

Johnny was concluding his remarks. “On Monday we will sue for five hundred thousand dollars. Mrs. Whistler will be an appealing plaintiff, don’t you think?”

“Five hundred thousand!” Attorney Matson’s face was faintly purple. “You’re out of your mind!”

“I agree.” Mrs. Whistler put a gentle hand on Johnny’s arm. “Let’s end this unpleasantness without a lot of fuss. I’ll drop this whole thing in exchange for two little favors. I’ve been through a shocking experience. And I hate to say it, but it’s entirely your fault, Mr. Schlag. So I expect MacTavish’s to pay me six thousand four hundred and eight dollars and eighty-five cents. Also, I met a charming woman today-in jail, of all places. Her name is Mrs. Blainey, and-”

“A shoplifter!” Schlag interrupted. “We’ve got a confession.”

“You could drop the charges,” said Mrs. Whistler. “I just couldn’t be happy knowing she was in prison.” Mrs. Whistler smiled brightly. “And when I’m unhappy, only one thing consoles me. Money-lots of it. Five hundred thousand dollars of it.”

“Relax, Dudley,” said the lawyer. “You’ve had it.”

Joyce met them at the door of the apartment. She threw her arms first around Mrs. Whistler, then around Johnny. “You were just wonderful,” she said. “Johnny, I never saw you like that before!”

Johnny blushed modestly. “Routine,” he said.

They celebrated in a small candlelit restaurant. Johnny raised his glass. “Merry Christmas for the Blainey family! Sixty-four hundred will pay off the mortgage on their house.”

Mrs. Whistler nodded. “And I’m getting back the eight eighty-five I spent for that dreadful brooch this morning.” She frowned. “Oh, dear! I forgot about the rent for the Santa costume.”

“What Santa costume?” Joyce asked. But Johnny quickly changed the subject.

Dorothy Leigh Sayers was perhaps the best English mystery writer of the 1920s. She invented a sort of crossbreed between the novel and the detective story. Lord Peter Wimsey had his debut in 1923, in Whose Body. His popularity was firmly established by Sayers’s second book (1926), Clouds of Witness.

A long list of Wimsey stories, two non-Wimsey mysteries and three excellent anthologies are evidence that Miss Sayers was an expert in the field of crime literature. She never thought much, however, of her mystery career, preferring to pursue her real interest, religious (Church-of-England) literature. In 1947 she announced that she would write no more detective stories.

Sir Septimus Shale was accustomed to assert his authority once in the year, and once only. He allowed his young and fashionable wife to fill his house with diagrammatic furniture made of steel, to collect advanced artists and antigrammatical poets, to believe in cocktails and relativity and to dress as extravagantly as she pleased; but he did insist on an old-fashioned Christmas. He was a simple-hearted man who really liked plum pudding and cracker mottoes, and he could not get it out of his head that other people, “at bottom,” enjoyed these things also. At Christmas, therefore, he firmly retired to his country house in Essex, called in the servants to hang holly and mistletoe upon the cubist electric fittings, loaded the steel sideboard with delicacies from Fortnum & Mason, hung up stockings at the heads of the polished walnut bedsteads, and even, on this occasion only, had the electric radiators removed from the modernist grates and installed wood fires and a Yule log. He then gathered his family and friends about him, filled them with as much Dickensian good fare as he could persuade them to swallow, and, after their Christmas dinner, set them down to play “Charades” and “Clumps” and “Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral” in the drawing-room, concluding these diversions by “Hide-and-Seek” in the dark all over the house. Because Sir Septimus was a very rich man, his guests fell in with this invariable program, and if they were bored, they did not tell him so.

Another charming and traditional custom which he followed was that of presenting to his daughter Margharita, a pearl on each successive birthday-this anniversary happening to coincide with Christmas Eve. The pearls now numbered twenty, and the collection was beginning to enjoy a certain celebrity and had been photographed in the Society papers. Though not sensationally large-each one being about the size of a marrow-fat pea-the pearls were of very great value. They were of exquisite color and perfect shape and matched to a hair’s-weight. On this particular Christmas Eve, the presentation of the twenty-first pearl had been the occasion of a very special ceremony. There was a dance and there were speeches. On the Christmas night, following, the more restricted family party took place, with the turkey and the Victorian games. There were eleven guests in addition to Sir Septimus and Lady Shale and their daughter, nearly all related or connected to them in some way: John Shale, a brother with his wife and their son and daughter, Henry and Betty; Betty’s fiancé, Oswald Truegood a young man with parliamentary ambitions; George Comphrey, a cousin of Lady Shale’s, aged about thirty and known as a man about town; Lavinia Prescott, asked on George’s account; Joyce Trivett, asked on Henry Shale’s account; Richard and Beryl Dennison, distant relations of Lady Shale, who lived a gay and expensive life in town on nobody precisely knew what resources; and Lord Peter Wimsey, asked, in a touching spirit of unreasonable hope, on Margharita’s account. There were also, of course, William Norgate, secretary to Sir Septimus, and Miss Tomkins, secretary to Lady Shale, who had to be there because, without their calm efficiency, the Christmas arrangements could not have been carried through.