Abigail Browining - Murder Most Merry

Professional thief Nick Velvet welcomes the holiday spirit when he attempts “The Theft of the Christmas Stocking,” by Edward D. Hoch, while Thomas Larry Adcock’s “Christmas Cop” stumbles across a gang of criminals who understand that it is better to give than to receive.

In a trio of tales featuring the bespectacled Mr. Albert Campion, Margery Allingham explores the darker side of the human spirit and lifts it into the light. “On Christmas Day in the Morning,” an elderly woman embraces the enduring love and promise of Christmas in the face of life’s tragedies. When there’s “Murder Under the Mistletoe,” an old acquaintance of Campion’s draws on his expertise to solve an impossible crime. And, “The Case is Altered” on holiday in the country, when Campion explores a series of peculiar events.

From the first perplexing and then intriguing “Supper With Miss Shivers,” by Peter Lovesey, to the “Christmas Party” with a twist by Martin Werner, to “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” classic by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, here are Christmas crimes every mystery reader will love to unwrap, one clue at a time.

Abigail Browning April 2002

A WINTER’S TALE – Ann Cleeves

In the hills there had been snow for five days, the first real snow of the winter. In town it had turned to rain, bitter and unrelenting, and in Otterbridge it had seemed to be dark all day. As Ramsay drove out of the coastal plain and began the climb up Cheviot the clouds broke and there was a shaft of sunshine which reflected blindingly on the snow. For days he had been depressed by the weather and the gaudy festivities of the season, but as the cloud lifted he felt suddenly more optimistic.

Hunter, sitting hunched beside him. remained gloomy. It was the Saturday before Christmas and he had better things to do. He always left his shopping until the last minute—he enjoyed being part of the crowd in Newcastle. Christmas meant getting pissed in the heaving pubs on the Big Market, sharing drinks with tipsy secretaries who seemed to spend the last week of work in a continuous office party. It meant wandering up Northumberland Street where children queued to peer in at the magic of Fenwick’s window and listening to the Sally Army band playing carols at the entrance to Eldon Square. It had nothing to do with all this space and the bloody cold. Like a Roman stationed on Hadrian’s Wall. Hunter thought the wilderness was barbaric.

Ramsay said nothing. The road had been cleared of snow but was slippery, and driving took concentration. Hunter was itching to get at the wheel—he had been invited to a party in a club in Blyth and it took him as long as a teenage girl to get ready for a special evening out.

Ramsay turned carefully off the road, across a cattle grid, and onto a track.

“Bloody hell!” Hunter said. “Are we going to get up there?”

“The farmer said it was passable. He’s been down with a tractor.”

“I’d better get the map,” Hunter said miserably. “I suppose we’ve got a grid reference. I don’t fancy getting lost out here.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” Ramsay said. “I’ve been to the house before.”

Hunter did not ask about Ramsay’s previous visit to Blackstoneburn. The inspector rarely volunteered information about his social life or friends. And apart from an occasional salacious curiosity about Ramsay’s troubled marriage and divorce, Hunter did not care. Nothing about the inspector would have surprised him.

The track no longer climbed but crossed a high and empty moor. The horizon was broken by a dry stone wall and a derelict barn, but otherwise there was no sign of habitation. Hunter felt increasingly uneasy. Six geese flew from a small reservoir to circle overhead and settle back once the car had passed.

“Greylags,” Ramsay said. “Wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t bloody know.” Hunter had not been able to identify them even as geese. And I don’t bloody care, he thought.

The sun was low in the sky ahead of them. Soon it would be dark. They must have driven over an imperceptible ridge because suddenly, caught in the orange sunlight, there was a house, grey, small-windowed, a fortress of a place surrounded by byres and outbuildings.

“That’s it, is it?” Hunter said, relieved. It hadn’t, after all, taken so long. The party wouldn’t warm up until the pubs shut. He would make it in time.

“No,” Ramsay said. “That’s the farm. It’s another couple of miles yet.”

He was surprised by the pleasure he took in Hunter’s discomfort, and a little ashamed. He thought his relationship with his sergeant was improving. Yet it wouldn’t do Hunter any harm, he thought, to feel anxious and out of place. On his home ground he was intolerably confident.

The track dipped to a ford. The path through the water was rocky and the burn was frozen at the edges. Ramsay accelerated carefully up the bank and as the back wheels spun he remembered his previous visit to Blackstoneburn. It had been high summer, the moor scorched with drought, the burn dried up almost to a trickle. He had thought he would never come to the house again.

As they climbed away from the ford they saw the Black Stone, surrounded by open moor. It was eight feet high, truly black with the setting sun behind it. throwing a shadow onto the snow.

Hunter stared and whistled under his breath but said nothing. He would not give his boss the satisfaction of asking for information. The information came anyway. Hunter thought Ramsay could have been one of those guides in bobble hats and walking boots who worked at weekends for the National Park.

“It’s a part of a circle of prehistoric stones,” the inspector said. “Even if there weren’t any snow you wouldn’t see the others at this distance. The bracken’s grown over them.” He seemed lost for a moment in memory. “The house was named after the stone, of course. There’s been a dwelling on this site since the fourteenth century.”

“A bloody daft place to put a house,” Hunter muttered. “If you ask me....”

They looked down into a valley onto an L-shaped house built around a flagged yard, surrounded by windblown trees and shrubs.

“According to the farmer,” Ramsay said, “the dead woman wasn’t one of the owner’s family....”

“So what the hell was she doing here?” Hunter demanded. The emptiness made him belligerent. “It’s not the sort of place you’d stumble on by chance.”

“It’s a holiday cottage,” Ramsay said. “Of sorts. Owned by a family from Otterbridge called Shaftoe. They don’t let it out commercially but friends know that they can stay here.... The strange thing is that the farmer said there was no car....”

The track continued up the hill and had, Hunter supposed, some obscure agricultural use. Ramsay turned off it down a potholed drive and stopped in the yard, which because of the way the wind had been blowing was almost clear of snow. A dirty green Land Rover was already parked there, and as they approached a tall, bearded man got out and stood impassively, waiting for them to emerge from the warmth of their car. The sun had disappeared and the air was icy.

“Mr. Helms.” The inspector held out his hand. “I’m Ramsay. Northumbria Police.”

“Aye,” the man said. “Well, I’d not have expected it to be anyone else.”

“Can we go in?” Hunter demanded. “It’s freezing out here.”

Without a word the farmer led them to the front of the house. The wall was half covered with ivy and already the leaves were beginning to be tinged with frost. The front door led directly into a living room. In a grate the remains of a fire smouldered, but there was little warmth. The three men stood awkwardly just inside the room.