Abigail Browining - Murder Most Merry

Preen hesitated, opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it. Lance looked after his retreating figure for some little time before he returned to his friend.

“Who wrote that blinking note?” he demanded.

“He did, of course.” said Campion brutally. “He wanted to see the report but was making absolutely sure that young Groome took all the risks of being found with it.”

“Preen wrote the note,” Lance repeated blankly.

“Well, naturally,” said Campion absently. “That was obvious as soon as the report appeared in the picture. He was the only man in the place with the necessary special information to make use of it.”

Lance made no comment. He pulled his coat collar more closely about his throat and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

All the same the artist was not quite satisfied, for, later still, when Campion was sitting in his dressing gown writing a note at one of the little escritoires which Florence so thoughtfully provided in her guest bedrooms, he came padding in again and stood warming himself before the fire.

“Why?” he demanded suddenly. “Why did I get the invitation?”

“Oh, that was a question of luggage,” Campion spoke over his shoulder.

“That bothered me at first, but as soon as we fixed it onto Preen that little mystery became blindingly clear. Do you remember falling into the carriage this afternoon? Where did you put your elegant piece of gent’s natty suitcasing? Over young Groome’s head. Preen saw it from the corridor and assumed that the chap was sitting under his own bag ! He sent his own man over here with the note, told him not to ask for Peter by name but to follow the nice new pigskin suitcase upstairs.”

Lance nodded regretfully. “Very likely,” he said sadly. “Funny thing. I was sure it was the girl.”

After a while he came over to the desk. Campion put down his pen and indicated the written sheet.

“Dear Groome,” it ran, “I enclose a little matter that I should burn forthwith. The package you left in the inglenook is still there, right at the back on the left-hand side, cunningly concealed under a pile of logs. It has not been seen by anyone who could possibly understand it. If you nipped over very early this morning you could return it to its appointed place without any trouble. If I may venture a word of advice, it is never worth it.”

The author grimaced. “It’s a bit avuncular,” he admitted awkwardly, “but what else can I do? His light is still on, poor chap. I thought I’d stick it under his door.”

Lance was grinning wickedly. “That’s fine,” he murmured. “The old man does his stuff for reckless youth. There’s just the signature now and that ought to be as obvious as everything else has been to you. I’ll write it for you. ‘Merry Christmas. Love from Santa Claus.’ “ “You win,” said Mr. Campion.

CHRISTMAS COP – Thomas Larry Adcock

By the second week of December, when they light up the giant fir tree behind the statue of a golden Prometheus overlooking the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center, Christmas in New York has got you by the throat.

Close to five hundred street-corner Santas (temporarily sober and none too happy about it) have been ringing bells since the day after Thanksgiving; the support pillars on Macy’s main selling floor have been dolled up like candy canes since Hallowe’en; the tipping season arrives in the person of your apartment-house super, all smiles and open-palmed and suddenly available to fix the leaky pipes you’ve complained about since July; total strangers insist not only that you have a nice day but that you be of good cheer on top of it; and your Con Ed bill says HAPPY HOLIDAYS at the top of the page in a festive red-and-green dot-matrix.

In addition, New York in December is crawling with boosters, dippers, yokers, smash-and-grabbers, bindlestiffs on the mope, aggressive pros offering special holiday rates to guys cruising around at dusk in station wagons with Jersey plates, pigeon droppers and assorted other bunco artists, purveyors of all manner of dubious gift items, and entrepreneurs of the informal branch of the pharmaceutical trade. My job is to try and prevent at least some of these fine upstanding perpetrators from scoring against at least some of their natural Yuletide prey—the seasonal hordes of out-of-towners, big-ticket shoppers along Fifth Avenue, blue-haired Wednesday matinee ladies, and wide-eyed suburban matrons lined up outside Radio City Music Hall with big, snatchable shoulder bags full of credit cards.

I’m your friendly neighborhood plainclothesman. Very plain clothes. The guy in the grungy overcoat and watch cap and jeans and beat-up shoes and a week’s growth of black beard shambling along the street carrying something in a brown paper bag—that ubiquitous New York bum you hurry past every day while holding your breath—might be me.

The name is Neil Hockaday, but everybody calls me Hock, my fellow cops and my snitches alike. And that’s no pint of muscatel in my paper bag, it’s my point-to-point shortwave radio. I work out of a boroughwide outfit called Street Crimes Unit-Manhattan, which is better known as the befitting S. C. U. M. patrol.

For twelve years, I’ve been a cop, the last three on S. C. U. M. patrol, which is a prestige assignment despite the way we dress on the job. In three years, I’ve made exactly twice the collars I did in my first nine riding around in precinct squad cars taking calls from sector dispatch. It’s all going to add up nicely when I go for my gold shield someday. Meanwhile, I appreciate being able to work pretty much unsupervised, which tells you I’m at least a half honest cop in a city I figure to be about three-quarters crooked.

Sometimes I do a little bellyaching about the department—and who doesn’t complain along about halfway through the second cold one after shift? —but mainly I enjoy the work I do. What I like about it most is how I’m always up against the elements of chance and surprise, one way or another.

That’s something you can’t say about most careers these days. Not even a cop’s, really. Believe it or not, you have plenty of tedium if you’re a uniform sealed up in a blue-and-white all day, even in New York. But the way my job plays, I’m out there on the street mostly alone and it’s an hour-by-hour proposition: fifty-eight minutes of walking around with my pores open so I don’t miss anything and two minutes of surprise.

No matter what, I’ve got to be ready because surprise comes in several degrees of seriousness. And when it does, it comes out of absolutely nowhere.

On the twenty-fourth of December, I wasn’t ready.

To me, it was a day like any other. That was wishful thinking, of course. To a holiday-crazed town, it was Christmas Eve and the big payoff was on deck—everybody out there with kids and wives and roast turkeys and plenty of money was anxious to let the rest of us know how happy they were.

Under the circumstances, it was just as well that I’d pulled duty. I wouldn’t have had anyplace to go besides the corner pub, as it happened—or, if I could stand it, the easy chair in front of my old Philco for a day of Christmas in Connecticut followed by Miracle on Thirty-fourth Street followed by A Christmas Carol followed by March of the Wooden Soldiers followed by Midnight Mass live from St. Patrick’s.

Every year since my divorce five years ago, I’d dropped by my ex-wife’s place out in Queens for Christmas Eve. I’d bring champagne, oysters, an expensive gift, and high hopes of spending the night. But this year she’d wrecked my plans. She telephoned around the twentieth to tell me about this new boyfriend of hers—some guy who wasn’t a cop and whose name sounded like a respiratory disease. Flummong—and how he was taking her out to some rectangular state in the Middle West to meet his parents, who grow wheat. Swell.