Abigail Browining - Murder Most Merry

An urgent voice from the sleigh radio intruded on Field’s remembering. “We interrupt this program for a news bulletin,” it said. “Santa is dead. We repeat. Santa is dead. The jolly old gentleman was shot several times in the chimney earlier this evening. More details when they are available.” At that late hour all good little boys and girls were in bed. Otherwise, Field knew, the announcer would’ve said. “Antasay is eadday,” and continued in pig Latin.

Field stood there glumly watching the street below where the A. P. L. people were chasing after a tiny reindeer which had escaped while being loaded into the van. Lights had come on all over the neighborhood and faces were appearing in windows. After a moment, he turned his attention to the corpse.

But Fountain was feeling the cold. “Roy,” he said impatiently, “Santa came down the wrong chimney. The woman panicked. Ka-pow, ka-pow, ka-pow! Cut and dried.”

Field shook his head. “Rooftops are like fingerprints,” he reminded the Captain. “No two are alike. Santa wouldn’t make a mistake like—” He frowned, leaned forward, and put his face close to the corpse’s.

“It wasn’t just the smell of whiskey on his lips, Miss Moore,” said Field. “You see, if Santa’d been going down the chimney his beard would’ve been pushed up over his face. But it was stuck down inside. Miss Moore, when you shot Santa he was on his way up that chimney.”

The woman twisted the handkerchief between her fingers. “All right,” she snapped. Then in a quieter voice she said, “All right, Nicky and I go back a long way. Right around here is end of the line for his Christmas deliveries. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”

Field had guessed as much. Last year when his kids wondered why the treat they left on a tray under the tree was never touched he had suggested maybe Santa was milk-and-cookied out by the time he got to their house.

“Anyway,” continued Miss Moore, “Nicky’d always drop by afterwards for a drink and some laughs and one thing would lead to another. But I’m not talking one-night stands,” she insisted. “We took trips. We spent time together whenever he could get away. He said he loved Mrs. Claus but she was a saint. And I wasn’t a saint, he said, and he loved me for that. And I was crazy about him. But tonight he tried to walk out on me. So I shot him.”

In the distance Field heard the police helicopter come to take the sleigh on the roof to Impound.

Fountain said, “Better get Miss Moore down to the station before this place is crawling with reporters. I’ll wait for the boys with the flue-extractor rig.”

Field turned on his car radio to catch any late-breaking developments. “O Tannenbaum. O Tannenbaum, how beautiful your branches!” sang a small choir. They drove without speaking for a while. Then out of nowhere the woman said, “You know that business about Nicky having a belly that shook like a bowl full of jelly? Well, that was just the poet going for a cheap rhyme. Nicky took care of himself. He exercised. He jogged. And he had this twinkle in his eye that’d just knock my socks off.”

“I heard about the twinkle,” Field admitted.

“But underneath it all there was this deep sadness,” she said. “It wasn’t just the fund-raising, the making the rounds every year, hat in hand, for money to keep the North Pole going. And it wasn’t the elves, although they weren’t always that easy to deal with. ‘They can be real short, Doreen,’ he told me once. Hey, I know elves are short, Nicky. Give me credit for some brains,’ I said. He said, ‘No, Doreen, I mean abrupt.’

“One time I asked him why he got so low and he said, ‘Doreen, when I look all those politicians, bankers, lawyers, and captains of industry in the eye do you know who I see staring back at me? Those same naughty little boys and girls I gave the sticks and lumps of coal to. Where did I go wrong, Doreen? How did they end up running the show?’

“Well, a while back Nicky got this great idea how he could walk away from the whole business. Mr. Santa franchises. He’d auction the whole operation off country by country. Mr. Santa U. S. A. gets exclusive rights to give free toys to American kids and so on, country by country. And the elves’d take care of Mrs. Claus,’ he said. ‘They love her. She’s a saint. And with the money I’ll raise you and me’ll buy a boat and sail away. We’ll live off my patented Mr. Santa accessories. You know, my wide belt and the metered tape recorder of my laugh at a buck a ‘ho!’ ”

Suddenly a voice on the radio said, “We now take you to New York where Leviathan Cribbage, elf observer to the United Nations, is about to hold a press conference.” After the squeal of a microphone being adjusted downward a considerable distance, a high-pitched little voice said, “The High Council of Elves has asked me to issue the following statement: ‘Cast down as we are by the murder of our great leader, Santa Claus, we are prepared, as a memorial to the man and his work, to continue to manufacture and distribute toys on the night before Christmas. In return we ask that our leader’s murderer, whom we know to be in police custody, be turned over to elf justice. If the murderer is not in our hands within twenty-four hours the Toy Works at the North Pole will be shut down permanently.’ ” The room erupted into a hubbub of voices.

“Turn me over to elf justice?” said Miss Moore with a shudder. “That doesn’t sound so hot.”

“It won’t happen.” Field assured her as he parked the car. “Even a politician couldn’t get away with a stunt like that.”

Four detectives were crowded around the squad room television set. Field took Miss Moore into his office. Gesturing her into a chair, he sat down at his desk and said, “Now where were we?”

“With a buck a ho! and me waiting there tonight with my bags packed,” she said. “And here comes Nicky down the chimney. ‘Doreen,’ he says. ‘I’ve only got a minute. I’ve still deliveries to make. Honey, I told Mrs. Claus about us. She’s forgiven me. as I knew she would. But I can’t see you again.’

‘What about the Mr. Santa auction?’ said I.

‘Some auction,’ he said. ‘Everybody wanted America or Germany. Nobody wanted to be the Bangladeshi or the Ethiopian Mr. Santa. Crazy, isn’t it? Everybody wants to load up the kids who’ve already got everything when giving to kids with nothing is the real fun.’ Then he looked at me and said. ‘It got me thinking about where I went wrong, Doreen. Maybe I should have given my naughty little clients toys. too. Maybe then they wouldn’t have grown up into the kinds of people they did. Anyway. I’m going to give it a try. From now on. I’ll be Santa of all the children, naughty or nice. Good-bye, Doreen,’ he said and turned to go.

“That’s when I pulled out the revolver I keep around because I’m alone so much. I was tired of men who put their careers ahead of their women. I swore I’d kill him if he tried to leave. He went ‘ho-ho-ho!’ and took the gun out of my hand. He knew I couldn’t shoot. I burst into tears. He gathered me in his arms and gave me a good-bye kiss. Emptying the bullets onto the rug, he tossed the pistol aside and walked over to the fireplace. ‘You’re a nice girl, Doreen,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Don’t let anybody ever tell you different.’ But just before he ducked his head under the mantel I saw the twinkle flicker.”

“Flicker?” asked Field.

“Like he was thinking maybe he’d figured me wrong,” she explained. “Like maybe I’d reload the gun. Well, up the chimney he went, hauling ass real fast. And suddenly, I was down on my knees pushing those bullets back into that pistol, furious that I’d wasted my whole life just to be there any time that old geezer in his red wool suit with that unfashionably wide belt could slip his collar and be with me, furious that he was dumping me just so he could give toys to naughty little boys and girls. I was trembling with rage. But every bullet I dropped I picked up again. When I’d gotten them all I went over and emptied the pistol up the chimney. Then I called you people.”