Abigail Browining - Murder Most Merry

“You damn well know what I’m talking about, you thief!”

“How dare you!” What a display of indignation—had she heard it, Norma Shearer would have died of envy.

“You stole the formula for my rejuvenating cream! You’ve formed a partnership with the Sibonay Group in Mexico!”

“You’re hallucinating. You’ve been taking too many of your own drugs.”

“I’ve got a friend at Sibonay—he’s told me everything! I’m going to put you behind bars unless you give me back my formula!”

Although I didn’t doubt for one moment that my mother had betrayed him, I still had to put my hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh. I mean, have you ever seen Santa Claus blowing his top? It’s a scream in red and white.

“Don’t you touch me! Don’t you lay a hand on me!” Mother’s handbag was open and she was fumbling for something in it. He slapped her hard across the face. Then I heard the pop and the professor was clutching at his chest. Through his fingers little streams of blood began to form.

Mom was holding a tiny pearl-handled pistol in her hand, the kind Kay Francis used to carry around in a beaded bag. My God, I remember saying to myself, I just saw Mommy killing Santa Claus.

I turned tail and ran. I bolted up the stairs and into the front of the house, where the other kids who couldn’t possibly have heard what had gone on in the basement were busy choosing up sides for a game called Kill the Hostess. I joined in and there wasn’t a peep out of Mom for at least half an hour.

I began to wonder if maybe I had been hallucinating, if maybe I hadn’t seen Mom slay the professor. I left the other kids and—out of curiosity and I suppose a little anxiety—I went to the kitchen.

You’ve got to hand it to Mom (you might as well, she’d take it anyway): the turkey was in the oven, roasting away. She had prepared the salad. Vegetables were simmering, timed to be ready when the turkey was finished roasting. She was topping a sweet-potato pie with little round marshmallows. She looked up when I came in and asked, “Enjoying yourself, Sonny?”

I couldn’t resist asking her. “When is Santa Claus coming with his bag of presents for us?”

“Good Lord, when indeed! Now, where could Santa be, do you suppose?”

Dead as a doornail in the testing room, I should have responded, but instead I said, “Shucks, Mom, it beats me.”

She thought for a moment and then said brightly, “I’ll bet he’s downstairs working on a new formula. Go down and tell him it’s time he put in his appearance.”

Can you top that? Sending her son into the basement to discover the body of the man she’d just assassinated?

Well, I dutifully discovered the body and started yelling my head off, deciding that was the wisest course under the circumstances. Mom and the kids came running. When they saw the body, the kids began shrieking, me shrieking the loudest so that maybe Mom would be proud of me, and Mom hurried and phoned the police.

What ensued after the police arrived was sheer genius on my mother’s part. I don’t remember the detective’s name—by now he must be in that Big Squadroom in the Sky—but I’m sure if he was ever given an I. Q. test he must have ended up owing them about fifty points. Mom was saying hysterically, “Oh, my God, to think there was a murderer in the house while I was in the kitchen preparing our Christmas dinner and the children were in the parlor playing guessing games!” She carried the monologue for about ten minutes until the medical examiner came into the kitchen to tell the detective the professor had been done in by a bullet to the heart.

“Any sign of the weapon?” asked the detective.

“It’s not my job to look for one.” replied the examiner testily.

So others were dispatched to look for a weapon. Knowing Mom, it wouldn’t be in her handbag, but where, I wondered, could she have stashed it? I stopped in mid-wonder when I heard her say, “It might have been Laurette.”

“Who’s she?” asked the detective.

Mom folded her hands, managing to look virtuous and sound scornful. “She was the professor’s girl friend, if you know what I mean. He broke it off with her last week and she wasn’t about to let him off so easy. She’s been phoning and making threats, and this morning he told me she might be coming around to give him his Christmas present.” She added darkly, “That Christmas present was called— death!”

“Did you see her here today?” the detective asked. Mom said she hadn’t. He asked us all if we’d seen a strange lady come into the house. I was tempted to tell him the only strange lady I saw come into the house was my mother, but I thought of that formula and how wealthy we’d become and I became a truly loving son.

“She could have come in by the cellar door,” I volunteered.

It was the first time I saw my mother look at me with love and admiration. “It’s on the other side of the house, and with all the noise we were making—”

“And I had the radio on in the kitchen, listening to the Make Believe Ballroom ,” was the fuel Mother added to the fire I had ignited. The arson was successful. The police finally left—without finding the weapon—taking the body with them, and Mom proceeded with Christmas dinner as though killing a man was an everyday occurrence.

The dinner was delicious, although some of us kids noted the turkey had a slightly strange taste to it.

“Turkey can be gamey.” Mama trilled—and within the next six months she was on her way to becoming one of the most powerful names in the cosmetics industry.

I remained a bachelor. I worked alongside Mother and her associates and watched as, one by one over the years, she got rid of all of them. She destroyed the Sibonay people in Mexico by proving falsely and at great cost, that they were the front for a dope-running operation. She thought it would be fun if I could become a mayor of New York City, but a psychic told me to forget about it and go into junk bonds—which I did and suffered staggering losses. (The psychic died a mysterious death, which she obviously hadn’t foretold herself.)

Year after year, Christmas after Christmas, I was sorely tempted to tell Mama I saw her kill Santa Claus. Year after year, Christmas after Christmas, I was aching to know where she had hidden the weapon.

And then I found out. It was Christmas Day fourteen years ago.

The doctors, after numerous tests, had assured me that Mom was showing signs of Alzheimer’s. Such as when applying lipstick, she ended up covering her chin with rouge. And wearing three dresses at the same time. And filing her shoes and accessories in the deep freeze. It was sad, really, even for a murderess who deserved no mercy. Yet she insisted on cooking the Christmas dinner herself that year.

“It’s going to be just like that Christmas Day when we had that wonderful dinner with the neighborhood kiddies,” she said. “And Professor Tester dressed up as Santa Claus and brought in that big bag of games and toys. And he gave me the wonderful gift of the exclusive rights to the formula for the Desiree Rejuvenating Lotion.”

There were twenty for dinner and, believe it or not, Mother cooked it impeccably. The servants were a bit nervous, but the guests were too drunk to notice. Then, while eating the turkey, Mother asked me across the table. “Does the turkey taste the same way it did way back when, Sonny?”

And then I remembered how the turkey had tasted that day forty years ago when Mama had said something about turkey sometimes tasting gamey. I looked at her and, ill or not, there was mockery in her eyes. It was then that I said to her, not knowing if she would understand what I meant: “Mama. I saw what you did.”