Abigail Browining - Murder Most Merry

“You can’t suspect Santa Claus!” my brother James shouted, which was a cue for a good bit of silly chatter that had a bad effect on Aunt Molly’s temper. She was much more thorough and more demanding in her search than she might have been otherwise.

Mama and Papa kept trying to make light of it. Of course the necklace was there. It had to be. None of us would take it. Aunt Molly said she would have granted that an hour earlier but the fact was someone had .

Our Santa Claus suggested we quarter the room and search it inch by inch with Aunt Molly supervising each stage of the search until the necklace turned up. That search was classic, something to pass into legend within our family. First, there were twelve people in the room, counting Aunt Molly herself, and someone insisted she should not be exempt from being searched. Santa and his sack were checked. Even Cliff agreed to be searched, his chair, his blankets, his clothes, his flannel wraps, every inch of the space around him.

Every branch of the tree was examined, every present inspected for signs of tampering. Two of them had to be opened and then repackaged because young hands had been scrabbling at them. But neither one contained the necklace. Chairs were overturned. The hanging light fixture was checked. It became a game to suggest new possibilities.

Maybe because he had been caught trying to get out the door, Harvey went to extremes to see that he and his props were cleared of suspicion. He also made sure every suggestion, no matter how unreasonable, was followed up. The windows were tested, even though everyone knew no one had opened a door or window. An icy wind was blowing, and it was snowing outside. Opening up just long enough to toss something out would have let in a blast the rest would have noticed, not to mention that the necklace would have been lost in the snow.

Aunt Molly had never seemed the least bit pitiful to anyone before that night. Now she looked like a broken woman. Her face was blotchy, and her shoulders sagged. I felt truly sorry for her. Like everyone else that night, I wanted to find her necklace and restore it to her, but it just wasn’t possible.

Mama put her arm around her and told her she d walk her up to her room. At the door, Aunt Molly turned and, looking at Molly, said. “I’m sorry, dear.”

“We’ll find it,” Mama told Aunt Molly. “We’ll still find it.”

Papa, Amanda, and Dr. Brittaman were all shaking their heads behind Mama and Aunt Molly’s backs. I knew what they were thinking. That necklace had just plain vanished, and it didn’t seem likely it could ever be found. If it wasn’t in that room, well, it just wasn’t anywhere.

Papa carried Cliff back to his bed. The rest of us also began to get ready to sleep. Somehow no one knew quite what to say to Molly.

We shuffled through nighttime rituals in uneasy silence. This was no way to go to bed on Christmas Eve. Aunt Molly was hurt, and to all appearances, we had a thief in our family. A dull misery settled around my heart.

You wouldn’t think a holiday could recover from a disaster like that, but the next day was one of the best Christmases of our lives. Strangely enough, it was all due to Aunt Molly, too. Several times during breakfast I saw her fingering a small piece of folded paper. She opened her presents with the rest of us and sounded sincerely grateful for her box of handkerchiefs, bottle of toilet water, book of poetry, and the handmade gifts from the younger children. If she was grieving, she was doing it bravely. It seemed to me she just looked thoughtful.

In the middle of the afternoon when the younger children were playing and Amanda and Harvey had gone home. Aunt Molly said she had something to say. She gathered Mama and Papa and Molly around the table. I hung around to hear what was going on.

“I’ve been doing some thinking since last night,” she told them. “No, don’t interrupt,” she cautioned as my mother began to speak. “I think I wanted to arrange for my namesake to have my life all over again, a thing that’s not possible, not even reasonable.” She stopped and sighed.

It’s all right about the necklace. I mean, it isn’t all right that you lost it,” Molly told her, “but it’s all right that it isn’t coming to me.”

Aunt Molly ignored her and continued. “I’d like to see this young woman go on with her studies. Toward that end, I want to pay her way to college.” At a sign of protest from my father, Aunt Molly said dryly, “Believe me, four years’ tuition will be less than the value of that necklace. You will not, of course, get the necklace,” she added to Molly.

“Thank you.” said Molly, her eyes wet and shining.

Molly walked on air for the rest of the day. Aunt Molly beamed. My parents kept exchanging smiles. The rest of us were infected by their joy, so it felt like Christmas morning all day and half the night.

I worked it out the other day that Aunt Molly on that Christmas was about the age I am now. I, of course, am not old at all, though she seemed old to me then. She just recently died, having lived into her nineties. Her large estate was divided among her children and grandchildren, but her will made provision for a sealed manila envelope to be delivered to me.

When I opened the envelope, I found a correctly folded letter on thick creamy stationery together with a yellowed slip of paper folded into a square. I opened the slip of paper first and read the message:

You can have you mizerable necklace back if you promise Molly don’t haf to git married. She don’t want a husban. She wants to go to collige.

I wouldn’t have believed the spelling could have been that bad. I unfolded the accompanying letter and read:

Dear Betsy,

I don’t know how many years will pass before you get this back, but I want to return your note to you.

For days I was baffled by the disappearing stunt you pulled. No one had left the room, yet the necklace wasn’t in the room, I told myself. Continuing to puzzle over the problem, I repeated that paradox endlessly. Finally I varied it a bit and said, “Not one creature went out of the room.” I stopped as I reached that point because I realized a “creature” had left—that smelly old hound. Then I knew my ruby and diamond necklace must have gone out of the room with the dog. He was wearing it there in his box by the kitchen stove all the time we were searching, wasn’t he? Of course, I also remembered that you were the one who sent the dog out of the room while Cliff kept the rest of us distracted. What a determined child you must have been to hold out against all that adult energy!

You always were a clever child, Betsy.

Aunt Molly’d gone home that year with her necklace. Late on Christmas afternoon, it showed up without explanation on her bed. She made sure everyone saw it one last time, then after that holiday never mentioned it again.

When the new semester began a few weeks after Christmas, my sister Molly started college.

ON CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE MORNING – Margery Allingham

Sir Leo Persuivant, the Chief Constable, had been sitting in his comfortable study after a magnificent lunch and talking shyly of the sadness of Christmas while his guest, Mr. Albert Campion, most favored of his large house party, had been laughing at him gently.

It was true, the younger man had admitted, his pale eyes sleepy behind his horn-rimmed spectacles, that, however good the organization, the festival was never quite the same after one was middle-aged, but then only dear old Leo would expect it to be. and meanwhile, what a truly remarkable bird that had been!