Abigail Browining - Murder Most Merry

It was in this main atrium, near the escalators, that Father Christmas had been installed on his throne amidst sparkly white mountains of ersatz snow that was hardly in keeping with the outdoor temperature. The man himself was stout, but not as fat as American Santa Clauses. His white beard and the white-trimmed cowl of his red robe effectively hid his identity. It might have been Ivan St. Ives, but Rand wasn’t prepared to swear to it. He had to get much closer if he wanted to be sure.

He watched for a time from the terrace level as a line of parents and tots wound its way up the carpeted ramp to Father Christmas’s chair. There he listened carefully to each child’s request, sometimes boosting the smallest of them to his knee and patting their heads, handing each one a small brightly wrapped gift box from a pile at his elbow.

After observing this for ten or fifteen minutes, Rand descended to the main floor and found a young mother approaching the end of the line with her little boy. “Pardon me. ma’am,” Rand said. “I wonder if I might borrow your son and take him up to see Father Christmas.”

She stared at him as if she hadn’t heard him correctly. ‘No. I can take him myself.”

Rand showed his identity card. “It’s official business.”

The woman hesitated, then stood firm. “I’m sorry. Roger would be terrified if I left him.”

“Could I come along, then, as your husband?”

She stared at the card again, as if memorizing the name. “I suppose so, if it’s official business. No violence or anything, though?”

“I promise.”

They stood in line together and Rand took the little boy’s hand. Roger stared up at him with his big brown eyes, but his mother was there to give him confidence. “I hate shopping on Christmas Eve,” she told Rand. “I always spend too much when I wait until the last minute.”

“I think most of us do that.” He smiled at the boy. “Are you ready, Roger? We’re getting closer to Father Christmas.”

In a moment the boy was on the bearded man’s knee, having his head patted as he told him what he wanted to find under the tree next day. Then he received his brightly wrapped gift box and they were on their way back down the ramp.

“Thank you,” Rand told the woman. “You’ve been a big help.” He went back up to the terrace level and spent the next hour watching Ivan St. Ives. double agent, passing out gifts to a long line of little children.

“It’s St. Ives,” Rand told Hastings when he returned to the office. “No doubt of it.”

“Did he recognize you?”

“I doubt it.” He explained how he’d accompanied himself with the woman and child. “If he did, he might have assumed I was with my family.”

“So he’s just making a little extra Christmas money?”

“I’m afraid it’s more than that.”

“You spotted something.”

“A great deal, but I don’t know what it means. I watched him for more than an hour in all. After he listened to each child, he handed them a small gift. I watched one little girl opening hers. It was a clear plastic ball to hang on a Christmas tree, with figures of cartoon characters inside.”

“Seems harmless enough.”

“I’m sure the store wouldn’t be giving out anything that wasn’t. The trouble is, while I watched him I noticed a slight deviation from his routine on three different occasions. In these cases, he chose the gift box from a separate pile, and handed it to the parent rather than the child.”

“Well, some of the children are quite small, I imagine.”

“In those three cases, none of the boxes were opened in the store. They were stowed away in shopping bags by the mother or father. One little boy started crying for his gift, but he didn’t get it.”

Hastings thought about it.

“Do you think an agent would take a position as a department store Father Christmas to distribute some sort of message to his network?”

“I think we should see one of those boxes, Hastings.”

“If there is a message, it probably says ‘Merry Christmas. ‘ “

“St. Ives has worked for some odd people in the past, including terrorists. When I left the store, there were still seven or eight boxes left on his special pile. If I went back there now with a couple of men—”

“Very well,” Hastings said. “But please be discreet, Rand. It’s the day before Christmas.”

It’s not easy to be discreet when seizing a suspected spy in the midst of a crowd of Christmas shoppers. Rand finally decided he wanted one of the free gifts more than he wanted the agents at this point, so he took only Parkinson with him. As they passed through the Oxford Street entrance of Perkins and Simplex, the younger man asked, “Is this case likely to run through the holidays? I was hoping to spend Christmas and Boxing Day with the family.”

“I hope there won’t even be a case,” Rand told him. “Hastings heard Ivan St. Ives was back in the city, working as Father Christmas for the holidays. I confirmed the fact and that’s why we’re here.”

“To steal a child’s gift?”

“Not exactly steal, Parkinson. I have another idea.”

They encountered a woman and child about to leave the store with the familiar square box. “Pardon me. but is that a gift from Father Christmas?” Rand asked her.

“Yes, it is.”

“Then this is your lucky day. As a special holiday treat. Perkins and Simplex is paying every tenth person ten pounds for their gift.” He held up a crisp new bill. “Would you like to exchange yours for a tenner?”

“I sure would!” The woman handed over the opened box and accepted the ten-pound note.

“That was easy,” Parkinson commented when the woman and child were gone. “What next?”

“This might be a bit more difficult,” Rand admitted. They retreated to a men’s room where Rand fastened the festive paper around the gift box once more, resticking the piece of tape that held it together. ‘There, looks as good as new.”

Parkinson got the point. “You’re going to substitute this for one of the special ones.”

“Exactly. And you’re going to help.”

They resumed Rand’s earlier position on the terrace level, where he observed that the previous stack of boxes had dwindled to three. If he was right, they would be gone shortly, too. “How about that man?” Parkinson pointed out. “The one with the little boy.”

“Why him?”

“He doesn’t look that fatherly to me. And the boy seems a bit old to believe in Father Christmas.”

“You’re right.” Rand said a moment later. “He’s getting one of the special boxes. Come on!”

As the man and the boy came down off the ramp and mingled with the crowd. Rand moved in. The man was clutching the box just as the others had when Rand managed to jostle him. The box didn’t come loose, so Rand jostled again with his elbow, this time using his other hand to yank it free. The man, in his twenties with black hair and a vaguely foreign look, muttered something in a language Rand didn’t understand. There was a trace of panic in his face as he bent to retrieve the box. Rand pretended to lose his footing then, and came down on top of the man. The crowd of shoppers parted as they tumbled to the floor.

“Terribly sorry,” Rand muttered, helping the man to his feet.

At the same moment, Parkinson held out the brightly wrapped package. “I believe you dropped this, sir.”

Anyone else might have cursed Rand and made a scene, but this strange man merely grasped the box and hurried away without a word, the small boy trailing along behind. “Good work.” Rand said, brushing off his jacket. “Let’s get this back to the office.”

“Aren’t we going to open it?”

“Not here.”