The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories Page 17

  “The next day, when the police came to question me, I swore that Olaf had lied to his friends at the inn. He’d known that Karen had promised herself to me. He’d known for the simple reason that I’d gone straight to him that afternoon and told him. He’d made for the inn that night, not to celebrate his good-fortune but to drown his grief. They believed me, of course. And why not? Didn’t my explanation provide an obvious motive for the murder?” For a moment, exhausted by the effort to lay before me the facts of his astounding story, Thord struggled to get his breath. Then he gasped out: “When Olaf comes out of prison he’ll need money. Quick, Doctor…there’s pen and paper on my desk. Will you write this for me? Just this…‘I leave all I possess to Olaf Kinck.’ Then let me sign it while I still have the strength.”

  “But, Thord!” I cried, bewildered. “How can this story of yours be true? You’ve explained about the knife and the fingerprints on the handle. But the single footprints and the pock-marks left by Olaf’s wooden leg—what of those?”

  “They tell me,” said Thord faintly, “that the boot Olaf was wearing on the night of Karen’s murder is now in the museum of crime at Oslo.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “That’s true. I’ve seen it there myself.”

  “Then you must take another look at it, Doctor, for it’s that boot which will unlock the door of Olaf’s cell and set him free. You will find three small holes in the sole of that boot…nail holes.”

  “But why? I don’t understand.”

  It occurred to me that his mind was beginning to wander.

  “Stilts,” he jerked out. “I was always good…on stilts… ever since I was a lad. So very simple, Doctor. All I had to do that night was…was to nail Olaf’s boot to my left stilt. The other, you see…in the snow…just like a wooden leg…”

  Crime at Lark Cottage

  John Bingham

  John Michael Ward Bingham, 7th Earl of Clanmorris (1908–88) was a member of the gentry who, following a spell as a journalist, was recruited into MI5 by Maxwell Knight. One of his younger colleagues was David Cornwell, who was inspired by Bingham’s success as an author of fiction to become a novelist himself, under the name John le Carré. Le Carré has subsequently acknowledged that Bingham was a key inspiration for his most famous character, the spy George Smiley.

  Bingham was unquestionably an establishment figure, yet his first crime novel, My Name is Michael Sibley (1952), is a bitterly ironic novel about an increasingly menacing police investigation into the death of a man whom Sibley, the narrator, had good cause to hate. He followed this up with Five Roundabouts to Heaven (1953; also known as The Tender Poisoner), which more than half a century later was made into a good film with a poor title, Married Life. A Fragment of Fear (1965), a gripping story of suspense and paranoia, was also filmed, in 1970, with David Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt in the lead roles. Thereafter, Bingham’s career as a crime writer seemed to lose momentum, although his books remained as readable as ever. This rare example of a Bingham short story was first published in the 1954 Christmas Number of The Illustrated London News.

  The weather was foul. It had been snowing, off and on, for some days, but during the last few hours the temperature had suddenly risen, and with the departure of the cold had come the rain, pitting the smooth snow, causing it to fall with soft rustles and sighs from the branches in the coppice which surrounded the cottage on three sides.

  Bradley switched off his engine in the black-velvet shadows of the trees opposite the little gate; and went up to the gate, and saw that it bore the name “Lark Cottage”; saw, too, the soft lamplight gleaming through the chinks in the curtains of the front room.

  It had been dark for two hours now. A blustery little wind had arisen, sweeping in chilly rushes across the moors, driving the rain before it, and plunging into the little hollow in which the cottage lay.

  There was no other habitation in sight.

  Bradley unlatched the gate, and walked up a narrow path and knocked on the door. For a few seconds he heard nothing. Then came the sound of footsteps, but they did not come to the door. He heard them pass in front of the door, then begin to ascend uncarpeted stairs.

  For a few seconds he stood listening, hearing the water drip from the eaves. A sudden gust of wind and rain, stronger than usual, caused him to turn up the collar of his raincoat.

  Suddenly, somewhere above him, a window was opened, and the gust of wind died away, and in the silence that followed a woman’s voice said:

  “Who is there? What do you want?”

  “You don’t know me,” he replied. “I am sorry to trouble you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You don’t know me,” he repeated. “My name is John Bradley. It will mean nothing to you, I’m afraid. I got lost, and now I’ve developed car trouble. The clutch is slipping badly. I see there is a telephone line to your cottage. I would be most grateful if I could use it. I’ll naturally pay you for the call.”

  He looked up as he spoke. He could see the pale blob of her face in the darkness, peering down at him through the half-opened lattice window. For a second or two she said nothing. Then she said:

  “Wait a minute. I’ll come down.”

  He heard her close the window, and the sound of her footsteps on the stairs again, and the noise of the door being unbolted.

  He followed her into the little hall, and then into the living-room. The room was a curious mixture of dark oak furniture, solid and enduring, and cheap modern bric-à-brac.

  In a far corner a small Christmas tree, obviously dug from the garden, stood in a red pot. A little girl, aged about ten, was decorating it with bits of silver tinsel. As he came in she held in her hand a small Fairy Queen, made of cardboard, and painted with some silvery, glittering substance.

  She was fair-haired and pale, and looked at him gravely, uncertainly; poised, as though prepared to drop everything and run at the first harsh word.

  Unhappy, thought Bradley; thin and unhappy, and none too fit. Aloud, he said:

  “That’s a pretty tree you have.”

  For a second, warmth crept into the child’s face and lit up the grey eyes, and she seemed about to speak. Then, as the woman spoke, the child thought better of it, and the face assumed again its former cautious expression.

  “The ’phone’s on the window-sill.”

  Bradley swung round and looked at the woman. She was about thirty-five, tall and sallow, with dark hair and eyes, the hair brushed back severely from the forehead. Her features were regular and, but for the fact that she was thin, and that her face wore a harsh, embittered expression, he would have considered her handsome for her age. Bradley said:

  “I suppose Skandale is the nearest town? Can you recommend a garage there?”

  She shook her head. “You won’t get a garage to come out at this time of night.” She paused and added: “I doubt if there’s even a garage open, now, in that dump.”

  “You are not from these parts?”

  She shook her head again and said:

  “I come from Brighton.”

  Bradley said: “You must find it a bit different up here.” But she was not listening to him. She was standing rigid, her head slightly on one side, as though she were listening. Her neck, her arms, her legs, her whole body was stiff. Bradley, glancing at her hands, saw that they were clenched and pressed to her sides.

  But the child was different.

  The child’s face was suddenly flushed and eager. She had stopped trying to fix the Fairy Queen to the top of the Christmas tree, and had turned her head towards the window, towards the front of the house and the garden path, and the gate through which a man would normally approach the cottage. She said:

  “Did you hear anything, Mummy?”

  The question seemed to break the tension. The woman said sharply:

  “Julia! Either get on with your tree or go to bed�
��one or the other.”

  The child turned back to her tree, but almost at once turned her head quickly to the window.

  Bradley heard the click of the gate, too. So did the woman. The noise came during a momentary lull in the wind, so when the woman said it was the storm blowing the gate nobody believed her, and the child ran to the window and looked out, thrusting the curtains aside, and peering into the night, kneeling on the window-seat, nose pressed against the pane. Bradley said:

  “You are expecting somebody, perhaps? Well, I won’t bother you any longer. I’ll be on my way. Maybe the clutch will last a mile or two, and I’ll do the last stretch on foot. I take it this road leads to the main road to Skandale?”

  The woman was staring towards the window, towards the child. Bradley thought: The child is eager, expectant, but the mother is afraid. At last she said:

  “It is at least ten miles to Skandale. You would do better to stay here, Mr Bradley, and catch the early-morning bus from the end of the lane. I can give you a bed.”

  “But if you are expecting somebody—”

  “Nobody is coming.”

  There was a flurry of movement on the window-seat, as the child Julia swung round and cried:

  “But, Mummy, it said on the wireless—”

  “Julia! Come, it’s time for your bed.”

  She went to the window and took the child by the hand, and jerked the child off the window-seat and towards the door. At the door she paused a moment and said:

  “You are quite welcome to stay the night. Julia and I share the same room, and I will make up the bed in the small room for you.”

  Bradley caught the strained, almost eager undertone in her voice, and knew that she wanted him to stay; knew that she was afraid, and wished for his company in the house; afraid, even though as yet she had not said what she feared—or whom.

  “Very well,” he said mildly. “I will gladly stay. It is very kind of you.”

  He watched her lead the child out of the room, and heard them mount the stairs, and the sound of voices in an upper room, the woman’s sharp and scolding, the child’s plaintive. Then he went quickly to the window and looked out.

  The light from the room was reflected by the snow, so that he could dimly see the garden and the path and the gate. But there was no sign of anybody.

  He had not expected to see anybody.

  He lit a cigarette and wandered slowly round the room, glancing at the books in the bookshelf near the fireplace, at the cheap water-colours on the whitewashed walls.

  On a table near the window stood a small silver tray. He picked it up and read the inscription in the middle, written in the impeccable copybook handwriting peculiar to such things:

  to fred shaw on his marriage— from his pals at the mill.

  He replaced the tray and moved to the fireplace, noting the inexpensive china ornaments, the walnut-wood clock. In a light oak frame was a picture of a plump-faced man with fair, receding hair. In the bottom right-hand corner were the words: “To Lucy, with love from Leslie.”

  He wandered on, looking for something which he somehow knew he would not find; looking for the usual wedding picture, the wedding picture of Fred and Lucy Shaw.

  He was not in the least surprised not to find it; not in the least surprised to find no trace of Fred Shaw at all, except for the silver tray, and that, after all, was worth money.

  No trace, that is, until he came to the newspaper lying on the dark oak sideboard, and saw the double-column headlines, and read the text about Frederick Shaw, and how warders and police were scouring the countryside for him.

  Frederick Shaw, aged forty-two. Escaped from Larnforth Prison.

  Shaw, the murderer, reprieved because of what Home Secretaries call “just an element of doubt”; and serving a life sentence, with nine-tenths of it still to run.

  Shaw, the former overseer, respected in all Skandale, who once or twice a year got a little befuddled with beer; who was known to be on bad terms with his uncle, the Skandale jeweller.

  Good-natured old Fred Shaw, who never could explain how his cap and heavy blackthorn stick were found beside the battered body of the jeweller—or even what became of the money they alleged he had stolen.

  Bradley put the paper down quickly when he heard the footsteps on the stairs. Too quickly. As he turned away, the big pages slipped over the side of the polished sideboard. So that when Lucy Shaw came into the room, she saw it lying on the floor, and said:

  “So now you know, I suppose?”

  “Yes,” said Bradley, “I know all right.”

  Now that the need for acting was past, she stood in front of the fireplace, massaging one hand with the other, staring at him with frightened eyes. A tall, gaunt woman, with a wide, sensual mouth. The harsh expression had left her face. He saw her lips quiver.

  “What are you scared of, Mrs Shaw?” asked Bradley.

  “I’m not scared, I’m not at all scared. What should I be frightened of?”

  “That’s what I was asking,” said Bradley. He moved to the door and said: “I’ll go and get my suitcase out of the car.”

  He went into the hall and out of the front door and down the garden path to the car. She heard the sound of the car door being slammed. On the way back, he paused by the front door. Then he came into the hall and put down his suitcase.

  When he came into the living-room he said:

  “Come outside a minute, will you?”

  She swung round and stared at him.

  “Why?”

  “Did your husband—did Mr Shaw use a walking-stick much?”

  “He always used one—almost always. He was a bit lame from a mill accident. Why?” And when he did not answer, when he only looked at her without saying anything, she repeated loudly, almost shrilly: “Why?”

  “Well, come outside a minute,” repeated Bradley, and groped in his trenchcoat pocket for his torch. She walked into the hall, and when she hesitated by the front door he said: “Come on, it’s all right. I’m with you, and I’m six foot tall and quite strong.”

  The wind had dropped now, but the rain still fell; but softly, soundlessly, more in the nature of a moorland mist.

  The snow was becoming soft on the surface, but was still deep, so that the footprints round the house showed up very distinctly in the light of the torch; so did the small ferrule-holes in the snow on the left-hand side of the prints.

  “I suppose he was left-handed,” said Bradley, more to himself than to Lucy Shaw, and saw her nod almost imperceptibly. He raised the torch-beam a trifle and said: “See how he turned aside to look into the room? I suppose he saw me in there with you and Julia. I suppose he is waiting for me to go. Then he will come in and spend a few short hours with you, and perhaps take some clothes and money and go.”

  He heard a movement by his side, and looked round, and found she had gone back into the house.

  When he joined her in the living-room she was sitting crouched in a chair by the fire. Her sallow face had turned white. She was trembling violently.

  Bradley said: “I think l had better go, after all. I’m keeping him out in the night rain. It’s the police job to catch escaped convicts, not mine. I was a prisoner of war once. I’ve got a sneaking sympathy for them. Poor devil!” he added softly.

  But she jumped to her feet, and clutched him by both arms, and said shrilly: “You mustn’t go! Please don’t go!” A thought struck her, and she added, almost in a whisper: “Before the gate clicked—you remember?—the child and I heard a sound. I think it was his hand, perhaps his finger-nail on the window-pane, as he looked in through a chink in the curtains.”

  Bradley said: “I’m going, unless you tell me why you are afraid.”

  He pushed her from him, and she went and stood by the fireplace. After a while she said:

  “He thought I should have done more f
or him when he had his trial. He said he was with me at the time of the murder, and I should have said so too.

  “But he wasn’t, so I couldn’t say it, could I? After all, you’re on oath, aren’t you, Mr Bradley?”

  “You’re on oath all right.”

  “So I couldn’t go and perjure myself, could I? I mean, could I?”

  “Men don’t kill women for not doing something, Mrs Shaw.” He glanced at the grate. “The fire is dying, and there is no more wood. Where is it kept?”

  She looked up at him, fear in her eyes, and said:

  “In the shed near the back door. I can’t go out there and fetch it. I’m not going out there alone.”

  “I’ll fetch it. Just come with me and show me where it is. Just come to the kitchen door with me.”

  He opened the kitchen door, and she stood with him, and pointed to the shed, a few yards away. The rain still fell, still soundlessly. Somewhere some water was running gurgling down a drain. Otherwise there was no noise, either in the trees which pressed down upon the cottage or in the glistening bushes which edged their way to within a few feet of the back door.

  He shone his torch, first on the shed then on the bushes, and took a step forward, and suddenly stopped as the bushes shook violently and snow cascaded from them.

  Behind him he heard Lucy Shaw gasp and sob twice.

  “It’s probably only a rabbit,” said Bradley, and walked towards the bushes. For a second he shone his torch at them, then made his way to the shed and gathered a trugful of sawn logs, and came back towards the kitchen.

  Lucy Shaw stood watching him, afraid to go back into the house alone, afraid to go out into the night with him. She kept passing her hand over her smooth hair, nervously, restlessly, staring out into the night at him with her black, dilated eyes.

  The crash of the broken window, the broken living-room window, made her turn and scream; caused Bradley to break into a run; and woke up the child. Bradley heard her calling: “Mummy! Mummy! What’s that?”

  Bradley carried the trug with one hand and with the other pushed Lucy Shaw into the house and whispered fiercely: