Murder Most Merry (60 page)

“She got to it before the extortionist.”

“Maybe,” Culhane answered gloomily.

“What’s the matter?”

“The Outreach Center reported that someone was snooping around the first victim’s things this afternoon, and stole a box.”

“That was me.”

“I was afraid it might be. That means the cops are after you.”

“How come?”

“They figure the killer was at the Outreach Center and that’s why he couldn’t pick up the extortion money from the three o’clock ferry.”

“I certainly don’t go around strangling Santas!” Nick objected. “You didn’t even hire me till after the killings.”

“I know, but try to tell them that! They need a fall guy. right away, or the city could lose millions in Christmas sales this final week. Who wants to bring the kids to see Santa Claus if he might be dead?”

A thought suddenly struck Nick. “You seemed nervous when I came in. Are they watching this office?”

“I had to tell them you were the one who set off the smoke bomb in the store yesterday. They were spending too much time on that angle and I tried to show them it was a dead end by admitting my part in it. Instead they got to thinking you were involved somehow.”

“Just give me the rest of my money and I’m out of here.”

“I don’t have it right now.”

Nick decided he’d overstayed his welcome. “I’ll be in touch,” he promised as he headed for the door.

They were waiting in the hall. A tall black man with a badge in one hand and a gun in the other barked, “Police! Up against the wall!”

His name was Sergeant Rynor and he was no more friendly within the confines of the precinct station. “You deny you were at the Outreach Center between three and four this afternoon, Mr. Velvet?”

“I told you I want a lawyer,” Nick answered.

“He’ll be here soon enough. And when he arrives we’re going to run a lineup. Then we’ll talk about the Santa Claus killings.”

Ralph Aarons was a dapper Manhattan attorney whom Nick had used on rare occasions. He wasn’t in the habit of getting in legal jams, especially in the New York area. Aarons made a good appearance, but he was hardly the sort to defend an accused serial Santa strangler.

“They’ve got a witness named Stover,” the lawyer told him. “If he can place you at the Outreach Center, it may be trouble.”

“We’ll see,” Nick said. He’d been thinking hard while he waited for Aarons to arrive.

Sergeant Rynor appeared in the doorway. “We’re ready for you, Velvet. Up here on stage, please.”

There were five other men. and Nick took the third position. The others were about his age and size but with different coloring and appearance. He guessed at least two of them were probably detectives. Chris Stover was brought in and escorted into a booth with a one-way glass. Over a loudspeaker, each of them was asked to step forward in turn. Then it was over. Apparently it had taken only a moment for Stover to identify him.

As Nick was being led away, Chris Stover and the other detectives came out of the booth. Nick paused ten feet from him and pointed dramatically. “That’s the man!” his voice thundered like the wrath of God. “He’s the one who killed the Santas and I can prove it!”

Nick couldn’t prove it, and Chris Stover should have snorted and kept on walking. But he was taken off guard, startled into a foolish action. Perhaps in that unthinking instant he imagined the whole lineup had been merely a trick to unmask him. He gave one terrified glance at Nick and then tried to run, shoving two detectives out of the way in his dash for freedom.

It was Sergeant Rynor who finally grabbed him, before he even got close to the door.

‘ We’re holding him,” the black detective told Nick Velvet ten minutes later in the interrogation room, “but you’d better have a good story. Are you trying to tell us that Chris Stover is the extortionist who’s been threatening the city’s department stores for the past several days?”

“I don’t think there was ever a real extortion plot. It was a matter of a big threat being used as a smokescreen to hide a smaller but no less deadly crime— the murders of Russell Bajon and Larry Averly.”

“You’d better explain that.”

Nick leaned back in the chair and collected his thoughts. “Grady Culhane told me about the extortion threats and even showed me a copy of the first letter. It was delivered to Kliman’s president on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after the second strangling of a Santa Claus. Those two killings were meant to appear to be random acts against two random Santas, committed as a demonstration that the extortionist meant business. But the note mentioned the names of the two victims—Bajon and Averly. You didn’t identify the second victim until later that day, and the killer had no chance to steal identification from his victim. The strangler knew the names of Bajon and Averly because these killings weren’t random at all. He deliberately selected these victims, not as part of an extortion plot but for another motive altogether.”

Rynor was making notes now, along with taping Nick’s interrogation. Ralph Aarons. perhaps sensing things were going well for Nick, made no attempt to interrupt. “What other motive?” the detective asked.

“I learned earlier today that Bajon might have been involved in a shoplifting ring. And I also have a letter here that the second victim sent to Bajon two weeks ago. Not only did they know each other, but Averly had arranged for Bajon to take over some money-making enterprise from him. I think you’ll find that Averly used to act as a Santa Claus for the Outreach Center. This year he passed the job on to Bajon, who became involved with the shoplifting.”

“You’re telling me that a man dressed in a bulky and highly visible Santa Claus costume was shoplifting?”

“No. I’m telling you that Santa stood on the corner with his collection chimney and the shoplifters came out of the stores with watches, rings, and other jewelry, and dropped them in the chimney. If the man was caught, there was no evidence on him, and the store detectives never considered Santa as an accessory.”

“It’s just wild enough to be true. But why would Stover kill them?”

“Bajon must have been skimming off the loot, or threatening to blackmail Stover. Once he decided to kill Bajon. he knew he had to kill Averly too, because the older man knew what was going on. When I guessed about Santa’s chimney being used for shoplifting loot, Chris Stover became the most likely brains behind the operation. After all, he was the one who picked up the Santas and chimneys each night. He was the one who told them where to stand. Only Monday night he parked the van in the next block and walked up and strangled Bajon, then hurried back to the van and acted like he was just driving up.”

“Maybe,” Sergeant Rynor said thoughtfully. “It could have been like that. The extortion letter was just a red herring to cover the real motive. He never had any intention of going after that money on the Staten Island ferry.”

“Can you prove all this?” Aarons asked, his legal mind in gear.

“We’ll get a search warrant for Stover’s office and room at the Center. If we find any shoplifted items there, I think he’ll be ready to talk, and name the rest of the gang.”

Nick knew he wasn’t off the hook unless they found what they were looking for, but he came up lucky. The police uncovered dozens of jewelry items, along with a spool of wire that matched the wire used to kill the two Santas. After that, Chris Stover ceased his denials.

The way things turned out, Nick never did collect the balance of his fee from Grady Culhane. Some people just didn’t have any Christmas spirit.

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH – Georges Simenon

“At home we always used to go to Midnight Mass. I can’t remember a Christmas when we missed it, though it meant a good half hour’s drive from the farm to the village.”

The speaker, Sommer, was making some coffee on a little electric stove.

“There were five of us,” he went on. “Five boys, that is. The winters were colder in those days. Sometimes we had to go by sledge.”

Lecœur, on the switchboard, had taken off his earphones to listen. “In what part of the country was that?”

“Lorraine.”

“The winters in Lorraine were no colder thirty or forty years ago than they are now—only, of course, in those days the peasant had no cars. How many times did you go to Midnight Mass by sledge?”

“Couldn’t say, exactly.”

“Three times? Twice? Perhaps no more than once. Only it made a great impression on you, as you were a child.”

“Anyhow, when we got back, we’d all have black pudding, and I’m not exaggerating when I tell you I’ve never had anything like it since. I don’t know what my mother used to put in them, but her
boudins
were quite different from anyone else’s. My wife’s tried, but it wasn’t the same thing, though she had the exact recipe from my eldest sister—at least, my sister swore it was.”

He walked over to one of the huge, uncurtained windows, through which was nothing but blackness, and scratched the pane with a fingernail.

“Hallo, there’s frost forming. That again reminds me of when I was little. The water used to freeze in our rooms and we’d have to break the ice in the morning when we wanted to wash.”

“People didn’t have central heating in those days.” answered Lecœur coolly.

There were three of them on night duty.
Les nuiteux
, they were called. They had been in that vast room since eleven o’clock, and now, at six on that Christmas morning, all three were looking a bit jaded. Three or four empty bottles were lying about, with the remains of the sandwiches they had brought with them.

A lamp no bigger than an aspirin tablet lit up on one of the walls. Its position told Lecœur at once where the call came from.

“Thirteenth Arrondissement, Croulebarbe,” he murmured, replacing his earphones. He seized a plug and pushed it into a hole.

“Croulebarbe? Your car’s been called out—what for?”

“A call from the Boulevard Masséna. Two drunks fighting.”

Lecœur carefully made a little cross in one of the columns of his notebook.

“How are you getting on down your way?”

“There are only four of us here. Two are playing dominoes.”

“Had any
boudin
tonight?”

“No. Why?”

“Never mind. I must ring off now. There’s a call from the Sixteenth.”

A gigantic map of Paris was drawn on the wall in front of him and on it each police station was represented by a little lamp. As soon as anything happened anywhere, a lamp would light up and Lecœur would plug into the appropriate socket.

“Chaillot? Hallo! Your car’s out?”

In front of each police station throughout the twenty arrondissements of Paris, one or more cars stood waiting, ready to dash off the moment an alarm was raised.

“What with?”

“Veronal.”

That would be a woman. It was the third suicide that night, the second in the smart district of Passy.

Another little cross was entered in the appropriate column of Lecœur’s notebook. Mambret, the third member of the watch, was sitting at a desk filling out forms.

“Hallo! Odéon? What’s going on? Oh, a car stolen.”

That was for Mambret, who took down the particulars, then phoned them through to Piedbœuf in the room above. Piedbœuf, the teleprinter operator, had such a resounding voice that the others could hear it through the ceiling. This was the forty-eighth car whose details he had circulated that night.

An ordinary night, in fact—for them. Not so for the world outside. For this was the great night,
la nuit de Noël
. Not only was there the Midnight Mass, but all the theaters and cinemas were crammed, and at the big stores, which stayed open till twelve, a crowd of people jostled each other in a last-minute scramble to finish off their Christmas shopping.

Indoors were family gatherings feasting on roast turkey and perhaps also on
boudins
made, like the ones Sommer had been talking about, from a secret recipe handed down from mother to daughter.

There were children sleeping restlessly while their parents crept about playing the part of Santa Claus. arranging the presents they would find on waking.