The Santa Klaus Murder Read online

“Yes; but is the career of the suburban young wife just the one you want?”

  “You would put it that way!” she protested. “We think we can manage a house as far out of town as Guildford, or somewhere like that. It’ll be practically country and it’ll be a small house that won’t take much managing, with a competent maid. Philip doesn’t want me to be just a parasite; he hates parasitic wives. I shall have my own affairs—Institutes, perhaps. I might even write; I’ve got a marvellous idea for a novel and Philip believes I could do it.”

  “You think I’m middle-aged and that I’ve forgotten what you feel like, but it isn’t that, Jennifer. It’s because I remember so well that I’m afraid.”

  “But, hang it all, Hilda; I’m not marrying a pauper. Millions of people marry on less. We shan’t have children at first. We can’t afford it. Not in the way Dittie can’t afford them, but really.”

  “It’s always relative of course.”

  “Yes; I know. But Hilda, you’ve got to help me. And of course you mustn’t breathe a word to Dittie or Eleanor or George. They think I ought to stay here and shield Father from the Portent. But that’s all nonsense. I couldn’t do anything if there was anything to be done. All I should be likely to do would be to throw him into her sympathetic arms. But I don’t think they’ve really any cause for worry. He may intend to leave her some money, but there’s enough to go round. Heaven knows, she’s earning it! But to return to the point, you must come and live at Flaxmere after I’ve gone.”

  “But how can I? Of course I’d come if Father asked me. At least—would I? There’s Carol, you see. Carol is you over again. You know, Jenny, you haven’t exactly helped to put her in the right frame of mind to get on with Father.”

  “What I have said hasn’t made any difference at all. Carol knows quite well that Father has treated you horribly meanly.”

  I had realized before this that Jenny and Carol did inevitably look at things from the same point of view, and to both of them Father’s line of policy looked like meanness. I don’t see it that way. I deliberately refused his way of life and chose my own. It was fair that I should follow that way, however it turned out, under my own steam, as Carol would say. I’m not sorry for anything. Father has been consistent and I like people to be consistent. I have followed my own way and have shown that I had the strength of character to do it. Father respects that and so we have always been good friends, though, of course, he was angry with me at the time.

  “The point is,” I explained to Jenny, “that even if Father should ask me to come back to Flaxmere and even if I should agree, how would Carol get on here?”

  “She’ll be away,” said Jenny cheerfully; “getting her architectural training. For the sake of that she’d put up with some holidays spent with her grandfather. She’d get on better than I do really, for she’s much more conversational and she’d amuse Father’s old pals with her witty remarks. I’m quite tongue-tied with them. Anyway, I’ll tell Carol the plan and see what she says.”

  I knew what she’d say. She’d see it all as Jenny did, with the difficult peaks of the prospect conveniently shrouded in mist. The adventure would appeal to her. She and Jenny would join forces—the forces of youth—in a trice.

  “I’m not so sure,” I said. “I don’t know that Carol would be able to get her training.”

  “Anyway, she has her job.”

  “But she doesn’t earn enough to live on—by herself.”

  “Well, how much does this architectural business cost? After all, you’d be living here with no expense. Wouldn’t that leave enough for Carol’s training when you consider that she’d also live here free of cost in the holidays?”

  “But we can’t assume all this!” I cried desperately. “It’s fantastic. If Father didn’t ask me to come, your house of cards topples to the ground.”

  “That’s what you’ve got to manage—to get him to ask you. You know he’d love to have you here and you’d like to be here. You’ve proved your point, that you can stand on your own feet and live your own life. Even Father admits that to himself, I’m sure. Hilda, I do want you to help me. Of course Philip and I have quite definitely made up our minds and we shall get married anyway, but I should like to know you were backing me up.”

  “I must think it over,” I told her. “My dear child, I want you to be happy. Can’t we persuade Father to give Philip his blessing? That would be so much simpler and, after all, he can’t object to him so much if he has him here to stay.”

  “I’ve suggested to Philip that he should write and publish a book that is at one and the same time an indisputable work of genius, a dignified production in the Victorian style and a best seller. That’s the only way I can see of getting Father to accept him as a son-in-law. You know quite well that no one can persuade Father to anything. Except, perhaps, Miss Portisham, and no one knows how she does it. Of course I’m not expecting you to persuade Father to ask you to come and live here. You must wangle it in some clever way, so that it just happens.”

  I have recorded all this conversation, in the words which I remember very well, because it clearly shows Jenny’s frame of mind just before Christmas Day. She wasn’t in the least influenced by what I said and she was full of plans for her own escape from Flaxmere in the spring. She had no thought of her father’s money, because she and Philip had decided that they could do quite well without it.

  Chapter Three

  Monday

  by Jennifer Melbury

  On Monday morning at nine o’clock most of us gathered in the dining-room for the family meal, which Father considered the correct thing. He liked to be “the head of the family in the old ancestral home.” He was always playing a part of some kind and I believe that’s why he has been so successful in material ways. He studied his role at each stage of his life and assumed the appropriate air. But he never bothered to study how to be the father of this family; I suppose he thinks we ought all to act our parts as members of the family of his imagination.

  Eleanor and Gordon hadn’t yet arrived at Flaxmere. Aunt Mildred had come several days before, but she doesn’t feel at her best in the morning and therefore breakfasts in bed. Dittie, who goes in for being a bit languid, often does the same, but on this occasion she appeared in the dining-room with the rest of us, probably because she had only arrived the evening before and wanted to test the atmosphere and make her plans for the day accordingly.

  After breakfast Hilda and Carol, Dittie and her husband David, Patricia and her children, and I were idling about in the hall, looking at papers, reading letters and making hurried notes of the names of people who’d sent early Christmas cards and whom we’d left off our lists. George, the only one of the family who dares to come down deliberately late for breakfast, was still in the dining-room, comfortably surrounded by toast and butter and marmalade and quite undisturbed by the fact that Father sternly presided at the head of the table.

  Suddenly Patricia began to create a fuss in the hall; she’d forgotten, or thought she’d forgotten, to dispatch a present to an important rich uncle and decided that she must arrange a shopping expedition to Bristol, which is about twenty miles from us. But first we must all be asked whether it would be too dreadful if she had sent the old man a present after all and now sent him a second one. So, knowing that Patricia would certainly go shopping, whatever we said, we all gave our advice. Carol asked if she could go too. George and Patricia had come in their own car, so that would be available. Patricia was delighted to have Carol and I insisted that Patricia’s only hope of salvation with this uncle was to go and buy this present and send it off at once, because I knew Carol had some shopping of her own to do in Bristol and there would be little hope of her getting the use of the Sunbeam.

  “Hadn’t we better wait till this afternoon?” Carol suggested insanely. “Aunt Eleanor will be here by lunch time and she may want to do some shopping too.”

  “It would b
e very difficult to manage three people’s shopping in one car!” Patricia protested. “I mean, everyone has their own ideas about shops and we should all want to go in different directions and it’s so confusing and there’d be all sorts of complications about waiting for everyone in different places. Besides, there’ll be such a mob in the afternoon. It’ll be bad enough this morning.”

  “Besides,” Dittie reminded them, “Eleanor never forgets; she’s like the elephant. All her presents will have been done up neatly in holly paper and all her cards addressed, and no one forgotten, long ago. You’d better be off as soon as you can, and be back punctually for lunch.” Dittie had already announced that she and David were driving over to Manton to lunch with the FitzPaines, so she was rather pleased to remind Patricia that it was her duty to return punctually.

  Then Patricia began to fuss again. “I’m really not sure whether it’s better to risk sending the man two presents or none at all, and perhaps write later, if he didn’t acknowledge it, and say I hoped it hadn’t been lost in the post. You never can tell at Christmas time. It is difficult.”

  “Oh, Aunt Pat!” Carol protested. “We’ve gone over all that already. It’s far, far better to risk sending him two; at the worst he’ll think you’re a little forgetful, but no one minds anyone being forgetful in that way. Now do get a move on!”

  “All this hurrying business is no good at all while George is still hanging over the marmalade,” Patricia pointed out.

  “I’ll go and stir him up!” cried Carol, bolting off.

  She was back in a few minutes. “Aunt Pat! Marvellous! George says I may drive the Austin! I’ve got a driving license, because it so often comes in handy for driving other people’s cars. He doesn’t mind a bit and I’m awfully safe.”

  Carol is one of those fortunate people who inspire confidence and she often gets cars lent her.

  “Well, of course, poor George does hate shopping—” began Patricia doubtfully.

  “Now rush and do your hatting and furring, Aunt Pat, and we’ll start in two minutes,” Carol urged.

  It is typical of the way Carol gets away with everything that she can call Patricia “Aunt Pat”—which is ridiculous, because George’s wife is so obviously a thorough “Patricia”—and still be approved of. Other people get frightfully squashed if they use that name.

  Just when Patricia was half-way upstairs, Parkins came in with the parcel post, which had just arrived. Enid, Kit and Clare, Patricia’s three children, and also Carol, swooped on it. Patricia stopped, unable to decide whether to go on up or come down again. Father emerged from the dining-room. I could see at once that he was dramatising himself as the benevolent grandfather.

  “Now, children!” he boomed. “No parcels for you! Don’t you know that yours don’t come by the postman? They come by the reindeer sleigh.”

  The children still scrambled and squealed. Enid, who is nearly ten, and Kit, who is eight, obviously disbelieved their grandfather’s statement. Enid looked up to announce: “The postman’s brought one for me, anyway! I saw it! Oh, Kit, you are clumsy; you’ve covered it up!” She caught her grandfather’s look of disapproval and stopped grabbing at the parcels to say, “I expect he met the sleigh in the drive and brought this one along so that I’d get it quickly.”

  Enid is a great deal too clever to be a really nice child.

  “Now, children! Don’t forget your manners! Let me see these things. There’s something I particularly want,” said Father, still playing his benevolent role with rather an effort. He looked around and caught sight of Patricia, who had now decided to descend.

  “Patricia! I really think the children should be better disciplined.”

  “Well, really; at Christmas time; children ought to be excited—” Patricia began and then, with relief, caught sight of her Nanny who had come to collect the children for a walk.

  Father was rummaging in the pile of parcels without success, grumbling to himself loudly, so that no one could ignore the fact that he was in distress.

  “Must be a good-sized box! Can’t have come! Confound those people! Thoroughly unreliable! What business is coming to, I don’t know! Plenty of notice and they can’t even carry out a simple order punctually! Well, I might have known! Quite useless to arrange anything that depends on modern shopkeepers doing their job with reasonable efficiency! All my arrangements ruined! Doesn’t matter to them, of course.”

  The benevolent grandfather had given place to the embittered man who has vainly tried to be a philanthropist but is foiled by the inefficiency of everyone else.

  Patricia, who has the mistaken idea that it’s a good thing to sympathize with Father in this mood, sniffed, “Christmas posts are so unreliable! These temporary postmen are often most dishonest; they’ll steal whole bags of stuff to avoid the trouble of delivering it! The working class has no sense of responsibility nowadays.”

  I kept my mouth shut, for the sake of peace, though I longed to argue with her.

  Dittie, aroused from the Times by all this fuss, remarked with her usual tactlessness, “It’s no good talking as if someone had waylaid your parcel out of spite! It’s not here, and that’s that! Considering how awful some people’s handwriting is, it’s a marvel that so many things do arrive! Clare Mapperleigh has twins, I see.” She sank back into the Times.

  Hilda came to the rescue. “If it’s something you particularly want, Father, is there anything we can do about it?” she inquired. “Send a telegram, perhaps?”

  “I don’t care!” Father declared, obviously untruthfully. “I wasn’t thinking of myself! It’s others who will be disappointed. I wash my hands of the whole affair.”

  This meant that he had worked himself into the belief that the non-arrival of his parcel was really due to the wickedness of his enemies, but he wasn’t going to let them get the better of him.

  “Perhaps it would be better to telephone,” Hilda continued calmly.

  “Quite right, Hilda!” Father agreed. “They don’t charge you for the number of words on the telephone! Ha! Not that I’m a man of many words myself, but they shall know what I think of them. Miss Portisham shall put a trunk call through.”

  He fussed away into his study, where the Portent was dutifully awaiting his orders. Hilda and I had already received instructions from him to secure any Christmas parcels which arrived for the children, and we now began to collect these and took them into the study to stow them in a cupboard.

  Miss Portisham was saying: “I think a trunk call, Sir Osmond, would be safer. Even the telegraph wires may be a little uncertain at this season. I will put the call through and I shall be very firm. The box must be despatched by passenger train, and Bingham shall meet the train and bring the box straight here.”

  “Yes, yes!” Father agreed. “I rather think you’d better go with Bingham yourself, to make sure there’s no mistake.”

  “Oh, certainly, Sir Osmond! I am quite sure it will be all right. We may even get two, the other one coming by a later post.”

  “Make it quite clear that I’m only paying for one. They had plenty of notice and they know quite well that it’s Christmas time! They should allow for postal delay.”

  “Oh, certainly, Sir Osmond. Shall I order the car for you now? I think you have some more calls to do? We shall hardly need it for the station until the 2.26.”

  “Yes, yes. But what about Eleanor and her husband and the children? They’re coming before lunch.”

  “I rather think, Sir Osmond, that Mr. and Mrs. Stickland have arranged for Ashmore to meet them, doubtless thinking that you would be needing the car at such a time.”

  “Hm! Very well! See to that, then I’ll look through these letters before I go.”

  Our parcels were packed away and we returned to the hall, to be greeted by George, who had just finished his breakfast, with, “What’s all this to-do about a parcel which hasn’t come for Fat
her?”

  I thought they’d better hear about it, but I warned them not to say I’d told them, because Father was probably planning a dramatic announcement.

  I explained his idea that Santa Klaus should distribute the presents to the children from the Christmas tree on the evening of Christmas Day. He had decided on this last week, and sent for a Santa Klaus outfit from Dawson’s. It was supposed to arrive on Saturday, but when it didn’t turn up he was persuaded by the Portent to wait until Monday morning. Now, of course, he was thoroughly annoyed at this hitch in his plan, but doubtless the thing would turn up later, and the Portent would also secure a second one, and Father would be rather pleased that Dawson’s had the trouble of sending two and would only be paid for one.

  “And who’s to have the honour of putting on the beard and the cotton wool?” George inquired. “You don’t mean to say I’m cast for the part? Or does the old man do it himself?”

  I told them I thought it was to be Oliver, though first of all Father had suggested that Philip should do it. Then I think it occurred to him that Philip, who is good at amateur theatricals, might make a great success of it and walk away with the honours, so he fixed on Oliver, who is such a stick and can’t act for nuts. It wasn’t to be one of the family, because Father thought the children would then identify him at once.

  “You’d better coach the children a bit, Patricia,” George advised his wife. “It would be just like Kit to spoil the game by blurting out that he can see Mr. Witcombe’s trousers!”

  “If it was to be done at all, it ought to have been done years ago, when the children were babies,” said Dittie. “Children of eight and nine nowadays know that it’s all rubbish, and I don’t think they ought to be brought up in this atmosphere of shams.”

  “The kiddies will enjoy it all right,” George assured her easily. “If they’re told they’ve got to pretend, they’ll pretend, won’t they, Patricia?”

  “I only hope so,” she replied. “But Kit is so naughty. Of course, I like these old-fashioned customs, but governesses and schools are so very up-to-date and the children do seem to get such a grown-up point of view and know all about aeroplanes and which car you ought to buy; one can’t keep pace with them. But I only hope it won’t interfere with their bedtime.”