Mystery for Christmas and Other Stories
- Автор: Аллингем (Аллингхэм) Марджери (Марджори), Бучер Энтони
- Год: 1990
- Язык: английский
- Год: Signet
- ISBN: 978-0-451-16909-9
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Mystery for Christmas and Other Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Sitting before the television at Security headquarters, a smiling Director General Hardnoggin raised his thimble-mug of ale. “My Santa, right or wrong,” he said.
Security Chief Bigtoes raised his glass. He wanted to think of a new toast. Crouchback was under guard and Carlotta and Brassbottom had fled to the Underwood. But he wanted to remind the Director General that SHAFT and the desire for something better still remained. Was automation the answer? Would machines finally free the elves to handcraft toys again? Bigtoes didn’t know. He did know that times were changing. They would never be the same. He raised his glass, but the right words escaped him and he missed his turn.
Charity Nosegay raised her glass. “Yes, Virginia,” she said, using the popular abbreviation for another elf toast; “yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
Hardnoggin turned and looked at her with a smile. “You have a beautiful voice, Miss Nosegay,” he said. “Have you ever considered being in the talkies?”
Santa Claus Beat
by Rex Stout
“Christmas Eve,” Art Hippie was thinking to himself, “would be a good time for the murder.”
The thought was both timely and characteristic. It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon of December 24, and though the murder would have got an eager welcome from Art Hippie any day at all, his disdainful attitude toward the prolonged hurly-burly of Christmas sentiment and shopping made that the best possible date for it. He did not actually turn up his nose at Christmas, for that would have been un-American; but as a New York cop not yet out of his twenties who had recently been made a precinct dick and had hung his uniform in the back of the closet of his furnished room, it had to be made clear, especially to himself, that he was good and tough. A cynical slant on Christmas was therefore imperative.
His hope of running across a murder had begun back in the days when his assignment had been tagging illegally parked cars, and was merely practical and professional. His biggest ambition was promotion to Homicide, and the shortest cut would have been discovery of a corpse, followed by swift, brilliant, solo detection and capture of the culprit. It had not gone so far as becoming an obsession; as he strode down the sidewalk this December afternoon he was not sniffing for the scent of blood at each dingy entrance he passed; but when he reached the number he had been given and turned to enter, his hand darted inside his jacket to touch his gun.
None of the three people he found in the cluttered and smelly little room one flight up seemed to need shooting. Art identified himself and wrote down their names. The man at the battered old desk, who was twice Art’s age and badly needed a shave, was Emil Duross, proprietor of the business conducted in that room — Duross Specialties, a mail-order concern dealing in gimcrack jewelry. The younger man, small, dark and neat, seated on a chair squeezed in between the desk and shelves stacked with cardboard boxes, was II. E. Koenig, adjuster, according to a card he had proffered, for the Apex Insurance Company. The girl, who had pale watery eyes and a stringy neck, stood backed up to a pile of cartons the height of her shoulder. She had on a dark brown felt hat and a lighter brown woolen coat that had lost a button. Her name was Helen Lauro, and it could have been not rheum in her eyes but the remains of tears.
Because Art Hippie was thorough it took him twenty minutes to get the story to his own satisfaction. Then he returned his notebook to his pocket, looked at Duross, at Koenig, and last at the girl. He wanted to tell her to wipe her eyes, but what if she didn’t have a handkerchief?
He spoke to Duross, “Stop me if I’m wrong,” he said. “You bought the ring a week ago to give to your wife for Christmas and paid sixty-two dollars for it. You put it there in a desk drawer after showing it to Miss Lauro. Why did you show it to Miss Lauro?”
Duross turned his palms up. “Just a natural thing. She works for me, she’s a woman, and it’s a beautiful ring.”
“Okay. Today you work with her — filling orders, addressing packages, and putting postage on. You send her to the post office with a bag of the packages. Why didn’t she take all of them?”
“She did.”
“Then what are those?” Art pointed to a pile of little boxes, addressed and stamped, on the end of a table.
“Orders that came in the afternoon mail. I did them while she was gone to the post office.”
Art nodded. “And also while she she was gone you looked in the drawer to get the ring to take home for Christmas, and it wasn’t there. You know it was there this morning because Miss Lauro asked if she could look at it again, and you showed it to her and let her put it on her finger, and then you put it back in the drawer. But this afternoon it was gone, and you couldn’t have taken it yourself because you haven’t left this room. Miss Lauro went out and got sandwiches for your lunch. So you decided she took the ring, and you phoned the insurance company, and Mr. Koenig came and advised you to call the police, and—”
“Only his stock is insured,” Koenig put in. “The ring was not a stock item and is not covered.”
“Just a legality,” Duross declared scornfully. “Insurance companies can’t hide behind legalities. It hurts their reputation.”
Koenig smiled politely but noncommittally.
Art turned to the girl. “Why don’t you sit down?” he asked her. “There’s a chair we men are not using.”
“I will never sit down in this room again,” she declared in a thin tight voice.
“Okay.” Art scowled at her. She was certainly not comely. “If you did take the ring you might—”
“I didn’t!”
“Very well. But if you did you might as well tell me where it is because you won’t ever dare to wear it or sell it.”
“Of course I wouldn’t. I knew I wouldn’t. That’s why I didn’t take it.”
“Oh? You thought of taking it?”
“Of course I did. It was a beautiful ring.” She stopped to swallow. “Maybe my life isn’t much, but what it is, I’d give it for a ring like that, and a girl like me, I could live a hundred years and never have one. Of course I thought of taking it — but I knew I couldn’t ever wear it.”
“You see?” Duross appealed to the law. “She’s foxy, that girl. She’s slick.”
Art downed an impulse to cut it short, get out, return to the station house, and write a report. Nobody here deserved anything, not even justice — especially not justice. Writing a brief report was all it rated, and all, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it would have got. But instead of breaking it off, Art sat and thought it over through a long silence, with the three pairs of eyes on him. Finally he spoke to Duross:
“Get me the orders that came in the afternoon mail.”
Duross was startled. “Why?”
“I want to check them with that pile of boxes you addressed and stamped.”
Duross shook his head. “I don’t need a cop to check my orders and shipments. Is this a gag?”
“No. Get me the orders.”
“I will not!”
“Then I’ll have to open all the boxes.” Art arose and headed for the table. Duross bounced up and got in front of him and they were chest to chest.
“You don’t touch those boxes,” Duross told him. “You got no search warrant. You don’t touch anything!”
“That’s just another legality.” Art backed off a foot to avoid contact. “And since I guessed right, what’s a little legality? I’m going to open the boxes here and now, but I’ll count ten first to give you a chance to pick it out and hand it to me and save both of us a lot of bother. One, two, three—”