“Mrs. Claus! Mrs. Claus!” they yelled in unison (though Jangle’s cries sounded more like “Mishush Claush! Mishush Claush!”).
They found Santa’s wife in the kitchen stirring an enormous cauldron of borscht. It was the only thing her husband would eat for the next six or seven months, so gorged would he be on cookies and milk by night’s end.
“Blood!” Jingle howled.
“Blllllloooooood!” Jangle added.
“Oh my, no,” Mrs. Claus replied sweetly. “It’s just borscht. Goodness, when you elves start nipping at the glogg there’s no telling what you’ll—”
Jingle grabbed one wrist, Jangle grabbed the other, and they pulled her away from the stove, out the door, and through the halls until she was standing before the giant Christmas tree, a dripping ladle still clutched in her hand.
Jingle pointed at the mysterious package. “Blood!” he howled again.
“Blllooood,” Jangle added dutifully, though he was a bit too winded by now to give it much oomph.
“Oh. I see,” Mrs. Claus said. “Dear oh dear. Well, I suppose someone had best open it up.”
A crowd began to gather around, but no one made a move toward the box. Mrs. Claus sighed, whispered another “Dear oh dear,” handed her ladle to Jingle, and stooped down under the tree’s lowest branches. The ribbon and paper slid off the package easily. When she lifted off the lid, a chorus of gasps shook the silver bells on the tree.
Inside the box was the crumpled form of an orange-haired, cherub-faced elf.
“Deary deary dear,” muttered Mrs. Claus, employing the fiercest vulgarities in her vocabulary. “It’s Gumdrop, Sugarplum’s brother.”
Another gasp echoed up into the rafters.
“Could he... could he have been... wrapped by mistake?” Jingle stammered.
Such things had been known to happen. Two years before, a pair of elves named Glitter and Sparkle had crawled into a box for a quick nap between shifts in Wrapping. Come Christmas morning, a horrified eight year old found their lifeless bodies crushed beneath a Star Wars Death Star play set.
Mrs. Claus reached into the package and gingerly shifted little Gumdrop.
“Oh deary deary deary deary dear,” she said, which told the elves that whatever she saw, it was bad indeed.
“Wh-what?” Jingle asked.
Mrs. Claus moved away from Gumdrop, giving the crowd a clear view of his blood-soaked back. Protruding from it was the red and white curl of a large candy cane. The deadly confection was smudged with sticky black fingerprints, just like the wrapping paper and ribbon on the box.
“I’m afraid this was no accident,” Mrs. Claus announced. “Someone here has been very, very naughty.”
The gasps turned to shrieks. A reindeer handler named Holly fainted into the arms of her brother Jolly. Rumpity-Tump the Icicle Man became so frozen with fear he fell over and shattered, and his pieces had to be swept up and placed outside in the snow so he could pull himself together.
“A killer! A killer loose in the workshop!” Jingle wailed.
“And Shanta won’t be back for hoursh!” cried Jangle, who’d been trying to steady his nerves with several long swigs from a flask he’d pulled from his vest pocket.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Claus, nodding sadly. “It looks like the borscht will have to wait.” She stepped out from under the branches and cleared her throat with dainty dignity. “Could everyone hush now, please?”
Her voice never rose more than a half step above a soothing whisper, ever, yet somehow her words carried farther and penetrated deeper than if she’d screamed every word. The elves’ lamentations and gnashing of teeth died away quickly, leaving only the sound of the wind outside and a quiet jingling somewhere high in the Christmas tree.
“Thank you. Now — is there anyone here who saw Gumdrop this evening?”
An elf toward the back of the room raised his hand.
“Yes, Snowflake?”
“Gumdrop was working with us in Nice Management this year. We finished the list up a little early and went to get some... uhhh, eggnog at Carol’s place.”
Mrs. Claus picked Carol’s face out of the throng. “Carol?”
“Yeah, Gumdrop was there for a while. But he and my sister Noel... ummm... had a little too much eggnog and they went off to... make some mulled cider.”
Mrs. Claus scanned the still-growing crowd for Noel’s blushing face. “Noel?”
“Over here, Mrs. C. When we got to the bedro — I mean, the kitchen, Gumdrop realized he didn’t have a... well... a... bag of mulling spices. There was one in his wallet, but he’d left it in his jacket at work. I might have had a bit too much eggnog, but I’m not stupid — I told him no spice, no cider. So Gumdrop went back to work to get his jacket.” Noel wiped away a tear. “He never came back.”
“He went back to Nice Management?”
“Yes.”
“And no one else saw him after that?”
The room was still.
“I see.” Mrs. Claus folded her arms and shook her head. “Eggnog and cider-making and mulling spices? My oh my.”
The assembled elves hung their heads in shame.
“Well, you’ve been working so hard this year... I don’t think we need to mention any of that to Santa.”
The elves peeked back up at her sheepishly.
“But this business with poor Gumdrop...”
Something rustled high above in the tree, and a single ornament dropped from branch to branch to branch, finally shattering on the floor just a few yards from Mrs. Claus. Everyone looked up.
At the top of the tree, tinkering with the brightly glowing star perched there, was a single elf.
“Hello, up there,” Mrs. Claus said.
The elf peered down at her. “Greetingz.” Then he went back to working on the star.
“Aren’t you interested in what’s going on down here?”
“Oh, it iz a zertainty. But I am having verk to do here, yez?”
“I think that can wait. Why don’t you come down and talk to me?”
Mrs. Claus’s tone was as sweet and lilting as ever, yet it was clear this was no request. It was a command.
“No,” the elf said, not bothering to even look at her this time. “I think I finish my verk firzt, yez?”
“Oh. Well then.”
Mrs. Claus took a deep breath and twiddled her thumbs for a moment. Disobedient elves were as rare at the North Pole as murders. There were no precedents for dealing with either one.
“Jingle, Jangle, everybody — stand back please,” Mrs. Claus said when she’d decided on a course of action.
She reached into the lowest branches of the Christmas tree and began pulling off a long strand of shimmering garland. Once she had about thirty feet of it, she tied one end into a hoop and began twirling it over her head. When she let it go, the makeshift lasso sailed to the top of the tree and landed around the obstinate elf’s right foot. With one quick, hard pull, Mrs. Claus closed the loop tight and jerked the little man into the air.
“Blahhhhhhhh!” he squawked as he cartwheeled downward.
“Ooooooooooh!” the elves cooed as they watched him fall.
“I’m so sorry,” said Mrs. Claus after she’d caught him by the fluffy white collar of his green tunic, snatching him out of the air before he could splatter at her feet. “But I really do think it’s awfully important that we talk.”
She loosened the garland and set her tiny prisoner down. He was chubbier than most of his kin, and a little taller too. He bent back and stared up at the top of the tree.