The pastor brought the conversation to an abrupt end by hanging up.
Herbie Morris was on the verge of locking up The Doll House when Father Crumlish and Big Tom walked in.
“Can you give this a bit of glue, Herbie?” Father asked as he handed the storekeeper the broken lamb.
“Forget it, Father,” Herbie said, shrugging. “Help yourself to a new one.”
“No need. I’m sure you can fix this one and it’ll do fine.”
Then, as Herbie began to administer to the statuette, the pastor walked over to a display of flaxen-haired dolls and leaned across the counter to select one. But the doll eluded his grasp and toppled over. The motion caused it to close its eyes, open its mouth, and emit the realistic sound of a child crying.
“I see your telephone is close by,” Father said, pointing to the instrument on a counter across the aisle. “So it’s little wonder that Detective Casey thought he heard a real child crying while you were on the phone with him at headquarters. One of these dolls must have fallen over just as you were telling him to arrest Charley Abbott for John Everett’s murder.”
The priest was aware of Madigan’s startled exclamation and the sound of something splintering. Herbie stood staring down at his hands, which had convulsively gripped the lamb he’d been holding, and broken it beyond repair.
“I know that you were notified that this building is going to be torn down, Herbie,” Father said, “and I know these four walls are your whole life. But were you so bitter that you were driven to commit murder to get revenge?”
“I didn’t want revenge,” Herbie burst out passionately. “I just wanted to keep my store. That’s all!” He wrung his hands despairingly. “I pleaded with Everett for two months, but he wouldn’t listen. Said he wanted this land for a parking lot.” Morris’s shoulders sagged and he began to weep.
Madigan moved to the man’s side. “Go on,” he said in a hard voice.
“When I went to his house that night, I took the gun just to frighten him. But he still wouldn’t change his mind. I went crazy, I guess, and-” He halted and looked pleadingly at the priest. “I didn’t really mean to kill him, Father. Honest!”
“What about his wallet?” Madigan prodded him.
“It fell out of his pocket. There was a lot of money in it-almost a thousand dollars. I-I just took it.”
“And then hid it, along with the gun, in the room of a poor innocent man,” Father Crumlish said, trying to contain his anger. “And to make sure that Charley would be charged with your crime, you called the police.”
“But the police would have come after me,” Herbie protested, as if to justify his actions. “I read in the papers that they were checking Everett’s properties and all his tenants. I was afraid-” The look on Father’s face caused Herbie’s voice to trail away.
“Not half as afraid as Charley when you kept warning him that the police would accuse him because of his mental record, because he worked in the Liberty Building and was going to lose his job. That’s what you did, didn’t you?” Father asked in a voice like thunder. “You deliberately put fear into his befuddled mind, told him he’d be put away-”
The priest halted and gazed at the little storekeeper’s bald bowed head. There were many more harsh words on the tip of his tongue that he might have said. But, as a priest, he knew that he must forego the saying of them.
Instead he murmured, “God have mercy on you.”
Then he turned and walked out into the night. It had begun to snow again-soft, gentle flakes. They fell on Father Crumlish’s cheeks and mingled with a few drops of moisture that were already there.
It was almost midnight before Big Tom Madigan rang St. Brigid’s doorbell. Under the circumstances Father wasn’t surprised by the policeman’s late visit.
“How did you know, Father?” Madigan asked as he sank into a chair.
Wearily Father related the incident at the crib. “After what I heard at the Swansons and what Casey told me, a crying child was on my mind. And then, when I saw what looked like tears on the Infant’s face, I got to thinking about all the homeless-” He paused for a long moment.
“Only a few hours before, Herbie had told me how hard it was, particularly at Christmas, to be lonely and without a real home. Charley was suspected of murder because he was going to lose his job. But wasn’t it more reasonable to suspect a man who was going to lose his life’s work? His whole world?” Father sighed. “I knew Herbie never could have opened another store in a new location. He would have had to pay much higher rent, and he was barely making ends meet where he was.” It was some moments before Father spoke again. “Tom,” he said brightly, sitting upright in his chair. “I happen to know that the kitchen table is loaded down with Christmas cookies.”
The policeman chuckled. “And I happen to know that Emma Catt counts every one of ’em. So don’t think you can sneak a few.”
“Follow me, lad,” Father said confidently as he got to his feet. “You’re on the list for a dozen for Christmas. Is there any law against my giving you your present now?”
“Not that I know of, Father,” Madigan replied, grinning.
“And in the true Christmas spirit, Tom”-Father Crumlish’s eyes twinkled merrily-“I’m sure you’ll want to share and share alike.”
Father Crumlish’s Christmas Cookies
R ECIPE :
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup sifted flour
1 1/4 cups very finely chopped blanched almonds
3/4 cup very finely chopped candied fruit and peels 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
(1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
(2) Combine butter, sugar, and cream in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat.
(3) Stir in other ingredients to form a batter.
(4) Drop batter by spoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet, spacing them about three inches apart.
(5) Bake ten minutes or until cookies begin to brown around the edges. Cool and then remove to a flat surface. If desired, while cookies are still warm, drizzle melted chocolate over tops.
YIELD: About 24 cookies
– Courtesy of the author
THE CHRISTMAS MASQUE by S. S. Rafferty
Born in New England in 1930, “S. S. Rafferty” worked as a newspaperman and free-lance writer, and was a Marine Corps news correspondent during the Korean conflict. Following military service, he went into the advertising business in Boston and later New York, where he served as vice president of a major agency.
In 1977 he decided to write full time and has now published over sixty short stories in the mystery genre. He is perhaps best known for three series detectives: Captain Jeremy Cork, an eighteenth-century American colonial “fact finder’’; Dr. Amos Phipps, a nineteenth-century New York criminologist known as “The Hawk”; and Chick Kelly, a modern-day stand-up comic who delightfully mixes detection with schtick. The Captain Cork stories were collected under the title Fatal Flourishes, and the other two richly deserve to be.
As much as I prefer the steady ways of New England, I have to agree with Captain Jeremy Cork that the Puritans certainly know how to avoid a good time. They just ignore it. That’s why every twenty-third of December we come to the New York colony from our home base in Connecticut to celebrate the midwinter holidays.
I am often critical of my employer’s inattention to his many business enterprises and his preoccupation with the solution of crime-but I give him credit for the way he keeps Christmas. That is, as long as I can stop him from keeping it clear into February.