I nodded. “You put on his cassock because at a distance the bloody rip in the cassock wouldn’t show on the black cloth. But you couldn’t wear the white surplice without the blood showing. You barely had time to get the cassock back on Wigger’s body, stuff the surplice through the chicken wire, and push it out so it wouldn’t be found in the belfry. You couldn’t put that back on the body because you hadn’t been wearing it downstairs.”
Carranza Lowara sighed. “It was hard work with my weak hand. I got the cassock back on the body just as the lock gave way. Will you call the sheriff now?”
I watched his son playing with the other gypsies and wondered if I had the right to judge. Finally I said, “Pack up your wagons and be gone from here by nightfall. Never come near Northmont again.”
“But-” Carranza began.
“Wigger was not a good man, but maybe he wasn’t bad enough to deserve what he got. I don’t know. I only know if you stay around here I might change my mind.”
Volga came to me. “Now I owe you more than ever.”
“Go. It’s only a Christmas present I’m giving you. Go, before it fades like the melting snow.”
And within an hour the wagons were on the road, heading south this time. Maybe they’d had enough of our New England winter.
“I never told anyone that story,” Dr. Sam Hawthorne concluded. “It was the first time I took justice into my own hands, and I never knew if I did right or not. No, the gypsies didn’t come back. I never saw them again.”
He emptied the last of the brandy and stood up. “It was in the spring of ’twenty-six that a famous French criminal sought shelter in Northmont. He was called the Eel because of his fantastic escapes. But I’ll save that story till next time. Another-ah-libation before you go?”
DEATH ON CHRISTMAS EVE by Stanley Ellin
Stanley Ellin writes slowly. He averages one short story a year, reworking his plots and phrases until they are perfect. From the beginning they have been winners. His first seven short stories won prizes in the annual contests of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Three Edgars (two for best short story, one for best novel of the year) and Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière continue the tradition. Both his shorter works and his novels have been adapted for television and films.
As a child I had been vastly impressed by the Boerum house. It was fairly new then, and glossy; a gigantic pile of Victorian rickrack, fretwork, and stained glass, flung together in such chaotic profusion that it was hard to encompass in one glance. Standing before it this early Christmas Eve, however, I could find no echo of that youthful impression. The gloss was long since gone; woodwork, glass, metal, all were merged to a dreary gray, and the shades behind the windows were drawn completely so that the house seemed to present a dozen blindly staring eyes to the passerby.
When I rapped my stick sharply on the door, Celia opened it.
“There is a doorbell right at hand,” she said. She was still wearing the long out-moded and badly wrinkled black dress she must have dragged from her mother’s trunk, and she looked, more than ever, the image of old Katrin in her later years: the scrawny body, the tightly compressed lips, the colorless hair drawn back hard enough to pull every wrinkle out of her forehead. She reminded me of a steel trap ready to snap down on anyone who touched her incautiously.
I said, “I am aware that the doorbell has been disconnected, Celia,” and walked past her into the hallway. Without turning my head, I knew that she was glaring at me; then she sniffed once, hard and dry, and flung the door shut. Instantly we were in a murky dimness that made the smell of dry rot about me stick in my throat. I fumbled for the wall switch, but Celia said sharply, “No! This is not the time for lights.”
I turned to the white blur of her face, which was all I could see of her. “Celia,” I said, “spare me the dramatics.”
“There has been a death in this house. You know that.”
“I have good reason to,” I said, “but your performance now does not impress me.”
“She was my own brother’s wife. She was very dear to me.
I took a step toward her in the murk and rested my stick on her shoulder. “Celia,” I said, “as your family’s lawyer, let me give you a word of advice. The inquest is over and done with, and you’ve been cleared. But nobody believed a word of your precious sentiments then, and nobody ever will. Keep that in mind, Celia.”
She jerked away so sharply that the stick almost fell from my hand. “Is that what you have come to tell me?” she said.
I said, “I came because I knew your brother would want to see me today. And if you don’t mind my saying so, I suggest that you keep to yourself while I talk to him. I don’t want any scenes.”
“Then keep away from him yourself!” she cried. “He was at the inquest. He saw them clear my name. In a little while he will forget the evil he thinks of me. Keep away from him so that he can forget.”
She was at her infuriating worst, and to break the spell I started up the dark stairway, one hand warily on the balustrade. But I heard her follow eagerly behind, and in some eerie way it seemed as if she were not addressing me, but answering the groaning of the stairs under our feet.
“When he comes to me,” she said, “I will forgive him. At first I was not sure, but now I know. I prayed for guidance, and I was told that life is too short for hatred. So when he comes to me I will forgive him.”
I reached the head of the stairway and almost went sprawling. I swore in annoyance as I righted myself. “If you’re not going to use lights, Celia, you should, at least, keep the way clear. Why don’t you get that stuff out of here?”
“Ah,” she said, “those are all poor Jessie’s belongings. It hurts Charlie so to see anything of hers, I knew this would be the best thing to do-to throw all her things out.”
Then a note of alarm entered her voice. “But you won’t tell Charlie, will you? You won’t tell him?” she said, and kept repeating it on a higher and higher note as I moved away from her, so that when I entered Charlie’s room and closed the door behind me it almost sounded as if I had left a bat chittering behind me.
As in the rest of the house, the shades in Charlie’s room were drawn to their full length. But a single bulb in the chandelier overhead dazzled me momentarily, and I had to look twice before I saw Charlie sprawled out on his bed with an arm flung over his eyes. Then he slowly came to his feet and peered at me.
“Well,” he said at last, nodding toward the door, “she didn’t give you any light to come up, did she?”
“No,” I said, “but I know the way.”
“She’s like a mole,” he said. “Gets around better in the dark than I do in the light. She’d rather have it that way too. Otherwise she might look into a mirror and be scared of what she sees there.”
“Yes,” I said, “she seems to be taking it very hard.”
He laughed short and sharp as a sea-lion barking. “That’s because she’s still got the fear in her. All you get out of her now is how she loved Jessie, and how sorry she is. Maybe she figures if she says it enough, people might get to believe it. But give her a little time and she’ll be the same old Celia again.”
I dropped my hat and stick on the bed and laid my overcoat beside them. Then I drew out a cigar and waited until he fumbled for a match and helped me to a light. His hand shook so violently that he had hard going for a moment and muttered angrily at himself. Then I slowly exhaled a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and waited.
Charlie was Celia’s junior by five years, but seeing him then it struck me that he looked a dozen years older. His hair was the same pale blond, almost colorless so that it was hard to tell if it was graying or not. But his cheeks wore a fine, silvery stubble, and there were huge blue-black pouches under his eyes. And where Celia was braced against a rigid and uncompromising backbone, Charlie sagged, standing or sitting, as if he were on the verge of falling forward. He stared at me and tugged uncertainly at the limp mustache that dropped past the corners of his mouth.