Part 16 (2/2)

”Yes, yes,” Marley said, clanking his chains excitedly. ”Speak, Spirit.”

Yet to Come took hold of his teacup handle with his bony fingers and raised his cup.

I held my breath.

”To Christmas,” he said, and why had I ever feared that voice? It was clear and childlike.

Like Gemma's voice, saying, ”We'll be together next Christmas.”

”To Christmas,” the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come said, his voice growing stronger with each word, ”G.o.d bless us Every One.”.

CAT'S PAW.

by Connie Willis.

Come, Bridlings,” Touffet said impatiently as soon as I ar-rived ”Go home and pack your bags. We're going to Suffolk for a jolly country Christmas.”

”I thought you hated country Christmases,” I said.

I had invited him only the week before down to my sister's and gotten a violent rejection of the idea.

”Country Christmases! Dreadful occasions!” he had said. ”Holly and mistletoe and vile games-blindman's bluff and that ridiculous game where people grab at burning raisins, and even viler food. Plum pudding!” he shuddered. ”And wa.s.sail!”

I protested that my sister was an excellent cook and that she never made wa.s.sail, she made eggnog. ”I think you'd have an excellent time,” I said. ”Everyone's very pleasant.”

”I can imagine,” he said. ”No one drinks, everyone is faithful to his wife, the inheritance is equally and fairly divided, and none of your relatives would ever think of murdering anyone.”

”Of course not!” I said, bristling.

”Then I would rather spend Christmas here alone,” Touffet said. ”At least then I shall not be subjected to roast goose and Dumb Crambo.”

”We do not play Dumb Crambo,” I replied with dignity. ”We play charades.”

And now, scarcely a week later, Touffet was eagerly proposing going to the country.

”I have just received a letter from Lady Charlotte Valladay,” he said, brandis.h.i.+ng a sheet of pale pink notepaper, ”asking me to come to Marwaite Manor. She wishes me to solve a mystery for her.” He examined the letter through his monocle. ”What could be more delightful than murder in a country house at Christmas?”

Actually, I could think of a number of things. I scanned the letter. ”You must come,” she had written. ”This is a mystery only you, the world's greatest detective, can solve.” Lady Charlotte Valladay. And Marwaite Manor. Where had I heard those names before? Lady Charlotte.”It doesn't say there's been a murder,” I said. ”It says a mystery.”

Touffet was not listening. ”We must hurry if we are to catch the 3:00 train from Euston. There won't be time for you to go home and pack and come back here. You must meet me at the station. Come, don't stand there looking foolish.”

”The letter doesn't say anything about my being invited,” I said. ”It only mentions you. And I've already told my sister I'm spending Christmas with her.”

”She does not mention you because it is of course a.s.sumed that I will bring my a.s.sistant.”

”Hardly your a.s.sistant, Touffet. You never let me do anything.”

”That is because you have not the mind of a detective. Always you see the facade. Never do you see what lies behind it.”

”Then you obviously won't need me,” I said.

”But I do, Bridlings,” he said. ”Who will record my exploits if you are not there? And who will point out the obvious and the incorrect, so that I may reject them and find the true solution?”

”I would rather play charades,” I said, and picked up my hat. ”I hope Lady Charlotte feeds you wa.s.sail and plum pudding. And makes you play Dumb Crambo.”

In the end I went. I had been with Touffet on every one of his cases, and although I still could not place Lady Charlotte Valla-day, it seemed to me her name had been connected to something interesting.

And I had never experienced Christmas in a country manor, with the ancient hall decked in holly and Gainsboroughs, a huge Yule log on the fire, an old-fas.h.i.+oned Christmas feast-poached salmon, a roast joint, and a resplendent goose, with a different wine for every course. Perhaps they might even have a boar's head.

The bullet trains to Suffolk were all filled, and we could only get seats on an express. It was filled as well, and every pa.s.senger had not only luggage but huge shopping bags crammed with gifts which completely filled all the overhead compartments. I had to hold my bag and Touffet's umbrella on my lap.

I thought longingly of the first-cla.s.s compartment I had booked on the train to my sister's and hoped Marwaite Manor was at the near end of Suffolk.

Marwaite Manor. Where had I heard that name? And Lady Charlotte's? Not in the tabloids, I decided, though I had a vague idea of something controversial. A protest of some sort. What? Cloning? The revival of fox hunting?

Perhaps she was an actress-they were always getting involved in causes. Or a royal scandal. No, she was too old. I seemed to remember she was in her fifties.

Touffet, across from me, was deep in a book. I leaned forward slightly, trying to read the t.i.tle. Touffet only reads mystery novels, he says, to study the methods of fictional detectives, but actually to criticize them.

And, I suspected, to study their mannerisms. And co-opt them. He had already affected Lord Peter Wimsey's monocle and Hercule Poirot's treatment of his ”a.s.sistant,” and he had met me at the station, wearing a Sherlock Holmesian-Inverness cape. Thank G.o.d he had not adopted Holmes's deerstalker. Or his violin. At least thus far.

The t.i.tle was in very tiny print. I leaned forward farther, and Touffet looked up irritably. ”This Dorothy Sayers, she is ridiculous,” he said, ”she makes her Lord Peter read timetables of trains, decipher codes, use stopwatches, and it is all, all unnecessary. If he would only ask himself, 'Who had a motive to murder Paul Alexis?' he would have no need of all these s.h.i.+rt collar receipts and diagrams.”

He flung it down. ”It is Sherlock Holmes who has caused this foolish preoccupation with evidence,” he said, ”with all his tobacco ashes and chemical experiments.” He grabbed the carpetbag off my lap and began rummaging through it. ”Where have you put my other book, Bridlings?”

I hadn't touched it. I sometimes think he takes me along with him for the same reason that he reads mystery novels-so he can feel superior.

He pulled a book from his bag, Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue. No doubt he would find all sorts of things wrong with Inspector Dupin. He would probably think Dupin should have asked himself what motive an orangu- ”Touffet!” I said. ”I've remembered who Lady Charlotte Valla-day is! She's the ape woman!”

”Ape woman?” Touffet said irritably. ”You are saying Lady Charlotte is a carnival attraction? Covered inhair and scratching herself?”

”No, no,” I said. ”She's a primate-rights activist, claims gorillas and orangutans should be allowed to vote, be given equal standing in the courts, and all that.”

”Are you certain this is the same person?” Touffet said.

”Completely. Her father's Lord Alastair Biddle, made his fortune in artificial intelligence. That's how she got interested in primates. They were IA research subjects. She founded the Primate Intelligence Inst.i.tute. I saw her on television just the other day, soliciting funds for it.”

Touffet had taken out Lady Charlotte's pink letter and was peering at it. ”She says nothing at all about apes.”

”Perhaps one of her orangutans has got loose and committed a murder, just like in The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” I said. ”Looks like she made a monkey out of you, Touffet.”

There was no one at the station to meet us. I suggested taking the single taxi parked at the end of the platform, but Touffet said, ”Lady Charlotte will of course send someone to meet us.”

After a quarter of an hour, during which it began to rain and I thought fondly of how my sister was always on the platform waiting for me, smiling and waving, I telephoned the manor.

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