A FELONIOUS FATHER CHRISTMAS
“Father Christmas! Halt right there!”
These words were delivered by Sherlock Holmes in his most stentorian and authoritative tone of voice.
The object of his command, however, did not heed it. On the contrary, the festively clad fugitive lowered his head and increased his speed.
The ground floor of Burgh and Harmondswyke, the noted Oxford Street department store, was crowded with shoppers, for it was December 19th and all of London, it seemed, was out buying gifts and other seasonal essentials. There were shouts of consternation and the occasional shriek of alarm as the man dressed as Father Christmas, complete with ivy-green robe and mistletoe crown, hurtled through the milling throng. Those who did not get out of his way of their own volition, he barged aside with a ruthless thrust of the forearm. Several men and women, and even a child, found themselves on the receiving end of such rough treatment.
Holmes was hard on his heels and would have overtaken him halfway across the haberdashery department, had a shop clerk not intervened. The young fellow, dressed in an apron with the characters “B & H” emblazoned on the pocket, misread the situation and identified Holmes as the villain of the piece. Boldly he stepped into my friend’s path and made strenuous efforts to waylay him. With as much delicacy as the situation permitted, Holmes disentangled himself from the clerk’s clutches and continued after his quarry.
The delay cost him precious seconds, however, and now Father Christmas was nearing one of the sets of doors that afforded access to the street. Naught lay between him and freedom, save for one thing: me.
I had been guarding the door for the past half an hour. Inspector Lestrade and a number of police constables, all in plain clothes, were likewise stationed at the other points of egress around the building. As luck would have it, the onus of intercepting our felon now rested upon me.
It was not a task I relished, since the man was nothing short of a giant: six feet seven tall if he was an inch, and broad as a barrel around the chest. He weighed, I would estimate, in the region of seventeen stone and, to judge by his speed, was possessed of considerable strength and vitality, not to mention a determination to evade capture that bordered on desperation.
I braced myself as he approached, feeling the way a matador must when confronted with a charging bull. Father Christmas’s cheeks, above his bushy white beard, were crimson with exertion. His eyes, beneath the mistletoe crown, glared like a madman’s. His nostrils flared.
I had faced men of similar stature on the rugby pitch, and duly adopted a half-crouch, as one might when preparing to tackle an oncoming flanker.
Father Christmas, on seeing me, did not falter. If anything, he accelerated.
“Watson!” Holmes called out from behind him. “He is yours! Deal with him, would you? There’s a good fellow.”
All might have been well, had I not in the heat of the moment made a crucial mistake, namely leading with my injured shoulder. When playing rugby, I was always at pains to tackle an opponent using my good shoulder, the one that had not received a bullet from a jezail rifle wielded by a Ghazi sniper in Afghanistan. On this occasion, I neglected to take the precaution. I drove the bad shoulder hard into Father Christmas’s midriff. The collision saw both of us tumble to the floor, and the wind was certainly knocked out of Father Christmas’s sails, and for that matter his lungs; but alas, I myself was rendered helpless too. My wounded shoulder seized up from the impact, feeling as though it were suddenly gripped in a vice. I could do nothing but roll on my back, clutch the offending area and clench my teeth, hissing with pain.
Giving vent to a roar of indignation, Father Christmas regained his feet.
At that moment, Holmes at last caught up. Without hesitation he pounced, driving the giant back down to the floor. There followed a brief struggle, which ended with Holmes enfolding his opponent in a complicated baritsu wrestling hold. His arms were wrapped around Father Christmas’s neck, fingers interlaced, while one knee pressed into the small of the man’s back and the other leg locked around his thighs.
“Submit,” he hissed in the miscreant’s ear, “or I will choke you into insensibility. The choice is yours.”
There was further resistance, but Holmes merely tightened his grasp, and soon the fellow was choking, gasping for breath. He slapped the floor, indicating surrender. Holmes obligingly released him.
By now, the commotion had drawn Lestrade and his fellow Scotland Yarders. They swarmed around Father Christmas, and in no time he was in handcuffs, cursing hoarsely but volubly.
“Watson, are you well?” Holmes enquired with the utmost solicitude. He extended a hand to me, helping me to my feet.
“I have been better, Holmes,” I replied, rolling my shoulder in a gingerly manner. “I feel such a fool. In attempting to incapacitate the man, I ended up incapacitating myself.”
“Nonsense! You performed admirably. You stopped him. He is in irons. What more could one want?”
“An explanation,” Inspector Lestrade interjected in that rather testy way of his. “That is what I want, Mr Holmes. You prevailed upon me to assist you with the apprehension of a notorious jewel thief, and who do I now have in custody but good old Saint Nicholas?”
“Ah, but, Lestrade, that is where you are mistaken.” Holmes reached for Father Christmas’s bushy beard and gave it a firm, forthright tug. It peeled away, revealing itself to be false. “Tell me, whom do you see now?”
“Why, bless me!” declared the sallow-skinned, weasel-featured official. “If it isn’t Barney O’Brien!”
“Indeed,” said Holmes. “A criminal taker of treasures posing as a jolly giver of gifts. Barney O’Brien, newly released from Pentonville and already up to his old tricks again.”
“Damn you, you dog,” growled the man called O’Brien, adding a few less salubrious oaths and curses.
“A very pretty scheme you concocted, O’Brien,” said my friend, unperturbed. “Something of a step up from your usual housebreaking. I salute you. Oh, by the way, Lestrade, have one of your men go to the jewellery department and arrest a certain female assistant there. Her name, I believe, is Clarice. She shouldn’t be hard to recognise. Russet hair. Freckles. She is O’Brien’s accomplice.”
Having despatched a subordinate as requested, Lestrade said, “So where is the booty? You told me, Mr Holmes, that we would seize the culprit in flagrante. I suppose I am to rummage through his pockets in order to find his ill-gotten gains?”
“No need.” Holmes plucked the mistletoe crown from O’Brien’s head. He turned it in his hands, examining it until at last his eye alighted upon that which he sought. “You see, Lestrade? What you are looking for is right here.”
He passed the crown to Lestrade, who cast his gaze over it. “All I see are leaves and berries.”
“Look closer. All is not as it appears.”
The official peered at the item of plant-based millinery with such furrowed-browed concentration, I thought his forehead might crack. “No,” he said eventually. “I must confess myself baffled. I see nothing out of the ordinary.”
For my own part, I was in agreement with him. The mistletoe crown appeared to be nothing other than a mistletoe crown.
“Great heavens above, the berries!” Holmes snapped. “Here.” He took the crown back from Lestrade and dug thumb and forefinger into the wreaths of mistletoe. He plucked out what seemed at first glance to be an ordinary white berry. Only when he held it up to the light did I observe that it bore a distinctive nacreous lustre.
“A pearl,” I said.
“Precisely. And there are two more wedged into the crown’s interstices, here, and here. As for the others that O’Brien has spirited off the premises over the past few days, I daresay they are stashed at whatever lodging he calls home. If, that is, they have not already been sold on to a third party.”
He thrust the mistletoe crown back into Lestrade’s hands.
“Come, Watson,” he said. “Our work is done. Friend Lestrade will tidy up the last few loose ends, will you not, Lestrade? I feel Watson and I are no longer needed.”
“As you wish, Mr Holmes,” Lestrade said, with some resignation. “And am I to mention your name, when the time comes to write my report?”
“It is up to you. You may take full credit if you like. Messrs Burgh and Harmondswyke have retained my services for a handsome fee. That, from my perspective, is more than sufficient reward for my trouble. Besides, if I know my Watson, this episode will no doubt form the basis for one of his stories, and so the general public will someday come to learn of the affair and my involvement in it.”
We took our leave, donning hats, gloves and scarves and wrapping our greatcoats around us as we headed outdoors. Snow lay thickly piled on the pavements, here and there compacted to treacherous ice by the passage of countless feet, while the roadways were lined with churned-up brown sludge that was crisscrossed with wheel ruts. The afternoon sky was clear, the air bitterly sharp. That December was already proving to be colder than any in living memory, and indeed the winter of late 1890 and early 1891 is on record as one of the severest ever.
We walked a short way west along Oxford Street and thence southward into Soho, where we found a coffee house. Soon we were warming ourselves with hot drinks, and I felt the stiffness and pain in my shoulder gradually begin to abate.
“Now then, Holmes,” I said, slipping notebook and pen from my pocket, “perhaps you would care to divulge some of the finer points of the case upon which we have just been engaged.”
“While you take notes? It would be my pleasure. You did come in somewhat late in the proceedings, after all, and are not apprised of the full details.”
“Until lunchtime today I did not even know there was a case.”
“Well, it was a trifling but nonetheless enlivening matter. Put simply, it had come to the attention of the store’s owners, Mr Burgh and Mr Harmondswyke, that pearls were disappearing from the jewellery department. Not in great numbers, but incrementally, two or three at a time. They were loose gems that had not yet been strung in a necklace or bracelet or set into a ring. The department would conduct its usual stocktake at the end of each day before consigning the valuables to a safe, and always when they tallied up the pearls, they would come up short.
“At first it was assumed a shoplifter was responsible, but close observation of customers disproved the supposition. Mr Burgh and Mr Harmondswyke then hit upon the notion that the culprit must be a member of staff, and so took the step of conducting a thorough search of all the clerks in the jewellery department daily as they left at close of business. When that did not stem the outflow of pearls, they instituted a regular search of all members of staff throughout the store. Still pearls continued to vanish. That was when I was hired to investigate.
“I spent a couple of days wandering the store in various disguises. You know my penchant for such masquerades, and you will be familiar with a couple of the personae I adopted. One was an asthmatic master mariner, another a rather guileless Nonconformist clergyman. I also essayed a new role, that of a venerable Italian priest, which, I will admit, remains a work in progress but which I hold out high hopes for. Watson? Are you paying attention? Your note-taking has tailed off somewhat.”
“What’s that, Holmes? Sorry. I was distracted. Pray go on.”
The cause of my distraction was a smartly dressed and rather comely-looking young woman who had entered the coffee house shortly after us and now sat two tables away. I had caught her eyeing me in a quizzical fashion and had returned her curiosity with an amiable smile.
Holmes crooked an eyebrow and continued. “As I was saying, I visited the store several times over the course of two days, on each occasion in a different disguise, and made a careful study of the comings and goings in the jewellery department. It was mid-afternoon on the second day, yesterday, when I saw our Father Christmas enter and start greeting all and sundry in a hearty manner, customers and staff alike. A Christmas grotto has been erected in the toy department – a sizeable construction made of wood and papier mâché, designed to resemble an ice cave – wherein a Father Christmas impersonator might entertain youngsters and dispense cheap gewgaws. The gentleman, it transpires, was also under instruction to amble around the rest of the store, spreading yuletide cheer wherever he went. He whiled some time in the jewellery department chatting with the shopgirl whom I described to Lestrade.”
“Russet hair. Freckles.”
“The very one. Well remembered. The two appeared on cordial terms, to the point of clasping hands at one stage, and I inferred some sort of relationship between them. By means of a casual enquiry to the floor manager I learned that this girl, Clarice by name, had been with Burgh and Harmondswyke for several months and was regarded as a good, diligent worker. Not only that but she had recommended an intimate of hers for the job of Father Christmas, which had come vacant. She had described him as a close friend and given his name as Seamus Flynn. Physically he fit the bill, being large and ruddy-cheeked, and he even had his own costume, saving the store the trouble and expense of providing him with one.
“Already I was beginning to formulate a conjecture. Why was it only pearls that were disappearing? Why not some other, more valuable form of precious stone, of which the department had ample specimens? And by what method were the pearls being smuggled out? I rapidly hit upon the solution. Father Christmas’s mistletoe crown was the key. Even if inspected closely, a pearl might easily pass for a mistletoe berry. It was a fairly ingenious stratagem.
“I was also aware – through the auspices of the Police Gazette, whose pages are a boon to the criminal specialist – that a certain Barney O’Brien had lately been released from prison, having served three years for stealing the Baroness Willoughby-Cavendish’s diamond tiara.”
“Yes,” I said, “I recall the trial. He would have been detained for longer had the tiara itself actually been found. As it was, there was only circumstantial evidence connecting him to the crime, and so he received a more lenient sentence than he otherwise might.”
Again, I caught the young woman’s eyes upon me. She averted her gaze and resumed her business, namely scribbling industriously in a small journal. Nevertheless I had the impression that she found me interesting, and were I not a happily married man, I might have paid her the compliment of a brief word or two after Holmes and I were finished with our coffees.
“It was no great leap in logic,” Holmes said, “to deduce that Seamus Flynn and Barney O’Brien were one and the same person. I knew of the latter’s considerable height and girth, which were matched by the former’s. I even had a strong suspicion that during his brief exchange of words with russet-haired Clarice, she could have surreptitiously passed a pearl or two to him, which he had then palmed with a view to inserting them into his crown later, when no one was looking.
“To prove this beyond a shred of doubt, however, I would actually have to observe the swap taking place. Hence I returned to the store today, this time as myself, and again shadowed Father Christmas on his perambulations. In the jewellery department I watched closely as he spoke to the shopgirl. There it was! Subtle but clearly visible to one who was looking for it. A glimpse of tiny, pale objects moving from her hand to his.
“I decided to wait until after he had secreted the pearls inside his mistletoe crown. In this, I was indulging my theatrical streak somewhat. I wished to provide a dramatic dénouement to the case, by exposing not just the villain’s identity but his modus operandi, in one fell swoop.”
“Much as you did.”
“Yes, but it was nearly not to be. As O’Brien was leaving the jewellery department, I saw him pause and remove the crown as though to make some small adjustment to it. It was then that he stealthily inserted the pearls in amongst the mistletoe fronds, before returning the crown to his head. I, spying my chance, pounced.
“‘You scoundrel!’ I declared. ‘I have you now!’
“Unfortunately, I had underestimated the full extent of his strength and he was able to give me the slip. I gave chase, secure in the knowledge that he would not be able to leave the building unimpeded, since I had taken the precaution of enlisting the aid of Lestrade and his men – and yours too, of course – and the exits were covered. All the same, I feared I was to be denied my moment of glory. It was a close-run thing!”
“What about the shopgirl?” I said.
“As to her, she will doubtless confess her complicity in the crime in due course.”
“Do you think O’Brien duped or coerced her into it?”
“Neither. On the contrary, my feeling is that Clarice was actually the mastermind and O’Brien her willing foil. O’Brien has in the past not shown himself to be the shrewdest of operators. He is a skilled enough burglar but not what one would call cunning. Clarice already had the job at Burgh and Harmondswyke. She was the one who put O’Brien forward, under a pseudonym, as a candidate for Father Christmas. She could well have worked out a means of stealing the pearls and then simply inveigled O’Brien into participating in her scheme. It would not have been difficult for her. She is not unattractive.”
“Nor would O’Brien have taken much persuasion, I’d have thought, an inveterate larcenist like him.”
“Indeed. And now you have the long and the short of it, Watson. Let us congratulate ourselves. We have scored a notable success, doing our bit to ensure that this remains a time of peace on earth and goodwill to all men.”
With this ironical flourish, my friend completed his disquisition, and I put away my notebook.
Lowering his voice, Holmes then said, “That young woman who has been proving so diverting to you – do you recognise her?”
“What young woman?”
“Come now, old friend. I have seen where your eyes keep straying.”
“Well, I… I mean… She is the one whose eyes keep straying.”
“And how could any female resist a square-jawed, well-whiskered fellow such as yourself? Yet I regret to inform you that it is the both of us who fascinate the girl, not just you, for some of her glances have been directed at me. Moreover, we have seen the lass before.”
“We have?”
“She was a customer in the stationery department at Burgh and Harmondswyke. I noticed her watching us during our exchange with Lestrade. Her scrutiny was quite intense. I am surprised you were not aware of it then. And now she has followed us to this coffee house, which I cannot believe to be a coincidence, and indeed, even as I speak, she is standing up and approaching our table.”
Sure enough, the young woman was making her way towards us with a certain nervously resolute air, as though after a period of prevarication she had made up her mind to introduce herself.
“Please forgive the intrusion, gentlemen,” she said. “You are, am I right in thinking, Mr Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr John Watson?”
“None other,” said Holmes.
“Your servant, madam,” said I, rising a little from my chair and bowing. “But you have us at a disadvantage. You are…?”
“Eve Allerthorpe. I would never normally be so forward, but when I saw the two of you in action at Burgh and Harmondswyke, and heard you address each other by name, I said to myself, ‘This is fate, Eve. Here I am, on a visit to London, and who should I chance upon amid all the millions in this city but the celebrated detective Mr Holmes, in the flesh. A rare chance has presented itself, and you must take it, girl.’ And that, after some inward debate, is what I am doing.”
“Please, have my seat,” I said, ushering her to it.
“You are too kind, Doctor. I don’t rightly know whether I should trouble you with my predicament or not. Sometimes it seems ridiculous even to me, while at other times it seems the deadliest and most serious set of circumstances and I fear that my sanity, even my very life, might… might be…”
All at once, Miss Eve Allerthorpe broke down in tears. I tendered her my handkerchief and she sobbed into it copiously. A few inquisitive glances came our way from other patrons of the coffee house, and I offered them a reassuring wave of the hand, as if to say all was well.
“Oh, I vowed I would not give in to my emotions,” the young woman said after her crying fit had run its course. “It’s just that I have been under such strain lately. You can hardly begin to imagine what it has been like. First my mother dying, and now this…”
“I think,” said Holmes, “that Watson and I should escort you to my rooms at Baker Street, Miss Allerthorpe, and there, away from prying eyes and eavesdropping ears, you may feel at liberty to unburden yourself to us in full.”