Anthology of Christmas Murders

Coyle Martin Annie

Description

Murder, as you know, comes in all shapes and sizes. It also comes at inconvenient times. Christmas, for example. Season of goodwill, peace to all men (and women too, of course), homely jollity round the turkey and mince-pies. A time of family reunion and celebration, of good cheer, recollection and renewal. And of unexpected death.Lock the doors. Draw the curtains. Settle down in your armchair. Pour yourself a drink. And enjoy ten stories by masters of the genre. Georgian England. 1960s and 1980s England. Twenty-first-century Africa, Canada, the USA. Murder by meat-hook, piano-wire, scarf, knife, hammer, golf-club, bullet, syringe ... Dear, oh, dear. And naturally all the classic motives: blackmail, revenge, disappointment in love, greed, anger, a perverted sense of duty ... Murders of men by women, and of women by men. Murders committed on impulse and murders carefully planned. A catalogue of weakness, hatred and villainy. It's all here, at your elbow. And there's more! Humour, intrigue, history, suspense ... and of course Christmas sparkle!So, cheers! And Happy Christmas!Contributors:Annie Coyle Martin, Julius Falconer, Peter Good, Peter Hodgson, Neal James, Andrew Malloy, James McCarthy, Steve Morris, Harry Riley, Derek RosserP. S. The writers are all published crime authors who have contributed a new story especially for this Pneuma Springs anthology.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Pneuma Springs Publishing
• Date de parution: 09 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782283652
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

An Anthology of Christmas Murders


Terror, Tinsel
and Turkey


Edited by Jeremy Moiser
Copyright

First Published in 2014 by:
Pneuma Springs Publishing An Anthology of Christmas Murders - Terror, Tinsel and Turkey
Copyright © 2014 Annie Coyle Martin, Julius Falconer, Peter Good, Peter Hodgson, Neal James, James McCarthy, Andrew Malloy, Steve Morris, Harry Riley, Derek Rosser All the contributing authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this Work British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Mobi eISBN: 9781782283614 ePub eISBN: 9781782283652 PDF eBook eISBN: 9781782283690 Paperback ISBN: 9781782283577 Pneuma Springs Publishing E: [e-mail] W: www.pneumasprings.co.uk Published in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, save those clearly in the public domain, is purely coincidental.
Dedication

To all Pneuma Springs authors
Acknowledgement
Thanks to all the anthology contributors for being a joy to work with.



Alone we can do so little;
Together we can do so much
- Helen Keller
Contents

Christmas at the Smooth Rock Motel
Annie Coyle Martin

The Foljambe Blazon
Julius Falconer

Murders don’t stop even at Christmas
Peter Good

Mummy, mummy, Santa’s here!
Peter Hodgson

Partridge in the Pear Tree
Neal James

White Christmas Bullet
James McCarthy

The Reading
Andrew Malloy

‘Nettlewoods’
Steve Morris

Terror, tinsel and turkey
Harry Riley

Fatal Festival (Yule Die)
Derek Rosser
Christmas at the Smooth Rock Motel
Annie Coyle Martin
May I tell you a story? A Christmas story? I can’t vouch for its, shall we say, historical accuracy in every detail, although I can assure you that I was sufficiently close to the events to be able to vouch for at least some of them. The rest I’ve reconstructed as an imaginative surplus! It doesn’t really matter at this point who I am. Think of me as Tom, if it helps: Tom, Dick or Harry. The events I’m going to tell you about took place in Quebec province – where it always snows plentifully at Christmas and Santa Claus has a hard job getting about – a few years ago. It’s not a particularly uplifting story; but then most of life isn’t uplifting, is it? It’s time the record was set straight. So, are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

Linda McCallum, one of the two housekeeping staff in charge of guest bedrooms at the Smooth Rock Motel, not all that far from where I’m sitting now, made her way along the second floor pushing her cart with its container for used sheets and other bed linen and its shelves of fresh supplies. She checked her list. All ten rooms on the second floor were to be occupied. It was December 23 rd , and the motel was quiet. It was eleven o’clock now, and most of the guests would have checked out. But for that evening many more rooms were booked - she didn’t know how many – but she expected quite a few: skiers arriving for a Christmas break. The bar off the lobby would be busy early in the evening, but skiers retired relatively early after dinner and a modest amount of alcohol.

The Smooth Rock Motel could not rival its bigger and more expensive brothers, better placed in the resort, but it boasted a steady all-year-round trade. At Christmas especially, it could almost be guaranteed to be full. And it occasionally had its small share of drama, as you shall hear.
At Christmas, guests were liberal with their tips, and when Linda came to check the rooms after the holiday, December 27 th , she would find on the bedside table a generous tip left by the departing guests. Nearly all the rooms would be taken. Linda liked to be busy - and to construct stories in her mind about the guests - stories about couples who booked separate rooms; guests with the same name in different rooms; people seemingly totally on their own; and those who booked the same room despite different names: lovers stealing a weekend away, or so she thought. And the guests who left the rooms in a mess - empty beer bottles, waste baskets overflowing with Scotties tissues, empty cigarette packets ...

She checked the empty rooms first, just opening each door and glancing inside. At room 215, she walked in, went over to the window and looked out on the snowy landscape now bathed in bright sunlight. This morning, when she awoke in the room she shared with Marie, it had been dark, gloomy. Now it seemed spring was on its way. It was so beautiful it brought back memories of her country childhood, building snow-forts and snowmen with her brothers in the Quebec countryside. In January, when things quieted down, she would have days off to make up for the extra hours she worked over Christmas. Then she and Marie would go cross-country skiing or snow-shoeing. Linda could hardly wait. They would have liked to try downhill, but the fees were too high. And Linda didn’t see the point of racing down the same hills time after time. Better to spend the day seeing the countryside.

She now started on the rooms that had been occupied. She checked room 216 first. There was no tag on the door handle to indicate whether the room was to be cleaned. She knocked twice - no answer. She used her card to enter. Someone was lying in the bed, slightly turned away from the door.
‘Excuse me. I thought you’d checked out.’ No answer. ‘Are you all right?’
She approached closer and saw the woman lying motionless, shocking in death, her eyes open, her tongue slack, protruding, saliva dry over her chin, her face purple.
‘Oh, lor’!’ Linda stood riveted for a few seconds, then turned and ran sobbing out of the door. She ran along the corridor past the elevator. She slammed the stairs door open and, hanging desperately on to the railing, stumbled down the stairs and across the lobby. She burst into the office of Anna Hayman, the hotel manager. ‘Miss Hayman, there’s a woman dead in 216.’ Miss Hayman was fleshy and faded but had clearly once been an attractive woman.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Miss Hayman, Miss Hayman, I found a woman dead in 216.’ Linda clung to the door of Miss Hayman’s office, pale, breathless.
‘Good heavens! Are you sure she’s dead?’
‘I’m sure, I’m sure.’
‘Sit down.’ She directed Linda to a chair in the corner of her office. Linda sat with her face in her hands. Her dark good looks suggested, despite her name, a Spanish, or at least southern Mediterranean, background. Canada has long been proud to host people from all over the world who wish to share her values and life-style. (I speak as a Canadian, of course!) ‘Have you got your door-card, Linda?’ Linda gave it over, her hand shaking. She could not remember shutting the door. Miss Hayman went to the door of her office. ‘Larry, I want you here,’ she called. The tall fair-haired young man who manned the reception desk came over, and Miss Hayman handed him the card. ‘Check Room 216: Linda here says the woman there’s dead – if you don’t mind, that is.’ He took the card and walked to the elevator. ‘Linda,’ she went on, turning to the chambermaid, ‘you’ve had a shock. Sit there, and I’ll make you a coffee. Do you take sugar?’ Linda nodded, her face pale, miserable. She sat there, seeing in her mind the woman strangled with the scarf, saliva dried on her chin, her eyes open, rolled up in her head. She saw that Miss Hayman looked almost as if she herself had found the body - shocked but, as manageress, trying to keep going and in her mind running through the actions she ought to be taking. The manageress plugged in the coffee machine in her office.

When Larry checked room 216, the door was open. He entered, glanced at the corpse, left and checked that the door had locked. He took the elevator downstairs, crossed the lobby and nodded at Miss Hayman. The latter asked:
‘Is she really dead?’
‘Seems so’
‘Go back to your desk.’
‘Right, Miss Hayman’ Miss Hayman thought he seemed very cool for a man who had just seen a murdered woman. Miss Hayman shut the door of her office and dialled 911 from the telephone on her desk. The dispatcher answered immediately.
‘Ambulance or police?’
‘Police, police!’
‘Where are you?’
‘At the Smooth Rock Motel on Mountain Road.’
‘Stay on the line.’ Anna Hayman hung on to the receiver. She would have to contact Frederick Johnson, the motel owner, who was off on some trapping expedition or other. Then she heard the sirens. ‘You can hang up now,’ the dispatcher was telling her. She hung up. The sirens were getting closer. In a matter of minutes, she saw the lights, and two police cars were coming across the parking lot, and then they parked at the entrance. Miss Hayman walked out and stood at reception. A detective corporal and two detective constables walked into the lobby. The corporal flashed his badge. He was, she thought, well, not to put too fine a point on it, too weedy to be a policeman. The constables, on the other hand, were both tall and well-built, with chests and shoulders bursting out of their uniforms.
‘Detective Corporal Crosby, ma’am. And you are - ?’
‘Anna Hayman, the motel manager.’
‘You called 911.’
‘Yes, we’ve discovered a dead woman here. She was murdered.’
‘Murdered? They didn’t tell us that at the switchboard. How do you know?’
‘Not difficult, officer,’ she answered, summoning up a sort of wry smile. ‘She apparently has a scarf tied tight round her neck. Her eyes are open, but I’m told there’s no doubt she’s dead – none whatever.’
‘I see. Who found her?’
‘Linda McC