Free Silent Nights by Martin Edwards Page A

which broods the mighty spirit of Millet.
    â€œWell, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English middle-class crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good old middle-class house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree. Enough, you know the species. I really think my imitation of Dickens’ style was dexterous and literary. It seems almost a pity I repented the same evening.”
    Flambeau would then proceed to tell the story from the inside; and even from the inside it was odd. Seen from the outside it was perfectly incomprehensible, and it is from the outside that the stranger must study it. From this standpoint the drama may be said to have begun when the front doors of the house with the stable opened on the garden with the monkey tree, and a young girl came out with bread to feed the birds on the afternoon of Boxing Day. She had a pretty face, with brave brown eyes; but her figure was beyond conjecture, for she was so wrapped up in brown furs that it was hard to say which was hair and which was fur. But for the attractive face she might have been a small toddling bear.
    The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and already a ruby light was rolled over the bloomless beds, filling them, as it were, with the ghosts of the dead roses. On one side of the house stood the stable, on the other an alley or cloister of laurels led to the larger garden behind. The young lady, having scattered bread for the birds (for the fourth or fifth time that day, because the dog ate it), passed unobtrusively down the lane of laurels and into a glimmering plantation of evergreens behind. Here she gave an exclamation of wonder, real or ritual, and looking up at the high garden wall above her, beheld it fantastically bestridden by a somewhat fantastic figure.
    â€œOh, don’t jump, Mr Crook,” she called out in some alarm; “it’s much too high.”
    The individual riding the party wall like an aerial horse was a tall, angular young man, with dark hair sticking up like a hairbrush, intelligent and even distinguished lineaments, but a sallow and almost alien complexion. This showed the more plainly because he wore an aggressive red tie, the only part of his costume of which he seemed to take any care. Perhaps it was a symbol. He took no notice of the girl’s alarmed adjuration, but leapt like a grasshopper to the ground beside her, where he might very well have broken his legs.
    â€œI think I was meant to be a burglar,” he said placidly, “and I have no doubt I should have been if I hadn’t happened to be born in that nice house next door. I can’t see any harm in it, anyhow.”
    â€œHow can you say such things?” she remonstrated.
    â€œWell,” said the young man, “if you’re born on the wrong side of the wall, I can’t see that it’s wrong to climb over it.”
    â€œI never know what you will say or do next,” she said.
    â€œI don’t often know myself,” replied Mr Crook; “but then I am on the right side of the wall now.”
    â€œAnd which is the right side of the wall?” asked the young lady, smiling.
    â€œWhichever side you are on,” said the young man named Crook.
    As they went together through the laurels towards the front garden a motor horn sounded thrice, coming nearer and nearer, and a car of splendid speed, great elegance, and a pale green colour swept up to the front doors like a bird and stood throbbing.
    â€œHullo, hullo!” said the young man with the red tie, “here’s somebody born on the right side, anyhow. I didn’t know, Miss Adams, that your Santa Claus was so modern as this.”
    â€œOh, that’s my godfather, Sir Leopold Fischer. He always comes on Boxing Day.”
    Then, after an innocent pause, which unconsciously betrayed