annashay 
If you read EQMM and follow our blog, chances are you’re familiar with Pat Black, the Yorkshire-based journalist who regularly contributes to our magazine. In this special post, Black draws on examples of classic mysteries, from Christie to Allingham, and discusses why Christmas and crime go so well together. Also, be sure to stay tuned for a holiday story by Pat in next year’s winter issue.
When it comes to fiction at Christmas time, ghost stories seem to have it all wrapped up. With A Christmas Carol as a starting point, all the way through to MR James’ chilling adaptations for the BBC from the 1970s all the way to the present day—it is the time for spectres and visitations. When the light is at its thinnest, and the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is most easily breached.
But there’s another genre that lends itself well to festive reading—crime. Much like the preponderance of ghosties and ghoulies, this is counter-intuitive. Christmas should be a time for feasting and merriment, of warmth and comfort in the company of our fellow humans… So it shouldn’t really make sense for us to cosy in with some grim, sometimes gruesome reading. Maybe it’s to do with the shifting seasons, rather than their associated festivals. Perhaps with the dark in ascendance, there are things to fear in there, reasons for foreboding, our blood chilling as the temperature falls outside.
Winter is no joke in our uncertain times and changing climate—but earlier in human history, proximity to a fire was the difference between life and death. Maybe there’s a yearning for stories that reflect this desperate state, even as we seek communal warmth and closeness in our own way. And maybe that storytelling instinct, the need to entertain each other with tales of darkness and danger, is another link to our need for festive crime.
But there’s another reason—Christmas is a time for gifts, and if you’re anything like me, that means good books. Handsome ones, too. Like the collected Sherlock Holmes. In it, you’ll find a classic Christmas story: The Adventure of The Blue Carbuncle.
If you’re imagining 221B Baker Street with a well-fed fire shooting sparks, maybe some crisp muffins while we’re at it, a good pipe, today’s Times and strong coffee, while snow falls outside on London’s streets, then congratulations—you’re already toasty. The tale concerns the stolen gemstone in the title, as well as a Christmas goose which turns out to be the key to the theft. Not for the last time in these stories, Holmes takes pity on a hapless criminal after exonerating someone framed for theft, betraying a sentimentality which we do not readily ascribe to the great detective. It ends, perfectly, with Holmes and Watson preparing to feast in the warm sanctuary of Baker Street, with all wrongs righted outside.
Dorothy L Sayers wrote a cosy mystery featuring Lord Peter Wimsey—A Necklace Of Pearls. Set in an English country house, dressing for dinner, assembled guests… let’s face it, it really needs a murder. But there’s no body in the snow here; Sayers’ golden age peer looks into the missing pearls in the title, a gift from Sir Septimus Shale for his daughter, with a brand new stone added to the necklace every year. Wimsey sniffs out the thief, and the location of the lost pearls, just in time for Christmas.
Agatha Christie has entire collections filled with seasonal tales, but we’ll allow her dapper little Belgian to represent her this Christmas. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas is the obvious place to go for the classic Christmas golden age murder mystery, but we’ll swerve to one side for The Adventure Of The Christmas Pudding. This one is a riot, which sees Poirot initially engaged to find a ruby stolen from an eastern prince. As part of his investigations, the sleuth is invited to spend Christmas at a fancy house, wherein he is inveigled in a number of plots. One of these involves a “faked” murder which then appears to turn into a real one. A typically clever and twisty plot is unpicked by the Belgian, who ends up with a kiss under the mistletoe as recompense by the end. Along the way the part played by the pudding in the title is revealed and—yes!—there is indeed some blood on the snow.
Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion takes on a mercy mission of sorts in The Man With The Sack. Answering a call from his friend, Mae Turrett, the “universal uncle” heads to the Turretts’ country retreat for Christmas. Long train journeys; home for the holidays; and, as ever, England between the wars is placed under the microscope by Allingham, as the certainties of the aristocracy in the early 20th century are exposed in a tale of theft.
In Rumpole’s Christmas, John Mortimer’s portly, slightly grumpy barrister begins to take on some ancient, pre-Christian characteristics. Apparently no lover of the festive season, Horace is tasked with trying to keep a younger member of the Timson crime clan out of prison, after one of the O’Dowd family is filleted during a dispute. Rumpole has a raging hangover during this story, but it has a nefarious purpose. The “spirit of Christmas” in the title doesn’t refer to anything in Rumpole’s gift, but to a carve-up between his opponents. Win a few, lose a lot, as Rumpole reflects, ruefully.
But there’s something ancient, possibly pre-Christian, about Rumpole and his forays into Pommeroy’s wine bar (to be fair, it doesn’t need to be Christmas for Rumpole to end up there for a snifter or two). Our boozy hero is a bewigged Bacchus—perhaps not the most enthusiastic spectator at the pantomime, but certainly a celebrant at the feast. For lovers of classic crime, maybe the ghost of Christmases past, in his cloak and wreath, wears the face of Leo McKern?
And this cosy sense of celebration takes us to a strange Christmas crime tradition—the classic board game, Cluedo (or Clue, for American readers). The classic whodunnit board game is linked to Christmas, for me, and there’s a tactile memory associated with it, as well as the fun of playing the game with family as a boy. There’s the weapons, for one thing—the frayed ends of the rope, the solid lead piping, the treacherous sheen on the candlestick, the testable point of the dagger and, of course, the wee gun. The cards, sheathed in their holders, concealing the identity of Professor Black’s killer. The pencils, even, whispering across the suspect list sheets. Who can it be? Mustard? Peacock? Scarlet? Plum?
I put Cluedo before Monopoly, any day of the week… it seems less murderous somehow. One day, perhaps very soon, Santa might bring a new edition of Cluedo for my own children to enjoy. I hope so. It’s top of my list this year.
May all your Christmas crimes be confined to the pages of a good book. All the best to you and yours.
