A Christmas short story. The first of an occasional series of short stories (covering the elapsed time between the books in The Falconer Files series.) On Christmas Day the two detectives are summoned to a block of apartments in Market Darley, to investigate the unexplained death of a young woman whose fiance was due to move in with her on New Year's Day. At first, her death seems a complete mystery, then, something that Dr Christmas discovers on the internet indicates that her death could just have been a tragic accident, or was it?
Release date:
December 6, 2013
Publisher:
Accent Press
Print pages:
50
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Harry Falconer spread garlic and tarragon butter evenly over the skin of the guinea fowl, wrapped it with fragrant whispers of Parma ham, and placed it lovingly in his cast-iron casserole dish, over a bed of sliced potatoes, julienne carrots, celery sticks, bay leaves and thinly sliced onion. This he placed in a wall cupboard, to keep it at room temperature and away from his Siamese’s alter-ego, Mycroft, and his two more recently acquired cats, Tar Baby and Ruby, until it was time to pop it into the oven.
Returning to his sitting room, he surveyed with satisfaction the perfectly trimmed tree in the window, its fibre optics twinkling and reflecting in the copper and gold-coloured glass baubles that had complied with this year’s colour co-ordinated design. Only gold lametta hung from its branches and, at its apex, he could almost hear the singing of the pure white plaster bird with its delicate touches of gold leaf, its tail and wings like gatherings of delicate glass threads; a bird of peace and glad tidings, rather like an avian angel.
No cards crowded his mantel; rather did they hang suspended on golden ribbons from the picture rail, even spaced around the room. The mantelpiece did, however, contain some gesture to the traditions of the season, in that it was draped in ivy, freshly bought the day before, and holly and mistletoe sat atop this where it topped the fireplace.
The radio was tuned to a Christmas morning Eucharist broadcast, and the blood-stirring harmonies of Tavener’s ‘The Lamb’ floated through the air, dramatic, simple, yet complex at the same time, and inviting nostalgia and wonder anew at the Christmas story and its implications for mankind, but this latter meant little to Falconer. He was listening to this, as he had the Carols from King’s, broadcast the day before.
His parents had never bothered about the religious aspects of Christmas, being too busy swilling champagne and cocktails, and entertaining, to let that sort of thing bother them. The real reason he turned on such broadcasts was because the army padre always insisted that, at Christmas, if at no other time in the church calendar, his ‘lads’ would get a bit of BBC church, whether they liked it or not (even if the men did sing alternative words to the carols, to bait their spiritual adviser, and draw his ire). Listening to these broadcasts, now that he had left the army, flooded Falconer with a warm glow of nostalgia.
Falconer’s eyes swept over to the area below the tree, where a pile of small wrapped offerings had been meticulously arranged, and he smiled as he remembered what he had chosen for Mycroft, and the other two cats, and would present them with, after they had partaken of their meal. Then, of course, there would be the Queen’s speech to attend to, something that had been part of his Christmas Day since as long as he could remember, and which he had never missed, no matter where in the world he had been.
He smiled contentedly, as he realised how right he had been to decli. . .
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