Mrs. Claus and the Fatal Figgy Pudding

Book 0: Mrs. Claus Mystery

by Liz Ireland

Genres: Ghost; Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

It’s a hectic holiday season for April Claus as she juggles everything from her Santaland duties to stage managing a community production of A Christmas Carol to sleuthing out who’s behind an actor’s fatal finale—all while caring for a very special delivery . . .

It’s a hectic holiday season for April Claus as she juggles everything from her Santaland duties to stage managing a community production of A Christmas Carol to sleuthing out who’s behind an actor’s fatal finale—all while caring for a very special delivery . . .

 

“Dear Mrs. Claus, I know you have a good heart. Please take care of baby August.” When April finds the poignant note accompanying an infant elf left at Castle Kringle’s door, she’s filled with emotion—and questions. After all, there’s an orphanage in Christmastown. And how is it that the baby’s name uniquely echoes her own? Despite her packed schedule, April is determined to care for little Augie while searching for answers. But one more drama is yet to come . . .

It’s curtains for the actor playing Tiny Tim when he keels over dead after eating April’s specially made figgy pudding. Distraught, April is at least relieved to learn that Castle Kringle’s kitchen didn’t make the deadly dollop of rum sauce responsible. But whodunit? The imperious director who wanted a casting change? The eager understudy? One of the surprising number of Santaland’s aspiring thespian elves?

Ignoring shady rumors swirling that Augie is secretly hers, April puts the baby on her hip and sets out to solve both mysteries. And as she digs deeper behind the scenes, the truth might just change all the Claus family’s Christmases to come . . .

Praise for Mrs. Claus and The Nightmare Before New Year’s

 

“Another delightful mystery filled with humor and mishaps.”

--Library Journal

 

“A fun, festive novel for fans of cozy mysteries.”

--Toronto.com

Release date: September 29, 2026

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 272

Sample

If you’ve never experienced it, beginning your day with the castle’s principal footman bringing you a tray of coffee and a bit of fresh pastry is an incredible luxury. When Jingles lightly rapped on my bedroom door on that December morning, I could almost imagine that I was living in Downton Abbey—a very frigid version, with elves.

He padded on soft-soled booties across the long room to place the coffee tray on my bedside table. Jingles was relatively tall and slender for an elf, and looked especially smart in his Castle Kringle uniform: a green tunic with red piping, over green striped stockings. Covering his short brown hair and the tops of his long ears was a red-and-green felt cap with a white snowball at the tip.

He cleared his throat. “Good morning, ma’am. Something was left for you at the door overnight.”

I sat up, stretching a little and glancing in pleasure at the gentle white fairy lights across the ceiling, and at the colorful Christmas tree my husband, Nick, and I had set up and decorated in the little entertainment nook of our cavernous private suite. I loved Christmas—a very good inclination to have when you’re Mrs. Claus.

I had a hunch about the delivery Jingles referred to. In addition to the usual mad whirl of Christmas activities, this year I was serving as stage manager for the Christmastown Players’ production of A Christmas Carol. When I’d first volunteered for the job, I’d envisioned myself standing smartly in the stage wings with a clipboard and script, cuing performers to go on. My vision of the position didn’t jibe with that of Garland Gooseberry, the show’s director. In that elf’s opinion, I was expected to be a jack-of-all-trades: rehearsal scheduler, prop wrangler, program designer, actor therapist, and all-around theatrical dogsbody. First up on my to-do list this morning was fetching Tiny Tim’s little crutch from a local carpenter.

As it turned out, my assistant stage manager, Butterbean, did most of the cuing and line prompting. The hustling and grunt work fell to me, as did most of the headaches. Last night’s rehearsal had gone on longer than expected. A week and a half till opening night, and our Bob Cratchit was still trying to learn the difference between upstage and downstage, and our too-jolly Scrooge was going up on half his lines. Tensions between the cast and our supercilious director intensified to the point that the Ghost of Christmas Past had stress vomited into the orchestra pit.

I could definitely use a quiet morning at home. If Needles Gingernut had taken the initiative to send the crutch to me by messenger, that would save me a trip to his workshop, which was reportedly out in the middle of nowhere.

“This is great,” I said, “and totally unexpected.” Needles, a grizzled old elf of few words, hadn’t struck me as an above-and-beyond type of businessman. But I was happy to be pleasantly surprised.

“Definitely unexpected,” Jingles said.

From his tone, I gathered my hunch about the delivery was off. Way off. If it wasn’t the crutch, I was almost afraid to ask … ​“What is it?”

“I don’t think you were expecting this.” Jingles snapped his white-gloved fingers.

My bedroom door opened again and the castle’s newest footman, Chip, toddled in, lugging a basket. The plain brown wicker container was almost as large as he was. I could just see his round eyes over the handle, which he was holding stiffly by the sides to keep the basket from dragging on the ground. Perspiration beaded on his brow, and now his cap was slipping down the back of his head.

I leaned forward. “Is it a gift?” The whole North Pole was on giving overdrive at this time of year.

“Not any kind of gift I’d want dropped at my door,” Jingles said.

Chip set the basket down gently, and with the flair of a magician revealing a trick, Jingles pulled back the blanket covering the basket’s contents.

I gasped. Almost as startled as I was, a face gaped up at me—a little face with dark blue button eyes and flushed cheeks. The long pointed earlobes marked this as a baby elf. Someone had dressed her in a homespun wool onesie dyed to a pale red. I surmised it was a her from the pink puffball on the cap covering the baby’s bald head. Tiny knit pink booties with curled toes kicked upward.

“That’s a baby!” I exclaimed.

Jingles affirmed the obvious with a curt nod. “Guessed it in one.”

“Why was the basket so heavy?”

“Because whoever it was that left it, put several jugs of eggnog in the basket, too. The whole caboodle was left at the castle door.” He lifted the blanket, showing rustic flagons with cork stoppers. “They’re still half frozen.”

I frowned. “Why eggnog?”

Jingles looked at me as if I were thick. “What else is a baby elf supposed to drink?”

What indeed. I didn’t know too much about baby elves. Or babies, period.

“There must have been some mistake,” I said. “Maybe they confused Castle Kringle with the Home for Orphaned Elves.”

“No mistake.” Jingles handed me a note written in red marker on heavy card stock. “This was attached to the baby blanket with a diaper pin.”

I looked at the message.

Dear Mrs. Claus,

I know you have a good heart. Please take care of Baby August.

Though the words were simple and direct, I had to read them several times. I couldn’t make sense of this. The possibility that this was all part of a dream flitted through my mind. Maybe I hadn’t really woken up yet at all. I took a swig of hot coffee. Jingles had already put cream and sugar in it, just the way I liked. The cream had been warmed so that the coffee remained hot. Would my tongue feel scalding heat in a dream?

Jingles clapped his white-gloved hands together. “Earth to Mrs. Claus.”

I snapped to. “This is so strange.”

“Would you like me to call the Home for Orphaned Elves?” Jingles asked.

“Of course—”

Before I could finish my sentence, Chip let out a distressed moan. The little elf’s eyes were wide as he glanced pleadingly from me to the baby in the basket.

“… not,” I finished, surprising myself. Certainly contacting the Home for Orphaned Elves was the next logical step. But when I looked again into that adorable, trusting face staring up at me from her blanket, I knew why I didn’t want to pick up the phone and make that call. The baby was a perfect little elf nugget.

“That note was addressed to me,” I told a perturbed Jingles. “Whoever did this must have had a reason to leave little—” My memory stumbled.

“August,” Chip piped up. “Her name’s August.”

Jingles’s lips curled in disgust. “What kind of name is that for an elf?”

“I like it,” Chip declared. “It sounds like Mrs. Claus’s name.”

My name’s April, which had marked me as a Santaland outsider for the several years since I’d moved to the North Pole to marry Nick—aka Santa Claus—after I’d met him while he was vacationing in the inn I’d run in Cloudberry Bay, Oregon. In my four years in Santaland, I’d never met an elf with a month name. That an elf parent had chosen the hottest summer month struck me as especially noteworthy. Elves endured summer the way humans suffered through the darkest, coldest days of January.

“Maybe the baby was born in August,” Chip said.

Jingles aimed a look of pity at the infant. “Very unlucky.”

And now it was December—just two and a half weeks before Christmas. “There must have been some reason the parents—or parent—left this baby with us,” I said.

“With you.” Jingles crossed his arms. “They probably know you’re a pushover.”

“I am not.” But those little button eyes … ​“I do think we should give her a home until we find out who she belongs to.”

“Yes!” Chip agreed.

“Mrs. Claus, you don’t have time for a baby elf,” Jingles insisted. “You’ve got a full schedule, including a play to stage manage.”

I detected a little self-serving attitude in his objection. Jingles, who in our production of A Christmas Carol was portraying one of the two elf gentlemen who come to see Mr. Scrooge in Act One, plus various crowd scene extras, was very anxious about his debut in the North Pole’s most popular play.

“It’s wonderful that you’ve got your priorities straight,” I said.

“What else is the Home for Orphaned Elves for?”

I arched a brow at him. “‘Are there no orphanages, are there no workhouses?’” I asked, echoing Ebenezer Scrooge.

Chip gulped in alarm. “Workhouses? For little Augie?”

“Don’t get your stockings in a jumble,” Jingles told him, shooting me a disdainful glance. “Mrs. Claus was just being literary.”

“I simply think I should do a little investigating before turning her over to an institution,” I said.

Chip nodded so vigorously he almost lost his cap. “I agree,” he said, securing it on his forehead.

I cut a curious glance his way. “You seem very attached to a baby you must have only met a few minutes ago.”

“Hours.” Jingles leveled a disapproving stare at me. “You slept late.”

I side-eyed the bedside clock. Leaping lemmings! It was almost ten, and my morning hadn’t made it to square one. I needed to drive out to the carpenter’s studio. And now I’d committed to looking into where this baby came from. Probably there was something else happening today that had slipped my mind. During December I always had trouble keeping my schedule straight. Now I would be further distracted by trying to piece together the mystery of this abandoned baby.

But maybe I’d been given my first clue already—the nickname that had tripped off the footman’s tongue so easily. I turned to Chip. “How did you come up with the name Augie? Have you really never seen this baby before?”

Chip blinked innocently. “No, I swear. It was the castle cook, Felice, who called her that. We put the baby in the kitchen next to the stove hearth, and Cook gave her some warm eggnog.”

“I always thought that eggnog being mother’s milk to elves was just a saying.”

“That shows what you know about babies,” Jingles said.

I tried not to take his remark personally. Jingles didn’t know that Nick and I couldn’t have children. That I couldn’t. From the beginning of our relationship, Nick had always sworn that he didn’t mind. He was a father figure to his nephew, Christopher, who would take on the mantle of Santa Claus when he came of age. Nick frequently reminded me that he had all the children of the world to look after—at least for one key night of each year.

Yet sometimes I wondered how Nick would feel when he stepped back from his official duties. When he retired from being Santa Claus, would he regret not having children?

The vision of my husband, who had worked so hard to expand into the role of Santa, back to rattling around the castle postretirement, as aimless as a snowflake, saddened me. Nick was industrious by nature, and for the past several years, all his energies had been focused on being the best Santa Claus he could be.

Maybe I should suggest some hobbies for him for when he stepped back from his duties.

But first things first.

“I’ll take the baby to the Santaland Infirmary and ask Doc Honeytree if he recognizes her.”

Doc Honeytree had attended the births of most of the elves in Santaland for the past fifty years. He wouldn’t have to reach far back in his memory to place this one.

Chip clutched the top of the basket’s handle. “Take little Augie out in the snow?”

He had a point. A glance at the window whose curtain Jingles had just pushed back revealed fat flakes falling outside. Although I suspected Chip just didn’t want to see the baby leave the castle yet.

Reading my thoughts, Jingles rolled his eyes. “It’s an elf. She doesn’t care about a little snow. She probably spent half the night out in the snow on our doorstep.”

Freezing like those flagons of eggnog. I cringed at the idea. Maybe elf babies were made of hardier material than I was, but even so. The poor thing was probably just getting warm.

“If I don’t take her, who could I leave her with?” I asked.

Jingles raised his hands in the universal “no backs” gesture. “I’m not the castle babysitter.”

Chip piped up, “I could look after her.” When Jingles frowned at him, he added, “Or Felice could watch her?” in a fainter voice. “She won’t be in anyone’s way in the corner in the kitchen.”

“All right,” I said. “Take the baby to the kitchen. I’ll have a word with Felice before I leave.”

Our cook could be cranky, but she had a soft spot for babies.

Radiating displeasure, Jingles looked as if he was about to put up an argument.

“After I finish dressing,” I said pointedly.

He took the hint and directed Chip to pick up the basket. “Just don’t forget that you still need to pick up the crutch. And the printer in Christmastown called. The play programs are ready.”

“Oh good.”

“You won’t forget?” Jingles said.

“For heaven’s sake—I do have a memory, you know. And I’ve got the entire day.”

Jingles’s lips bowed downward. “The combined Mildred Claus dessert potluck and Kringle Heights Ladies’ Guild tea is at four o’clock.”

“Oh right.” I’d forgotten. Because of a busier-than-usual holiday calendar, two of the big Kringle Heights neighborhood events of the year were combining forces. Mildred, Nick’s older cousin, was expecting a record crowd at her chateau.

I’d have to get back to the castle and change clothes after going to Needles’s workshop, which was over halfway between Christmastown and the village of Tinkertown, where all of Santa’s workshops were located. Busy, busy, busy.

“And then rehearsal is at six thirty,” Jingles continued. “Concentration on the Christmas at the Cratchits scene, followed by dance practice from scenes set at Fezziwig’s and Scrooge’s nephew’s houses.”

He knew the director’s rehearsal plan better than I did.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be there. And if I’m not, it’s not as if the show won’t go on. That’s what the assistant stage manager is for.”

Jingles hooted his displeasure. “Butterbean? He’s hopeless. He just acts like a know-it-all and shouts our lines at us all the time.”

Butterbean could be an overzealous prompter.

“He takes no account of the craft of acting,” Jingles complained. “And he clearly knows nothing about dramatic pauses.” His cheeks flushed. Last night he’d had to be cued for a forgotten line that had resulted in an uncomfortably long “dramatic pause.”

After the footmen left, I hurriedly showered and dressed. I also took a moment to text my friends Juniper and Claire. I didn’t have time for more than a coffee and a bite of pastry now, so a quick stop for lunch in Christmastown would work out perfectly. Maybe one of them had heard something about a suddenly baby-less elf.

I called to the reindeer stable to have my sleigh brought round to the castle’s side portico.

On my way downstairs, I ran into Nick’s sister, Lucia, loping up to the first landing, followed by her reindeer friend, Quasar, whose Rudolphian nose fizzled tiredly. They’d probably been up since dawn. The reindeer game finals were just getting started. These competitions decided which reindeer would pull Nick’s sleigh on Christmas Eve, and no one—besides the reindeer—took the competitions more seriously than Lucia.

She stopped on the step below me, but due to her height she still managed to be eye to eye with me. She was dressed in her outdoor clothes—a thick wool coat and a Cossack hat. Snow from her shearling-lined boots plopped onto the steps. She took in my freshly showered and daisy-fresh state with mild disapproval. “Just getting up?”

“Late rehearsal.”

“Quasar and I had a late night, too,” she said, “but we still managed to drag ourselves out this morning to monitor a race.”

“Where were you last night?”

“I v-volunteered for Elf Ride Home,” Quasar explained.

Elf Ride Home was a program the Association of Misfit Reindeer had started this year. They offered complimentary rides home to elves who’d been doing a little too much celebrating at holiday parties and grog taverns. Wobbler and Cannonball, the reindeer who took turns drawing my sleigh, had also signed up for Elf Ride Home.

“And now a furnace is acting up at the Toy Workshop in Tinkertown, and what with the wind drift at the moment, I had to come back here to get an okay from Nick to reroute some of the reindeer events to avoid the smoke from one of the chimneys.”

“I’m sure everyone—especially Nick—believes that the reindeer need clean air for their games,” I said.

She laughed. “Getting every elf in Santaland to agree on anything is impossible.”

“Except Christmas,” Quasar said. “All elves like Christmas.”

Lucia conceded the point with a shrug and then looked at me curiously. “Speaking of elves, what did you do with the baby?”

“How did you know about the baby elf?” I asked.

“I was the one who found it on my way out the door this morning. Quasar nearly stepped on it, actually.”

Quasar ducked his head sheepishly. “I-I wasn’t expecting a baby in a basket to be there.”

“Half covered in snow, too.” Lucia looked back at me. “It was a wonder the thing didn’t get squished. Did you call the Home for Orphaned Elves?”

“Not yet. We’re keeping her here until we find out a little more.”

Lucia’s brow crinkled into a network of lines. “What’s there to find out? It’s an abandoned elf. It’s not like a stray animal that you’d want to keep around.”

If baby August were a stray animal, Lucia would have been decorating a spare room for her already. She had a closer affinity with animals than with elves and people, which is why a misfit reindeer, a lynx, and various other animals found their way into the castle, to my mother-in-law’s ongoing irritation.

“When there’s a stray animal left at the door, you’ll be the first person I ask for advice,” I said. “Will I see you later at Mildred’s?”

She sent me a puzzled look.

“The combined Dessert Potluck-Ladies’ Guild Tea?” I reminded her.

She laughed. “I’ll be helping Salty muck out the reindeer stable, and enjoying it more.” She continued up the stairs.

Quasar looked at me apologetically, embarrassed for his friend’s brusque reply. “Have a g-good day, April, and enjoy the tea.”

Amazing that a reindeer could have better social graces than my sister-in-law.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll bring you back some shortbread.”

I was hoping to get out the door without another Claus encounter, but Pamela, Nick’s mother, intercepted me as I crossed through the breakfast room on the way to the kitchen.

“April, what is this I hear about a baby?”

How had she appeared out of nowhere? I could only assume she’d been lurking like a spider on a web. My mother-in-law, the Dowager Mrs. Claus, was small but hard to miss. Her gray hair piled into a bun that added a few inches to her height, and her appropriately plump figure was encased in an ice-blue wool dress and matching pumps. She tilted her head down to eye me over the round rims of her spectacles.

Much as I tried, I’d never felt totally at ease in Pamela’s presence. Her hawklike gaze made me felt like a child who was trying to cover up something, which was ridiculous. “It’s a baby elf,” I replied, as if this were an everyday occurrence that I totally had under control. “She’s in the kitchen.”

“Why is she in the kitchen?” Pamela said.

“Felice likes babies, and Jingles said he didn’t have time to watch her …”

Pamela drew up. “None of us have time to watch a baby, including the kitchen elves. Felice is supposed to be helping me put together my trifle for the Ladies’ Guild Tea, not goo-gooing at a baby.”

My mother-in-law, ladies and gentlemen. All heart.

“It’s only for a little while,” I said.

“Have you called the Home for Orphaned Elves?”

“Not yet. I want to go into town to talk to Doc Honeytree first.”

“Then you should take the baby with you,” she said.

“I hate to drag a baby out in the snow.”

Pamela scoffed at me. “Nonsense! It’s an elf.”

“But Chip said—”

“The doctor will need to see the baby to recognize it,” Pamela said, cutting me off.

I was primed to argue, but actually she made a good point.

“I’m not quite sure why the baby shouldn’t just be taken to the Home for Orphaned Elves right away.” Her frown deepened. “Obviously the castle is yours now to run as you see fit—”

Oh boy. I took a deep breath for patience. We were off to the passive-aggressive races.

“—since you’re the acting Mrs. Claus now,” she continued. “I’ve happily ceded that role to you. But having an unwanted baby in the castle at Christmas could be very disruptive. We don’t know where that baby came from.”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“But you have duties, April. Mrs. Claus duties, in addition to all these other silly things you get yourself involved in.”

She meant like the theater production, and the concert band I’d been a part of since moving here. “I’ve scheduled time for everything,” I assured her, edging toward the door.

“Have you done your clue riddle?”

My face must have given away the fact that I had no idea what she was talking about.

“For the Santaland Treasure Hunt,” she said impatiently. “You promised you’d think of an item to be hunted.”

“Oh right.” I remembered now. “I didn’t know about the riddle, though.”

“Well of course—that’s part of the fun. For instance, I just thought of an excellent riddle clue this morning: A topper for the continent hopper.” She grinned at me expectantly. “I bet you can’t guess what that is.”

I frowned in thought for a moment. There was only one continent hopper of note in Santaland, and I was married to him. “A Santa hat?”

Her face went slack. “Did Jingles tell you?”

“No—just a lucky guess. It’s very clever,” I assured her. “I’ll try to come up with something good, too.”

Her stiffly corseted monobosom rose and fell in a dramatic sigh. “I only hope the whole event isn’t canceled.”

“Why would the scavenger hunt be canceled?” Proceeds from participation entries were going to be donated to the Home for Orphaned Elves.

“The date we chose is also the date of the snowman serenade.”

The snowmen of Santaland liked to congregate in groups and sing carols, and their musical gatherings were a treat to see and hear. Most snowmen had beautiful, almost otherworldly singing voices. Last year they’d sung to us here at the castle. This year they were planning several serenades throughout Santaland.

“I don’t see how it’s a conflict,” I said. “In fact, it sounds like having the two events on the same night will be for everyone’s benefit. There will be more elves out and about to hear the snowmen sing, and all the scavenger hunters will get to be serenaded as they’re rushing to gather things around town.”

Her expression brightened. “A win-win!”

“Yes.” I gave myself a pat on the back. I so rarely said anything that managed to please my mother-in-law. Best to make my exit. . .