Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen Read Online Free PDF

was in alittle conclave with Nigel Pearce, Russ Durham, Ralph Dickerson, Fergus Cartwright, and my mom. Mom was drinking water, and the men were munching on gingerbread. Sue-Anne Morrow danced at the edges of the group, trying to squeeze herself in while Mom tried to block her. Betty had disappeared.
    Alan and I stood in comfortable silence, watching. Alan was a man of few words. His wooden toys—as much art as things for kids to play with—spoke for him.
    Soon Dad broke away from the group and went back to his duties. Mom turned to exchange a word with him, and Sue-Anne saw her chance. She darted forward and thrust her hand toward Nigel.
    â€œI’d better get back to it,” Alan said. “Do you . . . uh . . . think, Merry, when all this is over that . . .”
    â€œNice party.” The couple who’d been first into my shop today came up to us. Alan nodded to them and slipped away. I gave them a smile, and not only because they’d dropped five hundred bucks on jewelry and Christmas ornaments.
    â€œWe’ve already made a reservation at the inn for next year,” the woman said. “We’ve finally found a way to entertain my parents on their annual visit. They’ve retired to Hawaii and love it, but Mom still pines for the old-fashioned Christmases of her youth.”
    â€œThat’s the spirit of Rudolph,” I said, feeling my smile widening. Old-fashioned Christmases were my bread and butter.
    Night had arrived before five o’clock and snow still drifted lazily out of the dark sky. The room was bathed in a soft blue and green light from the tree and decorations. Soon nothing was left of the food but a few armless andheadless gingerpeople and a pile of crumbs. And not many of those. We deliberately didn’t provide
too
much food; we wanted our visitors to go to one of the town’s many restaurants after the party. People chatted and laughed in small groups, still enjoying their hot chocolate and the last of the cookies, reluctant to head out into the night. The youngest children were being folded into their snowsuits to be taken home and put to bed after an exciting day.
    Christmas. I might spend the entire month of December in an overworked panic, but I still love it as much as I did when I was a small kid. And in our house, Christmas had been pretty special. After all, my dad was Santa Claus.
    The nicest thing about the Christmas spirit, I always thought, was that it was infectious. Everyone was made happy simply by being near it.
    Well, almost everyone. Three people standing by the buffet table did not look as though they were about to burst into a spontaneous round of carols. I knew them all. Two were store owners from the next town, Muddle Harbor. The third was the mayor of that unfortunately named town, Randy Baumgartner.
    Over the years, as the reputation of Rudolph as
the
place for Christmas activities and shopping grew, the town of Muddle Harbor fell into decline. It wasn’t entirely our fault—the town’s main industry had closed and the shipyard along with it—but Muddle Harbor folks were convinced that Rudolph was stealing all the visitors that would otherwise be pouring into their town, loaded with cash to spend.
    In fact, they did pretty well out of our overflow. When the B&Bs and inns in Rudolph were full, we directed people to Muddle Harbor and that brought customers to their shopsand restaurants. Five years ago they’d tried to set themselves up as “Easter Town” with a parade and festival in the spring. That had ended when the former mayor had run through town in an Easter Bunny outfit with a vital part of his costume missing, pursued by the three-hundred-pound trucker-father of the nineteen-year-old Queen of the Easter Parade, titled the “Chocolette.” Right now, Randy Baumgartner and his companions were glaring at the group around Nigel Pearce.
    George lumbered up to me, a slab of