Last week, I
reviewed Paul Halter's L'Homme
qui aimait les nuages (The Man Who Loved Clouds,
1999). An enchanting detective story with a dreamy, fairy tale-like
quality that reminded me of another French mystery novelist, Pierre
Véry, who once said that "what counts for an author,"
and a person, "is to save what has been able to remain in us as
the child that we were" – of that person "full of flaws,
of changes of heart, of shadows and mystery." Véry would
probably have defined The Man Who Loved Clouds as "a
fairy tale for grown-ups" and of his few mysteries to be
translated into English can described exactly like that.
L'Assassinat
du Père Noël (The Murder of Father Christmas, 1934) was
translated by Alan Grimes and published in 2008 by Troubadour
Publications, which came with a brief, but insightful, introduction
by Roger Giron.
Véry was "a
bookseller in rue Monsieur-le-Prince" and this period in his
life inspired him to write Léonard ou les délices du bouquiniste
(Léonard or the Delights of the Second-Hand Bookseller,
1946), "a charming novella," which made him a visitor to
the genre from mainstream fiction. A literary visitor who, according
to Xavier Lechard, brought "whimsy and gentle surrealism" to our genre and his first foray was "a pastiche of the English
detective novel," entitled Le testament de Basil Crookes
(The Testament of Basil Crookes, 1930), but also penned a
couple of locked room mysteries – Les quatre vipères (The
Four Vipers, 1934) is one of them. Hopefully, The Four Vipers
will eventually be translated into English (are you reading this,
Pugmire?).
Until that
day comes, we have to help ourselves with what we have and that is a
mildly surrealistic, Christmas-themed mystery novel that reads like a
fairy tale for grown-ups.
The Murder
of Father Christmas takes place in Mortefont, a large town in the
county of Meurthe-et-Moselle, where the parish priest, Father Jérôme
Fuchs, becomes the victim of an attempted burglary in early December.
Father Fuchs had just locked away the reliquary of Saint Nicholas,
patron saint of the region, when the incident happened, but the
intruder miraculously got away from his pursuer.
Somehow, the
burglar escaped from "the room on the first floor of the
sacristy" without "going back by the staircase" or
by "leaving footprints on the muddy earth in the garden"
underneath the open window. And this attempt is complemented by an
anonymous letter warning the priest "a gang of burglars is
preparing to plunder the churches of our region." So they
decide to enlist the help of discreet, private-investigator. Enter
Prosper Lepicq, Barrister at the Paris Law Court.
Lepicq holds
office in modest apartment overlooking the courtyard on the ground
floor of a building in rue de Valois in Paris. The office has a room
with three large armchairs, a large table stacked with papers and
filing cabinets, labeled A to Z, line the wall, but this is only a
facade – because "the files were stuffed with blank paper"
and "the filing cabinets were full of old newspapers."
Lepicq is two months behind on his rent and has a secretary who
feverishly began to write gibberish to simulate hard work when their
client came to visit them. So pretty much a low-rent Arthur
Crook, but this was undoubtedly the most memorable scene of the
whole story.
Lepicq
immediately disappears from the stage and his place is taken by a
Portuguese nobleman, the Marquis de Santa Claus. The children of
Mortefont begin to believe he has come to their town to search for an
ancient, long-lost relic, the Golden Arm of King René of Anjou,
which is rumored to be buried somewhere in the ruined abbey of
Gondrange or a nearby castle. One legend says that if "you ask
the evening star, you will find the hidden Golden Arm," but
this hidden treasure is only a minor plot-thread to give a magical or
romantic touch to the story.
Meanwhile,
there are two gems stolen from the relic of Saint Nicholas under
seemingly impossible circumstances from the locked vault and a
German-looking stranger is found murdered near the entrance of an
underground passage close to the castle – clad in a Santa Claus
custom! So who was the victim and who had been the second Santa
Claus? I first read The Murder of Father Christmas nearly a
decade ago and was surprised upon my second read to discover the plot
was far more consistent than I remember it.
My
recollection was that the story was written as one of Gladys
Mitchell's imaginative flights of fancies, such as The
Rising of the Moon (1945), but the plot here provided
answers. And there's logic to all of the madness. Even if it's "the
logic of tales of the fantastic." So it was more in line with
G.K. Chesterton's "The Flying Stars" (collected in The
Innocence of Father Brown, 1911).
The
explanation to the impossible escape from the sacristy was silly, at
best, but was nicely tied to the inexplicable theft of the
gem-stones, which showed a glimmer of ingenuity in its simplicity.
This brace of impossibilities are also very minor aspects of the plot
with most of the plotting work being put into the murders. I suppose
this was, combined with the fairy tale atmosphere of the story, why
Halter's The Man Who Loved Clouds reminded me so much of
Véry's The Murder of Father Christmas. Two very different
detective stories cut from the same magical cloth.
So, in
closing, The Murder of Father Christmas is a charming,
spiritedly written mystery novel and perfect as a holiday read during
those long, dark, but cozy, days of December. As long as you don't
expect a stone-cold classic. But highly recommended, if you like to
read Christmas-themed (detective) fiction during this time of year.
Lastly, I
want to warn readers who want to read The Murder of Father
Christmas to hurry with procuring a copy, because the book has
been out-of-print for years and secondhand copies appear to be
scarce, which are already being offered at exorbitant prices –
going all the way up to several hundred dollars or pounds. There are,
however, still a few affordable copies floating around. So you better
be quick about it.
