The Holly
and the
Poison-Ivy
by Catherine Aird

SO who's coming for Christmas dinner, then, Mum?" asked Joshua."Friends, foes, or family?" 
'Neighbors," said his mother.
Both her children groaned. Her parents-in-law politely said nothing.
Libby Hawkins smiled round the dining table at them all."Besides, the family are here already—except Daddy, of course." Her husband's business activities presently lay in a distant land whose national holidays—and Holy Days—did not fall in the month of December.
"Which neighbors?" demanded her son.
"The Viponds..." began Libby Hawkins.
"Oh, no," protested Joshua."I can't stand him and his old jokes. I've heard them all a hundred times before. If not two hundred."
"The Bentleys..." continued Libby serenely.
"He's so boring," said her daughter, Clare,"and I don't like her."
"Mr. Vipond does," remarked Joshua.
"Joshua," remonstrated his mother,"you shouldn't say things like that."
"Mrs. Bentleys a man-eater," insisted her son unrepentantly."Even the milkman runs away from her. And the postman won't knock. Ever. If he's got a parcel he just leaves it on the doorstep and scarpers."
"What we've all got to remember," said Libby Hawkins,"is that she's not a nut-eater." She turned to her mother-in-law."Melissa Bentley's got an allergy to nuts so we shan't be having chestnut stuffing in the turkey."
"We didn't have any of those in my young days," said the old lady.
"What, no chestnuts, grandma?" said Joshua."What a shame."
"No allergies," said his grandmother briskly."Tell me, is Mr. Vipond's devotion to Mrs. Bentley reciprocated?"
"No," said Libby Hawkins, aware that the elderly were less reticent than the young and even more difficult to divert.
Joshua snorted."She's got her claws into someone else, that's why..."
Libby shot her son a warning glance.
"Who else is coming?" asked Clare into the silence.
"All right," sighed Libby."If you must know, the Hellaby-Lumbs." There were concerted moans from both her son and daughter.
"What have we done to deserve it?" asked Joshua histrionically, turning in appeal to his grandmother."I couldn't have led a better life if I'd tried, now could I, granny?"
"That I wouldn't know, Joshua," she said with gentle irony,"would I?"
"Rumours would have reached you for sure if I hadn't..." he said gloomily,
"Bound to have done."
"It's not what we've done to deserve it," pointed out Libby Hawkins."It's what they're going to do for us. The Viponds have asked the whole family round for Boxing Day, and the Bentleys are having open house for the entire neighborhood on Christmas Eve."
"And the Hellaby-Lumbs?" asked Clare a little breathlessly.
"Don't tell her, mummy," interrupted Joshua."I bet it'll be the biggest bash of the lot. They're show-offs with attitude and too much money."
"New Year's Eve," said Libby mildly."With some musical group or other playing."
"Which group?" asked Clare urgently."Oh, Mummy, which group?"
"I don't know, darling. You'll have to ask them yourself."
Joshua Hawkins was silent for awhile and then he murmured something to his grandmother which the rest of the family could not hear.
"It's rude to whisper," said Clare.
"You, Joshua," declared the old lady, suddenly sitting up very straight,"have been reading too many murder stories. That's your trouble."
"No, I haven't," said Joshua Hawkins.
"Murder stories," carried on his grandmother."You've always got your nose buried in one."
"All I said, granny, was that it would be quite fun to have a really old-fashioned Christmas this year. That's all."
"And what I am saying," insisted Arabella Hawkins firmly,"is that you formed your idea of what you are pleased to imagine an old-fashioned Christmas would be like by reading all those Golden Age detective stories."
Joshua, as befitted the youth he was, considered this allegation carefully."Well," he admitted,"I suppose you could say ] wouldn't have known much about butlers otherwise..."
"There you are, then."
"Although," admitted Joshua,"I must say that I still don't understand exactly what it was that butlers did..."
"Damned if I ever knew myself," remarked his grandfather from
the other side of the dining table."A cushy number, if you ask me."
"Everything," said Mrs. Arabella Hawkins unexpectedly, her stern expression melting with sudden warmth."Butlers did everything."
"I've always suspected that the Admirable Crichton wasn't all fiction..." murmured Libby Hawkins dryly. The presence in the house of her two elderly parents-in-law—to say nothing of the absence of her husband—in what was arguably the busiest week of the whole year was not a great help when it came to making preparations for the festive season. But everyone was trying to make the best of it in their own way.
"If we were to have a really old-fashioned Christmas," went on Joshua persuasively,"I could be the butler. That would really be fun and I wouldn't have to sit down with everyone either..."
With wry detachment Libby Hawkins watched her son maneuvering them all into compliance with his wishes. One fine day Joshua was going to make a great salesman—one fine day, that is, when he had finished his education and could get a job, any job at all. At the moment, though, she realised that he was just a very bored young man who was doing his best to inject a little interest into a family Christmas made duller by his father's absence abroad. Now, to avoid sitting in his place at the head of the table on the day itself Joshua was saying,"The butler must have done something to earn his oats, granddad..."
"He saw to the drink, of course," said old Bertram Hawkins.
"In more ways than one, I expect," grinned Joshua, adding with mock solemnity,"Human nature doesn't change."
"And the cigars... all that sort of thing." Bertram Hawkins waved a hand.
"Ugh!" exclaimed Clare at once."This house is a 'no smoking zone. ' We're not having cigars here, are we, Mummy?"
Libby nodded absently in agreement. Her daughter was a born proselytizer; where she would end up was anyone's guess at the moment. At least Clare herself wasn't smoking anything, thought Libby, her fingers crossed. That alone was something to be truly thankful for these days.
"And the silver," Arabella Hawkins reminded them all."The butler always looked after the silver. He cleaned it and kept it safe in his pantry—you've heard about butlers' pantries and butlers' sinks, surely, haven't you, Joshua?"
Joshua, who had not thought about cleaning silver, protested,"That wasn't man's work, surely..."
"Sexist," said Clare promptly.
"Libby, dear." Mr. Hawkins leaned forward."What happened to that big old silver salver that we gave you?"
"It's in the att... It's upstairs," Libby quickly amended her response."I'll bring it down and Joshua can give it a good polish." A polish of any sort was something the salver hadn't had in years but this was not the moment to say so.
"I'm sure that the maids would have laid the table, anyway," insisted Joshua."Clare can do that... and bring the food in here from the kitchen."
"Oh, she can, can she?" responded that young woman spiritedly."Well, let me tell you, brother of mine, that..."
"But you'll have to be the maid," said Joshua rationally "because there isn't anyone else."
"There aren't as many maids about as there used to be," remarked old Arabella Hawkins with deliberate ambiguity. She patted a stray wave of her white hair back into position."Not these days."
"You can say that again, granny," retorted Joshua with a wicked grin."Speaking for myself, I can only say that I haven't met many."
"The butler would see to all the napery, too," went on Arabella Hawkins, leaving everyone—but particularly Joshua— unsure whether he knew what she meant. Her mother-in-law's circle, decided Libby silently, probably used coded speech in much the same way that Joshua's generation dealt in double entendre. She sat back and relaxed while her son had it explained to him that 'napery' meant all the household table linen.
"Education isn't everything," remarked Clare, who hadn't yet decided whether she wanted to go to college or not."Besides, we can't have a murder here at Christmas..."
"Why not?" asked Joshua—as she had known he would.
"Because," said Clare,"though you can be the butler and I can be the maid, we haven't got a library for the body to be found in. That's why."
"We're not having a murder, darling," murmured Libby."Just an old-fashioned Christmas."
"I don't see not having a library as an insuperable obstacle. .." began Joshua. Libby decided against rising to this challenge and said, with the skill born of long maternal practice in diversionary tactics,"Don't forget that there's that lovely big white tablecloth which Granny gave us. I always I reserve it especially for Christmas..."
"That belonged to my grandmother," said Arabella Hawkins complacently."You don't see real linen like that these days."
Libby Hawkins made a mental note to see that the tablecloth was properly ironed, although exactly when she would do that, she wasn't sure. Her gaze drifted to the old-fashioned mirror hanging over the dining room sideboard. That, too, had come from her parents-in-law's old house but it, at least, required nothing more than a gentle wipe before being garlanded with holly and ivy for the festive season.
"I do wish so many of the napkins hadn't disappeared over the years, Libby, dear," her mother-in-law was saying."It was the laundry, you know."
"Paper napkins will do just as well," said Libby, thinking that it wouldn't be long before 'laundry' was nearly as archaic a word as 'butler. ' "They're so pretty these days."
"Tell me," enquired Arabella Hawkins,"will the gentleman in whom you say Melissa Bentley has got her claws be with us at Christmas, too?"
"Yes. It's Mr. Hellaby-Lumb, poor fish," said Joshua.
"Ah," remarked Arabella Hawkins."How interesting."
"Anything else, granny, that you can remember?" asked Clare."About Christmas in the old days, I mean."
A reminiscent look came over Arabella Hawkins' lined face."Lots of lovely things to eat, but best of all were the Elvas plums..."
Libby made a mental note to lay in a supply of crystallized fruit.
"But what I really remember about the Christmases when I was young was how lovely the dinner table looked." She gave a sweet smile."And, Joshua..."
"Yes, granny?"
"That was the butler's job."
Clare made a face at him.
"What made it so beautiful?" asked Libby swiftly.
"The epergne," said the old lady.
"All right, granny," said Joshua."I surrender. What's an epergne?"
"A table centre with lots of little dishes hanging from it with pretty things to eat in them—bonbons and chocolates..."
Libby mentally added sugared almonds to her shopping list. Melissa Bentley needn't eat them.
"And," continued her mother-in-law, well back in her own childhood now,"the epergne would have been decorated all over with trailing ivy. That looked really lovely against the white cloth."
Libby relaxed. There was ivy in the garden and she and Clare could do something pretty with it round the old silver candelabrum, another gift that had been relegated to the attic. It really wasn't any wonder that silver had gone so out of fashion— cleaning the candelabrum as well would keep Joshua busy.
"When I was a lad," contributed Bertram Hawkins,"they used something called smilax on the table centre instead." He grinned."Got you there, haven't I, Joshua? We didn't have any murders but I bet you don't know what smilax is."
"Sounds like a patent medicine, grandpa."
"A climbing species of asparagus that people used to use for decoration." He sat back in his chair."And no, you didn't eat it."
In the end the smilax was about the only feature that was missing from the table on Christmas Day. Libby had enhanced the effect of the candelabrum and its red candles by placing it on the large silver salver retrieved from the attic and polished back into brightness. She had draped the substitute epergne with ivy and Clare had contrived to hang a little dish of sweetmeats from each branch. Her mother-in-law, pleased, pronounced it as good an epergne as she had seen in years.
Joshua, bustling about with a corkscrew, had paused to admire it, too."I like the mirror effect of the salver..."
"Stop slacking, Narcissus," commanded Clare,"and give me a
hand with these side plates instead of admiring your own reflection."
"I don't have a reflection," said Joshua."I'm a vampire..."
By evening all was ready. Joshua answered the front door with aplomb, announced the guests with considerable empressement, and dispensed the drinks before withdrawing to collapse, helpless with laughter, behind the kitchen door.
"Don't!" pleaded Clare."I'm sure I'm going to giggle when I go in. I can't help it."
"Mr. Hellaby-Lumb liked it when I called him 'sir, '" said Joshua.
"I'll bet."
He grinned."But I could tell that Mrs. Bentley didn't care one little bit for the way I called her 'madam. '"
"Joshua, you are awful."
"Mr. Vipond can't take his eyes off her but she's trying to get her claws into Mr. Hellaby-Lumb, the poor fish..."
"Well," said Clare with the unconscious realism of the young,"he is the one with the money."
"Money isn't everything..."
"Maybe not to you and me but to some people it is," she said knowingly, and started off in the direction of the dining room with the soup."Just light the candles, will you, and then you can tell everyone that dinner is served..."
Libby Hawkins picked up her soup spoon and relaxed. Joshua and Clare were clearly enjoying their new roles and the guests had entered into the Christmas spirit with evident relish.
"Are they open to offers of work?" asked Gordon Hellaby-Lumb jovially as they reached the coffee stage."They're as good as those professionals we've got lined up for New Year's Eve, aren't they, my dear?"
Mrs. Hellaby-Lumb gave a remote smile, her eyes not leaving Melissa Bentley. That lady had devoted her evening to chatting up Mr. Hellaby-Lumb. And Mr. Vipond had spent all his time making sheep's eyes at Mrs. Bentley—to her obvious enjoyment, in spite of the equally apparent misgivings of Mrs. Vipond. The boring Mr. Bentley, sitting between Mrs. Vipond and Mrs. Hellaby-Lumb, had been dull but courteously attentive to both whilst studiously appearing not to notice his wife's outrageous flirting with Gordon Hellaby-Lumb and her occasional titillating encouragement of Paul Vipond. Melissa Bentley was sitting between her two admirers, almost invisible from her husband, and was clearly enjoying herself mightily behind the shelter of the epergne. At the head of the table Bertram Hawkins was taking pleasure from watching his grandchildren milking what fun they could from acting as butler and parlor-maid.
What Arabella Hawkins was thinking was anyone's guess. Her shrewd old eyes were darting about, watching everyone, and missing nothing. This was just as well. Her observations were to prove very helpful when she came to describe the evening again and again to Detective Inspector Sloan, Head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department of the Berebury Police Force. This was after the sudden death of Melissa Bentley from an acute anaphy-lactic reaction to nuts.
"She drank some coffee, Inspector," said Arabella Hawkins,"just a sip, I should say... then she started to complain that her mouth and throat were burning..."
The detective inspector nodded.
"And almost immediately after that her hands and face started to swell. This was before she collapsed, of course. She was dead before the ambulance arrived."
Arabella Hawkins did not sound too disturbed at this. It was Libby and the children who were too distraught to be comforted. They still had to be questioned, though.
"If," said Detective Inspector Sloan patiently to Joshua,"we might go through everything once more..."
"Like I said," repeated Joshua for the fourth or fifth time,"Clare made the coffee in the kitchen and brought it through to the dining room."
"And?"
"And she stood the pot over there." He waved a hand in the direction of the sideboard under the big mirror."The coffee cups were there already. And there wasn't anything in them then," he added defiantly.
"What were you doing at the time?" Detective Inspector Sloan wasn't completely au fait himself with the arcane duties of Joshua's temporary office but he did not say so."Were you still butlering?"
"Putting the nuts and crystallized fruit on the table..." Joshua said dully."With the dates and the figs."
"Then?"
"Clare poured out the coffee and I passed the cups down the table to everyone."
"You didn't hand them round yourself?"
"No. I just took them from Clare and put them on the table." He looked at the policeman and said belligerently,"I know that's not the right thing to do but Clare and I were only doing this for a lark. We hadn't ever done it before."
"What about the cream?" asked Sloan, pointing to a jug.
"I passed it down after the coffee, with the sugar." Joshua scowled."And, no, I didn't put anything in the cups except coffee."
"Quite so." Detective Inspector Sloan didn't for one moment suppose that he had. As the policeman saw it, any motives for handing a fatal dose of nuts to Melissa Bentley lay with Mrs. Vipond and Mrs. Hellaby-Lumb, with Mr. Bentley also well in the running. The man might well be as dull as everyone said he was, but even so, to Sloan's more experienced eye he didn't have the look of a marie complaisant, more one of a vengeful man suppressing great anger."Then what?"
"Mr. Vipond accidentally put some cream in the coffee that Mrs. Bentley wanted black."
"And?" Detective Inspector Sloan didn't think that old aphorism about always killing the thing you loved applied to Mr. Vipond, but he couldn't be overlooked.
"So Mrs. Bentley passed the cup back across the table— round that candlestick thing to her husband, who does take cream in his coffee, and someone else passed a black coffee back for her, through—or, rather, round—the centerpiece." He gulped."I think that must have been the one that Mrs. Bentley had... the one that had the nut in it."
So did Detective Inspector Sloan. The fingerprint people weren't prepared to commit themselves. The elegant little eggshell handles of the hastily cleared coffee cups had been singularly unrevealing in this respect."Who handed it to her?"
Joshua suddenly looked defenseless."I don't know for sure. It was difficult to see across the table from where I was standing what with all that ivy trailing round and anyway, I was still pouring the coffee. All I saw for sure when I looked down from my side of the table was a hand with a cup in it reflected in the silver salver corning out from under all the ivy."
"Man's or woman's?"
"Woman's." That, at least, Joshua was sure about.
"Right or left?"
He paused for thought."Left from where I saw it reflected on the salver—that means it would have been her right, doesn't it?"
The Inspector didn't answer this."Wedding ring?" he asked instead.
"I couldn't see that because there was a cup in her hand."
Clare had only seen things through the mirror above the sideboard. She stood in front of it now and tried to explain."I heard them talking about Mrs. Bentley having cream in her coffee when she didn't like it." She gave a little shiver."It reminded me of Cecily Cardew putting sugar in Gwendolyn Fairfax's tea just because she didn't want it in The Importance of Being Earnest, Inspector."
"Really, miss?" In his book there were more important things than being earnest. There was being right in the important matter of murder."Now, suppose you tell me exactly what you saw in your mirror..." Sloan went and stood beside Clare, both of them facing the sideboard and the great mirror above it.
Mrs. Vipond, Mr. Bentley, and Mrs. Hellaby-Lumb, all sitting on the side of the table opposite Melissa Bentley, had been uniformly vague about what they had and hadn't seen. In fact, they had reminded Detective Inspector Sloan of nothing so much as the three monkeys who saw no evil, heard no evil, and spoke no evil. In one way or another Melissa Bentley's behavior had been a threat to all three.
"I just saw a hand passing over a cup of coffee which was going across the table, Inspector," said Clare, still very shaken and tearful."I had my back to the table, getting the cups ready for Joshua, standing like we are now, and I was rather in the way of the reflection of the person so I didn't see who it was." Mr. Vipond and Mr. Hellaby-Lumb on the other side of the table had declared that they had not noticed anything at all, being busy with passing more cups round. The adult Hawkins' had similarly noticed nothing.
"Left or right hand?" he asked Clare patiently.
Clare raised her own hand in front of the mirror."My right, so her left," she said promptly,"because it would be a mirror-image, wouldn't it?"
Detective Inspector Sloan left her standing in front of the mirror while he went back to the table and sat where Mrs. Hellaby-Lumb had been sitting. He advanced his own right hand across the table. Then he put out his left hand.
"That's right. That's the one I saw."
He turned to Joshua and asked him to stand where he had been earlier, looking down at the reflection in the salver. Sloan put out his hands again.
"Tell me again which hand you saw come round from the other side of the table in the salver..."
"A left hand," he said promptly."Her right, I suppose."
Detective Inspector Sloan shook his head.
"We can't both be right," wailed Clare, dismayed.
He smiled benignly."Oh, yes, you can."
"Someone's going to get away with murder," muttered Joshua, who suddenly discovered that he minded about this.
"No, they aren't," said the Inspector."Two witnesses should be enough for any prosecution..."
"But what about us?" stammered Joshua."We don't agree."
"We saw different hands," said Clare, starting to cry again.
The lawyers will make mincemeat of Clare and me," said Joshua, feeling suddenly less grown-up than he liked. His sister shivered.
Detective Inspector Sloan explained himself."If a mirror is parallel to an image, it reverses it from left to right..."
"That's right," agreed Clare eagerly."Like the mirror on the wall..."
The policeman nodded."But when the mirror is at ninety degrees to the image..."
"As the salver was," agreed Joshua, greatly puzzled."It was flat on the table..."
"And you saw the image while you were standing up..."
"True, but..."
"When it reverses the image... reversed top to bottom instead of right to left," finished Detective Inspector Sloan."You both saw the same hand over the coffee cup—Mrs. Hellaby-Lumb's left one. Mrs. Vipond would only have been able to get her right one into that position by leaning across Mr. Bentley."
Clares swallowed as her natural practicality reasserted itself."I suppose you could say Mrs. Hellaby-Lumb had the most to lose..."
"She had means, motive, and opportunity," said Joshua, recovering some of his aplomb."And you have two witnesses." Turning politely to the police inspector, he resumed his butler mode and asked,"Will that be all, sir?"
"Yes, thank you, Hawkins," said Detective Inspector Sloan, entering into the spirit of things."For the time being, anyway."