That bloke

The pleasant custom of sending Christmas cards prevailed in Tilling, and most of the world met in the stationer's shop on Christmas Eve, selecting suitable salutations from the threepenny, the sixpenny and the shilling trays. Elizabeth came in rather early and had almost completed her purchases when some of her friends arrived, and she hung about looking at the backs of volumes in the lending-library, but keeping an eye on what they purchased. Diva, she observed, selected nothing from the shilling tray any more than she had herself; in fact, she thought that Diva's purchases this year were made entirely from the threepenny tray. Susan, on the other hand, ignored the threepenny tray and hovered between the sixpennies and the shillings and expressed an odiously opulent regret that there were not some 'choicer' cards to be obtained. The Padre and Mrs Bartlett were certainly exclusively threepenny, but that was always the case. However they, like everybody else, studied the other trays, so that when, next morning, they all received seasonable coloured greetings from their friends, a person must have a shocking memory if he did not know what had been the precise cost of all that were sent him. But Georgie and Lucia as was universally noticed, though without comment, had not been in at all, in spite of the fact that they had been seen about in the High Street together and going into other shops. Elizabeth therefore decided that they did not intend to send any Christmas cards and before paying for what she had chosen, she replaced in the threepenny tray a pretty picture of a robin sitting on a sprig of mistletoe which she had meant to send Georgie. There was no need to put back what she had chosen for Lucia, since the case did not arise.

A final deciding factor was that if Wimsey did not spend Christmas at Fenchurch, he would have no decent excuse for not spending it with his brother's family at Denver, and of all things in the world, a Christmas at Denver was most disagreeable to him.

Accordingly, he looked in at Denver for a day or two, irritated his sister-in-law and her guests as much as, and no more than, usual and thence, on Christmas Eve, made his way across country to Fenchurch St Paul.

"They seem," said Wimsey, "to keep a special brand of disgusting weather in these parts." He thurst up his hand against the hood of his car, discharging a deluge of water. "Last time it was snowing and now it's pelting cats and dogs. There's a fate in it Bunter."

"Yes, my lord," said that long-suffering man. He was deeply attached to his master, but sometimes felt his determined dislike of closed cars to be a trifle unreasonable. "A very inclement season, my lord."

Earlier, as Christmas Eve had turned into Christmas Day, she had listened at the window to the faraway church bell from the village ringing midnight. It was a still night and not cold, the wind in the direction to send the sound of the bell here; it would be a warm start to Christmas after the storms, and the lack of frost and cold left the landscape wintry without dignity; the bell's resonance was more pedestrian than it'd have been on the kind of crisp cold winter night tonight ideally ought to have been. Dead. Dead. Dead, the bell went. Or maybe: Head. Head. Head. The village church had only one bell so couldn't play a tune. It sounded, she thought, like someone at the back of memory hitting at stone with an axe, which is an act that'll do nothing but ruin a good blade.

Jane thought her most beautiful present was the first she opened. It was a lovely little wrist watch. On the card with it was written "From Hyde Park and myself with best wishes. Your Mr. Browne." But presently she opened a parcel which made her forget there were any other presents in the world. It was a plain cardboard box with none of the grand American fixings of massed bows and flowers. Inside was something done up in brown paper. Inside that was an exact duplicate of David's reed pipe. On a piece of paper David had written, "Happy Christmas. I'll teach you to play this. David."

The evening finished with carols. Tim played and everybody stood round his piano. On the top of the piano, where he could keep his eye on it, was Brent's trick box. Rachel had her arms hugged to her and inside them were Posy's old shoes. Jane, wearing her wrist watch, held the box with her pipe. As Tim crashed out the opening chords of "O, come all ye faithful" everybody's eyes were bright, even Aunt Cora's, but nobody's eyes shone quite so shiningly as Jane's.