“And a happy New Year!” The last notes of the carol hung in the air, a wispy white cloud in the freezing cold. Edith Langford rubbed her mittened hands together, marvelling at the perfect Christmas weather that had graced Longborough. A generous snowfall had transformed the village into a picture postcard, complete with a sky full of stars and a group of carollers — the latter provided by Lady Elrington’s insistence that the church choir serenade every house in the village on Christmas Eve.
Currently they were on the outskirts, regaling old Mrs. Dumfries, who appeared not to hear a note but smiled benignly and offered a shilling for the charity box. Lady Elrington shouted her thanks and marched them onwards.
“How many more to go?” Edith whispered to Mrs. Lundy.
“About a dozen,” Mrs. Lundy replied, stamping her feet. “And then back to the church for some mulled wine.”
The prospect cheered Edith immensely and carried her through many more choruses of “Deck the Halls” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”. All suggestions of popular new tunes such as “Winter Wonderland” had been resolutely shot down by their leader, much to the dismay of the younger choir members. When they sang “Silent Night”, however, there was an excited murmur from the teen-agers in the back of the group.
“They like this one,” Edith told Mrs. Lundy. “That crooner’s been singing it on the wireless. Bing somebody or other.”
“Crosby, miss!” exclaimed one boy, rolling his eyes.
“It’s an odd feeling, realising one is no longer young,” Edith mock-sighed. “But I’m trying to keep up. Judy lent me his record, and it’s quite good.”
She turned to the youths, but to her surprise Judy was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Judy?” Edith asked the others, suddenly worried. It wasn’t like her to just disappear into the night.
“She’s gone home, miss,” said a girl named Georgie. “She said she wasn’t feeling well.”
“But her house is that way,” said Edith, pointing ahead of them.
“What’s going on?” boomed Lady Elrington from the front of the group.
“We’ve lost Judy,” Mrs. Lundy answered. “Oh dear, I hope she hasn’t fallen into a snowbank, or stopped for a rest and frozen, or— or—”
“Mrs. Lundy, this is hardly an Arctic trek,” said the lady severely. The rest of the choir gathered around them, all eyes turned on Georgie. “Now, young lady, where did your friend really go?”
“She only said she was off to the woods, ma’am,” said Georgie plaintively. “She wanted to get away for a bit.”
Edith had an idea.
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with that boy she’s been seeing, would it?”
“Arthur?” Georgie shook her head vehemently. “Oh no, that’s all over.”
“Judy’s mother didn’t approve,” Mrs. Lundy, ever the source of information, explained to the choir. “And then Arthur got offended and broke it off. Poor girl, no wonder she wanted to be alone on Christmas Eve. Such a romantic time…”
“Quite,” Lady Elrington interrupted. “Miss Langford, why don’t you and Mrs. Lundy go find her, whilst we carry on here. I’m not keen to tell Mrs. Stubbs that her sixteen-year-old daughter ran off into the night and we did nothing about it.”
“I’d like Georgie to come, too,” said Edith. Her teacher’s sense told her the girl hadn’t revealed all she knew.
With Lady Elrington’s blessing, the three of them retraced their steps to the edge of the village. A row of three cottages sloped down to a field bordered by trees, which gradually turned into the local wood.
“There!” Edith pointed to the field, where a line of footprints led into the darkness. They followed the trail, crunching through the snow until they came to the edge of the wood. And there, the footprints simply… stopped.
“But where did she go?” exclaimed Mrs. Lundy. They peered at the blank snow, a little windswept, but clearly undisturbed by human steps.
“She can’t have disappeared into thin air,” Edith murmured. She looked up at the trees. “She can’t have climbed a tree either. These thin birches wouldn’t take a person’s weight.”
“And anyway, she’s not up a tree, we can see that,” pointed out Mrs. Lundy.
“Georgie, any insights?” asked Edith. The girl shrugged.
“Maybe she retraced her steps. You know, backwards.” She demonstrated with a couple of careful steps in her own footprints, but quickly lost her balance and landed in the snow. “Ow. It’s harder than it seems.”
“Exactly,” said Edith. “And why would she do that unless she was trying to throw someone off her trail? Was she in some kind of trouble?”
Georgie shook her head sullenly.
“Right,” Edith decided. “If you’re not going to tell us anything, we’d better talk to the neighbours. Come on Mrs. Lundy.”
“Oh dear,” her friend murmured as they walked back to the cottages, Georgie trudging behind them. “I do hope she hasn’t run away from home. Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly. “What if she’s been kidnapped? To think that such things can happen in our own village! The occasional murder, I can understand, but kidnapping—”
“Now Mrs. Lundy, we don’t know what happened,” said Edith soothingly. They reached the first cottage and knocked loudly for the owner’s benefit. The interview didn’t last long. Though eager to help, Mrs. Dumfries had been absorbed in the roasting of various festive vegetables and hadn’t seen a thing.
“Next neighbour,” Edith sighed, knocking on the second door.
“That’s that young artist fellow,” said Mrs. Lundy disapprovingly. “The one who didn’t open up when we came carolling. You can tell right away he’s from London. No sense of community!”
A young man appeared, looking embarrassed.
“Sorry about earlier,” he said. “I was busy painting.”
“That’s all right,” said Edith. “We actually want to know if you’ve seen a girl about? She left our group, and we’re trying to find her.”
The artist considered.
“I did look out the window when you were singing. You were doing such a lovely rendition of ‘Adeste Fideles’, I couldn’t help it.” He smiled sheepishly. “And I saw someone break away from the crowd and go towards the wood.”
“But you didn’t see anyone come back?”
“Not a soul. And I stayed by the window for a while.”
“Thanks for your help,” said Edith, more puzzled than ever.
The third door was opened by a harassed-looking man in a knitted jumper.
“Hello Mr. Brown,” said Edith. “We were wondering if you saw a girl go by here, after the carolling?”
He tugged his moustache.
“I don’t think so—”
“Muuum!!” a small voice shrieked from the depths of the house, cutting him off. “Peter ate my mince pie!”
“Did not!”
“Did too!”
The argument continued in this vein, a cat’s insistent meow joining in.
“Who gave the cat a mince pie?!” A woman’s voice, sounding the way Mr. Brown looked, completed the chorus.
“Sorry, bit busy here, didn’t see a thing,” said Mr. Brown firmly and shut the door.
Edith and Mrs. Lundy looked at each other.
“Christmas Eve is not a time for noticing the outside world,” Edith remarked. “But still, if she’d gone back to the village, the artist would have seen her. And if she’d gone into the woods, there would be footprints.”
“But where else could she be?” asked Mrs Lundy. “Georgie, are you sure there’s nothing else you can tell us?”
The girl glared at them obstinately. Edith, not one to back down, glared right back. Annoying teen-agers! she thought. And then, suddenly, a flash of light illuminated the whole dark mystery.
She marched back to the row of cottages and knocked on the middle door. The artist appeared again, looking startled.
“Tell Judy to come here, please,” said Edith sternly.
“But—”
“Now.” Her tone suggested in no uncertain terms that there’d be a note home to his mother, and though the man before her was at last twenty years old, it worked. He faltered for a second, then disappeared inside the house. A minute later Judy emerged.
“Miss Langford, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble!” She glared at Georgie over Edith’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, she didn’t give you away,” said Edith. “Come on Judy. We’re taking you for a long walk, and we’re going to discuss a few things. Such as why it’s a bad idea to run away to London with an artist when you’re sixteen!”
An hour later, all young girls had been delivered safely to their homes, and Edith and Mrs. Lundy were finally making their way back to the church.
“I don’t suppose there’s any mulled wine left,” said Edith wistfully. “I’m frozen.”
“I’ll make you a fresh batch at home,” said Mrs. Lundy. “You deserve it! Imagine figuring out that she’d staged her disappearance in order to run away with that cad of an artist. I’d never have guessed.”
“She had fun leaving an ‘impossible mystery’ for us, that’s for sure. And all she really did was shake the branches of those thin trees and bring the snow down to cover some of her tracks. Then she looped around through the woods and came back to his cottage. The footprints only had to stop for long enough to confuse us, and we fell for it and turned back.”
“But that man, how could he!”
“It’s funny, he seemed relieved that we stopped them from eloping. And I rather think she was just chasing him to make Arthur jealous. I doubt they would have gone through with it in the end.”
“Youth,” grumbled Mrs. Lundy.
“Judy’s a nice girl,” said Edith. “She was just rebelling against her parents’ strictness. I’m glad they reached a compromise, though. Judy will give up disreputable artists if Arthur is allowed to come to tea.”
“But how did you suspect the artist in the first place?”
Edith grinned.
“I have Bing Crosby to thank for that. You know that record Judy lent me? It’s got ‘Silent Night’ on one side — and ‘Adeste Fideles’ on the other! He said he’d heard us singing it, but of course we’d been singing the English version, ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’.”
“Quite right,” said Mrs. Lundy, staunchly Church of England.
“And then I remembered Judy’s records, and how she made everyone listen to them.”
“Listening to jazz was their downfall,” said Mrs. Lundy darkly, sending Edith into a fit of giggles.
A bell rang out, clear and lovely in the night air. Then another, and another, peal upon peal floating over the snowy rooftops.
“The church bells!” exclaimed Mrs. Lundy. “Why, it must be midnight. Happy Christmas, my dear!”
“And all the bells on Earth shall ring,” murmured Edith. The perfect ending to a carol-filled evening. “Happy Christmas, Mrs. Lundy!”
Daria Writes 