"Late?" Bucket dipped his forefinger into a pot of thick, brown gravy. "Oh, no! I'm early! Just look on the mantelpiece if you don't believe me."

While the inspector loaded a plate with the roast duck, stuffing and pudding he found warming in the oven, his wife went to the drawing room and searched the mantel. Tucked away behind a portrait of Sir Robert Peel she found a small black book bound with red ribbon: Tales, by Edgar Allan Poe. Eyes gleaming, Mrs. Bucket ripped the ribbon free and practically hurled herself into the nearest chair. By the time her husband joined her in the drawing room, his round belly all the rounder for the two heaping plates of food he'd just consumed, she'd already raced through "The Gold-Bug" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" and was plunging headlong into "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." Bucket knew it was useless to attempt to engage her in conversation until she'd finished, so he settled back into a chair of his own, propped his feet up before the fireplace, lit his pipe and waited.

A few minutes later, his wife heaved a contented sigh, closed her book, and looked up at Bucket with a smile.

"Thank you, William," she said. "So . . . now you can tell me your mystery story."

Bucket grinned back at her. There'd been no need to tell her what had kept him late. It had to be a case, and a particularly interesting one to boot. And, as with all such cases, Mrs. Bucket would want a full accounting from her husband-as well as the opportunity to test her own observations and inferences against his. And Bucket was happy to oblige her, for he'd found that his wife's conjectures stocked a far greater store of logic and insight than those of his colleagues.

So he told her the tale. Mrs. Bucket sat rapt throughout, not speaking a word for nearly a quarter of an hour. She merely c.o.c.ked an eyebrow or murmured the occasional "hmmm" until Bucket clapped his hands together and said, "And then I came home to find my dear wife on the verge of fainting! So? What do you make of it all?"

Something about the quizzical look in his wife's eyes tickled Bucket's forefinger like a feather.

"Why do I get the feeling, William, that you are on the verge of making an arrest?"

"Because you're a deucedly clever woman-and because I am on the verge of making an arrest!"

"But who will you arrest?"

"Why, the nephew, of course!"

"Mr. Merriweather?" Mrs. Bucket shook her head. "He sounds like such a nice, jovial man."

"So he seems," Bucket said, the tickle in his finger deepening into a disconcerting p.r.i.c.kling. "But consider this, my plum: Mr. Fred Merriweather is the only person in the world who stands to gain by the death of Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. The old man was hostile to the very notion of altruism . . . except when under the influence of opium. So it's unlikely that Mr. Scrooge would bequeath his holdings to the church or some charitable society. And those who had cause to hate Mr. Scrooge the most-the many men in his debt-had the most to lose from his death, since their chits might simply be handed over to an even more rapacious creditor."

Bucket paused to gauge how his reasoning was being received. His forefinger didn't like what his eyes reported: Mrs. Bucket's mouth had developed an infinitesimal tilt, one corner of her full lips curling ever-so-slightly upward.

It didn't bode well. Yet Bucket forged on.

"Second, consider the death of Mr. Merriweather's child. Not only would this deepen Mr. Merriweather's antipathy for his uncle-Mr. Scrooge didn't attend the funeral, you'll recall-but it could have created another motive for murder, as well. Even after the spirit departs, the bills remain. A long illness, a burial, a year in mourning dress. It all costs money. In fact, death is such an expensive proposition these days, I daresay most of us can't afford it! Yet when it comes time to pay the ferryman, we can't refuse, and those we leave behind must settle the tab. It's made paupers of more than one prosperous family. Perhaps Mr. Merriweather found it necessary to, shall we say, accelerate the scheduling of his inheritance."

Bucket's forefinger was itching and sweating now, for Mrs. Bucket's smile had grown wider. But the finger had one more card up its sleeve, so to speak.

"Third, consider the smell of opium smoke I detected upon Mr. Scrooge-and remember that Mr. Merriweather specializes in 'imports from the East.' Surely, a businessman with dealings in the Orient might easily develop connections with the China opium trade or the poppy fields of Afghanistan. And for what purpose did Mr. Merriweather visit his uncle's offices today? To offer 'Christian forgiveness' by inviting Mr. Scrooge to a holiday party hosted by a grief-stricken woman who openly loathes him? That's offering an olive branch with a wasp nest attached, wouldn't you say? Yet it gave Mr. Merriweather an excuse to be alone with his uncle for a few minutes . . . and that was all the time he needed to set his fiendish plot into motion."

Bucket leaned back in his chair and put his pipe to his lips for a triumphant puff-and only noticed then that there was no puff to be had, the tobacco's low flicker of fire having long since snuffed out.

Mrs. Bucket's smile, on the other hand, had been kindled into full flame.

"I'm curious, William," Mrs. Bucket said. "By what means did Mr. Merriweather 'set his fiendish plot into motion'?"

Bucket's forefinger rubbed the cold curve of his pipe-bowl, as if it might relight the tobacco within through sheer friction. Blast her (and bless her) his wife had found the hole in his case, as she always did when there was a hole to be found.

"You mean how did he administer the opium to his uncle? That I shall discover when I return to Mr. Merriweather's home after Christmas. With a search warrant."

"I see," Mrs. Bucket said in a way that suggested she saw much more than her husband.

"You have another question for me, Mrs. Bucket?"

"I do," Mrs. Bucket said. "I wonder why you a.s.sign such importance to Merriweather's access to opium via trade connections when it's so readily available through alternate means. Might a doctor not have a sample amongst his supplies? Wouldn't someone who had access to, let's say, the medical kit in a police ambulance be able to make off with some variant, such as morphine? And, my goodness-you won't find a more popular bottled remedy than laudanum, and it's little more than opium sweetened with sugar."

For the full length of a minute, Bucket made no reply. His wife hadn't just pointed out a hole. She'd pointed out that his theory about Merriweather was nothing but hole.

"What you say is true," he finally admitted. "But even if this hypothetical doctor or ambulance driver or laudanum user had equal access to opium, you must admit that none would have as potent a motivation for using it."

"Well," Mrs. Bucket said, shrugging in a way that indicated she would admit no such thing, "I find it rather hard to understand why anyone would want to use it on Scrooge."

"What? Ebenezer Scrooge was one of the most hated men in London!"

Mrs. Bucket nodded calmly. "Yes, he was. So if he had been murdered, I should think you would have a city full of suspects to sort through. But, William-Scrooge wasn't murdered, was he? He ran into the street and was trampled by a pa.s.sing wagon. His death was an accident."

"How can you say that? The opium-!"

"Would have made a poor murder weapon. If Scrooge's death had been the objective, surely a.r.s.enic would have made a better choice. Or any of a hundred other poisons."

"But . . .!" Bucket began, his forefinger poised to give his arguments renewed life through vigorous pointing and waggling. The finger quickly went limp, however, and the rest of the detective followed suit, settling back into his chair with a defeated sigh.

"You're right," he said. "I'm a fool."

Mrs. Bucket reached over and gave her brooding husband a brisk (but not too forceful) swat on the arm.

"What a thing for Inspector William Bucket to say! The man who unmasked the killer of Theopholus Tulkinghorn and rescued Edwin Drood from the clutches of the devious Canon Crisparkle? The man who engineered the capture of Reginald Compeyson and Tom Gradgrind? The man who pulled the secret strings that sent the fiends Orlick and f.a.gin to the gallows? The man who married me? A fool? I think not! You've simply been asking yourself the wrong questions tonight. Set your mind to the right ones, and we'll soon see who's a fool!"

"Well . . . perhaps." Bucket pushed himself deeper into the cushions enveloping his broad undercarriage and tried to revive his fatigued and dejected forefinger by rubbing it across his chin(s). "So 'the right questions' would be . . . ."

"Who would have preferred to see old Scrooge drugged rather than dead, and why?" his wife finished for him.

"Ahhhh . . . ."

The detective bolted to his feet with his arm upraised and his forefinger pointed skyward, as if he were a puppet hoisted aloft by a string tied to his finger.

"A-ha!"

"A-ha?" Mrs. Bucket asked innocently.

The inspector dashed to the coat rack in the foyer and began pulling on his overcoat and boots. "I've no time to explain-and no need, I'll warrant! By Jove, if Scotland Yard knew about you, half the force would be in blue skirts and bonnets inside a week. You ladies might not be as swift with a truncheon as us brutes, but you can be just as swift with a deduction, if given half a chance." Bucket affixed his hat upon his head and threw open the door. "But enough of my babblings! If there ever was any time to lose, I've misplaced it already!"

"Be careful, William!" Mrs. Bucket called as her husband rushed outside in such a hurry he didn't even close the door behind him.

"If duty permits, my pet!" he shouted without looking back. "If duty permits!"

Bucket spent the next seven minutes hustling up and down the streets of Bloomsbury looking for a hansom, all the while mumbling self-recriminations so acidic they could have melted the snow beneath his flying feet. Even after he finally found a free cab, Bucket's anxious, murmured curses continued throughout his ride, only coming to an end when he hopped out, collared a shivering street waif and sent the lad running to the Bow Street station house with a shiny new three-penny in his pocket. (Scrooge's clerk Cratchit had confiscated all the detective's smaller coins.) The urchin had already dashed off, disappearing into the fog and snow swirling around the gaslights, when Bucket realized exactly how much rested on his messenger's honesty and speed. Looking across the street at his destination-the offices of Scrooge & Marley-Bucket beheld a dim light flickering behind the thin curtains in the window.

The inspector had arrived just in time to confront the culprit. But he would have to do so alone.

The hustle and bustle of the neighborhood had long given way to the eerie stillness of a late winter's night. Nevertheless, Bucket paused to look both ways before hurrying across the street. He was, after all, at the very spot where Scrooge had been crushed like a pea in a nutcracker hours before.

When he reached the office door, Bucket opened it slowly, dreading the shrieking squeak of rusty hinges that would alert his quarry. But the squeak never came, and Bucket crept inside. He took ginger, hesitant steps, mindful of the floorboards and the not-insubstantial strain his bulk placed upon them. He turned, closed the door, then pushed on into the darkness.

A low, fluttering glow spilled out from a room at the back of the office. As Bucket inched toward the source of the light-candles atop Scrooge's own desk, he was certain-he pa.s.sed Cratchit's cramped work nook. Resting on the clerk's precarious perch of a desk were an unused candle and a box of lucifer matches. The detective picked them up and brought them to the ready as he crept forward.

He paused just outside Scrooge's sanctum, listening to a low, scratchy noise from around the corner: a pen moving across paper. Then he struck the match, lit the candle and stepped into the room.

"Working late, are we?"

The detective's theatrical entrance had the desired effect. The man seated at Scrooge's desk jumped to his feet popeyed with fright.

"Oh . . . it's you, Inspector," Bob Cratchit said. He eased himself back down into Scrooge's seat with a smile that looked as out of place on his sallow face as jingle bells on a crocodile. "You gave me quite a scare! Yes . . . yes, I am working late. There were a few things that needed to be put in order before Scrooge's accounts are handed over to whoever-"

"What sort of things?" Bucket cut in. He nodded at the ledger spread out before Cratchit. It was the same wax-splattered account book the detective had seen there when he'd made his search of the office hours before. "From the lock on that ledger book, I'd guess Mr. Scrooge intended that only he should make changes to the balances inside."

"Well, yes . . . you're right." Cratchit's grin began to flicker like the candlelight that barely illuminated the room. "But Scrooge fell behind on the bookkeeping. There were changes he never got around to writing down."

"Payments, I a.s.sume?"

Cratchit's smile finally snuffed out completely.

"Yes . . . payments," the clerk said, his gaze dropping to the fresh ink that still glistened on the ledger book's pages. When he looked back up again, his eyes were wild with fear and remorse. "You must believe me, Inspector, I-!"

Bucket silenced him with a clucked tut-tut and a waggle of his upraised forefinger. "You don't have to explain. I know you didn't mean to harm Mr. Scrooge-at least not in the physical sense. You merely hoped to inflict a few small wounds upon his pocketbook through some surrept.i.tious . . . editing, shall we say? Your duties have included copying Mr. Scrooge's letters, so you've had ample opportunity to master the forging of his handwriting. But getting access to his ledgers proved a thornier problem. Mr. Scrooge kept them under lock and key. So you planned to make the changes while he was in an opium-induced stupor. You could tell him afterwards that he suffered from some kind of episode-an excuse you could also use if he ever questioned your changes. 'Don't you remember, sir? Mr. Smith paid us in full the day you had your spell. Mr. Jones, as well.' And so on. I a.s.sume you were to be rewarded for your trouble. A percentage of the debts you erased, perhaps?"

As he unspooled his deductions, Bucket was overcome by a growing sense of triumph that flew past smugness all the way to ecstasy. Not only did his forefinger tingle with a barely contained elation, his entire body seemed to throb with pleasure. The feeling grew so powerful, in fact, that the detective found it difficult to continue speaking.

"But something went wrong . . . didn't it, Mr. Scratchit? I don't know how you madministered the yummyop . . . administered the opium, but it didn't effect Mr. Plan as you'd scrooged. Mr. Spoon as you'd praged. Memar Scroo ash oo glanged."

Bucket put his free hand to his forehead and took a deep breath. Three separate sensations were trying to crowd their way into his brain all at once, and the only way he could accommodate them was to have them form a line and enter one at a time.

The first came by way of his ears, which sent word that a sound not unlike giggling was escaping from his own lips.

The second had been sent by his nose, which wished to inform him that an overpowering odor of opium smoke had been detected very close nearby.

The third came from his eyes.

"Master Bucket," they were trying to tell him. "Please note that Mr. Cratchit is grinning again-and a most malevolent grin it is."

By the time this last report reached his consciousness, however, Bucket found that Cratchit had disappeared entirely, replaced somehow by a remarkably large and malicious-looking gingerbread man.

"You're right, Inspector," the menacing pastry said. "I'd a.s.sumed the opium would render Scrooge unconscious, or at least malleable. Instead, he became agitated, convinced ghosts were tormenting him, and he ran babbling out of the office. With the old man causing a commotion out front, I could hardly take the time to sit here altering the books as I pleased. So I slipped away, planning to return the next work day and act as though nothing had happened. You can imagine my surprise-if not sorrow-when you showed up to inform me that Scrooge had gotten himself killed. Fortunately, you graced me with enough coin to pay for a quick cab back here so I could finish my work tonight."

As he spoke, the gingerbread man turned black around the edges, as if left in the oven too long. The scorched dough grew fuzzy, then became fur, and Cratchit was again transformed, this time into a deer. But no ordinary deer-a reindeer with blood-stained antlers and a nose that blazed as red as the unholy fires of h.e.l.l.

"As for the how of it, you hold the answer in your hand," the reindeer said. "Candles with opium suffused into the wick and wax, placed on Scrooge's desk. I got the idea from an Edgar Allan Poe story-'The Imp of the Perverse.' I was actually rather surprised to find that it worked. How fortunate for me that a moment ago you should pick up and light one of my spares."

The deer rose from his seat and started around the desk. The walls behind him writhed and shifted, coalescing into a sinister tableau of glowering, green-haired ogres with termites in their smiles, and the detective barely even noticed the object-long, shiny and sharp-clutched somehow in the reindeer's hooves.

"Quite effective up close, isn't it?" the reindeer said. "And quite pleasurable, if you give yourself over to it. Which I do frequently, being an opium-eater myself. That's how I originally fell into Scrooge's debt-and his servitude. I've been the man's slave for four years. I begged him to release me from my debt, or at least pay me a fair wage so I could have some hope of paying the debt down. I even filled his ears with heart-breaking tales of a desperate wife, a starving family, a crippled son. All rubbish, by the way. My wife ran off years ago, and I've never been cursed with a brat that can prove its right to call me 'father.' But even if Scrooge believed my lies-and I've no idea if he did or didn't-it wouldn't have mattered to him. As long as he owned my debt, he owned me."

The deer drew ever closer, but Bucket was finding it harder and harder to glean meaning from the animal's words.

"The only way for me to free myself was to free some of Scrooge's other victims . . . for a fee," the reindeer said. "I had to flu-fluba my life back. And now that I've tartinka gard.i.n.ka death on my head, I have no reason not to bells bailey drummer-boy petals. I'm sorry, Inspector. I find I must bing b.u.mble zuzu dentist. Dolly Madison? Mommy's little piggy."

The reindeer said more, but the words weren't even sounds to Bucket any longer. They were globules of mulled cider, dark and steaming hot, that hovered in the air before Bucket's eyes. Bucket giggled again and brought his forefinger up to touch one of the quivering brown spheres.

"Curious," the forefinger said. "There's nothing there."

The reindeer came to a stop before Bucket and raised one of its hooves-the one holding the shiny object.

A candy cane shimmering with sugar.

No, a beautiful crystalline icicle.

"No, no!" Bucket's forefinger screamed. "That's a letter opener! Sharp! Pointy! b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l!"

As the rest of the detective was still far too woozy to react, the finger had to take matters in hand itself.

It shot out and jabbed the reindeer in the eye.

"Argh! Kissed by a dog!" the reindeer yelped (or seemed to in Bucket's still-scrambled mind). Except it wasn't a reindeer anymore. It had turned back into Cratchit, and he was bringing up the letter opener again with a roar of rage, ready to plunge the sharp metal into the detective's throat.

Even with a brain broiled in opium, Bucket knew a poke in the eye wouldn't be enough to save him now. So he used the only weapon he had: the candle he still clutched in his left hand.

He rammed it as hard as he could into Cratchit's face. He was in no condition to aim his thrust, so it was pure accident that most of the candle ended up in the clerk's mouth.

Bucket couldn't be sure if he actually heard the sizzling of hot wax at the back of Cratchit's throat or if the sound was merely another product of his overstoked imagination. The man's scream, on the other hand, was indisputably real. Cratchit flailed out with the letter opener, catching Bucket on the side of the head with more fist than metal, and ran gurgling from the room.

One of the few benefits of being dosed with opium without one's knowledge is the pleasant glow it can impart to the unpleasant consequences. Which is why, when Bucket toppled to the floor, he flattened his nose with a smile, for he dreamed he was being gathered into the warm folds of Mrs. Bucket's ample bosom.

When he awoke a short time later, he was disappointed to find himself not nestled between pillows of soft flesh but staring into the bearded face of a bitterly scowling man.

"What is my name?" the man snapped.

"You . . . are . . . Dr. Charhart," Bucket answered, the words coming with difficulty. "Have you forgotten?"

"Just checking to see if the blow you took knocked any sense into you. It didn't."

The doctor stood and stalked away, and it slowly dawned on Bucket where he was: flat on his back outside the offices of Scrooge & Marley.

"Don't mind him. He got dragged out of his bed this time, and he ain't happy about it." The large, lumpy form of Constable Thicke loomed over Bucket. "Need a hand up, sir?"

"Yes, that would . . . gad!" Bucket sat bolt upright-and grew so dizzy he nearly pa.s.sed out again. "Cratchit! He's gotten away!"

Thicke steadied the inspector with a hand on his shoulder. "Not to worry, sir. If you mean the gent with the candle in his mouth, we got him. Went tearing down the street just as we arrived, and I didn't have to be a detective like yourself to figure out we should give chase. Fast on his feet, he was, and I reckon he would've gotten away if he hadn't gone all queer all of sudden. Stopped dead in his tracks in front of a snowman and started screaming that the thing was alive. Had on a magic hat, he said. Or at least that's what it sounded like. It's hard to understand him. His mouth's still all waxy-like." Thicke shook his head in weary wonderment. "You do see some interesting things when you put on the blue, don't you, sir? Anyway, we found you inside looking 'bout ready to give up the ghost, so I sent one of the lads off to fetch Dr. Charhart, and there you have it."

"Well, as you can see I have my ghost fully in check, Police Constable Thicke." Bucket drew in a deep lungful of air. It was cold and rank with the smells of the city, but it swept through his brain like a broom clearing out cobwebs. "Not that I believe in ghosts, of course."

"His eyes!" a hoa.r.s.e, tortured voice shrieked.

Bucket and Thicke turned to see Constable Dimm and another officer dragging Cratchit to the police ambulance.