Mrs. Claus and the Santaland Slayings. Liz Ireland

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      Chapter 1

      The strange occurrences that threatened to upend my marriage, my adopted city, and the potential happiness of tens of millions of children started on a December morning just nine days before Christmas with a frantic pounding on our bedchamber door. The racket sounded loud enough to wake half of Christmastown.

      It was ten past six, though, so most of the town’s residents were probably up already. Elves tend to be early birds.

      Our steward, Jingles, shouted through four inches of ancient timber, “Nick!” In the excitement of the moment, he’d reverted to the name my husband went by before he’d assumed his title, but he quickly remembered himself. “Er—Santa! Awaken, sir! We have a very important messenger!”

      Nick and I trundled out of bed, he shrugging on his red coat and buttoning it quickly and I pulling on a ridiculously heavy flannel-lined boiled wool robe. The Order of Elven Seamstresses had presented the robe as a welcoming gift upon my arrival in Santaland. Though the cynic in me had silently chortled (ho ho ho) at the fire-engine-red garment trimmed with fluffy white wool and a black sash, one night in frigid Castle Kringle was all it took for me to appreciate their thoughtfulness, not to mention skill and artistry. I arrived at the North Pole as prepared for the arctic cold as someone from Kansas is prepared for a volcanic eruption. I’d moved here from Oregon, which, from the perspective of Santalanders, is so far south it might as well be equatorial jungle.

      Nick was halfway across the room as I was still adjusting my nightcap. A few months ago I’d never dreamed people still wore nightcaps. Then again, I’d never dreamed Santa Claus existed, at least not since I was five. Now I was married to the guy. Whoever coined the phrase life comes at you fast didn’t know the half of it.

      “Come in!” Nick called out, flipping the switch on an elaborate network of twinkling lights across the vaulted ceiling.

      The eight-foot-high arched door was pushed open with effort, even though Jingles and his assistant, Waldo, kept the hinges well oiled. Jingles was puffing and out of breath when he appeared and scrambled aside just in time to avoid being trampled by the messenger.

      You might wonder, as I once did, why doors in the castle should be so tall when most of Santaland’s inhabitants were elves—definitely on the short side—and the Clauses, who, whatever their varying girths, were humans of average height. You’d stop wondering the first time you saw a reindeer saunter through one, its bulk and antlers making all those oversized doorframes seem modest.

      At the sight of Nick, the reindeer stopped, dipped her heavy head, and pawed the stone floor with her right hoof in greeting. “Excuse the intrusion, sir. I have an important message from the village.”

      Though she was as stocky, furry, and snub-nosed as any reindeer, just a glance told me this was obviously a female. Most of the bucks had already shed their antlers for the winter, but females kept theirs until spring. It was one of those things that shocked me when I first came here—I’d grown up assuming most of the antlered reindeer fabled in story and song, the heroes of Christmas night, were males: all those illustrations of fantastic racks of antlers limned against the moonlit sky, pulling the sleigh. But didn’t it just figure that it was the females with the stamina and patience to haul Santa around on the world’s biggest errand run?

      “What’s wrong, Blitzen?”

      Although СКАЧАТЬ