The most embarrassing aspect to this new business was that Tudor himself had been a witness to the event. He had been duped like everyone else. Still, it was not often, as a mere academic, that he could actually claim to be present at the scene of the crime. His stock in trade was very cold trails indeed. There was usually not a whiff of a scent, false or otherwise, by the time he came to investigate murder or mayhem. So this eyewitness affair was something he should be able to work up into a useful lecture to set aside his existing Yuletide special, an analysis of Conan Doyle's "Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle." 

The invitation had said the event was in aid of charity, though no charity had been specified, which should perhaps have aroused suspicion. But at this time of universal goodwill and good cheer one's sense of suspicion tended to be dulled. As an expert, he should have known better, but even experts lower their guard occasionally. Nor was there an RSVP on the invitation. The card just said, "Champagne for Christmas Charity," and asked Tudor to come along to Santa's Grotto at Bottomley's to drink freely and give generously. Perfectly plausible. So was the advice that he would be allowed in only if dressed as Santa Claus.

It was years since he had been in Bottomley's, and he certainly hadn't seen it since the venerable store had been acquired by Barnaby Ming Po, the Shanghai billionaire playboy. He was reminded of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a set text for this year's "Special Subject Paper" on Victorian Crime Fiction. What was it Dickens wrote? "Lavish profusion is in the shops: particularly in the articles of currants, raisins, spices, candied peel, and moist sugar." There was certainly a lavish profusion of currants, raisins, spices, candied peel, and moist sugar in Bottomley's Food Hall on the morning of the Champagne for Christmas Charity: What else had Dickens said about Christmas in Cloisterham? "An unusual air of gallantry and dissipation is abroad." That was it. And he had gone on to say that this air was "evinced in an immense bunch of mistletoe hanging in the greengrocer's shop doorway." Some things never changed. Just such a bunch was hanging at the entrance to Santa's Grotto, and under it all manner of Santas embraced and canoodled, for the white whiskers concealed both men and women. Tudor remembered that there was a state in the American Mid-west which made it a criminal offence for a woman to venture out of doors disguised as Santa Claus. Looking at all the gallantry and dissipation on display under the mistletoe, he wondered if the state didn't have a point.

It was, of course, impossible to be sure who anyone was that morning at Bottomley's. Some of the red and white outfits looked like Armani and others simply off-the-peg. There were hand-me-down beards and manicured Truefitt & Hill or Trumper jobs and one Santa was sporting what looked suspiciously like his own. Tudor thought it might have been the famous novelist who was president of the Detection Club, but was not sure enough to ask. Besides, they had had a serious contretemps on the subject of "Fingerprinting in the British Raj" on very late-night television and had not spoken since. One or two other Father and Mother, Brother and Sister, Daughter and Son Christmasses looked vaguely familiar, but Tudor was not in the mood for penetrating their disguises. That was too much like work.

As it transpired, the guests included almost every known figure in the respectable criminal world: policemen, criminologists, forensic pathologists, mystery writers, crime correspondents, and academics like Cornwall himself. Even the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police himself, Tudor's friend, Sir Andrew Warburton, had been seduced into Santa's Grotto, his better judgment blurred by the chance to do some anonymous last-minute shopping. Buying presents for his mistress without arousing the suspicions of his wife and secretary was one of the commissioner's recurring problems.

The press had not yet rumbled the fact that the commissioner himself had been present at the scene of the crime. Tudor Cornwall, on the other hand, was among the first to be "outed." The daily messages from "Santa" to the national press combined outrageous ransom demands with challenges to the alleged "experts." Santa wanted millions of pounds for the safe return of Bottomley's owner, but he was also having a lot of fun taunting such people as "the so-called professor of crime at the University of Wessex." Tudor wasn't actually a professor, but simply "Reader in Criminal Studies," but neither Santa nor the tabloid press had time for such nice distinctions. "Professor" made it a funnier story. 

"Bottomley's Boss Snatched Under Crime-Prof's Nose." Everybody likes laughing at mad professors.

"It's not actually very funny," said Warburton. "My men have better things to do than trying to find a dubious foreign national who's lucky to be allowed into the country-let alone interrogating anyone found wearing a white beard and a red suit."

"No clue about what happened?"

"You saw what happened just as well as I did." Warburton sounded snippy. "There was no reason to suspect foul play. It just looked like a stunt."

"Ming Po didn't look very happy about it at the time. . . . "said Tudor forlornly.

"Entirely consistent with the abduction being a joke," said the commissioner. "If he'd been laughing uproariously as he was carried off by a hit squad of Santa Clauses we'd all have smelled a rat. As it was, he just looked as if he were hamming it up. Plausible, very."

"And they drove away in his own car?"

"Which we found abandoned in South Kensington together with four discarded Father Christmas outfits. We have an eyewitness account of an unmarked white transit van driving away from the site."

"I'd make unmarked white transit vans illegal."

The commissioner smiled ruefully but said nothing. 

"Is it true that 'Santa' has asked for a million from Manchester United?" asked Tudor.

"Man U, the Chinese Government, the Prince of Wales, the National Lottery, Chris Tarrant, Elton John. . . it's becoming a long list."

"Based on what?"

"Perceived wealth. A residual connection. Ming Po has an entertainment facility at Old Trafford, he's still a Chinese national, he has an organic window box. That accounts for the first three. It's scattergun. Santa's after money from anywhere."

"Has the family been targeted?"

"Oh yes. Mabel Ming Po's had messages. And the parents in Shanghai. They're happy to fork up, but it won't be enough on its own. Santa's looking for serious dosh. Trouble is that he's playing the Robin Hood card. All the demands are for charity. He's robbing the rich to pay the poor. And the abduction had a certain spurious style. People have fallen for it. Public opinion is on Santa's side. We're on a loser."

"You've no idea who the Father Christmas gang really are?" Tudor was beginning to have suspicions, but he was not about to share them. He was private enterprise. Warburton was government-controlled. Never the twain. . .

"Could be the IRA. Or Gaddafi's mob. Or the Countryside Alliance. No real clue. You know what it's like, Tudor-thank the Lord most people don't realise how easy it is to pull off a scam like this. Otherwise everyone would be at it. Frankly, we're grasping at straws. Santa's got us by them. Short and curly ones."

"You can't have short and curly straws," said Tudor, "but I know what you mean. Is .Santa issuing deadlines?"

"Christmas Day seems to be the cutoff," said the commissioner. "If the money's not up the chimney or on the sleigh by the twenty-fifth of December, then Barnaby Ming Po is cold turkey. If you get my drift."

"Do we care?" Tudor wanted to know. "Does anyone care? People die. Fact of life. Barnaby Ming Po is a rich, high-profile celebrity. He dies. We notice. But he's just one of us. A tiny statistic. A grain of sand. Even Mabel would get over it. Her inheritance would sugar the pill."

"Oh, come on, Tudor," said the commissioner. "I'm not one of your students and this isn't a seminar. This is real. You know the problem. You know the issue. I have to get this sorted. Jobs on the line. Reputations at stake. Not easy."

"It's not an orthodox crime," said Tudor, "and with the greatest respect, you and the Yard don't do unorthodox very well. How many Santa Claus outfits did you say were found in the Ming Po limo?"

"Four."

"And how many kidnappers were there?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. There must have been a couple of hundred Father Christmasses in the grotto that morning. It was impossible to tell who was doing the kidnapping and who was just joining in the fun."

"Which is part of what makes the whole plot so fiendishly cunning. Did your eyewitness in South Kensington say anything else?"

"Difficult to be entirely sure. They're a Kurdish couple. No English to speak of. I've had a Kurdish constable question them, of course, but she seems almost as confused as they are. Not surprising, really. I mean, you don't expect a group of Santa Clauses to drive up in a Rolls Royce, take off their kit, and get away in a van."

"Did they realise they were watching a crime?"

"No more than we did. They thought someone was making a film, which is pretty daft, as there was no sign of a camera. I'd say they were totally unreliable. The wife even had some story about one of the men putting on a Santa Claus outfit rather than taking it off."

"Hmm," said Tudor. "Can I see these people?"

"I don't see why not," said the commissioner. "We've let them go, but they live somewhere in North London - Willesden, Neasden, somewhere like that." 

Tudor seemed thoughtful.

"Tell me something," he said. "Barnaby Ming Po's been having a run-in with the so-called British Establishment ever since he got here, hasn't he?"

"You could say that."

"So it's in his interest to make the said British Establishment look an ass? Particularly the police. . . Wasn't there some row over parking tickets? And one of your people picked up his aunt on a mistaken-identity thing at the airport?"

"No mistaken identity about it. She was in possession of a large quantity of an illegal substance. We were fantastically diplomatic about it. Let her go in the end. Pressure from the Foreign Office. The Chinese kicked up a fuss. You're not supposed to know about it. How did you find out?"

Tudor smiled. "You forget that it's my business to know things like that," he said. "And now, if you'll forgive me, I'm going to go and interview these Kurds."

Which he did. They turned out to be perfectly charming and to speak conspicuously better English than the commissioner alleged. They also stuck to their story, such as it was. 

After he had finished, Tudor called in at the theatrical outfitters from whom he habitually hired fancy dress and other disguises. He wanted a repeat order from the previous week, so there was no need to try it on. It was late afternoon by now, so he went back to his London club and phoned Bottomley's from his room. He got a few bars of "Jingle Bells" played on a tinny xylophone. This was followed by an interminable recorded message with innumerable press-button options. Twenty minutes later he had established that, despite the tragic disappearance of their boss, the staff at Bottomley's were carrying on business as usual, there would be late-night shopping, and Santa would be in his grotto as per usual. Tudor smiled and put another call through to the cell phone of his
favourite Fleet Street crime editor.

"Gus," he said, "it's Tudor here. If you can get round to the front hall of the Senior Service in half an hour I can promise you a scoop."

"Actually, Tudor, mate, I'm a bit tied up with the Ming Po case. . .Mabel's called a press conference. . . ."

"Half an hour, Gus," said Tudor. "Trust me."

He put down the phone. Gus would come round. He always did. He needed a witness and Gus was more reliable than most. 

Tudor changed and then went down to the smoking room, picked up an evening paper, and saw that the front-page headline was "Top Cop Shopped-Met Chief in Grotto Grab." It was Warburton's turn to look ridiculous. The story told how as the ransom demands from the Santa Claus abductor of billionaire store owner and playboy Barnaby Ming Po grew ever more extravagant, it now transpired that among the Father Christmasses thronging the Bottomley's Grotto on that fateful morning was none other than the capital's senior policeman, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Andrew Warburton. The inside leader was headed "On Yer Bike, Sandy!" It did make Sir Andrew look remarkably foolish. Even more foolish than Tudor Cornwall a day or so earlier. The editorial finished up, not unreasonably, by asking, "Who next in this guest list of dupes?"

Tudor stroked his beard and went out into the hall, where he was relieved to find a breathless crime editor bustling round the revolving door.

"Jesus Christ," said the journalist, "is this your idea of a joke? Haven't we had enough Santa Claus outfits for one Christmas?"

"Not my idea of a joke," he said. "Come on. We'll get a cab and I'll explain."

Twenty minutes later the two men alighted at the main entrance of Bottomley's.

"I think you're wrong this time, Tudor," said the crime editor. "It's too. . . well, it's too bloody obvious. . . "

"Had you fooled, though," said Doctor Cornwall. "And everyone else. One of the first rules of serious crime: It's the bloody obvious which gets overlooked. And, as in this case, the answer's usually sitting right under your nose. I daresay Mabel's press conference was going to reveal all. However, if I can, as it were, beard Santa in his den, then at least I'll have managed a modicum of damage limitation. Let's go and see if I'm right."

And so they passed the gold-braided and epauletted flunkey on the door, who smiled and bowed slightly in deference to Cornwall's festive alter ego, and continued on into Cosmetics. Tudor, entering into the spirit of the occasion, waved jovially at the pancaked shop assistants standing wanly behind their caravanserai of oils and unguents.

"Are we the two wise men, Gus?" he asked his companion. "Are these the foolish virgins?" And so they tripped on into the food hall replete with greedy punters eyeing its groaning boards of avocados and Armagnac, beluga and brandy, chestnut and chocolate all the way through the gastronomic alphabet to zabaglione and zebra (carpaccio of). And so finally to the giant mistletoe at the mouth of Santa's Grotto. 

The yuletide cavern was a riot of elves, pixies, more than seven dwarves, reindeer, bambis, Jacks, beanstalks, Little Red Ridinghoods, ugly sisters, and a fair sprinkling of Joe Public to leaven the leitmotif. And there, as Tudor Cornwall had very much surmised, was exactly what he was looking for.

"Well, well," said Tudor, sitting down in the sleigh at the centre of the Bottomley's grotto where the man in the white beard and the scarlet hat with bells was going, "Ho! Ho! Ho!" at a group of credulous-looking five-year-olds. "An Asian-eyed Santa. Nice try, Barnaby, but the game is finally up." l