Naughty Nine Tales of Christmas Crime by Steve Hockensmith

smoke, horses and the unwholesome effluvia of a million souls living in close quarter.
    His nose finding little to investigate, Bucket turned the job over to his eyes. After giving the rooms before them a thorough examination, they reported back thusly:
    — Scrooge employed a solitary clerk, and the old man made no exception from his stinginess to accommodate this underling's comfort. (An empty coal scuttle, overflowing work desk and high, rickety stool were shoved into one, cell-like corner.)
    — Scrooge was as parsimonious with his trust as he was with his coal. (The ledger books arrayed upon a shelf at the back of the office were shut tight with leather clasps and padlocks.)
    — Scrooge's tight fist squeezed its owner nearly as hard as it squeezed the rest of humanity. (Scrooge's own work area was only slightly less dismal than the clerk's, and the old man had conducted his affairs by candle light rather than part with the extra coins necessary for the purchase of lamp oil.)
    — Scrooge had been "burning the candle at both ends" at the very moment his sanity flickered out. (His aforementioned desk candles had melted completely, leaving tracks of yellow and brown wax slithering across the wood to pool around the edges of an open ledger.)
    — And finally, Scrooge had most definitely not been smoking opium on the premises. (There was no pipe in sight.)
    Aside from the streams of wax flowing across the desktop, Scrooge's office was a perfectly orderly (if exceptionally dark and dingy) place of business, and there was nothing to suggest it doubled as an opium den. Yet, while Bucket could be labeled agnostic on many another matter, his faith in his own senses never wavered. He was one of a new breed: a "detective." One who detects. And he had smelled opium on the old man.
    So when Dimm stepped inside to glumly announce that the body was ready for "home delivery," Bucket had an announcement of his own to make: He would be accompanying Dimm to the residence of Scrooge's nephew, Fred Merriweather.
    "A happy Christmas to you, Police Constable Thicke!" Bucket called out as the ambulance rolled away.
    "And to you and the missus, Inspector Bucket!" Thicke replied with a hearty wave. "And to you, too, Dimm!"
    "Oh, yes," Dimm grumbled. "What could be merrier than spending Christmas Eve playing hansom cab for a corpse?"
    "Cheer up, Police Constable Dimm! At least you won't spend the night walking a beat like poor Police Constable Thicke back there."
    Dimm would have rolled his eyes had he the energy to do so.
    "Sure you wouldn't rather ride inside, sir?" he muttered instead. "Warmer."
    Bucket shook his head. "From what I understand, the old gentleman would make more congenial company now than ever he did in life. Nevertheless, I prefer to surround myself with more, shall we say, animated companions." The detective paused to glance at Dimm, who sat beside him as hunched and still as a gargoyle, his only movement an occasional flick of the reins he held loosely in his limply hanging hands. "Not that I'm entirely certain you qualify as such, Police Constable Dimm. You seem so uncommonly torpid, even by your own languorous standards, I almost wonder if this ambulance carries two cadavers this evening."
    Astronomers training their telescopes upon the blue wool of Dimm's uniform tailcoat might have detected, had they been squinting fiercely enough, a slight tremor about the shoulders that would have entirely evaded the detection of the unaided human eye. This was a shrug.
    "Just . . . thinking," Dimm mumbled.
    "Ah-ha! There's your problem! Constables aren't paid to think—that's what inspectors are for. Just let your mind go blank and you'll feel better in no time, there's a good fellow."
    He gave Dimm a jovial swat on the back, certain he'd solved the younger man's problems—whatever they were. Yet something about Dimm's lugubrious manner made Bucket's forefinger twitch, as it did whenever there was an itch the detective felt compelled