Aunt Mildred declared that no good could come of the Melbury family Christmas gatherings at their country residence Flaxmere. So when Sir Osmond Melbury, the family patriarch, is discovered -by a guest dressed as Santa Klaus-with a bullet in his head on Christmas Day, the festivities are plunged into chaos. Nearly every member of the party stands to reap some sort of benefit from Sir Osmond's death, but Santa Klaus, the one person who seems to have every opportunity to fire the shot, has no apparent motive. Various members of the family have their private suspicions about the identity of the murderer, and the Chief Constable of Haulmshire, who begins his investigations by saying that he knows the family too well and that is his difficulty, wishes before long that he understood them better. In the midst of mistrust, suspicion, and hatred, it emerges that there was not one Santa Klaus, but two. MAVIS DORIEL HAY (1894-1979) was a novelist of the golden age of British crime fiction. Her three detective novels-The Santa Klaus Murder, Murder Underground and Death on the Cherwell -were all published in the 1930s. They were long neglected but all are now available as British Library Crime Classics. She was an expert on rural handicraft and wrote several books on the subject.