Rycroft: The Secret Santa Mystery 

He was supposedly one of the generation’s most gifted minds, at least according to his Fields award biography, but there was one puzzle that always stumped Charles Rycroft – how to find the perfect Christmas gifts. It was hard enough for his friends and family, but once he’d been roped into the department Secret Santa pool, the challenge only intensified.

He’d been lucky (or perhaps unlucky) to draw a name that he knew – it was the head of department, Dr Jeremy Niven. Rycroft had known the man for a couple of years, but he didn’t really know him. So what do you do, he wondered? He could have done a little stalking, attempting to discover what Niven liked – he did vaguely entertain the idea of asking Lucy Monroe to run his name through the police database, lend him a hand, but he knew what reaction he’d get from his friend.

Rycroft thought about being funny, buying his renowned maths colleague a calculator or a log book or a gag gift. But, on reflection, Niven’s lack of a sense of humour might have made that gift idea a little awkward. And if everyone else was sincere, Niven would likely be insulted – and, worse, he might want to know who bought the gift in the first place.

So the Professor ultimately decided to play safe. He wandered around Ambrose’s shopping district, tempted by chocolates and fancy notebooks and pens, and decided on a nice bottle of whisky. It was a bit of a boring gift, he thought, but it seemed to go down well at the Christmas party. Niven – who was distributing the gifts – found his own. He opened it, expressed his pleasure at an excellent vintage, and Rycroft stood to one side and was silently pleased.

The Secret Santa continued, and it eventually landed on the Professor. He opened his own present, and found a curious object tucked away in a small box – an antique puzzle box, clearly a couple of hundred years old. His usually impassive face gave way to a big smile, and he thanked the group for a lovely gift.

Once they were all distributed, the party continued – people ate and drank, and when the music turned Christmassy, tables were cleared away to make an impromptu dancefloor.

Rycroft stood away from the dancing, watching his colleagues and taking a sip of his champagne.

“How are you, Professor?” asked a voice to his right. It was Amy Golding, one of his former undergraduate students who’d progressed to postgrad as one of his supervisees. She was a promising mind herself, teaching and hard at work on a thesis, and she looked professional as ever.

“I’m very well, Amy,” he smiled at her. “And how are you getting on?”

They chatted for a few minutes, and then compared Secret Santa gifts. Someone had played safe with Amy, buying her some expensive chocolates, ones she said she would certainly appreciate. Rycroft passed her his puzzle box: “If you can figure this out, Amy, I’d be glad of the help!”

Amy smiled at him – she took the box in her hand, and looked it over.

“Do you know who it’s from?” she asked.

That question got his brain in gear.

He thought, and his mind instantly saw a number of ways to tackle the problem. There was the question of packaging – Rycroft had been in Niven’s office a few days before, and he’d noticed the roll of red and gold starred wrapping paper not particularly well-concealed by one of his filing cabinets. So when he saw a gift in that paper in the pile, he could identify it easily enough. Similarly, he’d noticed a lovely bow on one of the presents in the pile. There was nothing in that in itself, but he only knew one person in the office who ever tied bows like that. There were stickers to avoid your handwriting giving the game away, but some people had still provided names under their own impetus, a major clue.

Then there were the personalities involved, and the ways that he’d seen people react to gift-buying, gift-giving and gift-receiving. He’d seen people be painfully transparent around the office, dropping questions about what interests people had and what kind of things they liked with all the subtlety of a hammer blow to the face. If you didn’t know that Frank Chambers had drawn Lisa Landoll from the office, you weren’t paying attention. Rycroft had looked around the room as Niven distributed the gifts, and he saw the tell-tale signs when people were opening their presents – hints of worry in their eyes, or relief once the present had been well-received. It was hard to disguise if you were looking for it, and a lot of people here had given themselves away without knowing it.

Of course, he couldn’t scan the room while he was opening his present. But there were a couple of extra hints to help him. He remembered a class he gave in which he mentioned a fondness for puzzles, and the people who’d attended it. He’d picked up a slight scent of perfume when he opened the gift, a scent which was considerably stronger now. And he detected hints of worry in the voice of the young woman opposite him, her question posed in a tone that obviously suggested that the answer mattered personally. He’d put it together almost immediately.

Those thoughts all passed through his mind in a moment.

As to how to respond – well, a brief look at Amy’s face answered that for him.

“Not a clue,” he smiled, hand on his head, “but I’m very happy with it, I know that much.”

She smiled back at him, and raised her glass a little in appreciation.

“Merry Christmas, Professor.”

“Merry Christmas to you too, Amy.”