A Yuletide Kazoo

An entirely standalone Highclere Inn & Carriage House festive farce, set outside the main mystery series. No previous reservation required. A hillside with armed strangers, an inn reopened as bait, and one seventeen-year-old absolutely certain he can crack the case before Santa comes down the chimney. Long before the mystery boxes, past lives and baffling murders, Highclere Inn & Carriage House faced its very first mystery. It's Christmas Eve in the present day, and Mason Valentine's nieces and nephews have finally cornered him into explaining the battered hubcap the family hangs where a Christmas wreath ought to be. His answer takes everyone back to December 2002-and a holiday adventure so improbable that several witnesses still dispute his version of events. That Christmas, seventeen-year-old Mason arrives early at Highclere with his best friend, Eulalie Sticks, hoping to recover his missing Christmas spirit. Within the hour, Eulalie has flipped off two unmarked SUVs idling on the hill above the resort, and Mason has discovered that his grandfather has "generously" volunteered the closed-for-the-season inn for an undercover police operation. The plan is simple: reopen Highclere, lure in the suspects and unmask the crew behind a drug transfer. Naturally, everything goes wrong. Soon, the Highclere roundabout contains an Aston Martin that has no business being in Muskoka in December, a rusted van with a painted-over crest, and a red Lexus carrying an actress nobody invited. Not that Mason can remember most of their names. He has assigned them Christmas ones instead-which is why, in his telling, the investigation is being led by Officers Donner and Blitzen. With his formidable cousin Cordelia "Cici" Bradshaw attempting to keep the operation on course, a festive kazoo of…