Maxwell's Summer

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Sorry, Henry,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘Force of habit. I’m still trying to work out who half-inched the Deputy Head’s laptop and he’s been retired for three years. Dogs, plural.’

  ‘Lurchers,’ Hall nodded. ‘Like the others. Burke and Hare.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Their names,’ the DCI explained. ‘Burke and Hare.’ He caught the look on Maxwell’s face. ‘Look, I don’t write this stuff, you know,’ he said. Indeed, he did not. No joke had ever been known to slip from Henry Hall’s lips. If he cracked a smile, it much have been because he had wind. Henry was a lot of things – honest, dependable, a good boss and a close friend. But nobody could ever accuse him of being the life and soul of the party. ‘No, the dogs are still missing. I’ve got a couple of lads on it together with one of the groundsmen. I’ve got DS Gamage’s notes here.’ He pointed to a notepad on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Technically,’ Maxwell said, ‘WPC Anonymous’s notes. See the flower on the capital “I”? Pure comprehensive school circa 2005.’

  ‘One of yours?’ Hall asked.

  ‘A Leighford Hyena? No,’ Maxwell said, ‘although half the workforce here seems to be.’

  ‘Pooley, by the way,’ Hall said. ‘The anonymous WPC. Gamage should have given you her name.’

  ‘I’m sure he did,’ Maxwell said. ‘I probably wasn’t listening. He’d got right up my arse even before the introductions.’

  Hall said nothing. He’d heard that before about the new DS and he’d shelve it for later, just in case. ‘You knew the deceased?’

  ‘“Knew” is rather strong,’ Maxwell told him. ‘We had dinner together last night.’

  ‘Did you form an opinion?’

  ‘Bigoted, egocentric, liked the sound of his own voice – but that’s enough about me; you were asking about the late Roddy.’

  Nothing. Not even the whisper of a smile. One day, Maxwell swore anew, he’d make Henry Hall crack. But not today.

  ‘He was your standard ex-army man, trying to cope, like all of us, I suppose, with a world that was changing too fast for him. He told a tall tale, did Roddy; I’ll give him that.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘Oh, pretty well that all the international events of the last fifty years revolved around him. I think he’d swallowed a Who’s Who and was spitting out a couple of names a day. He was no prisoner of the alphabet, of course – we had Eden and Makarios ...’

  Hall looked at his man blankly.

  ‘Exactly,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Before my time, too, Henry.’

  Hall smiled inwardly. He knew perfectly well that nobody was before Peter Maxwell’s time. ‘But nothing that stood out particularly?’ Hall pursued it, ‘No mention of ructions, contretemps with staff, anything like that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Maxwell said. ‘Although ...’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Well, if the late Colonel was considering publishing his memoirs ... indeed, if he had gone further and actually written the damn things, I suspect there may have been one or two people who might have an opposing view or two. Such things have been known.’

  ‘Max!’

  Somehow, Maxwell hadn’t expected his peace and quiet to last long. So far, since he had opened his eyes that morning, he had had a maximum of five minutes without yelling, blood or policemen. Or, he added to the list, Yanks. And now, here was the cherry on top. Harry, Ariana Hale-ffinch, who he supposed was his boss.

  ‘Harry!’ There seemed little more to add.

  ‘How are you?’ She sat beside him and put a comforting hand over his. He immediately knew what it was to be patronised. With a very capital P.

  ‘Fine, thank you. It’s been a little ... busy, but better than being bored.’ He bared his teeth in a smile that wasn’t quite a smile but Harry plunged on.

  ‘I was wondering ... well, I was wondering what you had planned for your conversation at today’s cocktail hour? For the board, you know.’

  Maxwell blinked. He had been a teacher for more years than he cared to remember and had thought that he was immune to anything approaching speechlessness, but the woman had done it. His gob was so smacked that he was beyond words. ‘This ... this afternoon? I must say, Harry, I had rather thought that we would have called a halt to all that. I’ll give you your money back, of course. But ... surely?’

  Getting no reply, he looked at her. She had her head on one side, one eyebrow raised and there was a quizzical lift to her nostrils.

  He felt she needed more. ‘Because of ... because of Roddy, you know. Mark of respect.’ He stopped, struck by the fear that he might be inadvertently taking the poor old bugger off. He cleared his throat. ‘I’m not sure whether the guests will be expecting ...’

  ‘They’ve paid,’ she said shortly, ‘so they will, trust me. And anyway, the police have said that no one can leave for now, so we have to amuse them. This afternoon was to have been a coach trip to Brighton Pavilion, but obviously, that’s no longer possible.’

  ‘Obviously.’ There didn’t seem anything else to be said.

  ‘So ... your conversation ...?’

  Maxwell ran the options through his head. ...will be incredibly witty? ... will be the best they have ever slept through? ... will, yet again be nothing to do with dolphins? He still hadn’t worked out why that raddled old Texan lady had expected him to be a cetacean expert; perhaps it was the blowhole on the top of his head. ‘Well, why not the Pavilion, the Prince Regent, Mrs Fitzherbert? They love all that. Family intrigue. Wrong side of the blanket. Like The Crown, only historically accurate.’

  ‘Do you already have the PowerPoint?’ Harry hadn’t heard, obviously.

  ‘I don’t use vis aids, Harry, sorry. I thought Sally would have said. But I can help them picture the scene, I’m sure.’

  His erstwhile employer looked dubious. ‘As long as you’re sure. Do you need to look anything up? I can arrange for a computer ...’ She caught his glance. ‘No. Of course. My apologies.’ She straightened her shoulders and let out a long sigh. ‘It’s been quite the morning, Max, hasn’t it?’

  Maxwell raised an eyebrow. For understatements, this was quite a classic. ‘It certainly has. Is Elliot all right? He was a bit shocked, I think.’ Another understatement.

  ‘Poor man, yes. What was he telling you, over his brandy?’

  ‘Hard to say. He has watched so much American TV ... well, I suppose it would be, apart from Downton Abbey, of course. He’s watched so many CSI and CCTV shows he thinks he’s an expert. He thinks our SOCO guys came down with the last shower of rain, that they missed things ... I hope he isn’t going to badger poor Flo. She puts up with a lot.’

  Harry looked at him. ‘You really are very perceptive, Max,’ she said, patting his hand again. ‘Are you sure you want to stay in teaching? Why not come and work for me, full time? In a more senior position. Management.’

  He extricated his hand. ‘Ten years ago, I was thinking of taking early retirement, it’s true,’ he said. ‘But something always stopped me. And what doesn’t kill you, makes you completely and utterly stark raving mad. So I think I’ll stay with teaching, if it’s all the same to you. I’ll be quite good at it, given a few more years, or so I’m told.’ Headmaster Legs Diamond’s disapproving face swam in the air between the two and he doffed his cap to it, as they did for magpies, for luck.

  ‘The money would be better here.’

  ‘Everything would be better here,’ Maxwell pointed out. ‘The surroundings, for one thing. The perks.’ He decided to be generous about the food, which was a few steps down from the worst that County Hall could provide. ‘The company, by and large.’ He looked reminiscent. ‘Maureen in the ticket office is ....’

  ‘... hard to define, I know,’ Harry finished for him. ‘But she’s been here since Tom and Roddy started opening to the public. Just in a small way, to start with, of course. Guided tours by appointment. They were in a bit of a ticklish position, financially. Tom’s father – that’s Roddy’s brother, of course – die
d young and his mother was off in the South of France ... is off in the South of France, oh, drat, that’s another phone call ...’ she whipped out her phone and made a note ‘... spending money they didn’t have. So Roddy stepped into the breach, as best he could. Tom was to have gone to Sandhurst, but that had to be put on hold, then cancelled.’ She looked down at her lap for a moment. ‘Poor Tom,’ she said, quietly. ‘He really wasn’t managing very well ...’ She looked up, suddenly beaming. ‘But then we met and ... well, the rest is history.’ She patted his knee and got up to go. ‘As I am sure you well know. So ...’ she drummed an aimless tune on her thigh with tense fingers, ‘The Prince Regent, eh? Is that the title?’

  Maxwell frowned. ‘Will they know who that is?’

  She fetched him a thwack on the shoulder that would have downed a lesser man. ‘Good point. Let’s call it “The History of the Brighton Pavilion” shall we? What you actually tell them is up to you.’

  Maxwell smiled and leaned back. ‘It always is,’ he said.

  Peter Maxwell had put the boy down, in as humane a way as he could. The ritual teeth-brushing had gone on for longer than usual and the sword-play along the landing had, as ever, ended in a general melee on Mums’ and Dads’ bed, with much tickling and hysterics. Then, all had become calm as Maxwell had weighed up the pros and cons of the bedtime read; Fifty Shades of Grey or Daisy Pulls It Off? Which was it to be? Kids grow up so fast, these days ... In the end, it was the usual old tosh from Paw Patrol – or Pa Patrol, as it had come to be known Chez Maxwell.

  The attic came later. Nothing was stirring, not even a spouse, because Jacquie was pulling a late one and had called her worse half from the nick. Maxwell had dutifully taken something lumpy out of the freezer and had retired – ah, if only – to his inner sanctum, north of the bedroom. He checked Nole as he did half a dozen times in the course of any evening, still not quite believing that he was there and he was his; then it was time to face Trumpeter Harry Powell of the 13th Lights.

  Ahead of the teacher-turned-modeller stretched the bulk of Lord Cardigan’s Light Brigade, waiting in the late morning sun at the end of the Valley of Death that fateful day in October 1854 to ride into legend. Maxwell had lovingly built and painted four hundred and twenty-four of the little 54mm bastards, watched over by Metternich, friend of modellers everywhere, who was, as usual, licking his bum.

  ‘You won’t be doing that when the vicar calls, will you, Count?’ he asked, placing the Crimean forage cap on his head and looking for the glue.

  The Count’s jaws squelched on what was left of his private parts in lieu of a witty riposte and he carried on as before. Maxwell switched on the lamp, modellers, for the use of, and held the figure’s right arm up to his dismembered shoulder.

  ‘Harry Powell, before you ask,’ he said to the cat, ‘born in Bangalore, enlisted at Cahir, Ireland. He caught the Mary Anne to the Crimea and his brother, William, caught a packet, poor bastard, at Varna.’ He checked his white paint. Trumpeters of the cavalry rode greys, so his dappling skills would soon come into effect. ‘Harry’s horse was shot in the Charge, but he made it home all right, discharged corporal back in Cahir. Probably had to flog his medals to survive in Ireland, back in the day.’

  He squeezed a tiny amount of what modellers call cement for reasons best known to themselves and held the arm in place. ‘Bugle cords, Count,’ he said suddenly. ‘Any idea what colour they were for the thirteenth?’

  The Count paused in mid-lick; did this man know nothing?

  ‘On the other hand,’ Maxwell eased himself back as the glue hardened, ‘what can you tell me about your bêtes noires, pets of the canine persuasion? Are they, for example, likely to rip someone’s throat out, just for jolly?’

  Metternich had never been asked to consider that before.

  ‘Take you, for instance,’ Maxwell said, relaxing his grip on the plastic slightly. ‘I know you go for the jugular on a nightly basis, but that’s mice, I’m thinking, voles, shrews and rats, oh, my! A five foot nineish bloke, weighing around twelve stone, you’d probably think twice, am I right?’

  ‘Don’t say another word, Count,’ a soft female voice was coming up the stairs and a soft female head appeared at floor level. ‘You might incriminate yourself.’

  ‘Hello, heart of darkness,’ Maxwell smiled, blowing Jacquie a kiss. ‘You’re early.’

  ‘Hardly,’ she said. ‘It’s gone eight.’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean. Good day?’

  ‘An absolute bitch,’ Jacquie told him. ‘But I want to know about yours. Put that plastic man down and come and talk to me.’

  She rattled backwards down the stairs and he followed, kissing her cheek and patting her bum as he passed her on the landing and getting to the drinks cabinet in the nick of time.

  ‘Something gin related?’ he waved the bottle at her.

  ‘If the relative is, indeed, Granny, she of the ruin, then, yes.’

  Maxwell smiled to himself. It only seemed yesterday that Woman Policeman Carpenter, all eyes and uniform, was a rookie, a little girl lost in a world that no little girl had any place in. Now, she was a feisty DI, who could quip for England – and catch a few criminals along the way. She’d even developed Maxwell’s speech patterns, in the same way that some people grew to look like their pets.

  ‘A bloody war,’ she raised the glass he had poured for her.

  ‘... and a sickly season,’ he finished the old Indian army mess toast and they clinked SiO2 together.

  ‘So.’ She kicked off her heels and sprawled on the sofa. ‘Uncle Roddy.’

  ‘What do you know?’ he asked her.

  ‘Well, in Middle School ...’ she beamed innocently.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Maxwell waved the attempt at wit aside. ‘The old duffer ... er ... I mean, the Colonel, was found dead this morning by Elliot Thingee – you know, I still don’t know his name.’

  ‘Schwarzenegger. With two gees.’

  Maxwell laughed. ‘Very amusing. Anyway, he ...’

  ‘No, I mean, that’s his name. Elliot Baines Schwarzenegger.’

  Maxwell blinked. ‘Good Lord. Well ... where was I?’

  ‘The Colonel was found dead.’

  ‘That’s right. He was found dead, with his throat ripped out by two of the Hale-ffinch lurchers, by name, Burke and Hare.’

  ‘Do you buy that?’ she asked him, flexing her aching feet.

  ‘No.’ He frowned now that he was thinking about it. ‘Any more than I did when I first read The Hound of the Baskervilles. Metternich didn’t go for it, either.’

  She rolled her eyes and chuckled. For as long as she had known Mad Max Maxwell, he and his cat had been inseparable. She knew that the man she had married loved her and their son desperately, but the Count ... he was in a different league altogether.

  ‘Astley and Donald will give us the low-down,’ she assured him. The double act from the Morgue were indeed reliable, with backing vocals from Angus in the Forensics lab in Chichester. Astley was perhaps a little slower these days, now that anno domini had caught up with him, along with the rheumatism and the golf-addiction. But they were stout fellows both and could be relied on to come up with the goods.

  ‘This Elliot,’ she was working with what little she knew. ‘Could he be in the frame?’

  ‘Too stupid,’ Maxwell said. For a man who had spent years re-writing that very phrase in a thousand more polite ways on school reports without number, it was good to just come out and say it for once. ‘Anyway, what would be the motive? Unless, of course, he’s a serial killer with a thing for Oldies.’

  ‘Better watch out, heart,’ she said, straight-faced.

  ‘Bitch!’ he hissed. ‘No, seriously, Elliot was shaken to buggery by the whole experience. Oh, he came the hard man later after a few – actually, rather more than a few – stiff brandies, but either he’s the next Daniel Day Lewis or he’s as innocent as sin. My money’s on the latter.’

  ‘Tom and Ariana Hale-ffinch didn’t seem too cu
t up.’

  ‘Really? How do you know?’

  She looked at him, open-mouthed. ‘I’m a detective, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that beastly Sergeant Gamage confided in you?’

  ‘God, no. He wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire. No, I twisted WPC Pooley’s arm on her way out earlier. The pair of them had interviewed you, Ariana Hale-ffinch and about a quarter of the staff before Henry arrived. Funny he interviewed you as well.’

  ‘Funny in the sense you think I may have done it, you mean? And, to be fair, I had a motive. I had spent an evening being bored witless by the mad old duffer and if someone had handed me a baseball bat at any time after about seven o’clock, I would have used it without hesitation.’

  Jacquie’s mind was already elsewhere. She knew that most of the officers at the nick would give a chunk of their pension to be able to bang Maxwell up for life. ‘Perhaps Henry doesn’t trust Gamage.’

  ‘I’m with him there.’ Maxwell sipped his Southern Comfort. ‘On the other hand, it could have just been professional courtesy. I meant to ask Henry, what about the elephant outside the room, Cee Cee Tee Vee?’

  ‘On the fritz, apparently. Anyway, in my experience, private estates like Haledown buy the cheapest Chinese knock-offs possible, so the quality wouldn’t have been good enough. I haven’t talked to Henry yet, but presumably he’s got the dirt on the Colonel by now.’

  ‘From me, certainly,’ Maxwell said. ‘The old boy had a rather inflated sense of his own importance, to the extent that he and the truth had parted company rather a long time ago.’

  ‘Something from his past, you mean?’

  ‘It could be,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘From somebody’s past, that’s always a certainty. In this case, only time and DCI Henry Hall will tell. I assume you’ve been given the heave-ho on this one.’