by M. J. Trow
Peter Maxwell was doing what he liked best, after modelling his soldiers, cuddling his family, stroking his cat and teaching History; he was browsing in the Haledown library. The afternoon sun of a perfect summer was dappling the spines of the volumes bought by the yard by Hale-ffinches past, who had constantly striven to bring yet more culture to the family, to erase the words ‘nouveau’ and ‘riche’ from the motto of same.
He could hear afternoon tea going on in the drawing room and beyond it, the orangery, the rattle of cups and whisper of Lemon Drizzle mingling with the sotto voce of the guests. He looked at them through the open door, the dozens of blue rinses; the new hips under wide-legged shorts; the pairs of open-toed sandals worn over white socks and the hum of ivy league and redneck conversation burned his ears.
Maxwell was biding his time until the east wing domestics had finished their work. When he saw them plodding across the foyer with their mops and Henrys, he took his chance and made for the stairs. None of this, of course, was any of his business, but he was now in blood stepped in so far ... The Hale-ffinches of yesteryear scowled down at him from their cracked oil canvases, the scarlet and gilt of the aristocracy clashing with the occasional penguin colours of a churchman and the deep green of the Rifle Brigade. He shuddered inwardly ... ugh! Infantry!
Roddy’s room, he knew, had been thoroughly gone over by Henry’s boys already and he told himself that what he was doing was not going to cause a problem, therefore. And, anyway, now that his better half was on the case, the whole thing had a proprietorial family feel about it. He checked that the coast was clear, waving to the old girl on the lower staircase. He had her down as the widow Dubose from To Kill a Mockingbird and wondered where she stashed her Navy Colt. He clicked the door open and was inside.
All in all, the room was neat. It was impossible to know whether Henry’s boys had been meticulous in putting things back or whether Roddy had been of the OCD persuasion. He was an old soldier, Maxwell reminded himself; everything would be neatly in its place. Methodically, the visiting conversationalist combed the desk drawers, the cupboards, the bedside tables. There was no sign of any autobiography, published or otherwise. No grubby manuscript, graffitied with handwritten notes describing Monty’s secret affair with Erwin Rommel. He was quietly delighted to find that the late Colonel Roddy was old school in all sorts of ways; he had a fountain pen neatly placed on his desk, the one with the rolltop pull-down and a pad of blotting paper in a leather cover of the 77th Foot. All right, it was infantry again, but you couldn’t blame a man for choosing the wrong arm of the service.
Empty envelopes always fascinated Maxwell and he was looking at one now, tucked into a hidey-hole in Roddy’s roll-top. In all the best noir films he’d seen, black and white (or noir et blanc, as the French had it) someone like Sidney Greenstreet or Peter Lorre would have had a blackmail note in that or a fat wodge of cash. This one, though, actually was empty. It had the imprimatur of Find Your Family, Oxford, stamped on the envelope, but as for contents ... nada, as most of the Haledown guests would probably have said. All in all, just another of Roddy’s pieces of research.
Maxwell’s eyes were drawn to that blotting paper and the late, great Leonardo da Vinci sprang to mind. When he wasn’t inventing helicopters, tanks and submarines, when he wasn’t painting enigmatic-looking women and the de rigeur Madonnas and Children, he was writing his notes backwards. It was a skill that Maxwell had never mastered, but then, he probably didn’t have the welter of secrets that Leonardo probably had, so he’d never had the need. Across the centre of the pad, blotted from a page presumably, were the words ‘oc a toN’. The clue was in the last letter; it was a capital. And an old stickler like the not-particularly-lamented Roddy would have begun his sentence with a capital letter, as anyone not a snowflake would. Maxwell reversed it in his head and ended up saying it out loud. ‘Not a co.’
He was vaguely familiar with the lower case and dot obsessions of computer-speak, but that was hardly Roddy’s style. ‘Co.’ was an abbreviation, but what for? Company? Commanding Officer? Coca Cola? Coquito? He doffed his cap to Scrabble-mad Mrs Troubridge for the last and then shook himself – it was all getting too silly. It was probably nothing. There was no sign of a piece of paper suitably inscribed the right way round and why should the old boy write it backwards? The maids cleared the dead man’s rooms daily; perhaps the note had to be cryptic, to keep them off the scent. But if so, why?
Maxwell sighed. All in all, he had hoped to find something incriminating in Roddy’s study and he had found nothing. Even so, those silly, unexplained words, stayed with him, like an itch he couldn’t scratch. As he crossed the room to leave, he caught sight of Anthony Beevor’s excellent book on Berlin on one of the shelves. On an impulse, he took it down. Roddy was precisely one of those people who pestered the academically famous for a signed copy. He flipped it open. There was no signature. What there was, was a library label from Chichester and the return date of four years ago.
So, Maxwell slammed the book shut and put it back on the shelf; that was it. Someone knew about Roddy’s overdue library book and, outraged, had killed him for it. All Maxwell had to do now was to find an unbalanced librarian, and, God, there were plenty of those! Case closed.
At the stables, Maxwell could see the boys now advanced to trotting, watched by an entranced Mrs Plocker leaning on a gate. Neither of them seemed to have broken or bent anything, though he thought he had probably never seen two children carrying a bigger weight of dirt on them. Their smiles shone through the grime like diamonds in the rough, like pigs in shit. For a day off, it had been not quite as planned; but useful. Maxwell had to agree with himself on that. It had certainly been very useful.
‘Max, I hoped I’d find you.’ Harry was in full organizational mode after his ground-breaking lecture at the cocktail hour. The guests had shuffled out of the library in search of another drink. It wasn’t Maxwell’s fault. Nobody could make much sense of Cistercians, Dominicans and Praemonstratorians. For the guests, seen one monk, you’ve seen ’em all – they were all actually Friar Tuck anyway.
‘Pax vobiscum.’ Maxwell was still in the zone and made the sign of the cross in the air before he realised he might be offending the hidden Buddhist that was Ariana Hale-ffinch. As things turned out, he needn’t have worried; she hadn’t noticed. She had noticed the Latin, though and was delighted – English eccentricity was exactly what she paid him for.
‘All right for the Oxford trip tomorrow?’
‘I thought DCI Hall had vetoed that,’ Maxwell said.
‘Oh, he had,’ Harry laughed, ‘but I twisted his arm. As long as there’s a police presence, whatever that means, he’s happy to go ahead.’
Maxwell was impressed; it took a lot to make Henry Hall happy.
‘Give them the full monty,’ Harry said. ‘Especially Mrs Schwarzenegger. She’s been through a lot, poor dear. I think the change of air would do her good; get her out of herself.’
Judging by the change of hair colour and various comments the last time Maxwell had seen the woman, that was happening already.
‘Oxford.’ Maxwell shuffled into the bedroom, shaking the shower droplets out of his ears. ‘What’s that all about?’
‘Well,’ Jacquie put her book down and clasped her hands over it, propped up in bed as she was, ‘it’s a university town, Max; you must have heard of it.’
‘Oh, ha.’ He gave her his best Liberace smile. ‘I’ll set ’em up, you knock ’em down.’
‘It’ll be fun,’ she said, picking up the book again. ‘Although it’s the wrong alma mater, you can pretend you’re a student again. And I’ll be the wide-eyed girl on your arm, hanging on your every word.’
‘You?’ He stopped towelling his hair.
‘I am your wife, Max,’ she said. ‘You know, mother of your child, that sort of thing.’
‘But ...’
‘But officially, tomorrow, I will be the “police presence” which Henry’s insisting on.’
‘My God,’ Maxwell muttered.
Jacquie rolled her eyes. ‘Well, don’t get too ecstatic, husband mine,’ she said. ‘Just think – it could have been Gamage.’ She opened her book again and read a couple of lines. Without looking up, she muttered, ‘Still could be, unless you play your cards right.’
For the entire journey, Maxwell might just as well have been invisible. As soon as the guests knew that the police presence was Maxwell’s wife, the conversationalist was about as relevant as chalk on an interactive white board. When they got to Oxford’s High, however, all that changed. Especially as DI Carpenter-Maxwell suddenly disappeared, having spoken through the crackly microphone as the coach driver manoeuvred into a space, telling them that in the special circumstances they were currently under, no one was to leave the group. They were all to stay close to Mr Maxwell and if they lost sight of him not to worry, the coach had special dispensation to stay here all day and anyway, Mr Maxwell would be carrying a bright yellow umbrella.
‘If you could just ...’ she smiled at her husband who had the look on his face that said there would be more on this subject when they got home. He waved his brolly in the air and there was a smattering of applause.
Jacquie managed to make her draconian rules sound like the most gentle of suggestions. Maxwell chuckled to think how Gamage would have managed it. The upshot was, however – and there was no getting away from it – that, lose Mr Maxwell and there would be hell to pay. He looked forward to a day of trodden-down heels and counting heads.
‘So this is Main Street, huh?’ Jada was taking in the academic surroundings.
‘Sure is.’ Bo was alongside her. ‘And, look, there’s that open air coffee shop where Morse and Lewis and Hathaway drink. Think they’ll be filming today?’
Maxwell sighed. In that dear old Inspector Morse was now pounding that great beat in the sky and had been for best part of twenty years, it didn’t seem likely. ‘We’ll do the churches first, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘St Mary the Virgin, St Michael, St Paul in the East, and, of course, St Frideswide.’
‘Frideswide?’ Mr Jada echoed. ‘Who the hell?’
Maxwell held up his hand. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said, ‘and all will be revealed.’
‘Hey.’ An Hawaiian-shirted tripper pointed to a souvenir shop. ‘I gotta get me one of those. Those polo shirts. Whaddya think, Ethel? Magdalen College?’
‘Maudlin,’ Maxwell corrected him.
‘Oh, I think it’s sort of colourful,’ the tourist countered. ‘Well, hey ... no, that’s gotta be the one, Eth, huh? Brasenose. What a ridiculous name. Folks back in Passamaquoddy are just gonna love that.’
Maxwell put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. When he had an average of fifty per cent of their attention, he held his umbrella aloft and led the way along the High, praying that the pavement would soon open up and swallow him whole.
‘Say, Mr Maxwell,’ Jada was at his elbow. ‘What happened to that little wifey of yours?’
Maxwell’s little wifey stood squarely in the foyer of the Find Your Family office in the Cornmarket. The slip of a thing employed to answer the phone and receive customers had copped out already and had passed her latest problem upstairs.
‘Upstairs’ was Roger Paine, the CEO, an oily reptile who had clearly once been a used-car salesman. He took a careful look at the DI’s ID and ushered her into an inner sanctum.
‘As I explained to your girl,’ Jacquie said, ‘I am from West Sussex CID and we are following up leads in a murder enquiry.’
‘Oh dear.’
If Jacquie had made a collection of the responses she’d had to that piece of information over the years, Paine’s would be right up there with the most banal. She fished Roddy’s envelope out of her handbag and held it out to the man. ‘Does this look familiar?’ she asked.
Paine made a great fuss about placing his glasses on his nose. They were attached by a cord around his neck, which he believed gave him gravitas. To Jacquie, it reminded her of the mittens on strings that Nolan had only just grown out of.
‘Seems to be one of ours,’ he finally conceded, having turned it this way and that.
‘Can you tell me the contents of your correspondence to Colonel Hale-ffinch, please? I assume you have copies.’
‘Ah.’ Paine became arch-professional and conspiratorial all in one, rather ruining the effect by whipping off his glasses and placing them decisively in his breast pocket and almost slicing his jugular with the cord. He recovered well and Jacquie secretly applauded him in her head. ‘Client confidentiality, I’m afraid.’
Jacquie smiled. ‘I’ll see your client confidentiality,’ she said, ‘and raise you my arrest warrant.’
‘Arrest?’ Paine was outraged.
Jacquie was still smiling, playing out the little wifey card to the last. ‘Oh, it won’t come to that,’ she said. ‘I’ll just get my colleagues in Thames Valley to arrange a search warrant, turn this place upside down,’ she looked meaningfully at the banks of filing cabinets along one wall, ‘check your bank records, that sort of thing. It’s amazing what a forensic accountant can uncover these days. Businesses like yours with no actual product, no offence of course, are a great cover for international money laundering. Forget Bitcoin; just show me a business like yours and I will show you a drug cartel in the background.’
‘Drug cartel?’ Paine’s eyes were wide. ‘This business is completely above board, I assure you.’ He leapt to his feet and ran his finger along the lines of cabinets. ‘It’ll be on the computer, of course,’ he said, ‘but most of our correspondents ... Hale-ffinch, did you say?’
‘Yes. With two effs.’
‘Here we are. Stupid girl had filed it under F. Yes, most of our correspondents don’t have one, so we tend to file stuff.’ He pulled out a letter. ‘Apparently, Colonel Hale-ffinch was compiling his family tree and was having difficulty filling in some sections.’ He handed the letter to Jacquie.
‘Do you have a copy of the tree?’ she asked.
‘Ah, now that is on the computer. We sent him one, of course, but don’t keep hard copies, because they can be a bit bulky. The Colonel’s certainly was – we had to use the A2 printer for his. I can get one printed off for you, if it helps.’
‘It does,’ Jacquie smiled. ‘May I keep this?’ She was already tucking the letter into her bag.
‘Of course.’ Paine’s teeth had been firmly clenched for the past five minutes. ‘Or I could forward it. Do you have an email address? I’ll send it by WeTransfer – it’s a big file.’
‘No, that’s all right,’ Jacquie said. ‘I’ll wait.’
Paine muttered into his phone and sat back, trying to force his rigid jaw into a smile. Then, an idea clearly occurred to him. ‘Umm ... as you are dealing with this case,’ he said, ‘I wonder if perhaps you could help me,’ he said. ‘If you bump into the colonel as you pursue your enquiries, could you perhaps mention his outstanding account ... he has not answered our reminders.’
‘I did mention this was a murder enquiry?’ she checked.
‘Yes, but ... oh, ah, I see ... yes.’ He squirmed in his seat for a moment and suddenly got up. ‘I’ll go and see where that girl is with your copy, shall I?’
‘Please do,’ Jacquie said. ‘As I said, I’ll wait.’
‘Her name was Ann Green,’ Maxwell told his flock. ‘They hanged her just over there, in what was the old gaol, in 1650. Her crime? She concealed the death of her bastard child.’
‘Jeez!’ somebody murmured.
‘That’s why our ancestors got the hell out,’ somebody else said, ‘to set up a country where stuff like that just didn’t happen.’
Maxwell was too much of a gentleman to mention Wounded Knee, Mississippi burnings and lynchings without number. ‘Then, she came back to life,’ he said.
There were whistles, cheers and cries of ‘What the ...?’ until the caller remembered exactly where they were, in the heart of one of the oldest universities in the world, even
older that the Empire State Building.
‘Somebody bungled the hanging,’ Maxwell explained. ‘I like to think deliberately. They were about to dissect Ann when she woke up.’
‘Mother of God,’ somebody muttered. ‘That’s scarier than Blair Witch.’
Maxwell concurred, but then, so was Shrek III. ‘And, would you believe, she lived happily every after. Married. Had kids.’
‘Aw.’ The audience was smiling. Trust Mr Maxwell to come out with a happy ending. And it was all true.
‘Now.’ He raised his tour-guiding umbrella on high, ‘just before lunch, let me tell you about the slaughter of the Danes that took place outside the Starbucks. Afterwards, we’ll have a look at the place they burned Bishops Ridley and Latimer, back in 1555 – which is not an American phone number. They built a Pizza Hut, rather appropriately, on the very spot soon afterwards. Oh, and by the way, rumour has it that there’s a pretty second-rate university around here somewhere.’
Belatedly, Maxwell thought it was time to do a quick head count. He had hoped that taking adults on a trip would be easier than sixty Year Elevens, but it was like herding cats.
‘If everyone could just stand still a minute, I need to check you’re all here.’
Heads swivelled as they all looked for their friends and enemies. It really was just like a Year Eleven trip after all. Maxwell pointed and muttered numbers under his breath. That was odd. He had three extra.
‘Could anyone not with the Haledown party please raise their hand?’
Four hands went in the air. It was getting worse. He had four extra, but also one too few.
‘If the extras could just come and stand near me ... yes, thank you. I’ll be with you ... who’s missing?’
All heads swung aimlessly back and forth and Maxwell used the usual format.
‘Is the person who was sitting by you in the coach here? If so, take one step to the left ... careful there,’ he extended a hand as Bo stepped out into the road. ‘Only when safe to do so.’ He looked at them. It had caused a real division and only three of his group were still where they began. ‘Ladies,’ he said. ‘Who isn’t here?’ The maths was beginning to hurt his head. He was down one, three people couldn’t see their travelling companion, four tourists were beginning to get restive and there was going to be a mutiny soon.
