by M. J. Trow
Maxwell sighed. First Boadicea; now Vikings with horned helmets. What had been the point of his lecturing efforts over the past week? He smiled and shrugged, a well-mannered megalomaniac Bond villain if ever there was one.
As Bo drifted away in search of another drink or to sack Camelodunum, as the mood took her, Maxwell turned to his better half. ‘Mingle, Lucrezia, my dove. You’d be amazed what little snippets you can pick up from the pissed, especially at the end of term party.’
‘Grannies and eggs, Auric,’ she said. ‘And don’t think for a moment that I’ll be taking one eye off you.’
And the tide of socialising swept them apart.
Chapter Fifteen
‘E
vening, Mr M.’ James Brereton was on duty tonight, in case any of the guests fancied a turn in Tom Hale-ffinch’s Hispano-Suiza, the one with the top speed of sixteen miles an hour and a thirst like Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend.
‘Elegant,’ Maxwell looked him up and down. He was dressed in silver-grey breeches and tails, with a tricorn hat of the same colour on his head. His powdered wig had a subtle sheen and his face was pale, with dark rings under his eyes. It was a temptation to tell the man he didn’t look well, but presumably it was all part of the costume. ‘I can’t place ...’
James did a twirl. Cobwebs swung from his silver epaulettes. ‘The Phantom Coachman, of course. As behoofs.’
Behoof it did, but Maxwell was painfully aware that the chauffeur was out on bail paid for by Tom Hale-ffinch and, what with the Mem among the guests, he wasn’t sure he should be seen talking to him.
‘That’s pure genius, by the way,’ James said.
‘What is?’
‘You coming as Mad Max. Sheer brilliance.’
Maxwell held up his finger. ‘Actually, I came as the famous Bond villain of the gilded digit,’ he said.
‘Oh, you’ve ruined it now,’ the chauffeur said. ‘Far too over the top.’
‘Tell me, James,’ Maxwell took another glass from a passing floozy, who looked like extras in Downton, ‘where were you in the early hours of yesterday morning?’
‘Er ... tucked up with the missus at Eighty-One, Vallenser Road, if memory serves.’
‘Can the missus verify that?’ Maxwell asked. As far as Maxwell knew, Fran Brereton, nee Thornley, was straight as a die (and you couldn’t get straighter than that).
James frowned. ‘Wait a minute,’ he clicked his fingers as best he could, what with their being greasy with five and nine. ‘This is about the attempt on you, isn’t it? I heard about that. Bummer of a thing, Mr M.’
‘You got that right, James,’ Maxwell said.
‘No, I’ll put my hand up to thumping that mean sod who tries to pass himself off as a detective, but I’m not your everyday serial killer. I think Joe Law has me down for Elliot Schwarzenegger because of the strychnine and my former life. But, honestly, if I’d done that, would I seriously have suggested the MO employed? Equally, would I have tried to kill you?’
‘I’d be very hurt if you did, James,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Your good lady wife being an Old Leighford Highena and all.’
‘Exactly,’ James said. ‘Fran’d kill me. Oh, got to go. Looks like the emperor wants a spin in the old banger.’
Across the room from them both, an ancient guest in toga and laurel wreath was trying to attract the chauffeur’s attention and they tottered off towards the side entrance.
Try though he might, Maxwell could not equate the sour-faced old besom of the ticket office with the Eighties’ answer to the flower people he had seen on Jacquie’s computer. Maureen Dollery was clearly trying to avoid eye contact, but Maxwell had years of collaring miscreants under his belt and he never missed.
‘Not exactly Glasto, is it?’ He raised his glass to her.
‘What?’ The pince-nez swivelled to one side, followed soon after by her eyes.
‘Glastonbury,’ Maxwell qualified. ‘This isn’t exactly like it?’
‘Why would it be?’ she quizzed him. ‘I don’t see the relevance.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘A load of self-obsessed strangers all trying to outdo each other in the Look-At-Me competition.’ He glanced at the geriatric combo, whose elbows were jerking with a syncopation known to no man. ‘And don’t get me started on the music.’
Her stare could freeze Hell. ‘The double bass player is my brother,’ she told him, flatly.
‘I love your costume, by the way.’ Maxwell knew a new direction when he needed one. It could best be described as Bo Peep, especially as she’d clearly lost her little ovine companion. Her bun was hidden under a mass of golden curls and her chubby knees oozed over her white socks.
‘Thank you.’ Every word came through clenched teeth.
Maxwell realized that Maureen was never going to unbutton herself to discuss her once-Rabelaisian past, still less talk about current murders, so he gave up, made his excuses and wandered over to the two security men, each of them wearing long straw-coloured wigs, heavy moustaches and rough-cut tunics with broad belts.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘Hengist and Horsa.’
‘How did you know?’ Jack asked, the ends of his moustache blowing in the breeze from his mouth.
‘Lucky guess,’ Maxwell said. ‘Tell me, Jack, Bob, got the old Cee Cee Tee Vee working yet?’
‘Knackered,’ Bob said. His moustache was coming loose on one side and he kept dabbing at it anxiously. He was making inroads into the canapes and had already almost swallowed it along with the duck with orange glaze vol au vent. ‘I told her ladyship it was on the blink last month, but nothing happened.’
‘That was poor, wasn’t it?’ Maxwell asked. ‘What with Health and Safety and all?’
‘She’s got a lot on her plate, has Ariana.’ Jack was quick to defend his mistress.
‘Are you all right, by the way, Mr Maxwell? That gryphon business?’ The question was what passed for extreme concern in the Bob Good household.
‘Well, it’s the sort of thing, if this doesn’t sound too corny, you’re either fine or you’re dead. I doubt there’s a halfway house between ticketty-boo and twelve stone of gargoyle on your head.’
‘Well, I’ve been at Haledown, man and boy, for years,’ Jack said, holding his moustache out of the way so that he could sup his beer, ‘and I’ve never known anything like it. Looks like somebody’s got it in for you, Mr Maxwell.’
‘You think?’ Maxwell asked. He would have given triple detention to any Year Eight who used that phrase, but sometimes only certain words would do. ‘Tell me, Jack, you know the lay-out here better than anyone. Could a guest get up to the leads, without being shown the way, I mean?’
‘On their own, no, but in theory, yes.’
Maxwell smiled. It was a bit like talking to a member of the Lib-Dems. ‘Come again?’ he said.
‘Well, Ariana takes them on a guided tour on their first day. You missed it because you hadn’t joined us then.’
Maxwell didn’t miss that ‘us’. Jack obviously saw himself as one of the family. ‘Where does she take them?’
‘All over,’ Bob chimed in. ‘The main house, top to bottom. The orangery, the stables, the outbuildings, the maze. If it’s raining, she misses out the roof, because of slipping, but we’ve been lucky this year – I think she’s only had to do that once.’
That was exactly what Peter Maxwell had not wanted to hear. Roddy’s murder scene; the place where Elliot was given strychnine; the departure point of the gryphon – all of it was known to everybody. That narrowed the suspects down to ... and in lieu of working out a huge number, Maxwell reached for another glass of bubbly.
Lucrezia Borgia and Auric Goldfinger passed each other like ships in the night.
‘Anything?’ he asked her, not looking directly into her face.
‘Not a sausage. Ah,’ and she saw one tempting her on a passing flunkey’s tray and helped herself. ‘You?’
‘Nada. Aha, Jada!’ Maxwell crossed the floor t
o where a tall temptress stood alluringly in straight black wig and figure-hugging gown, vaguely of the Theban persuasion.
‘Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt,’ he half bowed.
‘What?’ She blinked her eyelids as hooded and heavy as anything Maureen Dollery had worn back in the day.
‘Age cannot wither you, Jada,’ he said, raising a glass to her, ‘nor custom stale your infinite variety.’
‘You Limeys,’ she clicked her tongue. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about most of the time.’
‘I was merely quoting the Bard – well, almost. I assume you are Cleopatra?’
‘Who else would I be?’ she asked.
Possibly Nefertiti, Maxwell thought to himself, but never Cleopatra, because she was Greek, and Jada fitted none of the requirements. She was certainly turning heads, however; her breasts went before her like a pair of magnificent Nubians. ‘Tell me,’ he said, standing as close to her as they would allow, ‘after we parted company in the stables the other morning, where did you go?’
She turned to face him, her dark eyes smouldering. ‘So, you are interested, after all?’
‘In whomever tried to kill me, certainly.’
‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘I heard about that. Too bad.’
‘That somebody tried? Or that somebody failed?’
She looked at him. ‘Max, my back is broad.’ Maxwell could vouch for that. ‘I’ve been turned down before. Hell, if I took a hatchet to every guy who hasn’t dropped his pants for me, the streets’d be littered with corpses. In my defence, however, I have to say there are a lot more who have than who haven’t.’
Maxwell didn’t doubt it, but he was too much of a gentleman to say so.
‘After I left you, I took a shower,’ she said. ‘Helluva passion killer if an old stick-in-the mud ... what do you guys call ’em? Gooseberry? If a gooseberry turns up. When you calm down on occasions like that, you realize you stink of horse shit.’ She closed to him still further and smiled for the first time. ‘I don’t think Tom’s speaking to me any more; I think Harry’ll have his nuts on toast if she finds out.’
Tom Hale-ffinch was just helping himself to the roasted nuts when Peter Maxwell arrived. The lord of the manor wore a Victorian gentleman’s frock coat and a tall, stovepipe hat.
‘I know the period,’ Maxwell said. ‘I just can’t place the face.’
‘Sir Robert Peel,’ Hale-ffinch tipped his hat. ‘Home Secretary.’
Maxwell was half impressed; Tom was the right height for the man who had created the Metropolitan Police, but his Northern accent was non-existent. ‘You?’
‘Auric Goldfinger,’ Maxwell’s digit was once again in the air. Hale-ffinch looked blank. ‘You know, James Bond.’
‘Ah. I was never allowed to watch any Bond films,’ Hale-ffinch told him. ‘Uncle Roddy had once had to punch Ian Fleming for disrespecting a certain lady. He took that kind of thing very seriously, did Uncle Roddy ...’ He looked at Maxwell and smiled. ‘Or at least, he sometimes did. It depended on what story he was remembering to tell.’ His eyes were everywhere as he spoke, especially in the direction of Jada Cleopatra. Especially when she veered anywhere near Ariana Hale-ffinch.
‘I was half hoping you’d be Lord Castlereagh,’ Maxwell said.
‘Really?’ Tom Hale-ffinch took two champagne flutes from a floosy and passed one to Maxwell. ‘Why?’
‘Well, it would have given me a chance to come out with my Shelley line – “I met murder in the way; he wore a mask like Castlereagh”.’
‘That’s not funny, Max.’
‘It’s not meant to be, Tom,’ Maxwell countered. ‘Like it or not, you have a killer under your roof. That’s rather like a wasps’ nest, only worse.’
‘I trust the police have all that in hand.’
There was a sudden guffaw from across the hall where a clutch of American men were surrounding Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell, heading her off at the pass.
‘I trust they do,’ Maxwell said. ‘My money’s on your Uncle Roddy.’
Hale-ffinch looked askance. ‘But he’s dead, Max,’ he said.
Maxwell groaned inwardly. No wonder the aristocracy were a dying breed. What with death duties, the window tax and inbreeding, it’s astonishing there were any of them left. That said, of course, the House of Lords was bigger than ever. ‘Yes, Tom.’ Nobody could patronize like Peter Maxwell. ‘I mean, his death kicked off the whole thing. He was the murderer’s real target – Elliot and me? Well, we’re just collateral damage.’ And Maxwell knew that; he’d seen the film.
‘But who’d have it in for Roddy?’ Hale-ffinch was wondering aloud.
‘You tell me,’ Maxwell said, watching the man intently.
‘I’ve told the police all I know,’ the squire said. ‘When he retired from the army, the old boy was sort of rudderless, if I’m not mixing my services there, came to live permanently with Harry and me – mother had cleared out to the South of France, of course; they couldn’t stand each other. He’d been my guardian, back in the day, and she has always resented the way Papa left his money, though she isn’t short, by no means.’ He looked up, vaguely. ‘Where was I?’
‘Roddy. Coming to live here.’
‘Yes. Well, I stopped listening to his tall stories years ago. I saw him bending your ear along those lines on your first evening here.’
Maxwell’s ear throbbed just thinking about it.
‘But he was harmless enough. Got quite obsessed with the old genealogy nonsense. A few branches short of the family tree, if you ask me.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, he had that sort of mind; a bit OCD, in many ways. His military training, I suppose. Everything in neat rows, in rank order, all Sandhurst spit and polish. In the days before he died, something was worrying him.’
‘Do you know what?’
‘No, but it had something to do with his researches. He’d never use a computer, of course. He’d pester Harry to do the online stuff for him. Latterly, though, he was doing it all on paper. One night, he came to see me, in my study – and that wasn’t like him.’
‘When was this?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Hale-ffinch said, sipping his bubbly. ‘Three or four days before he died, I suppose.’
‘What did he want?’
‘Well, that’s just it.’ Hale-ffinch found a surface to put down his top hat. ‘Bloody thing doesn’t fit me anywhere. Roddy ummed and ahed even more than usual. Kept babbling about black sheep ...’
Instinctively, Maxwell’s eyes swivelled to Little Bo Peep who stood flanked by Hengist and Horsa, an unshakeable trio as stalwart as Horatius and his mates on the bridge. Once again, his flight of fancy filled his mind. Back in the day, Roddy Hale-ffinch and the hip-swinging Glasto-goer, sharing who knew what guilty memories. ‘Did he say what he meant?’
‘He just kept saying that he couldn’t work it out; it didn’t make sense. And for Roddy to admit defeat like that, believe me, it had to be a problem. He did, after all, bring down the Berlin Wall single-handedly; advise Yuri Gagarin which buttons to push up there in space. And of course, he was right up there with JFK telling Khrushchev where to stick it in the Cuban missile business.’
‘Of course,’ Maxwell chuckled. Clearly, over dinner the night he had been buttonholed by the Colonel, he hadn’t heard the half of it.
‘Mr Maxwell.’ The Merry Widow who was Flo Schwarzenegger made Roddy Hale-ffinch’s buttonholing look decidedly amateur. The rather frowsty, down-trodden wife of Mr American Business had already transformed herself before tonight but in the dazzle of the Leavers’ Ball, she looked positively radiant. ‘I wanted to thank you.’
‘Whatever for, Mrs Schwarzenegger?’
‘That’s Flo, remember,’ she said, cheerily. ‘Flo Ironmonger now – I’ve decided to revert to my maiden name. And I was a maiden, in every sense of the word, before Elliot. I guess it’s too late to make up for all that now.’
Maxwell smiled and patted her hand. ‘It’s n
ever too late, Flo,’ he said.
Flo ironmonger was a large lady, the sort who could have slashed a man’s throat without breaking into a glow. She could also have worked loose a stone gargoyle on the Haledown roof. But what about poison? And why wait until this visit back to the Old Country to get rid of the man she so clearly hated? The scenario ran through Maxwell’s mind like a rat in a maze. Roddy and he were just red herrings – two completely different MOs to confuse the police – to disguise the real target; Elliot himself. Back home, she’d have been pestered by local law enforcement, pushy DAs, the FBI. Here, she may have reasoned, she’d have a village bobby on his bike – after all, as the old Sixties song had it, ‘England swings’.
‘Why, Mr Maxwell,’ she flirted. ‘That is so kind!’
God, thought Maxwell, she’s turned into Scarlett O’Hara.
‘So kind, in fact, that I’m going to have to break the habit of a lifetime and ask you for a dance.’
‘Oh, no,’ Maxwell laughed, his knees turning to water as they always did at the mention of the ‘d’ word. ‘Really, I ...’
But Merry Widows didn’t take ‘No’ for an answer and the geriatric combo suddenly sprang into life, their vocalist clapping his hands and shouting the commands of the Gay Gordons, the Durham Reel and whatever else passed for a dance tune in the seventh circle of Hell.
It was while he sashayed past Lucrezia for the third time that he hissed at her, ‘Found anybody to poison yet?’
When they passed again, she purred, ‘That’s all folklore. I’m just looking for a tall, good-looking Italian who’s probably my brother.’
But the last pass was more to the matter in hand. ‘Frank Harper,’ she murmured. ‘Knew Elliot from way back. He’s over there, dressed as ...’
‘... Frederick Douglass,’ Maxwell stuck out his hand. ‘With a double ess.’
Frank shook it. ‘Impressed you recognized me,’ he said. ‘To some white folks, all us black folks look alike.’
‘Ah,’ Maxwell smiled, risking a hate crime lawsuit, ‘we’re all God’s chillun.’
