Maxwell's Grave

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Ms Twigg,’ he raised his unseasonal hat. ‘Good morning. I’m Peter Maxwell. Is there somewhere we could talk?’

  ‘You say you’re a private investigator?’ She stirred her coffee with a certain worldweariness.

  ‘Of sorts,’ he nodded. He’d taken her out of her office with its rows of box-files and its computer banks and she’d taken him to the staff canteen, a relatively palatial pad by Leighford High standards, in that it had curtains and glass at the windows and they sat facing each other across an upright, formica-topped table.

  ‘For whom are you working?’ she asked. He liked her sense of syntax, suddenly bereaved though she had been.

  ‘Justice,’ he said, a little portentously. ‘I’ve already expressed my sincere condolences about Ms Welland. You were close?’

  Hazel looked her man in the eye. ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Our paths never crossed. I joined the dig at Leighford after she…died.’

  ‘If this is some sort of insurance scam…’

  ‘As I said, Ms Twigg, I am looking into this sad business for my own, impartial reasons.’

  ‘And they are?’

  ‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘A man I rather liked – David Radley – invited me and some of my students to his dig site. Then somebody killed him. There’s something redraggish to a bull about that – well, there is to me, anyway. I don’t get maudlin – I get even.’

  ‘You believe that David and Sam died by the same hand?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ her eyes dipped to the still-swirling coffee in front of her. ‘I’m not sure what I believe any more.’

  ‘You loved Sam?’ he asked.

  She still didn’t look up. Just nodded.

  ‘And she didn’t take her own life?’

  ‘No.’ The voice was firm, the eyes steady as they came up to meet his. ‘No, of that I am sure.’

  ‘Let’s draw some threads together, then. Two colleagues, both dead within a week of each other. What’s the connection?’

  Silence.

  ‘Are you all right, Ms Twigg?’ Maxwell asked her. ‘To talk about this, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She almost willed herself to do it. ‘They’d known each other for about three years.’

  ‘As colleagues?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Tell me, Ms Twigg, was Dr Radley happily married?’

  The silence once again, but frostier this time. ‘I believe he was,’ she said. ‘You must realize, Mr Maxwell, that Dr Radley was Professor of Archaeology. I am merely an administrative assistant. We never actually discussed personal relationships.’

  ‘No, of course not. Did Sam…I mean, was Sam ever…?’

  ‘Was she bi and did she ever have a fling with David Radley?’ Say what you like about Hazel Twigg, she knew how to cut to the chase.

  ‘Something like that,’ he nodded.

  ‘No,’ her reply was louder than she’d meant it to be and a professor of Comparative Religions in the corner woke up from his end of semester doze as a result. ‘No, no,’ she said more softly. ‘Nothing like that.’ She found herself smiling. ‘She liked to flirt with men, to tease them. For instance, she told me the detective who came to see her was rather dishy.’

  ‘The detective? You mean, DS Toogood?’

  ‘Was that his name? I don’t know. He came to see her at the Club. The Campdens.’

  ‘Yes.’ Maxwell nodded. ‘That was his name. Did Sam tell you anything else about him? Toogood, I mean?’

  The woman sighed. ‘I really can’t remember,’ she said. ‘He was asking her about David, of course, and Tam Fraser, I believe. I got the impression he was grilling everybody in the Department. I suppose he’ll get around to me eventually.’

  ‘No, Ms Twigg,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘I doubt he will. What about…and please forgive me for asking this, but…other women?’ Maxwell was chancing his arm.

  Hazel took a deep breath. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Definitely not.’

  They looked at each other for a moment.

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ she broke the silence first. ‘I loved Sam Welland. And she loved me. Fifty years ago, our relationship would have caused raised eyebrows, revulsion even. It may even have been a motive for murder. But today? Today people can’t even be bothered with the old jokes. You’re looking in the wrong direction.’

  ‘About now, Ms Twigg,’ the amateur detective said, ‘I have no idea in which direction I’m looking. What do you know about the Sepulchre Society of Sussex?’

  ‘The what?’ she frowned.

  ‘Nothing,’ he shrugged. ‘Forget I mentioned it.’

  She already had.

  There had to be a way out. And she’d lost track of the hours in which she’d been thinking of it. Her eyes had long ago become accustomed to the dark. When she was little, her mum had taken her to the old Morwellham copper mine in Devon and she had never known blackness like it. They took you deep underground in a little train and the man turned off the lights. It was impenetrable, mysterious.

  She had clung to her mum in the infinite silence of that blackness. Now, she had nobody to cling to. She could feel the chain that chafed her ankles, knew the extent of the links that held her. She’d counted the links and she’d counted the paces she could move from the wall – twenty-three; just enough to reach the hole in the floor she was using as a loo. Was it night? Was it day? She still didn’t know. Her watch had gone, so had her shoes.

  She’d tried it before, of course. And it hadn’t worked. But it was all she had and she had no choice but to try it again. She swung the chains that held her wrist against the near wall, screaming at the same time with all that remained of her strength. Nothing. Nothing but the dying echo of her own voice.

  Where was she? Where had she been buried that no one could hear her?

  Peter Maxwell was usually a shower man. But that Thursday night, he lay soaking in his bath until his finger-ends wrinkled. He didn’t normally do his best thinking while carrying out his ablutions. His shower control was a bitch and he either came out frozen or scalded from the experience and, either way, he had not thought beautiful thoughts. Metternich never ventured into Maxwell’s bathroom. The steam and the sickly-sweet aromas of oils and lotions played merry hell with his olfactories. And anyway, he secretly suspected Maxwell of doing things in that white porcelain jobbie which real cats did in the garden. It was all rather unsavoury. Especially since he’d never once seen him try to cover it up.

  Maxwell was paying the price of trowelling all day and never being able to see fifty-five again. His shoulders ached, his fingers throbbed and he couldn’t feel his back at all. They didn’t have a bath-foam called Dig Relief, so he had to settle for something green and slimy and lay in it, eyes closed, hands clasped across his chest.

  Names whirled in his fevered brain. Scenarios. Places. Men with shotguns and dark glasses prowled the hillside of death. Helen Reader waved to him with her trowel flashing silver in the hot sun. Tam Fraser stood, full-kilted like some latter-day Rob Roy, barking orders to his minions. Douglas Russell waved threatening letters at the dozing Maxwell. Derek Latymer sneered at him, Robin Edwards at his elbow; two men on the make; Castor and Pollux, Brutus and Cassius. He tried to picture the dead Sam Welland twirling at the end of a rope, but he only had Jacquie’s second-hand version and love her madly though he did, it was never quite the same. David Radley’s face would haunt him for ever, like Banquo’s at the feast. It was calm and still and dead. As if he’d stood in the centre of that silent, swaying stand of ash trees and given up the ghost. He had lain down like the frozen figures of Pompeii under their grey coats of death and he had stopped breathing. David Radley, whom everyone respected. David Radley, whom everyone liked. David Radley, whom some people loved. One day, Mad Max would stumble onto a murder case that would make him construct a bad sentence.

  He opened his right eye and glanced out ont
o the landing. The great black and white beast lay there, like his master, dozing the evening away.

  ‘No chance of you passing me a towel, I suppose?’ Maxwell asked. Metternich turned over and went back to sleep.

  The place had ‘Geek’ written all over it. Maxwell had parked White Surrey around the corner and checked the address under the street light. Redan Street was a cut above the grim railway cottages where Michaela Reynolds lived with a psychopath in a string vest. The terrace was built to celebrate the growth of Leighford as a Victorian seaside resort. Paris had its Champs Elyseé, Amritsar its Golden Temple; Leighford had Redan Street.

  He rang the bell of number 41, the number given to him obligingly by the Gentleman of the Press who’d turned out to be a fan. There had to be a catch, of course, and that catch was that Peter Maxwell had to give an exclusive, should he succeed in catching a murderer, to Reginald James, Pulitzer Prize pending. It was nearly nine; past his bedtime, sure, but he had a murderer to catch. Nothing. He tried again. The window to his right was clearly the lounge of number 41 and it was in darkness. There was a glimmer though, as if from a room at the back and he noticed that light dim as he pressed the bell. Somebody was in and somebody had closed the door, or handled the dimmer switch, or both. He’d done it himself, pretending not to be in, most Christmases when carol singers came; not because he was mean, but because he was so embarrassed by a confrontational, in-your-face rendering of God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen. It all seemed so point-blank somehow.

  He crouched, as far as his shooting pains would let him, and called through the letterbox, ‘Mr Wimble?’

  Nothing.

  He had another go. ‘Mr Wimble. My name is Peter Maxwell. I’d like to talk to you.’

  ‘What do you want?’ the voice was muffled, wary.

  Maxwell waved his bicycle pump in the air, its end wrapped in sacking. ‘I’m having trouble with my metal detector. Somebody said you might be able to help.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Who?’ the voice came back. ‘Who said?’

  ‘Tony Lyman, at the Museum. He said if anybody could fix it, you could.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Mr Lyman said that?’

  ‘Said you were the best south of the Piddle. I took that to be a compliment.’

  So, evidently, did Arthur Wimble. This time, there was a visual sighting. Maxwell watched the man hobble through his narrow hall, what appeared to be a baseball bat in his hand.

  ‘Who did you say you were again?’ The voice was right behind the door now. In fact, whether he wanted to or not, Peter Maxwell had a pretty good view of Arthur Wimble’s groin.

  ‘Peter Maxwell,’ he said again. ‘From Leighford High School.’

  ‘Are you a member of the Society?’ Wimble asked.

  ‘About to be,’ Maxwell bluffed. ‘Sent off my application a couple of days ago.’

  There was a sliding of bolts and the door swung inwards. Arthur Wimble was an unprepossessing shambles of a man, wearing what appeared to be an old jumper of Frank Bough’s and a pair of trousers that might once have been worn by Fatty Arbuckle.

  ‘Good Lord!’ he whispered when he saw Maxwell’s face.

  ‘Yes,’ the Head of Sixth Form could just about smile by now. ‘I have that effect on most people. Mind if I come in?’

  ‘That’s not a metal detector!’ Wimble half-stumbled backwards, both hands gripping the baseball bat above his head.

  Maxwell reached out a defensive arm. ‘No, it’s a bicycle pump,’ he said quickly. ‘But I didn’t think you’d let me in if I told you the truth.’

  ‘You’re a liar!’ Wimble screamed, his face crimson, his eyes wild behind his glasses. ‘You’re a lying bastard!’

  ‘Well, yes and no,’ Maxwell hedged.

  He ducked quickly as Wimble swung the bat. It hissed over Maxwell’s head and crunched into the plaster behind him. So far, so good, but Arthur Wimble’s back-hand was a blow too far and not only did he miss, but he stumbled badly and Maxwell wrenched the bat from his grip, thrusting the business end of his bicycle pump up under his chin with the other hand. Wimble cowered, half kneeling in the corner, his glasses dangling off his ears, his hands raised in supplication.

  ‘Please,’ he whispered, clearly terrified. ‘I haven’t been well.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘How are you feeling now?’ Maxwell sat opposite his man, watching him closely.

  ‘All right,’ Wimble said. He was still sniffing. ‘I don’t suppose you even know Tony Lyman, do you?’

  ‘The Museum man? As a matter of fact, I do,’ Maxwell said. ‘Tony and I go back more than a few years. Look, I’m sorry about the subterfuge.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Wimble was still trying to retrieve the bit of his glasses that went behind his ear.

  ‘Tea all right?’ They were sitting at the Anorak’s rather nasty kitchen table, drinking from his Woolie’s cups.

  ‘Fine, ta.’

  ‘I’ve got to say, Arthur…you don’t mind if I call you Arthur?’

  The man shook his head. Peter Maxwell had inveigled his way into the castle he called home, disarmed him in a vicious baseball bat attack, sat him down and made him a cup of tea. Arthur’s mum had believed you had to marry people if you had a relationship like that.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’ve got to say, going for me with that was a bit OTT, wasn’t it?’

  The blunt instrument stood propped against the door jamb. If push came to shove, Maxwell reckoned he could reach it first. But there was no response.

  ‘Did you think I was a rent-collector or something? Prospective parliamentary candidate for the UK Independence Party?’

  Wimble looked like frightened ferret behind the glasses. ‘I thought you were from them,’ he said, ‘I thought they’d tracked me down. They’ve got my number, you see.’

  Everybody had. Reg James at the Advertiser had warned Maxwell about this one. Sudden, hysterical welcomes were his stock in trade. ‘Them?’ Maxwell asked. He knew the film, of course – black and white Fifties tosh about mutant ants on the rampage in Nevada; James Arness being lantern-jawed, a young Leonard Nimoy getting his first taste of something wicked from outer space. But somehow, Maxwell knew that Arthur Wimble wasn’t talking about those ‘them’. Wimble had paled noticeably and ripples were forming on the surface of the tea in his cup.

  Maxwell pursued it from another direction. ‘A moment ago,’ he said, ‘when we were having a conversation through the door, you mentioned a society. I said I was joining.’

  ‘That wasn’t true, was it?’ Wimble’s lip was trembling.

  ‘Alas, no,’ Maxwell confessed. ‘But I had to say something to get to talk to you. What society were you talking about?’

  ‘The Metal Detectives’ Society,’ Wimble told him. ‘It was founded in 1995 in Littlehampton.’

  ‘Metal detectives?’ Maxwell frowned.

  ‘You’re not actually an archaeologist at all, are you?’ Wimble’s eyes narrowed as he peered at the man.

  ‘Technically, no,’ Maxwell said. ‘But I have got my knees brown recently.’

  Wimble sighed. ‘I’m going to get up now,’ he said. ‘I’m feeling a little stronger.’

  Maxwell steadied the man as he put his tea cup down and got shakily to his feet. ‘I don’t normally invite strangers into my bedroom,’ the metal detective said. Maxwell could believe that. ‘But, apart from all that unpleasant bruising, Mr Maxwell, you’ve a kind face. I suppose I ought to be more concerned about the man who gave you that face, shouldn’t I? So come on up.’

  Maxwell followed the man up the creaking stairs with their single twist and their early Sixties carpet. If Arthur Wimble had ‘fallen downstairs’ in his previous bungalow, what would happen to him here? He led his night visitor into a box-room. It was full of boxes.

  ‘There!’ Wimble stood triumphant.

  ‘You collect cardboard?’ Maxwell wondered. It was difficult to t
ake all this seriously.

  Wimble tried to wither him with a stare, but he didn’t really have what it took and relented with a series of blinks. ‘In these boxes,’ he said, ‘are a lifetime of archaeological remains. Bones, potsherds, coins – they come from all over southern England.’

  ‘I see,’ Maxwell said. ‘Shouldn’t you have…?’

  ‘Handed them in? Oh, no,’ Wimble said quickly. ‘You see, the law is a highly complex beast. Most objects found belong to the landowner, except gold or silver. I’ve never yet met a farmer who wanted bits of bone or pot – in fact, they chuck ’em away with vandalistic regularity. Hence, my little collection. I prize them. But these…’ He opened a box to his right to show Maxwell a collection of coins, ‘are mine. I found them.’

  ‘I thought the law of Treasure Trove meant that the finder might be offered the value of the goods, not the goods themselves.’

  Wimble closed the box quickly. ‘That’s a very narrow interpretation,’ he said. ‘Shall we go back down? I don’t have much of a head for heights.’

  Maxwell descended, careful to keep his hand on the banister. Somehow he didn’t really like turning his back on Arthur Wimble.

  ‘Well, basically, Count,’ the Great Man was sipping a large Southern Comfort in the quiet of his lounge as Thursday ticked inexorably into Friday. ‘Arthur Wimble is as mad as a tree. But he did open a can of worms.’ He raised an eyebrow at the cat. ‘Not mixing too many metaphors for you, am I? I had the lecture of field archaeology versus metal-detecting and how it used to be a free for all and that many irresponsible metal detectives ruined important sites in their headlong, speedy rush for gold. That was the good old days, of course, California ’49 – get it? Gold rush? Oh, never mind. It was before satellite television and before Tony Robinson stopped being Baldrick and became an intelligent, if slightly irritating frontman. That’s why the Metal Detectives’ Society was formed.’ He lapsed into his best Mid-West, hand on heart in a presidential salute, ‘To do good for the sake of archaeology, to go hand in hand, professional and amateur, in a mutual quest to unearth the past…boldly.’