Maxwell's Grave

by M. J. Trow

  ‘What do you make of this, professor?’ Maxwell produced a crumpled piece of paper from his back trouser pocket.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A drawing.’ It was going to be a long day.

  ‘Aye, laddie, I can see that. Not exactly Rubens. Who did it?’

  ‘A small thing,’ Maxwell bowed in his canvas chair, ‘but mine own.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Fraser chuckled. ‘Not even a pretty face. No, sorry, Maxwell, I shouldn’t mock. You used, what, charcoal here?’

  ‘Er…pencil,’ Maxwell corrected him.

  ‘Should be HB,’ Fraser suggested. ‘You’ve used a shovel. Now, perhaps you’d like to tell me what it’s supposed to be.’

  ‘Well, it’s a working design only,’ Maxwell explained. ‘Working in fact from a description given to me by the self same Arthur Wimble I mentioned a moment ago. And he only saw it briefly and in the dark.’

  ‘You’re losing me,’ Fraser said, shaking his head.

  ‘All right,’ Maxwell leaned back. ‘Arthur Wimble isn’t quite as saintly as I may have suggested. He was on this site, exactly where I don’t know, but my guess would be on the edge of the ash grove one night back in March.’

  ‘Was he now?’

  ‘The dig had only just started. He remembers one, perhaps two slit trenches.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Fraser was leaning back too, still trying to make any sense of Maxwell’s drawing.

  ‘He found a knife. Dagger. Something. This was higher up the hill, not far, I suspect, from that first body David Radley found. That’s in Tony Lyman’s museum now, isn’t it, awaiting shipment to your university?’

  ‘I believe it is,’ Fraser told him.

  ‘Wimble also found this,’ Maxwell tapped the drawing. ‘It was about two feet long, made of stone or marble – he couldn’t remember which – and it was carved with the letters you see there.’

  Fraser fished his glasses out of his shirt pocket and held them up to his nose. ‘Here lies King Alfred,’ he shouted.

  ‘Precisely.’

  There was a silence, then Tam Fraser exploded with laughter. ‘Man, man. I don’t know who this Arthur Wimble is, but he’s on a par with whoever faked the Piltdown skull.’ He suddenly leaned forward, deadly serious. ‘It wasn’t you, was it Maxwell?’ and he burst out laughing again.

  ‘You don’t buy it, then?’ Maxwell asked, when the Scotsman’s mirth had subsided.

  ‘What, that Staple Hill in West Sussex is the last resting place of Alfred of Wessex? No, laddie, I do not. And if I were to go public with any hint of this, my fellow archaeologists would laugh me to scorn and rightly so. I don’t know whether it’s the hours toiling under the hot sun or the blow to the head you received, but whatever it is, man – go and have a nice lie down. You’ll feel better in the morning.’

  The campus at Petworth shimmered in the afternoon sun, green fields wobbling under the cloudless blue. Maxwell had called in to Leighford nick, to touch base, to look for comfort, however crumby. The ever-on-duty Tom Wilson had just looked up and had shaken his head.

  ‘Nothing, Mr Maxwell,’ he said, as though the man had popped in to check on his lost cat.

  The Great Man didn’t stay to question. The boys in blue had their methods. He had his. And he’d put his trust in Team Maxwell any day. Now, he was making his determined way up the garden path to the Archaeology Department, David Radley’s name still prominent on the staff list on the wall in the admissions office. The grim-haired Hazel Twigg looked up at him as he arrived, breath in fist, at Reception. He held something brown and sticky in his left hand.

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ she said. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s a stick,’ he answered her. ‘More precisely, a twig.’

  Her face said it all. She glanced across her office to where her colleagues were all trying desperately hard to mind anybody’s business but hers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said tartly. ‘You’ll have to be more explicit.’

  ‘Here?’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer somewhere else?’

  She hesitated for a moment. Then she lifted the counter and let him through. He followed her through double doors and along a maze of corridors until they came to what appeared to be a rest room of sorts. There were soft chairs all around the walls. It was deserted. Neither of them sat down.

  ‘I’m not really in the mood for cryptic nonsense,’ she turned on him. ‘I have lost the woman I love.’

  ‘So have I,’ he snapped back. ‘Careless of us both, isn’t it? The difference is that, at the moment, I may still be able to get mine back.’

  Hazel looked flustered. ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘Did Professor Fraser tell you about the skull?’ He was asking the questions.

  ‘Skull?’ she repeated. ‘What skull?’

  ‘The one you sent to the Quinton.’ He was at full throttle now. ‘The one you placed so carefully on Fraser’s bed, its mouth propped open with this – or at least something like it. A twig – your calling card, Ms Twigg. One piece of arrogance too far, I believe.’

  She was staring at him, her mouth open. ‘You’re mad,’ she whispered. ‘Raving mad.’

  ‘Hazel, I wonder if…’ Both of them spun round at the sound of a voice. An attractive young woman stood there, her dress as black as her short-cropped hair. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were busy.’

  ‘Um…that’s all right.’ Hazel Twigg was the first to find her composure. ‘Mr Maxwell, I’d like you to meet Mrs Susan Radley.’

  They walked together along the line of the river where the horse chestnuts gave the shade. Susan Radley barely reached Maxwell’s shoulder as she wandered beside him. It reminded him, for a moment, of a long, long time ago, when he walked with the girl he loved, to Grantchester along the Cam, fancying for a moment, along with Rupert Brooke, that his ghostly lordship still swam the pool below the mill there. The sweet, unforgettable river smell…

  ‘David lost count of the students who’ve had to be fished out of there.’ She saw his eyes trained on the brown eddies of the water, its ripples glittering in the afternoon sun.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ he said. He glanced back across the fields to where the tractor belched black, slicing the grass behind it and sending a fine green spray of allergies into the air. ‘You know, I’ve made a fool of myself in universities before. But never quite so glaringly as I did in there.’

  ‘Don’t reproach yourself, Mr Maxwell,’ she said. ‘I know the pressure you’re under.’

  Maxwell looked at her. He’d talked to widows before, women suddenly alone, having to cope in a world of one where once there had been two. He recognized the courage, the determination and the hopelessness behind those bright eyes.

  ‘It’s good of you to take me out,’ she said. ‘I needed the fresh air.’

  ‘No, no,’ he held up both hands. ‘It is I who should be thanking you. That’s Southern Rail, for you, you see. I had too much time on my way here, for reflection. I’d half-convinced myself that Hazel Twigg was a murderess. Quite how a woman of five foot two was supposed to hoist…’

  ‘A six foot husband?’ she finished the sentence for him. ‘Yes,’ she smiled for the first time. ‘It was a bit unlikely.’

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘David was a lucky man. You really are an extraordinary woman.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head and carried on walking. ‘No, I’m not. I’m carrying on with my life as best I can, but it’s not easy. Do you know, today is the fourth time I’ve tried to go through David’s things in his study. Everything has such associations, doesn’t it? Books, finds, silly mementoes.’

  ‘No.’ he shook his head. ‘Not silly. I lost my wife and child.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ she stopped suddenly. ‘Oh, Mr Maxwell, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Oh, it was all a long time ago,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid the bad news is you never forget.’

  ‘Nor would I want to,’ she said, holding her head high. ‘The year
s with David were the best of my life.’

  ‘Tell me, Mrs Radley, did David…talk to you about the dig?’

  ‘At Leighford? Of course.’

  ‘How did he get involved? Nearest Archaeology Department?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ she told him. ‘It was more complicated than that. He was approached by someone, another archaeologist, who thought there was something pretty special about Staple Hill.’

  ‘Really? What was special?’

  She looked at him. ‘You’re an historian, I understand, Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Of sorts.’

  ‘Saxon expert?’

  ‘Lord no. I’m just assistant to the assistant pot-washer at the dig.’

  ‘David…David thought there may be some connection with King Alfred – Alfred the Great.’

  It was his turn to stop walking. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What connection?’

  She shook her head. ‘Now, that he wouldn’t be drawn on. Said he needed more evidence. He was a careful man, Mr Maxwell, my David. Some people said he was a genius. And Professors of Archaeology, geniuses or not, do not stick their necks out without hard evidence.’

  Peter Maxwell looked at her. Her husband had stuck his neck out all right. In the wrong place, at the wrong time.

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ she said. ‘Do you believe in fate?’

  ‘Fate?’ he chuckled. ‘With its fickle finger…It’s difficult not to believe in it sometimes.’

  ‘I do,’ she said, folding her arms and frowning. ‘I do absolutely. And I had a bad feeling about Staple Hill. David took me there once, in the early stages three months ago. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want him to take it on.’

  ‘Can you explain why?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Oh, you’ll call it a silly female thing.’

  Now he was shaking his head. ‘No, I won’t,’ he said. ‘Really.’

  ‘The day after David…was found, I had a dream. The doctor had given me something…sedatives or whatever. Mum and Dad were marvellous as always, on hand to do all they could. But I had this dream. I was standing on Staple Hill, but there was no dig. No trench. No spoil heap. It was as though…as though I was back in time, to the Hill as it was centuries ago. It was night. I remember the wind in the trees, the distant rush of the sea. It was all so vivid. I saw men, horsemen, in helmets and mail. They were carrying something I couldn’t make out at first. Then I saw it was a body, wrapped in a shroud.’ She looked deep into his dark, sad eyes with dark, sad eyes of her own. ‘It was David’s body, Mr Maxwell. They were burying him in the ash grove…It was the sedatives, I suppose.’

  He nodded because, astonishingly for Peter Maxwell, he had no words to say.

  ‘Then, as they were laying him in the ground, I saw it. A wolf, a grey wolf, fast, proud, wild. He loped out of the ash grove and made for the high ground. It was the wolf. The wolf, I knew, had killed David.’

  ‘“Beware the wolf,”’ Maxwell quoted, ‘“the grey Heath-stalker.”’

  ‘That’s right,’ her eyes widened. ‘Do you know it, Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘I know of it,’ he told her. ‘It was an anonymous message left on the answerphone of my local paper at Leighford. What’s it from?’

  She shrugged. ‘That’s just it. I don’t know. David was always quoting it, but I can’t remember the source.’

  She turned to walk on. ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he asked. She stopped, staring into the darkness of the river. ‘You left the message on the Advertiser’s answerphone.’

  For what seemed a long time she didn’t move. Only the river breeze blew her soft hair from her lovely, oval face. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Immediately after David died, I wasn’t thinking rationally. I don’t know why, but I didn’t trust the police to get their job done. That was silly.’

  ‘DS Toogood spoke to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I believe that was his name.’

  ‘And you told him about the wolf?’

  She nodded. ‘My dad was a journalist,’ she said. ‘Fleet Street, nearly thirty years. He was all for getting involved himself, but his heart… He doesn’t get out much any more. He suggested I contact the Advertiser. What possessed me to leave that silly, cryptic nonsense, I can’t imagine.’

  ‘Mrs Radley,’ Maxwell said to her. ‘Susan. I want to ask you one more question. And I want you to be absolutely sure about the answer you give. All right?’

  She nodded.

  ‘The archaeologist, the one who persuaded David to take on the dig at Leighford; who was it?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ she said. ‘It was Derek. Derek Latymer.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hove CID had checked all the DIY and hardware stores in the area. The rope used to hang Sam Welland was bog standard – it could have come from anywhere.

  Leighford CID were working on David Radley’s clothes. The last person who admitted seeing him alive was Douglas Russell when the soon to be dead man had taken the phone call at the dig. And he had given his best description to DC Steve Holland, desperately trying to fill the infuriating little gaps in a man’s last day. Gone were the Gucci loafers, the Cotton Traders slacks, the Millett’s shirt. And gone where? They were not, certainly, at Room 13, the Quinton. Neither were they at Radley’s house. Nor in his office at the university. His attic, his cellar, his dustbins, even the remains of a bonfire in his garden had been checked and rechecked; West Sussex’s finest going through their paces with meticulous care.

  What of the emperor’s new clothes, the ones his murderer had so thoughtfully provided for him? Nothing out of the ordinary. The shirt, the trousers, the shoes, the underwear – it was all middle of the road high street stuff. And the boys and girls in blue who trudged from Next to Top Man to Matalan all drew a blank. Yes, they had sold dozens of those, but when and to whom? The till rolls alone could take months.

  That afternoon was broken by the rumble of intermittent thunder, as though the gods themselves were angry that no progress had been made. It point-blank refused to rain however. Just great grey banks of cloud forming thunderheads that never developed, except perhaps far out to sea. The grass and the leaves took on an unnatural greenness at the edge of Tam Fraser’s dig and Helen Reader felt twitchy from her toes to her trowel-hand. Something was going to happen. And it would happen soon.

  John Fry roamed the special room they’d put him in, arms folded, eyes to the ground. He ignored the view out onto the sloping lawns, the trees bright and luminous against the angry grey of the sky. He had to plan lessons for God’s sake and get home to see if Ellie had come back yet. There was just so much to do. He didn’t register the bars at the windows, the white coated nurses watching him through a grille in the door. And even as they’d wheeled him past it in his dressing gown and slippers, he hadn’t noticed the sign that read Psychiatric Department, Leighford Hospital. It was difficult for the watchers to know where John Fry was really; but he sure as hell wasn’t here.

  Dave Garstang was back in the High Street as they closed the shops. He’d been working the town all day, officially checking the clothing that the body of David Radley had been dressed in. But all the time he was actually looking for Jacquie. Alison McCormick was on his mind too, but it was Jacquie whose face he saw, whose voice he heard, whose perfume wafted past him occasionally on the wind. He’d walked this way already and had bumped into Peter Maxwell, on an equally futile quest. But surely, he reasoned, somewhere, somehow, something had to crack.

  He watched them slide back the summer awnings and drop the mesh behind the glass and go home, the stolid, dependable shop-keepers of Leighford. They’d have their tea and watch the telly and maybe nip out to the pub for a pint and a game of pool. It would be hours before dark when an altogether less stolid and dependable coterie would be on the streets – the lawless kids who, God help us all, were to be society’s future.

  He wouldn’t go home just yet. Maybe grab a half at the White Ferret, a few bar snacks; see
what came up. There was no Mrs Garstang to wait up for him. Two of his colleagues were missing, a third was dead. Maybe, tonight would be payback time.

  Margaret Hall knew all the signs. The last minute change of plan, the phone call in the dead of night, the half-eaten plateful pushed quietly away. The boys had grown up with this. It was just dad and he was a copper and sometimes, it all got a bit much for him. And he’d been there for them when he could, kicking a football around, exploring rock-pools, sitting quietly petrified on death-defying rides in Disneyland, Paris.

  That night was no exception. Henry had rung her at something past eight. There were complications and he didn’t know when etcetera, etcetera. She told him she loved him and plated up his dinner ready for the microwave and sat in the conservatory with her sewing. Somehow, she didn’t feel like eating either.

  Mad Max was back in town as television stations all over the country reached the watershed and the nightly effing and blinding began. He was hot and sticky and tired and the electrical storm that had swept across the campus at Petworth had left him feeling oddly on edge. He needed to get to the Quinton and fast, but the taxi rank outside the station was empty. He waited for a while, prowling like a caged panther. He toyed with ringing for a cab, but that would probably take longer than if he hoofed it. So off he went. He took the slope of Tavistock Street at a dead run, until he felt his legs buckle and his lungs feel like lead. He’d often read about ‘the wall’, the impassable point that long-distance runners reach after miles on the road. And he’d reached it now, just short of the Asda Superstore where the road bends.

  He was still sagging here, holding the brickwork with one hand and the stitch in his side with the other, when he saw them, clattering round the corner in their Fuck-Me shoes. His eyes narrowed against the glare of the headlights hurtling towards him, then swinging away as the traffic made the turn. Somehow he hauled himself upright and continued his trot, less focused now, more splay-footed. His throat was tight and his back in half and he realized that his shoes on the pavement would attract too much attention. So he slowed down, grateful for the reason.