Maxwell's War

by M. J. Trow

  Mrs Robinson frowned. ‘Now I wonder whose child it was,’ she muttered.

  ‘We are carrying out tests,’ Jacquie offered, ‘but it’s a long shot. There’s no one you know … no one Barbara spoke of in her life at the minute?’

  ‘Barbara and I were never all that close, my dear,’ the old lady said through her rouge and lipstick. ‘We talked on the telephone each week, but neither of us had anything to say. It sometimes happens that way with children. I hope you never find out.’

  ‘Mrs Robinson,’ Jacquie found herself fidgeting in the high-backed chair, ‘as a couple, can you think of anyone who would want to see them both dead?’

  ‘He was a noxious individual,’ Alice remembered. ‘From day one I warned Babs not to get involved. There was some trouble when she was in her early twenties. She rented the Bournemouth house from us then and we were staying there too. Miles would have been a little older. I remember the police calling. I don’t remember the details now, something to do with the disappearance of a derelict, I believe. But I do remember a kindly old uniformed sergeant advising Babs to stay away from Miles. And of course for several years, she did. What she saw in him, I can’t imagine. But as for her … Well, what mother doesn’t imagine her goose is a swan, my dear? Babs had her faults. She was selfish, vain, rather headstrong and wilful – all that from her father of course, and I suppose that might have made enemies. But enough to kill her? No, I can’t believe that. Tell me, my dear, when will I be able to have her back, her body, I mean? I would like to pay my last respects.’

  Peter Maxwell leaned on the doorbell at the Larches. He seemed to have been leaning that way for ever when a small, solid-looking woman answered the door.

  ‘You must be Helen’s gran,’ Maxwell raised his hat.

  ‘That’s right. Who are you?’

  ‘Peter Maxwell, Head of the Sixth Form at Leighford High.’

  She tried to slam the door in his face, but Maxwell was faster and jammed his foot in the way. ‘Mrs Hetherington, we haven’t seen Helen at school for nearly three weeks now. I’d like to talk to her.’

  ‘She ain’t here,’ the woman snapped, infinitely more decisive face to face than she had been on the phone. Where was the tapioca woman now? ‘Now, let go of this door or I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Gran!’ a female voice called from upstairs. ‘Who is it, Gran?’

  ‘It’s that Maxwell,’ the old woman shrieked back into the hall. ‘From up at the school.’

  There was a slam from the bedroom door.

  ‘There!’ Mrs Hetherington said firmly. ‘Now look what you’ve done. You’ve upset her now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Hetherington,’ Maxwell said. ‘That was not my intention. I just need to know why Helen isn’t coming to school any more. If it’s Giles Sparrow, I understand that she’d be upset …’

  ‘Giles Sparrow?’ the old woman trilled. ‘What’s he got to do with it? Bloody Sparrows everywhere! He’s a bloody murderer. His uncle was a queer and killed hisself – which is the best thing to do if you’re queer. My Helen’s just going through a rough time that’s all. She’s under the doctor.’

  ‘She’s missing a lot of work, Mrs Hetherington,’ Maxwell told her. ‘I had some sent round, but it’s not the same.’

  ‘She’s not well enough for that. I’ve told you, she’s under the doctor,’ and she kicked Maxwell’s foot out of the way before slamming the door. ‘Now, you go away before I call the police,’ he heard her muffled voice from inside the hall.

  Peter Maxwell knew when he faced his Waterloo. He’d fought wild women before – and men; shrieking parents who knew their rights and defended their demon offspring to the death. In his halcyon days, when W.E. Forster had passed the first ever Education Act and men walked in front of steam cars with scarlet flags, he’d have gone head to toe with Mrs Hetherington and the police officers she’d summon and come out on top. But Peter Maxwell was in the Autumn of his days. Oh, he was still ‘battling Maxie’ and mad as a March hare, but in life’s battles now, he chose his own ground and kept his powder dry. This was a day for discretion. Time enough for valour later. He looked up to the bedroom window as he swung White Surrey away from the Hetherington fence. Helen McGregor looked down on him from behind the twitching nets. Four hundred years ago she’d have been sticking pins into a wax puppet of Peter Maxwell. But they were different days. She let two fingers in the air suffice.

  ‘I’ve got two words to say to you, Chief Inspector Hall,’ Jim Astley was on the phone in his lab, looking for somewhere to tap out the contents of his pipe. The recent Home Office directive on good laboratory practice would do.

  ‘And they are?’ Henry Hall was all ears.

  ‘Haemoglobin S.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Jim Astley liked to be smug. It was one reason why he’d chosen medicine as a career in the first place – you could use the long words and blind your fellow man with science.

  ‘I won’t bore you with the small print,’ he chortled. ‘The years of dedication, sleight of hand and enormity of brain power required for the tests I carried out this morning. Suffice it to say that I checked Barbara Needham’s baby as per your request

  ‘And?’

  ‘It turns out the father is black or at the very least half caste.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Now, I realize this is not a crime,’ Astley went on, ‘at least not in West Sussex, but if you are looking for a motive, well, even in these politically correct days …’

  ‘Can you be more specific?’ Hall wanted to know.

  He was lucky it was only Astley’s eyes that rolled towards the ceiling and not the top of his head. ‘Do you mean can I tell you the man’s brand of aftershave and where he buys his Y-fronts, no, pardon me all to Hell, I can’t. Contrary to what you may have been taught in the police academy, all that Sherlock Holmes stuff is bollocks. But I can tell you he is African. First or second generation, I’d say. Well, there it is; take it or leave it.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll take it, doctor,’ Hall said. ‘And thanks – I owe you one.’

  The Chief Inspector flicked his intercom, ferreting in his desk drawer for his sandwiches and flask. ‘Janet,’ he said, ‘get me Cambridge CID will you? And have a squad car standing by. I’m not sure the Chief Constable will wear me commandeering a plane in these stringent times.’

  Lieutenant Henry Fitzhardinge Berkeley Maxse was coming on a treat. Maxwell sat in his lamp-lit garret that night crossing his eyes as he applied the very tip of his paint brush to the man’s blue and gold pill box cap.

  ‘Whaddya think, Count?’ he asked the cat, ‘Moustache, of course. De rigeur. Nobody would be seen dead in the Crimea without a moustache – and that included Mrs Duberley. Full dundrearies? Or is that over the top?’

  He was still deciding what sort of facial hair to give his 54-millimetre soldier, sitting nonchalantly astride his roan when the phone rang.

  ‘Bugger and shit!’ Maxwell jerked the paintbrush away just in time before Maxse’s entire head turned gold. He rammed the brush horizontally in his teeth and picked up the phone.

  Metternich looked at him with utter contempt. What was this love affair with plastic? At least picking it up stopped that bloody noise.

  ‘War Office,’ Maxwell slurred over the wood between his molars.

  ‘Max?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘It’s me, Bwana.’

  ‘John!’ Maxwell whipped out the brush and left a golden line across his cheek. ‘How are you? Where are you?’

  ‘Leighford Police Station.’

  ‘What? Ah, so you talked to them after all.’

  ‘Not exactly, Max. They talked to me. Listen, I need your help.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, you know I’m allowed one phone call.’

  ‘Yes,’ Maxwell drew the word out. He somehow knew what was coming next.

  ‘Well, you’re it. You’re my phone call.’

  ‘Right. Give me your solici
tor’s number.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t want my solicitor, Max, Bwana. I want you.’

  ‘Well, you’re a funny age, John, me ol’ Uncle Tom, but seriously …’

  ‘Max,’ the Head of Sixth Form could hardly miss the change of tone. ‘This is me being serious. I’ve never been so serious in my life. I’m in a hole, Bwana. I need your help.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell?’ a different voice hummed along the wires.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Inspector Watkiss. I’m on the other line.’

  ‘Should you be eavesdropping on a private call?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘There’s nothing private that comes out of a police station, Mr Maxwell,’ Watkiss told him. ‘Especially in a murder inquiry. I have to caution you that Dr Irving’s request is highly unusual. I assume you have no legal training?’

  ‘I watch Kavanagh QC,’ Maxwell said, straight-faced.

  There was a brief silence. ‘If you think this is some sort of game, Mr Maxwell …’

  ‘Never played games if I could avoid it,’ Maxwell said, hauling off the Crimean forage cap he always wore when painting to give him that sense of camaraderie with his plastic men. ‘It was always more fun thinking up scams to get out of it.’

  ‘Would you like a squad car, sir?’ Watkiss sounded tired, unprepared to waste any more of his time.

  ‘Thank you, no. I can do Leighford nick in fourteen minutes flat with a tail wind. And don’t worry, Inspector – my vehicle does have lights and an anti-theft device; so do sleep well – don’t have nightmares.’ And he hung up, leaving Dave Watkiss wondering just how many books he could throw at the man when he arrived.

  ‘Well, Count.’ Maxwell switched off the lights and put lids on paint tins, not always in that order. ‘I fear our swarthy friend has put his great size tens into it this time.’ He paused while stuffing his trouser-bottoms into his socks, ‘Did I or did I not urge him to give himself up only the other day?’

  Metternich said nothing, but then he was like that.

  ‘You know perfectly well I did,’ Maxwell was looking for his keys, ‘But not him as would. Oh, dear, no.’ He found them under a copy of Everyman His Own Jehovah’s Witness a strange caller had pushed through his letterbox the day before. He looked at the cat. ‘I don’t suppose you’d care to accompany me to the station, would you?’

  Metternich’s head sunk sullenly into his shoulders, his ears flat, his eyes closed.

  ‘No, I thought not,’ Maxwell murmured.

  Detective Inspector Dave Watkiss was probably late thirties. He had a long, unfashionable face topped by an unfashionable fringe and because someone once told him he looked not unlike Jeremy Paxman, he’d grown a moustache to reduce the possibility. Well, it was that or plastic surgery. The other man, Maxwell didn’t know, but he was glad in a way that it wasn’t Jacquie Carpenter. He didn’t need distractions tonight, of all nights.

  ‘Interview commencing at … eleven thirteen. DI Watkiss, DC Firth in the presence of Dr John Irving and … Mr Peter Maxwell. Mr Maxwell, for the record, is not a solicitor and is here merely at the request of Dr Irving, said Dr Irving having been advised against this. Is that correct, Dr Irving?’

  The coloured man nodded. They sat in Interview Room Number Two at Leighford Police Station, as bleak and forbidding a place as a guilty man could wish for.

  ‘You have to speak, sir,’ Watkiss said with what little patience he had left. ‘Even equipment this sophisticated doesn’t pick up a nod, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Er … sorry.’ Irving cleared his throat. ‘Yes, that is correct.’

  ‘You are John William Irving of 124, St Neot’s Rd, Cambridge?’

  ‘Yes,’ Irving answered.

  ‘And you are a lecturer in history at Caius College, Cambridge?’

  ‘That’s pronounced “Keys”, Inspector,’ Maxwell interrupted. ‘For the record.’ And he winked at his man.

  ‘For the record, Mr Maxwell,’ Watkiss leaned forward with as much menace as the whirring spools would allow him, ‘This interview is to be conducted along strict procedural lines. You may not interrupt unless on a point of legality. And since you don’t know any points of legality, I suggest you shut up. Okay?’

  Maxwell beamed at him in silence, pleading the Fifth.

  ‘What was your relationship with the late Mrs Barbara Needham?’ Watkiss asked Irving. Firth was lolling back in shirt and tie. A young man with a bland face and blond hair, he could have been one of those children from the Village of the Damned. Maxwell knew the type – he’d been teaching them for years.

  ‘I don’t have a relationship with Mrs Needham,’ Irving said.

  ‘Really?’ Watkiss’s eyes narrowed and his nose became even more hawklike. ‘Then how do you explain your phone number being in her phone book?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Irving shrugged, staring ahead at Watkiss, not daring to turn to Maxwell, who watched his old mucker with a growing sense of unease.

  ‘And how do you account for the fact that Mrs Needham made … four calls to … Keys … college in the last week of her life?’

  ‘Once again,’ Irving blustered, ‘I am at a loss …’

  ‘When we picked you up this lunch time, Dr Irving, your college secretary, Mrs Maguire? …’

  ‘Yes,’ Irving cleared his throat, dry and tight as it was.

  ‘Yes,’ Watkiss smiled, ‘she was very helpful. She’d taken two of the calls. Apparently, you wouldn’t speak to Mrs Needham at first.’

  ‘That’s almost certainly because I didn’t know who she was.’

  ‘But then you relented,’ Watkiss said. ‘Calls three and four you accepted. Though to be fair, Mrs Maguire was only able to tell us about call three. Call four came through direct after hours when she’d gone home. Give us those figures again, Roger, will you?’

  DC Firth slid his note pad into the pool of light over the blank table top. ‘Call three lasted four minutes, seven seconds,’ he said. ‘Call four two minutes eighteen seconds.’

  ‘Wonderful service, British Telecom, isn’t it?’ Watkiss beamed. Then the smile vanished and his face darkened. ‘Would you like to revise your previous statement, sir, in the light of all this? What was your relationship with Mrs Barbara Needham?’

  Irving felt all eyes on him, boring into his soul. ‘There was no relationship,’ he insisted. ‘She rang me a few times, that was all.’

  ‘I see,’ Watkiss leaned back, hands clasped across his shirt. ‘Do you mind telling me why?’

  ‘She wanted to enrol on a Cambridge summer course that I run.’

  ‘Really?’ This came as a surprise to DI Watkiss and still more of a surprise to Peter Maxwell. ‘Is this at Keys?’ Watkiss stressed the word each time for Maxwell’s benefit.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. It’s on the slave trade. Or at least she thought it was. Actually she got her dates wrong. It was at Easter.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell her that in her first call?’ Watkiss asked, ‘That she’d missed the boat, as it were?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Persistent, was she?’ Firth asked. He’d picked up the wheedling I’m-going-to-get-right-up-your-nose tone from his DI.

  ‘Clearly,’ Irving responded.

  ‘Tell me, Dr Irving.’ Watkiss cut in. ‘What sort of car do you drive?’

  ‘An Audi. Why?’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Silver.’

  ‘Ah,’ Watkiss took his time checking the notes in front of him. ‘There was a silver Audi parked outside the Longshoreman pub on the night Mrs Needham was killed.’

  Something in Dave Watkiss’s tone didn’t sit right with Peter Maxwell. He’d been lied to by a lot of people at the Chalk Face in his quarter of a century in the business, most of them his teaching colleagues and many of them far more consummate than DI Watkiss. ‘That’s not quite true, Inspector, is it?’ he asked disingenuously.

  The look on Watkiss’s face said it all, and he dropped tha
t particular line of inquiry. ‘How well did you know Miles Needham?’ he rattled the question at Irving.

  ‘Hardly at all,’ the Cambridge man told him. ‘We met a few months ago in London. I suppose we had three or four meetings to discuss the script of The Captain’s Fancy. I wouldn’t say I knew him well at all, really.’

  ‘And Barbara Needham wasn’t present at any of these meetings?’

  ‘No, of course not. They were purely business. I wouldn’t expect the man to bring his wife.’

  ‘Who was there?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Irving had not exactly slept for a while. The whole nightmare was exploding again and again whenever he shut his eyes. So he preferred not to shut his eyes.

  ‘Those production meetings or whatever you call them. Who was there?’

  ‘Well, Miles of course. Angela Badham, his PA. There was a bigwig or two at the first one – I’m sorry, I don’t remember their names. Oh, at the last two was Erika Marriner.’

  ‘Who’s she?’ Watkiss asked.

  ‘The writer.’

  ‘Got on with her, did you?’ the Inspector probed, every avenue worth a wander.

  ‘She’s mad as a snake, Inspector,’ Maxwell couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Dr Irving?’ Watkiss continued to focus on his man.

  ‘She’s a little … eccentric, yes. She didn’t like what Miles and I had done to her baby.’

  ‘Baby, Dr Irving?’ Watkiss had a strange look in his eyes.

  ‘Her creation. The Captain’s Fancy. I was brought in to add some gravitas, I suppose. Mr Maxwell here was brought in because I realized I needed help on the battle scenes.’

  Watkiss and Firth shot sideways glances to the man of war to their right.

  ‘Tell me,’ Watkiss changed tack. ‘How well did you know Hannah Morpeth?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Irving shrugged. ‘I met her on the set, of course. She seemed charming.’

  ‘Make a pass at her, did you?’ Watkiss’s barbs were all the sharper for being unexpected.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Irving insisted.

  ‘No, I suppose she was a little young for you.’ Watkiss was fishing. ‘And a little unattached. You like ’em married, don’t you, Doctor? Somebody else’s wife? That’s what they call race memory, isn’t it?’