Maxwell's Island

by M. J. Trow

  ‘No,’ he said, hurriedly. ‘I was just trying to be funny. A little joke, Millie, that’s all.’ Suddenly the whole week caught up with him in one hit and he wanted to be home, snuggled up with Jacquie, Nole and the Count, watching something mindless on telly, no one missing, no one ill. Just the usual same ol’, same ol’.

  ‘I see.’ She fetched him a sharp one on the arm. ‘Cheer me up. How thoughtful.’ The whole speech was delivered in the tones of a sarcophagus lid closing. ‘Thank you. But I think what I meant was, she seemed frightened of you.’

  ‘Me?’ Maxwell cast his mind back. Taken in one way, he supposed that the old woman’s words could be construed that way, but there was no need for Mrs Troubridge to be frightened of him, surely. ‘I think you must have misunderstood, Millie. Apart from anything else, I wasn’t even in Leighford when she fell.’

  ‘As far as we know,’ Millie said, darkly. ‘As far as we know.’ Then, as if she had not spoken, she said, brightly, ‘Did you take Nolan to the zoo, at all, on the Isle of Wight?’

  ‘Not the zoo, as such, no. Jacquie isn’t wild about snakes and they rather specialise. On our free afternoon, we went to Amazon World. Anteaters, tapirs, sloths, that sort of creature.’

  ‘How lovely. Even sloths are very endearing as babies, aren’t they?’

  ‘They have their moments,’ Maxwell agreed. It was quite difficult to keep up with Millie’s thought processes, but fortunately, they had arrived at the door of the Horse & Collar, an unpretentious pub with the cheapest beer and wine and the most expensive food in town, to allow for the habits of the local influx from the medical professions. The ground outside was carpeted with dog-ends, mostly sucked down to the filter. On fine nights, there were more people outside than in. Maxwell pushed open the door and gestured to Millie. ‘Shall we?’

  ‘I don’t usually go in to pubs, Mr Maxwell,’ she said, looking furtively in through the door, as if expecting an orgy to be taking place in the public bar.

  ‘Well, you’re with me,’ he smiled, giving her a nudge, which did no good. ‘You’ll be perfectly safe.’

  ‘Well, just a tiny drink, then,’ she said and edged in, shyly. There was a table right by the door and Maxwell pulled out one of the chairs for her. ‘You are such a gentleman,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What will you have to drink?’ he asked, rummaging for his wallet.

  ‘What are you going to have?’ she asked, a little coquettishly. The effect was not attractive and Maxwell was keen to get away for a minute to the bar, where he could recover.

  ‘My usual drink is Southern Comfort,’ he said, ‘but …’

  ‘I’ll have one of those, then,’ she said, ‘if I may?’

  ‘Ice?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I have sensitive gums.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ Maxwell said and went up to the bar, leaning on it in the time-honoured tradition, one foot up on the rail, a note between his fingers.

  ‘Evening, Mr Maxwell,’ a voice said in his ear. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat. He had specifically said ‘No Leighford Highenas’ on his way down the stairs, and yet here was one. ‘Not often we see you in here.’

  Reluctantly, he turned his head. Praise be – not an Old Leighford Highena, but Donald, the post-mortem technician. Almost unbelievably, he appeared to have put on a few hundredweight. ‘Donald! How the hell are you?’ he said, shaking the man’s hand. ‘I haven’t seen you since Adam was in the Militia.’

  ‘No,’ Donald said ruefully. ‘We’re very quiet at the moment. Dr Astley’s on his holiday and we’ve got a locum in.’ He ran the sentence back and realised it made little sense. ‘Not that that’s why we’re quiet, of course. That’s two completely different things.’

  ‘Yes, I do understand, Donald,’ Maxwell said. ‘I didn’t think that even Dr Astley provided his own bodies.’ He let his eyes swivel sideways and leant closer, ‘Although, I did hear the odd rumour …’ and he nudged Donald where he presumed his ribs ought to be. ‘Have you ever given any thought to why things go quiet? There must be a reason.’ The barman caught his eye. ‘I’ll have two Southern Comforts, no ice and … Donald?’

  The big man downed the remains of his pint and slammed the glass down on the bar. ‘I’ll have another of these, thanks very much, Mr Maxwell. Two Southern Comforts? Is Jacquie … I mean, Mrs Maxwell with you?’ Donald and Angus, the forensics supremo, fought over Jacquie’s supposed attentions, in a spirit of brotherly competition. Unbeknownst to Maxwell they both had photos of her, head to foot in SOCO whites, in their respective lockers. Donald turned his head without removing his elbows from the bar; a neat trick honed over the years of solitary drinking. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I hate to disappoint you, Donald,’ Maxwell said, picking up his change, ‘but I’m not with Jacquie. I’m with that lady over there, by the door.’

  This time, Donald turned round completely, spilling a fair bit of his pint in the process. ‘Good God, Mr Maxwell. Have you gone nuts?’ The technician could scarcely believe the evidence of his own eyes. ‘What a moose.’

  ‘Now, Donald,’ Maxwell said, calmly, picking up the Southern Comforts. ‘Millie might not be to everyone’s taste, but I am pretty sure she has a heart of gold.’

  ‘Where?’ Donald asked. ‘How would you know? Blimey, Mr Maxwell, I’m glad I don’t have to get that one in one of my fridges.’

  ‘Your sensitivity does you credit, Donald. Anyway, nice seeing you. Give my regards to Dr Astley when he returns. Gone anywhere nice, has he?’

  ‘Huh.’ This was clearly a sore point. ‘He’s come into some money. Somebody died. He and the lush are cruising round the Greek Islands, apparently. For a month.’

  Maxwell knew that Marjorie Astley drank a bit. Or rather more than a bit, in fact. Obviously Donald knew as well. Perhaps a month on ouzo and retsina might be a good way of getting her out of the habit. ‘Nice. I hope Jacquie doesn’t get to hear of it. We were supposed to be going abroad for our holidays this autumn, but something came up.’

  ‘Something nice?’ Donald asked politely.

  ‘Not ever so, no. It was a school trip to the Isle of Wight.’

  ‘Oooh,’ Donald said. ‘I didn’t know that was you. Was it the one where that woman was butchered in the hotel shower?’

  ‘No, Donald,’ Maxwell said, with a sigh. Did gossip know no bounds? ‘That was Janet Leigh in the Bates Motel and it was Psycho. Anyway, as I think I said, nice to see you. I must rejoin my guest.’ Donald launched himself off the bar, with the clear intention of following Maxwell to the table. An evening of Donald and Millie, no matter how little time remained, was quite a picture and he knew he must get out of it, if only he could work out how. A small noise worked its way into his brain. ‘Is that your bum making that noise?’ he asked, pointing.

  Donald slapped his pocket and then drew out a pager. ‘Oh, bugger. I’m needed. Never mind.’ He drained his pint in one and slammed the glass down again. ‘My fault for saying we were quiet.’

  ‘You’re on duty?’ Maxwell asked, surprised. He had always thought that post-mortems tended to be done in the day, to a timetable, strictly nine to five and usually two days after the event.

  ‘Overtime,’ he said. ‘We have an on-call system for the SOCO and they are a bit short-handed. Also, this locum they’ve got in for Astley, well, she’s a bit green, so I said I would be on when she was, help out, know what I mean?’

  ‘She?’ The light was dawning. Donald was a sucker for a pretty face.

  ‘Strictly professional.’ The fat man bridled, setting his chins wobbling. ‘I don’t know if it is SOCO yet, though. It might just be somebody croaked in theatre, something like that.’

  Maxwell dropped his voice and Donald leant in to listen. ‘My … companion and I have just come from visiting a very sick friend in the General. So, perhaps …’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Maxwell. Lips are sealed.’ And Donald swept through the doors with a jaunty wave at Millie, to his date with
Death.

  ‘A friend of yours?’ Millie asked, when Maxwell sat down.

  ‘Not as such,’ he told her. ‘Just someone I have met while … enjoying my hobby.’

  Her eyes shone. ‘Hobbies. Yes. Marvellous things. I, for instance, derive so much pleasure from my genealogy. I could tell you some tales! Oh, yes.’ And she proceeded to do so until, like an angel of mercy, Jacquie’s head popped round the door of the pub.

  ‘Millie!’ she cried, somehow adding subliminally to Maxwell, ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘Darling!’ he replied, adding in body language, ‘Don’t worry. She just needs a lift to the station.’ To make things clearer he added, out loud, ‘Millie needs a lift to the station, heart, if that is possible.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jacquie said, holding the door open for them both. ‘Not a problem at all. Oh,’ she glanced at the table, ‘finish your drinks first. No hurry.’

  Millie picked up her glass and chugged back the drink. For a stranger to liquor, she had a hell of a swallow on her. The drunk in the corner all but applauded.

  ‘I won’t bother, thanks, honeybunch,’ Maxwell said, eyes wide.

  ‘That is very pleasant,’ Millie boomed. ‘What did you say it was called?’

  ‘Southern Comfort,’ Maxwell said, stealing a sidelong glance at Jacquie.

  ‘Lovely,’ Millie said, licking her top lip to get the last drop. ‘I must get some in for Christmas.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jacquie, herding her charges towards the car. ‘The station it is.’ The first mad bars of ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ rang out. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I should take this.’ She wandered off away from the car, head inclined and one finger in her ear. Maxwell chased her, ostensibly to get the keys, but also to listen in if possible. Unfortunately, his timing was way off and she was receiving rather than transmitting. He went back towards Millie, swinging the keys around one finger. There was some unseemly struggling with the complexities of the immobiliser and the door had only just sprung open when Jacquie returned and slid into the driving seat without speaking.

  Millie got in the car and looked around, perplexed. ‘Where is Nolan?’ she asked. ‘You surely haven’t left him at home all alone?’

  ‘No,’ Jacquie said, tersely. ‘Of course not. He is staying with some friends of ours. The school trip was a little stressful. Max and I needed a break for a day or two.’

  ‘Really,’ Millie said, acidly. ‘Well, I must say, had I ever been lucky enough to have a child, especially one as lovely as Nolan, I shouldn’t just leave him with any Tom, Dick or Harry because I wanted a break.’

  ‘Goodness me, Millie,’ Maxwell said, mildly. ‘Keep your wig on. We are lucky to have Nolan, I especially am lucky to have him, and we don’t just fling him at the nearest passer-by. But even if we did, I don’t really think it is anyone’s place to say so.’ He might have been a public schoolboy, but even Maxwell had his limits. Neither David Starkey nor Jeremy Paxman were overkeen to mix it with him.

  The sweet Millie was back in an instant. ‘Oh, no, no offence intended,’ she purred, making the dashboard vibrate. ‘I just feel very strongly about family, as you know.’

  Maxwell, who had come as near to hating history as he ever would come in his life whilst listening to her stories of genealogy adventures, nodded, his head lolling tiredly. He almost drifted off as Jacquie negotiated all the short cuts a woman policeman learns and got them to the station in record time. She stopped at the front entrance and leapt out and wrenched Millie’s door open, virtually dragging the woman out.

  ‘Well, lovely to see you again, Millie. Where do you need the train for?’

  ‘Brighton, but …’

  ‘Lovely. Far platform. Around every half an hour at this time, I believe. Smashing to see you again. Bye bye.’ She leapt into the car and was off, as if Leighford Station was the starting point of a race and she was in pole position.

  Maxwell turned and waved out of the rear window as Millie’s waving figure grew smaller as the distance between them grew, rather more quickly than the speed limit strictly allowed. Then they turned a corner and she was gone.

  ‘Tom, Dick or Harry?’ exploded Jacquie. ‘Who the hell does she think she is?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Don’t say Millie bloody Muswell or you can go and share her hotel room with her, Mister, and no mistake.’ Jacquie was an excellent driver, which was just as well, because the phrase ‘to cut corners’ was seldom as accurate as it was now. She flung the car round as though she was on a crash test circuit and, seat belt notwithstanding, Maxwell was flung from side to side as if he was the dummy of the same ilk. Something had upset her, and it wasn’t a bit of lip from Millie Muswell. Experience told Maxwell to just hang on and wait; she would tell him in her own good time.

  ‘Sodding, buggering, sodding bugger,’ Jacquie exploded as soon as they got through the front door at 38 Columbine and burst into tears.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ Maxwell said, scooping her up, to get a kick on the shin and a thump on the arm for his pains. Plan B. ‘Jacquie.’ He shook her. ‘What is the matter with you? Ever since …’ he stopped shaking her and lowered his voice. ‘Ever since you got that phone call, you’ve been like a thing possessed.’ A horrible thought crept like cold water up the back of his neck, over his scalp and seemed to settle in the fine skin round his eyes, making it hard to focus. ‘What was it? Is it Mrs Troubridge? She seemed very …’

  Jacquie shook her head, reached into her pocket and, pulling out a handkerchief, blew her nose hard. ‘No,’ she said, squaring her shoulders and looking him in the eye, almost defiantly. ‘It’s Izzy. Some kids looking for a quiet spot for a barbecue, smoke a few joints, generally not get interrupted, found her. She’s dead at the bottom of a cliff, with a broken neck.’ And finally, she fell into his arms and cried, cried for the dead woman, her husband and everything sad in the world.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Henry Hall was sitting quietly at his desk, full of a Chinese meal, but not so full that he couldn’t cheerfully have eaten another, when his phone rang.

  ‘No calls,’ he said sharply, then listened to the desk sergeant who was on the other end. ‘Is it? Put them through.’ He waited only semi-patiently to the series of clicks and whirrs that this instruction set in motion.

  ‘Is that DCI Hall?’ A woman’s voice, clipped and businesslike came through.

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Sergeant Carpenter-Maxwell gave me your number and asked me to ring. This is Hampshire Police.’

  ‘Right.’ Henry Hall armed himself with a pencil, ready to take down some numbers, names, case numbers. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Nothing to fire with, really, DCI Hall,’ the woman said, flatly. ‘I am just ringing to tell you that, pending visual identification, we believe we have found the body of Isabelle Medlicott.’

  Hall dropped his pencil and also almost dropped the phone. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought you were just ringing to … well, to make contact.’ He found his pencil again and pulled a larger piece of paper towards him. ‘Where was she found?’

  ‘At the bottom of a cliff, not much more than half a mile from the hotel where the group was staying. As I understand it, they did go out to look for her.’

  ‘I believe so, yes,’ said Hall, making notes.

  ‘If you should come across any of the people involved in that search, then I would appreciate if you could make it clear to them that it would have made no difference had they found her. Death was instantaneous.’

  After he got used to the feeling that the woman was reading from a script, Hall appreciated her style. ‘I assume she struck a rock, or something. With her head?’ Without small talk from the other end, not so much as an ‘uh-huh’ it was like talking into a bucket.

  ‘She may well have done, yes,’ the policewoman said. ‘In fact, there are contusions on Mrs Medlicott’s body, but they are all post-mortem. In fact, our pathologist is of the opinion that her neck was broken at the c
liff top.’

  Henry Hall felt the world stop turning. His life flashed before him, especially the bit spent sitting next to Mrs Troubridge’s bed, looking at all the many and varied bruises on her body. In his memory, it seemed that there were some, around her neck, that had nothing to do with a fall downstairs. ‘Strangled?’ he asked.

  ‘No. He thinks a chop. She has grass and soil under her fingernails, so we think that it was a push, but she saved herself. Then, the murderer leant over and gave her a karate chop with the side of the hand. He must have been quite powerful.’

  ‘Definitely a man?’ Hall had to check, but a man was beginning to take shape in his mind. Not too powerful in the Arnold Schwarzenegger sense, perhaps, but fit enough.

  ‘I should say so, but, of course, we must never say never, DCI Hall. Anyway, I’m sorry to be ringing you so late and with such sad news. I understand that Sergeant Carpenter-Maxwell was a friend of the family.’

  ‘She knows them, yes,’ Hall said. He didn’t want to label Jacquie as a friend. It was going to be bad enough trying to tie everything together, what with different forces and only a thread in his brain to link them, without having Jacquie off the case because of conflict of interest.

  ‘She seemed quite upset,’ the woman remarked.

  ‘She would be, yes. She … it’s very complicated.’

  ‘I see. Well, apart from keeping you in the loop, DCI Hall, I rang to ask if you could send someone out to inform the husband. Sergeant Carpenter-Maxwell was very insistent that we didn’t phone him. She said he is under medication at the moment, is that right?’

  ‘He is, yes,’ Hall confirmed. ‘He came in to the station, but we took medical advice and our police surgeon gave him a sedative and we took him home.’ He sensed the woman’s heightened awareness on the other end of the phone.

  ‘He’s been in to the station? May I ask why, particularly?’

  ‘We just wanted a chat. We only had second-hand information and I felt that since this had happened on a school trip, we needed extra confirmation, in case this should become a child protection issue.’ Hall was proud of himself; he had managed to justify himself without lying too much.