Maxwell's Island

by M. J. Trow

  Back in her night-dark office, his caller smiled. Clever. Very clever. There was some other issue here that he wasn’t going to share. However, he clearly wasn’t going to tell her what his agenda was and, with all the other things on her desk, she didn’t really want to know all that much. So she let him off the hook. ‘I see. You have his address, then?’

  ‘Yes, we do.’ She seemed to have bought it, to his surprise.

  ‘Well, DCI Hall, if I could leave it with you, then? I’m not sure how to arrange identification if Mr Medlicott is too ill to travel, but we can talk that over tomorrow, perhaps.’

  ‘Be glad to,’ Henry said. ‘Could I have a contact number for you?’ She gave it and he wrote it down. ‘Thank you. Goodnight.’ He put the phone down and rubbed his eyes, which were suddenly feeling rather tired. Then he picked up the phone again and dialled zero for the front desk. ‘Do we have a WPC around at the moment?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, guv,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘We’ve got …’ There was a pause as he turned to look at the duty roster. ‘Sorry, guv. My mistake. I thought we had Mel, but she’s off sick. Do you want me to call someone in?’

  ‘No, no. Don’t do that,’ Hall said. Staff off sick could become part of a vicious circle if the powers that be weren’t careful and he had seen it many times. Staff off sick means everyone else works twice as hard. Working twice as hard means going off sick, with stress, viruses or just good old fedupitis. Best not start that cascade off. He sighed and said, ‘I’ll do it. Just send anyone you’ve got to the car park and I’ll be down there in a minute.’

  ‘Need anything special, guv? Ram, anything like that?’ The desk sergeant watched a lot of American TV and was beginning to lose the flavour of life on the streets of Leighford.

  ‘No. Nothing special. A box of tissues might come in handy, though.’

  ‘Oh,’ the desk man understood at once. ‘One of those. OK, guv. Will do.’ And the phone went down with a clatter.

  Henry Hall sat for a moment, hands flat on his desk. He took a deep breath and stood up, reaching behind him for his jacket. He hated these jobs, but he was glad he had drawn the short straw. He would be on the spot to see how Medlicott reacted to the news of his wife’s death. He had had to shelve one theory – suicide – because surely even the most determined suicide didn’t push themselves off the cliff with a well-aimed karate chop. So now he had just the two theories – wandering maniac or conspiracy. He had long ceased to believe in the wandering maniac, so that left him with one theory, which he could put to the test as soon as he got to the Medlicott’s house. He checked he had his keys, switched off his desk light and ran down the back stairs to the car park.

  Maxwell and Jacquie had settled down in their respective seats in the sitting room with their respective favourite drinks in hand. Metternich stretched out along the back of the sofa and every now and then touched a paw to Jacquie’s shoulder. She turned her head and nuzzled his back.

  ‘You’re an old softie,’ she said. The cat, outraged, got up and walked away, his tail high, his pencil sharpener bum swaggering from side to side. You give them an inch …

  ‘Oops,’ Maxwell told her. ‘You’ve offended him now.’

  ‘Well, he is,’ she said, taking a sip of her gin and tonic, not quite Pansy-style, but pretty near. She curled her feet up under her and sighed. ‘Sorry for being so wet earlier,’ she said.

  ‘Sweetie,’ Maxwell said. ‘You had every right. You’ve had a hell of a day, well, hell of a week, really. School trips are far more stressful than anybody thinks, though I must say the kids this time deserve to be mentioned in despatches. I’ve never known such a good year group. I thought we had the difficult ones; I think someone must have got the paperwork mixed up.’

  ‘Some of them were a bit strange,’ Jacquie said. ‘The one with the notebook.’

  ‘Ah, the lovely Jarvis,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘I thought his name was Gervaise,’ Jacquie said. ‘That’s what it had on the list.’

  ‘Long story. My favourite was the one who folded everything. Did you notice her?’

  ‘Oh. Do you know, I wondered where all those little pellets of paper were coming from. Which one was that?’ She was enjoying this, even if it was just pencil sharpening to stay away from the job in hand.

  ‘It was that tiny little girl, the one with the plait with about three hairs in it. She folded everything, not just paper. She was sitting next to the one with the ears, you know the one.’ He chuckled, just picturing it.

  ‘How could you miss? She looked like a taxi with the doors open.’

  ‘Yes, very unfortunate for the poor child. We were coming back from … Carisbrooke, I think it was. I took a stroll down the bus and there they were, the folder had folded the ear kid’s ears right in. They looked like little envelopes. Uncanny, it looked, and then, suddenly,’ he was leaning forward, drawing her in, ‘they popped out.’ He sprang upright, hands in the air.

  Jacquie was laughing now. ‘Poor kid. What did she do?’

  ‘Just folded them back in. It was like earigami.’

  Jacquie was disappointed. ‘I thought that was a true story,’ she complained. ‘But you did it just for the joke.’

  ‘No,’ he protested. ‘It really happened. I just thought of the joke, just now. Ask Sylv. She took a picture.’

  ‘Talking of pictures,’ Jacquie said. ‘I’ve downloaded the pictures from the camera. Henry wanted one of … one of Izzy.’

  Maxwell decided to ignore it for the present. ‘Are they good? The pictures?’

  ‘Some are. The problem was we were always with so many people. Not just the kids and staff but holidaymakers, all over the shop. And I would swear there isn’t a single one without Pansy in it.’

  ‘Surely not that one of Nole and me cleaning our teeth?’

  She laughed. ‘No, perhaps not that one.’ She twirled her glass and watched the last shards of ice break up and disappear. ‘We’ve got to talk about it, Max. We can’t pretend it hasn’t happened, can we?’

  ‘No,’ he said, solemnly. ‘We can’t. But I think we can leave it until tomorrow. You’re so tired I don’t know how you’re still upright. There’s nothing we can do tonight. Henry will see to it that Tom is told properly, sympathetically. Tomorrow, when we all feel a bit brighter, you can call Henry and see if there is anything you can do.’ It almost cost him an arm and a leg, but he didn’t ask her a single question about what she knew about the case. He could feel the words bouncing around in his head, in his mouth, beating on the inside of his skull to be let out. But he knew that this wasn’t the time. With his wife, as with good comedy, timing was everything, so he would wait.

  Jacquie wasn’t so tired that she didn’t wonder what Maxwell was up to; why wasn’t he bombarding her with questions? Perhaps she was too tired. She wasn’t concentrating. She put down her glass and yawned, stretching. ‘I think I will go up to bed. I’m pooped.’

  ‘Of course you are, heart. I’ll come and tuck you in, then I might do a spot of modelling. Is that OK?’

  She stood up and reached out a hand to him. ‘That would be lovely. Come on, then, up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.’ She pretended to haul him hand over hand to his feet and they went upstairs.

  While she was in the bathroom, he turned back the duvet and fluffed her pillows. He turned on her bedside light and turned off the main one, so that when she came back all she could see was an inviting patch of sheet in a pool of warm light, the man she loved standing there with her book in his hand, ready to hand her into bed like a very attentive butler.

  ‘Oh, no reading, I don’t think,’ she said, turning on her side. She switched her light off and reached up, lips pursed cartoon-style for a kiss. ‘Night night. See you in the morning.’

  ‘Night night,’ he said, ‘Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.’ He looked down at his wife with a smile, but she was already asleep.

  It was not true that Peter Maxwell could only think straight when he was tal
king to his cat. He had many cogent thoughts when sitting apparently asleep in staff briefings at Leighford High School, as James Diamond could ruefully attest. He could follow a train of thought through the most labyrinthine of A level Politics debates, blowing the arrogant and the ignorant out of the water having apparently been sitting marking in a corner of the room. But when it came to unravelling a crime, especially the crime of murder, his favourite sparring partner was definitely Metternich, the cat who thought for himself.

  Maxwell switched on the modelling lamp which hung over his work table. A deep pool of shadow was over the basket which had, through long usage, become the Count’s favourite seat. It had once belonged in the bathroom, but now, matted with a lightly padded covering of black and white hair, it was generally agreed that the cat could have it. He showed as some white patches in the gloom, which stirred slightly when the light snapped on.

  Maxwell adjusted the vintage forage cap which gave him his inspiration till it was at the correct angle. He picked up the partially constructed James Olley of the 4th Light Dragoons and chose a suitable brush and pot of colour. He held his breath as he applied the first delicate stroke and then exhaled gently, so as not to disturb the tiny fragments of paper, the shards of plastic which, in the fullness of time, might well become a vital piece of some other figure.

  Metternich was far too polite to begin the conversation. There was a certain protocol which prevailed in these private chats and the cat had indeed known occasions when Maxwell came up to the loft just to be quiet by the simple expedient of not speaking. But somehow, something in the air tonight kept the beast on his perch, though his superfine hearing could detect the scrabbling of bats in the eaves, the swish of tiny feet through the grass at the edge of the lawn. Given the time and the solitude, he could have heard the moths beating their powdery way towards the glow of the street light. All of them were fair game, some tastier than others. Moths, for example, made him sneeze. He’d take a frog if one crossed his path, but preferred not to, because they made him dribble. And if a frog followed a moth, he could be all night cleaning the resultant goo off his whiskers. Bats just tasted of old shoes marinated in wee. Voles made good presents, but there was nothing quite like a nice corn-fed mouse, best at this time of year. Metternich preferred to eat seasonally; he liked to watch Jamie Oliver as well as the next mammal. These mouse-based musings were interrupted as Maxwell turned to him and said something he didn’t catch.

  He raised his head. ‘Murrrhh?’ he said. It didn’t mean anything in Cat, but the Boy seemed to like it, so he used it now and then.

  Maxwell chuckled. ‘Sorry, were you miles away?’ he asked.

  He had no idea. Metternich buried his nose again, but kept one ear up, to denote that Maxwell had his full attention.

  ‘To recap,’ Maxwell said, pleasantly, ‘I was just wondering who this second body might be. It can’t be Izzy’s father, because I’m sure otherwise Tom would have mentioned that he had died through foul play. I mean,’ he put another dab of paint on Olley’s jacket, ‘it’s the sort of thing you mention, isn’t it? Not many people have a murderee in the family, do they? It’s a conversation piece.’

  There was no reply from the cat, who didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Death was a daily routine for him and if he had a mouse for every one of his friends who he had discovered squashed on the side of the road … well, his maths wasn’t great, but he knew he would have more than one mouse.

  ‘So,’ Maxwell mused, accidentally putting the wrong end of the brush in his mouth and spitting. ‘Eugghh. Cobalt blue doesn’t taste half as nice as burnt umber. So, it must be someone from where they lived before, wouldn’t you say? Where was that, can you remember?’

  Metternich had no idea.

  ‘Nottingham? No, I would have remembered that because of the sheriff. It began with “N”, I’m sure …’ He laid down a little more paint. ‘Northampton,’ he said suddenly, making the cat jump awake and sit up, looking round wildly. ‘You agree? Good, because I’m sure that’s it. Deene – Lord Cardigan’s country pad. Yes, that’s the county. The problem we have now, Count, is that I have no idea how I progress that thought, without asking the Mem outright and she has learnt a great deal of cunning over the years and can see a ploy at a thousand yards.’ He put down the little figure he was painting, carefully leaning him on an old wine cork so that his wet bits didn’t smudge. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  The cat was surprised. He wasn’t under the impression that anyone not of the feline persuasion knew all the methods for immolating moles. He was impressed, despite himself.

  ‘You’re thinking that, if only I were a little more computer literate, then I could look up newspapers and such, to see if anything was reported. And I would reply to you, that there is a box of recycling downstairs holding months’ worth of various newspapers, which might well tell us just what we need to know. And,’ Maxwell held up a triumphant finger, ‘the good bit is that the Mem needn’t know what I’m doing, because I shall simply pretend I am doing some tidying up. So, brownie points all round.’ He chuckled happily to himself, in honour of a job well done.

  The cat, who usually let him witter on regardless, couldn’t help but give him a withering look. The look said that he, Metternich, had known the Mem, Jacquie, for a much shorter time than he, Maxwell, had. The look also said that if Maxwell hadn’t sorted out yet that nothing, absolutely nothing – not a whisker, not a disembodied tail, not the tiniest giblet – got past her, then really, he should just hang up his cycle clips and give up. Metternich had had her sussed within the first five minutes, as she had him. Their affection was built on a mutual respect of one expert in the field for another. The enormous feline gave a small snort of amusement and jumped down from his perch.

  He walked to the door and looked at Maxwell in a meaningful way, which took a while to take effect.

  ‘You want feeding?’ Maxwell asked him. ‘Again? Well, I suppose you deserve it, spending your hols in a cattery.’ At this point, Jacquie would have fondled his ears, but Maxwell knew better. ‘Come on, then. Let’s see what we’ve got. I bet you’ve got some food in the cupboard.’

  They crept down the stairs, man and cat, to the kitchen, where Maxwell fed Metternich something from a pouch which purported to be steamed fish. The cat lapped it up and Maxwell, unused to such an empty fridge, almost joined him. It was only lack of bread to sop up the gravy which stopped him. That, and the sudden extreme tiredness which swept over him.

  Leaving the cat to find his own way out, Maxwell wended his way to bed and fell asleep almost at once, little caring that the blue paint on his lips would give Jacquie a hell of a turn when she woke up next to him in the morning. Anyway, he thought, as his eyelids flickered for the last time, he would have licked it off by then, so peckish was he – he’d give his right arm for a Kit Kat.

  ‘Do you know where this house is, guv?’ asked Phil Smart, the duty sergeant assigned to Henry Hall for everyone’s least favourite job.

  ‘I don’t know the very one, no,’ Hall said. ‘But I know the estate and it isn’t very big. We shouldn’t have a problem.’

  ‘I hate these places at night, don’t you?’ Smart said. ‘Nobody has proper numbers on their doors anymore, they’re all fancy carved things with hedgehogs and stuff all over them. You have to practically be in the hall before you know what the number is.’

  ‘True. Anyway, you look out for the numbers when we get there. It’s jotted down on that sheet, there, in the file.’

  The sergeant turned the sheet to the window to try and catch the light as the car whizzed down the dual carriageway on the outskirts of Leighford. He also tried to get the gist of the notes on the page. He had heard various snippets about this case in the canteen. There had been no briefing, because it wasn’t a case, really. Not for them, anyway. There was a body here, a body there. Just no bodies in Leighford. He could see this one coming up to bite the boss in the arse, if he wasn’t careful. But then, ‘careful�
�� was Henry Hall’s middle name.

  ‘Nearly there, Phil. Ready?’

  ‘Yep. Whoah, could you slow down a bit, guv? Small numbers.’ Craftcarn Avenue wasn’t very long, but of course they had come in at the high-number end, and although the development was quite new, the waters had already been muddied by various ‘a’s and ‘b’s added when granny annexes had been built, or gardens sold.

  Hall braked and they crawled past the houses, Smart counting under his breath as they went.

  ‘It should be that one, guv, over there. Oh, hang on. I’ve done that wrong. He’s in bed, sedated, isn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Hall.

  ‘Well, he must have got up again. All the lights are on, if that’s the right house.’

  ‘That’s strange,’ Hall said. ‘It was light when they brought him back. I’m sure they wouldn’t have just left them on. Perhaps you’ve counted wrong.’ But, as they got nearer, it was clear that he hadn’t. The Medlicott house was ablaze with light. Literally every bulb in the place must have been burning, down to the security light outside and the decorative fairy lights still in the tree since last Christmas.

  ‘What’s going on, guv?’ Smart asked. ‘Do you think he’s had some kind of, well, a breakdown of some sort?’ Smart was a bit of an amateur psychiatrist. He had, after all, watched every episode of Frasier, some of them many times, and he could swap Freud and Jung with the best of them. ‘He’s probably put the lights on so that he can see his wife when she gets back.’

  Hall rarely felt a shudder down his spine. But he did now. ‘Let’s hope not, Phil. I’m sure there’s a sensible explanation.’ He cut the engine and they got out of the car. ‘I just can’t think quite what it might be.’

  Unconsciously mirroring each other, for comfort, the two men walked up the brick drive and Hall rang the bell. It echoed down the hall but no one came to the door.