by M. J. Trow
Upstairs, they had to be quieter, so as not to disturb Margaret and Nolan. Jacquie had decided to assume that Maxwell would not have left anything in Nolan’s room. He was punctilious about not involving his little boy in any dark doings which might cross his path. With the experience of the Medlicotts in mind, Jacquie searched their bedroom. It was a given that Maxwell would not have left a message in any electronic format, but Jacquie kept a pad by the bed, for night calls, and she checked every page of that. Nothing.
They had high hopes of the study, but there didn’t seem to be anything amiss. Henry noticed Jacquie’s passport on the desk; she was still obviously hoping for a break in the sun. The computer was off and cold. Although Hall knew, unlike most of Maxwell’s colleagues, to whom he was still the dinosaur, that Maxwell was fairly computer-literate, he would not have expected him to have left a message on the thing. He would have needed Jacquie to get him past the home page, for one thing. Even so, they waited for it to grind into life so they could check. The Maxwells had been saying for ages that they needed a newer model; Jacquie had never wanted a faster computer so much in her life. Eventually, the screen lit and she could search for new documents. Again, nothing.
Only the attic remained. They went up the stairs and Jacquie switched on the light. Hall had visited this room before, but never failed to be amazed at the trompe-l’oeil achieved by the ranks of tiny soldiers arrayed on the sand-painted board. The valley was laid out in front of him, the doomed riders almost seeming to shift in their saddles as their horses rattled their bits and stamped their hooves in anticipation.
‘Guv,’ Jacquie whispered. ‘Over here.’
Carefully skirting the diorama, Hall joined her at the modelling table. She had switched on the light over it and the surface sprang up in extreme detail. Among the shavings of wood and plastic, daubed at one corner with some cobalt-blue paint, were two sheets of paper.
On one were the words in Maxwell’s writing, clearly copied from somewhere. Ah, ‘Araminta’. Jacquie realised these were from the postcard, then. Underneath, in single capital letters spaced apart, Maxwell had written HELP / ME / I / HAVE / BEEN / FOUND / ARE / YOU / ALL / RITE. Hall read it through a couple of times. Then he turned his attention to the other piece of paper. On this, Maxwell had made a list, with numbers at first, but then he had scratched them out, as though he had decided the order didn’t matter. The list of items was: Mrs T down stairs; ex off ladder; Izzy off cliff; Tom down stairs; dead dad?; otter?; two pansies; sloth; key; Araminta.
Hall turned to Jacquie. ‘Does any of this mean anything to you?’ he asked her.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Some of it does. The first …’ she ran her finger down the list, ‘… four do, of course. Then, Izzy’s father has recently died. I’m not sure if Max is thinking that might be linked as well. That would fit in with her mother as suspect, if she still is a suspect. Otter is ringing a bell. I’ve seen it written down somewhere. I’ll remember it shortly. Two pansies. That must mean two Pansies, as in Pansy Donaldson. Can’t think what that means. Sloth – Nolan wants a sloth as a pet. We saw one on the Isle of Wight. Key. Don’t know. Araminta – that’s Mrs Troubridge’s twin sister. She sent a postcard. There’s the message, there.’ She pointed to the other piece of paper covered in Maxwell’s writing. ‘Max took it to Mrs Troubridge at the hospital but she got a bit worked up about it so he had to come away.’
‘Where did she send the card from?’ Henry asked the question to fill in time.
‘Er … Rhodes, I think. Yes, Rhodes.’
‘Does she have any psychological problems?’ he asked.
‘Well …’ What could Jacquie say? ‘She’s a Troubridge.’
Hall pointed to the first piece of paper. ‘It’s just that this is a rather odd message, don’t you think? Even for a Troubridge?’
Jacquie clutched Henry’s arm. ‘I think I know where he is,’ she said. ‘Oh, no, guv, I can’t believe that even Max …’ She made for the stairs and hurtled down them, missing the last few altogether. Going down more circumspectly, Hall found her in the study, with her passport in her hand. She waved it at Hall and held up a piece of paper and a photo that had been underneath it. ‘Our passports are always kept together in a drawer. His is missing. He left me this.’
Hall took it and read, ‘Woman Policeman Carpenter, I know you will find this because you are a whizzo detective, straight from Boy’s Own Paper. Sorry I couldn’t tell you where I was going, because you wouldn’t let me go, not least because I am having to spend the holiday fund to get there. With luck, by the time you find this, I will be at least in the air, if not actually landing at my destination, which you have probably already worked out. Don’t follow me, I’ll let you know as soon as I have found out what’s going on. Taxi’s here, must dash. Love you always and for ever, Agapi mou, M xxx’
‘Where the hell is he, Jacquie? Has he gone nuts?’
‘No, he’s not gone nuts, guv. He’s gone to Rhodes.’ Even as she spoke, Jacquie could hardly believe her ears.
‘But …’
‘There are at least three flights a day,’ she recited, from memory, having pored over more travel brochures than a reasonable person could stand. ‘He will be on …’ she looked up at the clock, ‘the one which is probably taxiing as we speak.’ Suddenly, it was as though all of her strings had been cut and she flopped into the chair at the desk.
‘Get up,’ Hall said. ‘Two can play at that game. Would you rather drive or shout at people over the phone?’
‘What?’
‘We are going to be on the next plane,’ Hall said. ‘If he is trying to find Araminta Troubridge, then so can we. And a good deal quicker, or we don’t deserve to be in the job.’ He hauled her to her feet. ‘Up for it?’ he asked.
‘I’ll drive,’ she said. ‘Do you have your passport, guv?’
He patted his pocket. ‘I never leave home without it. I find I sometimes need it to prove my age when I buy alcohol.’
Now Jacquie was really scared. Henry Hall had made a joke.
Going to the airport without any luggage was a peculiar feeling. Driving through the gathering dawn with Henry Hall shouting down his mobile phone was even more peculiar. Drives to the airport in Jacquie’s normal world meant being in a taxi, Nolan going hysterical and Maxwell reading a history book on their destination. She personally would keep checking passports, tickets and resort information, round and round, as though they were stations on a prayer wheel.
‘I don’t care,’ Hall was saying. ‘We’ll sort out accommodation later. What we need is for you, yes, you, to make sure that when we get to Gatwick,’ he covered the phone and turned to Jacquie, ‘When?’ She held up three fingers and then made a zero. ‘When we get to Gatwick in half an hour there will be a man standing by to drive my car to secure parking. There will also be someone standing just inside the door with two tickets to Rhodes. You will also arrange VIP lounge facilities, breakfast and an international call to the British Consul on the Island. Clear?’ He listened and appeared appeased. ‘All right, then.’ He closed his phone and sat back.
Jacquie tried to beat down the lump in her throat. If it were Maxwell sitting next to her, that last phrase would have been via Jim Carrey. To fill the silence, she said, ‘It’s terribly good of Margaret, guv …’
‘She’ll love it,’ he said. ‘She misses the boys. Empty nest, that sort of thing. Did you leave all the instructions? Not that she’ll need them. She has boys off pat.’
Jacquie didn’t mention that her boy had been brought up by Mad Max. Let Margaret find out in her own good time. The slip road to Gatwick was the next turn and Jacquie took it as if she was at Brands Hatch. Hall furtively clung to the edges of the seat and closed his eyes.
All too soon they had gone through security and were in the VIP lounge, with an uneaten breakfast in front of them. Hall had gone into the security office to make his call to Rhodes, and as he sat back down, he patted his breast pocket. ‘I have the address here,’ he
said. ‘She’s staying in a little villa just outside Lindos. It will be about three-quarters of an hour from the airport and if we don’t beat Max to her, we’ll be right on his tail.’
Jacquie breathed a sigh of relief. ‘He won’t stand a chance of finding her, though, will he?’ She couldn’t believe it would be as easy for a random member of the public as it had been for Henry Hall. ‘He’s still in the air and will be for around another hour and a half.’
Hall watched her carefully. Her mood was very brittle and he didn’t think he ought to shatter it. So he kept to himself the fact that a nice English policeman had already rung the consulate, very, very early. He was searching for an old lady, the same old lady, and was coming out to bring her some bad news. The consulate had laid on a car. Henry Hall had been rather terse with the very nice consulate official, but had been unable, when push came to shove, to prove over the phone that he and not the other very nice, very well-spoken policeman, was the real policeman in this case. So, Peter Maxwell would be swept, in consular splendour, to the doors of Araminta Troubridge’s rented villa. So he said, ‘I’d like to see his face when he gets there after a three-hour journey on a busload of goats to find us sitting there drinking a nice cold drink with Miss Araminta Troubridge in handcuffs.’
‘Oh,’ Jacquie said. ‘It isn’t Araminta we’re going to catch, guv.’
‘It isn’t?’ he said.
‘No. Don’t you remember what I said? Araminta is Mrs Troubridge’s twin, you know, the tiny little thing. She couldn’t push Nolan downstairs. No, the person we’re after is someone else altogether. I’ll show you a photo if you like. Let me know when you have it sussed.’ She reached into her handbag and got out the photo of the trip which Maxwell had put under her passport. She smiled to see Hall examine it closely, ticking off the people on his fingers and leant back in her chair and, rather to her own surprise, dropped off to sleep.
The heat, as he stepped off the plane, hit Peter Maxwell like a wall. He had not really stopped to consider the weather and so was wearing what he had taken off, very briefly, the night before. He had lain in bed for long enough for Jacquie to go to sleep and had then slipped out of the room and away in the waiting taxi. He was wondering now whether he should have left her the clues and where he would be, but surely, the budget of West Sussex Police wouldn’t run to tickets to Rhodes. It wasn’t a huge amount, as his credit card had been delighted to discover, but he remembered the fuss last spring when someone had claimed for a parking ticket which he only got because he was pinned down by some loony with a gun in the Botanical Gardens. It had gone to three tribunals.
He looked around, but mostly at the blazing sky, the blue so deep it was almost cobalt. He could check; he still had a fleck of the paint under his thumbnail from painting Private Olley’s jacket. He wasn’t a fearful man, but he had a bad feeling about this showdown he was about to have. He knew that the murderer had killed at least three people, almost certainly four, and had tried to kill five. And these were just the ones he knew about. With luck, he would prevent the sixth. With a following wind, he would not become the seventh. He took off his jacket as he left the terminal building. It was at least fifteen degrees hotter than it had been at home, and the sun was still climbing. He hoped this car they were sending would be air-conditioned.
‘DCI Maxwell?’ A uniformed driver was standing in front of him. He almost sidestepped him, not having expected the rank, but realised in time.
‘Yes, yes, that’s me.’ He suddenly was aware how little he knew of police procedure. Was he supposed to salute? Was this man a policeman, or just amazingly well turned out? If truth were told, Mad Max had impersonated policemen before. He’d flashed his NUT card, split his infinitives and hoped for the best, but that was at home, on his own turf, where he could bluff his way out of anything, more or less. This was different. ‘Abroad was a bloody place’ as some long-dead Englishman had said. Interpol. There would at least be forms to fill in, probably in triplicate.
‘You wish to go to the Villa Arcati?’ the man asked.
With the dear, dead shades of Rex Harrison and Margaret Rutherford for company, Maxwell nodded and climbed in to the back of the car and went off to meet his own Colossus of Rhodes.
‘We will have to go the pretty way, Chief Inspector,’ the driver said.
‘I’m sure it will be lovely,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘I am in your hands.’
‘Yes,’ the driver shoved a wad of paper at him, almost as thick as the Yellow Pages used to be before it went online, ‘and these are in yours.’
‘Thank you,’ Maxwell was still beaming. ‘What are they?’
‘Authorisation papers,’ the driver said. ‘You must read and initial each page before I can let you out of the car. You have done this before?’
‘Oh, of course,’ Maxwell bluffed, ‘Anything new since 2004?’
‘Page 6, Clause 38b might amuse you,’ the driver said. He wasn’t smiling and behind his shades he was as inscrutable as Henry Hall.
‘And do I have to sign these in triplicate?’ Maxwell asked him.
‘No. Just three times,’ the driver said.
The drive was beautiful, and he tried to drink it all in, to tell Jacquie and Nole about it later. He concentrated on the later, it was the best way. In the meantime, he thought he’d better actually read the paperwork. It wouldn’t do to have the driver become suspicious.
He had rehearsed what he would say when he got there, over and over on the plane, to the irritation of the man in the seat next to him. He had watched the film to try and relax, but as the credits rolled he realised he had absolutely no idea what he had just watched. It might have had Matt Damon in it. At least that would mean he could watch it again, with Jacquie when he got home. He began to feel a little like Dorothy in Oz; he wasn’t sure where he was just now, but he sure as hell wasn’t in Kansas anymore. The dreamlike state continued when the driver pulled up at the end of a long, pot-holed drive. The entrance was marked by two tumbledown posts, which had once been stately Grecian columns, but were now so weathered and worn that only shallow grooves running down the more sheltered of the two gave any clue to their past glory.
‘Here we are, DCI Maxwell,’ the driver said. ‘I am afraid I cannot take the car up the driveway. It is, as you see, too small, too rough. But I will wait there,’ he pointed down the road to where a rough-tiled roof was just visible, ‘where I can get something to eat and drink. If you need me until tonight, I will be there.’
That settled that question, then. He was a policeman. On overtime. ‘Thank you,’ Maxwell said.
‘And the papers?’
‘Of course,’ smiled Maxwell, handing them over, ‘every eye dotted, every tee crossed. It’s been a pleasure.’
‘Παρακαλώ,’ the man said. ‘You’re welcome.’ He got back into the car and it purred away. Maxwell threw his jacket over his shoulder and looked up the drive, as it snaked away up the hill. He checked his watch. To his amazement, they had left the airport nearly an hour ago. He took a deep breath and took his first step. Then the next. Then the next. It was the only way to tackle the incline and prevent his legs from carrying him down the road to the rough-roofed inn and telling the driver it had all been a horrible mistake and please take him home.
With every turning, he thought the villa must certainly appear and just as he thought it never would, there, suddenly, it was in front of him; low, white with green shutters closed against the heat of the day. The door was of thick, grey olive wood and looked as if it had grown to fill the space of the doorway. It was as hard as iron and the hinges had sunk into it, with years of shrinking in the heat and swelling in the rain. He knocked on it and the sound of his knuckles seemed to be soaked up into the fabric. He tried again, but thought that if Miss Troubridge was anything like her sister, she would be lurking somewhere, having been aware of his approach for the last three twists in the path, secateurs gripped in her bony fingers.
He set off round the side of the house
, pushing past stunted olive trees until he reached an open space at the back. The door on this side of the house was open and the inside beckoned, cool and black against the heat outside. Calling, ‘Miss Troubridge? Araminta?’ he walked into what appeared to be the kitchen of the villa. There was a huge wood-burning stove which was, unbelievably in this temperature, belching out heat. A pan of something was mumbling away to itself on the top and he could smell the aroma of lamb and garlic. He realised how hungry he was and sniffed appreciatively. On the table was a glass of lemonade. He felt rather like Goldilocks.
Above the soft bubble and pop of the stew, he thought he could hear another noise, a faint mewing, like a distant seagull. He remembered Metternich had made the same noise when he was a kitten, missing his mother. He pushed open a door on the other side of the room and the sound grew louder. Another door and he was in the room from where the noise came. Sitting in a chair by the mercifully empty fireplace, her eyes like marbles, sat Araminta Troubridge. Across her mouth was a piece of sticking plaster. Behind her, like an enormous temple deity, toying lightly with the old woman’s fluffy white hair, stood Millie Muswell.
‘Mr Maxwell,’ the huge woman rumbled. ‘What a totally delightful surprise. How is Mrs Maxwell? And your lovely son? And of course, dear Jessica?’
‘All well, Millie, thanks for asking.’ Maxwell was amazed that his voice was working so well. He was thirsty and hungry and scared out of his wits. He knew now that she hadn’t just murdered three people. She had murdered as many people as had crossed her in her entire life. It was the Millie Muswell Way. ‘Fancy bumping into you, all the way out here.’
