by M. J. Trow
‘I could say the same,’ Millie said. ‘Come to chat about Jessica and her broken hip, have you? About how she is as mad as a hatter. Not got long, so I hear.’
‘Actually,’ Maxwell said and knew he sounded both desperate and pompous. ‘She is much better. I showed her Araminta’s postcard and it perked her up no end. I also showed her the picture someone had taken of you on our school trip. You were often in the background, but rather stupidly I didn’t really look closely. I just saw a large person in the shot and assumed it was a colleague. And then I saw you both in one photo and it began to click into place.’
‘Ah, yes, the drunk,’ Millie laughed and the windows shook. ‘She came in very handy. I’m a bit cross with myself, though, for ending up in one picture with her. I was very careful. Digital cameras, I suppose. Panoramic shot, was it?’ She laughed again, unpleasantly.
‘Then I started thinking. You mentioned baby sloths being sweet. But the sloth was only out in public for the first time when we were there, and unless you had seen one somewhere else, and they are not exactly ten a penny in England, then you must have seen it then. Then, Gervaise saw Izzy talking to someone outside the hotel, and I think it was you.’
‘Well done, Mr Maxwell. You really have done splendidly. Little woman know all this, does she? Right behind you with the handcuffs?’ Millie looked behind him, miming extreme concentration and shading her eyes with a hand like a small suitcase. ‘No. I don’t see her. Any other clever clues, Mr Maxwell?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact. Mrs Troubridge, bless her, cried out quite a lot when she was on a morphine drip and after, in her sleep. She kept going on about a wardrobe, which, unflattering as you might find it, Millie, is what you had become to her in her delirium. She kept counting as well, but I only worked that out last night.’ It came to him with a sudden shock how recently he had been in his own house and how far he had come, so quickly. He lost his thread.
‘I made a bit of a bosh shot with Jessica,’ Millie mused. ‘Of all of them, I thought I could snap her like a twig. Ironic.’
‘We thought you had gone home,’ Maxwell said.
‘I had,’ the woman said. ‘I know you all thought I got about by train, but for heaven’s sake, how can anyone do that these days? Online timetables? Ha!’ So she and Maxwell had that at least in common. ‘I kept my car parked in the station car park, so I could come and go as I liked. I had already palmed your keys from the cupboard in the kitchen, so I got into your house, used the keys you so cleverly hide …’ she paused to snort, ‘in your garage and let myself back in. Jessica had no idea I was there and came whiffling along the landing like a little shrew. I went for her neck but she beat me by fainting and I only got a glancing blow. I put the keys …’ she looked at Maxwell. ‘I put them in the wrong place, didn’t I?’
He nodded.
‘Drat. I remember now. That’s where Mirabell kept his keys.’ She looked at him and smiled. ‘It gets confusing, you know, Mr Maxwell, after a while. Never mind. Where was I?’
‘The keys,’ said Maxwell, trying to be helpful.
‘Yes. The keys. I put them … down, went to the front door. Put on one of her slippers, so it looked as if she had fallen down the stairs, and went out, slamming the door behind me. Then I went back into your house and hung the keys back up. Simple. I can’t work out why she was found so soon, though. A while longer and she’d have been dead for certain, with the gap under the door.’
‘It was my cat,’ Maxwell said, proudly. ‘He was calling outside her door.’
‘Damned animal,’ she said, pulling Araminta’s hair in her annoyance. The little woman winced and put her hand up to her head, only to have it slapped down.
‘Also, you started one of Jacquie’s police colleagues thinking by putting the slipper on the wrong foot. You obviously don’t know your own strength.’ As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew it was a mistake.
Millamant Muswell pulled on Araminta Troubridge’s hair until the woman was on her feet. Then she pulled some more, making her scream behind her plaster. The old woman’s eyes were full of tears and she reached up to try and stop the pain. The murderess held both of her wrists together in one hand and yanked on those as well. ‘So, Mr Maxwell, why don’t you come and watch me throw Araminta here over the edge of the cliff? It’s not high, not that much higher than, say, an upstairs window, but she’s old, and quite frightened now, I think.’ She turned her round and poked her in the chest, holding her face nose to nose. ‘Is the old heart beating a bit faster, dear?’ she asked. ‘Dearie me, I might not have to chuck you off the cliff, after all.’
‘Don’t hurt her,’ Maxwell took a step closer. ‘She hasn’t done anything to you.’
‘Well, yes and no,’ Millie said. ‘Nosy old besom was looking into the family history – oh yes, that bit was true – and she noticed that the numbers of an unclaimed EuroMillions prize were exactly the birthdays of my brother, me, his daughter, our parents … you get the picture. She told me all about it, in a wide-eyed,’ and she poked the little woman viciously again, ‘sort of way. She didn’t know, of course, that Mirabell would bet on anything, so the lottery was definitely his sort of thing. I went to see him, but the stupid man was so drunk he couldn’t remember where he had hidden his ticket.’
‘So you pushed him down the stairs,’ Maxwell said. ‘An accident at home, I think you called it.’
‘Mr Maxwell, you have excellent recall,’ the woman congratulated him. ‘Well, I had to work fast, but I wasn’t fast enough. First that daughter of his was round, going through his stuff. Then that grasping wife of his. They had the house cleared like locusts. I didn’t know quite what Isabelle – isn’t that sweet, Mirabell and Isabelle? – would have done with his things and I didn’t know where she had gone to live, exactly. But I had visited her at her real house, with her real husband, and so I thought I would ask him. He was a sharp one.’ She shook her head and laughed, making Maxwell’s teeth buzz. ‘He knew I wasn’t just there for a chat. I could see that he was suspicious. So I killed him and then threw him out of the window.’
‘A slight change of method, then,’ Maxwell said. He looked at Araminta, who had gone pale and limp. ‘Please let her go. She’s fainted. Or …’
‘Oh, is she dead?’ Millie said, releasing her grip. The old woman slumped back into her chair and lay there, horribly still.
‘When you mentioned the school trip I knew you’d be away and that’s when I thought I would polish off Jessica. This one,’ she kicked a limp leg with her toe, ‘had already taken off. I thought I’d just watch to make sure you went – what with wifey being in the police, I couldn’t be sure – and I saw Isabelle with you. Perfect. Kill Jessica, kill Isabelle. Couldn’t decide what to do about the husband. But then he made it easy for me. I mistimed your coming home and I was in the house when your lovely wife delivered him back. I was trapped upstairs with him weeping and wailing in the front room. And then … guess what?’ She leant forward.
‘You found the lottery ticket.’
‘Mr Maxwell, you are so clever! The things that Jessica says about you are mostly untrue in my opinion. Anyway, I was just making my way out of the door, when he came out into the hall. He tried to stop me. I … well, I just sometimes hardly know my own strength, as you said. I just—’ she made a chopping motion, ‘and there he was.’
‘But why did you have to kill anyone?’ he asked, stepping one pace nearer.
‘Pardon?’ She looked puzzled.
‘Could you not have just told Izzy about the lottery ticket and shared the money out?’ He might just as well have said ‘elephant chocolate pencil’ for all the sense it made to Millie Muswell.
‘Share? Why should I share?’ she said. ‘Anyway, it was only a single rollover. The top prize was only something like twenty-five million euros. And how far does that go these days?’
‘I see,’ Maxwell said. ‘So what are you planning to do with it?’
‘I haven’t decided,�
�� Millie said. ‘Do you know, Mr Maxwell, it’s a shame you’re spoken for. I think we would have got on, if we had met when you were a single gentleman. But I don’t believe in breaking up families, so I’m afraid it has to be over the cliff with you.’
‘Won’t that break up my family?’ he asked. ‘Nolan fatherless, Jacquie a widow.’
‘I’ll send them a little anonymous something from time to time,’ Millie promised. ‘They’ll want for nothing.’
‘Except me,’ Maxwell persisted.
‘They’ll soon get over it,’ she said, reaching forward and grabbing his wrist. ‘People do.’
He leant back instinctively, trying to use his weight to stop her but she was too strong for him. The slick, tiled floor didn’t help matters and soon he was outside, and being dragged to the edge of the garden, which was over a sheer drop. Millie looked over and smiled.
‘It’s a bit further than I thought. The fall would probably do it, but it’s best to be certain,’ she said and raised her arm for the final blow.
Maxwell struggled and flailed around as he had witnessed Nolan do when he met the hard place that was his mother at bedtime, and to as little effect. He wasn’t making headway but at least he had stopped her progress.
‘Mr Maxwell,’ she said. ‘Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.’
Unless she actually turned green, Maxwell thought, she couldn’t get more like the Incredible Hulk if she tried. And the thought of Millie Muswell bursting out of her clothes was more than he could stand. He gave another mighty wrench and suddenly, he was free. Flying through the air, to the rock-strewn sand below.
Jacquie and Henry Hall were younger than Maxwell, in Hall’s case not much but he tried to keep himself in trim. Even so, he was sweating and panting and way behind Jacquie as the Villa Arcati came into sight. Jacquie still seemed to have the breath left to yell as she ran round the back of the building.
‘Max! Max! Where are you?’
Henry was a little more measured as he got to the back door and went inside to look around. He had nothing to worry about. Millie Muswell had been picked up by the local police as she was getting into her taxi at the bottom of the drive. The powers that be had believed Henry was a policeman to the extent of sending out a patrol. It had taken four policemen to subdue her, but she would say nothing. She denied that Maxwell had even been to the villa. Araminta wasn’t saying anything either. Still alive, but only barely, she was out for the count in Rhodes Town hospital, with two huge bald patches on her scalp and two broken wrists to show for her Dodecanese adventure. There was only Maxwell to account for now.
Jacquie’s yelling stopped. But there was something in the silence that made Hall’s short hairs prickle. He went outside. Jacquie was kneeling on the edge of the little cliff, her hands to her eyes. And down below, spreadeagled face down in the sand, lay Peter Maxwell, legend and dinosaur. And he wasn’t moving.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The room was in darkness. It was silent. Years Twelve and Thirteen, Maxwell’s Own, sat in serried ranks, looking towards the front. From the darkness, music played, then fell away, diminuendo. The darkness lessened as images appeared on the screen, ancient buildings, modern guns, superimposed on each other, changing, shifting. It was as if Peter Maxwell, Mad Max, was encapsulated there in front of them, in all his fossil glory.
The woman standing at the back lowered the music a little more … a little more. This had been planned in advance. It had to go right. Peter Maxwell deserved that it should go right.
A voice spoke out of the darkness. ‘Right, my little dears. As you know, I have a broken leg.’ The classes gathered together heard a dull sound as a board rubber was banged against plaster, to prove the point. ‘So instead of assembly, Mr Diamond has allowed me to use this digital device to show you an excellent film instead.’ He gestured to Nicole, the IT girl at the back of the room. ‘Clara, music please!’
And, as if in celebration of Peter Maxwell and his island adventures, the music rose above the scattered applause of his Own.
‘On an island, green and beautiful, green and beautiful, stand the guns of Navarone …’
And in the darkness, Peter Maxwell smiled.
ALSO BY M.J. TROW
At Leighford High, the ever-resourceful Peter ‘Mad Max’ Maxwell is acting as Head of History whilst Peter Moss partakes in an American exchange. His counterpart is Hector Gold, accompanied to Leighford by his eccentric family. In particular, Hector’s father-in-law Jeff O’Malley is quite a character, gate-crashing the local poker school, much to the dismay of its members.
When events take a sinister turn and one of the poker school’s members is found murdered, newly-promoted Inspector Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell and Henry Hall investigate, with the assistance of Maxwell, of course. Something is crooked in this case and Maxwell is sure that it is more than meets the eye.
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About the Author
M.J. TROW has recently retired as a history teacher – he has been doubling as a crime writer for twenty-one years. Originally from Rhondda in South Wales, he claims to be the only Welshman who cannot sing or play rugby. He currently lives on the Isle of Wight with his wife, also a writer. His interests include collecting militaria, films, the supernatural and true crime. He is the author of the Inspector Sholto Lestrade series, the Peter ‘Mad Max’ Maxwell series, and eighteen non-fiction books.
By M.J. Trow
THE PETER ‘MAD MAX’ MAXWELL SERIES
Maxwell’s Match
Maxwell’s Inspection
Maxwell’s Grave
Maxwell’s Mask
Maxwell’s Point
Maxwell’s Chain
Maxwell’s Revenge
Maxwell’s Retirement
Maxwell’s Island
Maxwell’s Crossing
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
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London W1T 6DW
www.allisonandbusby.com
First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2011.
This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2012.
Copyright © 2011 by M.J. TROW
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1320–2
