Maxwell’s Flame

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Don’t be,’ Maxwell rumbled. ‘Yours was the first room I passed after I ran out screaming.’

  Sally ignored him. Underneath that bluff exterior was a core of solid, molten gold. She knew it. And in her own way she loved it. ‘Three sugars.’ She handed him the cup. ‘And the Lord have mercy on your arteries.’

  ‘We have an understanding, the Lord and I,’ Maxwell told her. ‘He won’t let me go of the cholesterol and I won’t sing in any of his churches. It’s a fair deal, I’ve always felt. Ta,’ and he took the cup.

  ‘Gracewell wasn’t serious, surely?’ Sally said.

  ‘Oh, but he was,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘He genuinely had to confess to stirrings under his cassock for the late Mrs Striker.’

  ‘And the current Mrs King? Oh, sorry, Max.’

  ‘Look,’ Maxwell said, ‘Mrs King and I were a long time ago, Sally. She was Miss Cameron then and I hadn’t celebrated my eightieth birthday – at least, not quite. You don’t have to talk about her in hushed tones, you know.’

  ‘But still,’ Sally shrugged, grateful that it was Max who had said it, ‘you can’t believe that she’s a murderer.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Maxwell said. ‘Gracewell does. Good God, girl, I don’t believe Belgium exists, but it’s there on the bloody map. I don’t believe Bill Clinton’s the President of the United States –’

  ‘He isn’t,’ Sally said straight-faced. ‘Hilary Clinton is.’

  ‘Oh, ha!’ Maxwell slurped his coffee. ‘I got the impression, while we’re on American Presidents, that if I hadn’t kicked Gracewell out when I did, he’d have confided in me that he thinks Rachel shot Kennedy.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked him. Sally Greenhow had seen that light in Maxwell’s eyes before. Somehow it excited her.

  ‘Prove the egotistical befrocked bastard wrong,’ Maxwell said, eyes narrowing as he planned. ‘I think we owe it to Rachel to sort this out before Father Dowling out there blabs to the fuzz.’

  ‘We?’ Sally exploded. ‘When I asked you, not an hour ago, to undertake just that, you virtually told me to piss off.’

  ‘Did I?’ Maxwell paused in mid-slurp. ‘Dear lady, I think you must be confusing me with somebody else.’

  Then, suddenly, Peter Maxwell was deadly serious. ‘Sally,’ he said, ‘this is not going to be a game. We can expect no help whatever from the boys in blue. In fact, if once they find out we’re snooping, we’ll probably be up before the beak ourselves. And, more importantly,’ he held her hand, ‘there is a murderer somewhere in this building.’

  ‘Why are you squeezing my hand, Max?’ she asked him.

  ‘Freudian substitute,’ he grinned gappily at her. ‘If I told you what I’d like to be squeezing you’d have me committed to the Home for Repulsive Old Roués. And who’d catch a murderer then?’

  ‘Max,’ her face was close to him, ‘Max, I think I’m scared. Do you know, I check these locks a dozen times a day. Catch myself looking round corners before I walk down corridors. Daft, isn’t it?’

  His eyes locked on hers as he shook his head. ‘Keep feeling that way, kid,’ he gave her his best Bogart. ‘That’s the way you know you’re still alive.’

  Little Sam McBride discovered Playmobil that Sunday. It was his fifth birthday and his mum and dad had bought him the boxed set of knights at a tournament. Peter Maxwell, had he known, would have been proud. Parents with foresight – the Middle Ages was part of the National Curriculum’s History Key Stage 2 – educational toys, if ever there were some.

  If the truth were told, John McBride already hated his son’s birthday. Nothing to do with the lad himself, who was very much the apple of his father’s eye. No, it was the dozen or so other five-year-olds who descended on the unsuspecting semi that killed it for John. By the time night came and a sort of peace returned to the estate, Inspector McBride had lost track of the crimes perpetrated by the vile little monsters. Only his inordinate self-control had prevented the addition of another crime to theirs – he had not quite committed infanticide.

  Cathy McBride was five months pregnant. She sat that night still surrounded by the debris of the day, slowly twirling the little plastic knights in her fingers. ‘Thanks, daddy,’ she said.

  John looked up from his notepad, and laughed. ‘How many more of these have we got to do?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, adjusting the lump that would be little Sam’s brother or sister, ‘that depends on how you care to calculate it. If you go on throwing parties for Sam until he’s sixteen – I expect after that, he’ll just want you to pay for them and go away – that’s another eleven. Then there are another sixteen for the Embryo here; that’s twenty-seven. Assuming we have no more kids. Then of course, there’s your grandparental contribution …’

  ‘I don’t notice Sam’s grandparents very much in the offing, do you?’

  ‘Ah, you’re just a rotten old stick-in-the-mud, John McBride. Fancy a drink?’

  ‘I’d kill for a beer,’ he said, but his head was back in his notebook and he wasn’t really there any more.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ she said, nudging him with the cold can she’d liberated from the fridge.

  ‘Oh, it’s this bloody case, Cath,’ he said.

  She’d heard it all before. Every time it was this bloody case. He hated murder. No one ever gained. No one ever won. She’d seen this, even from the outside. She knew he had to tell people their loved ones were dead. It might be a wife. It might be a husband. It might be a son. Everyone had someone. That was how it was. And here they were, with the party streamers of their little boy’s birthday still twirling in the air, and they were suddenly talking about death.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, as she always did.

  He couldn’t, of course. Not really. Not the nitty gritty of things. He couldn’t show her the shattered head of Liz Striker, her cramped little grave of paper packages in that stock cupboard. Nor would he have wanted to.

  ‘It’s this woman,’ he said, seeing in his mind’s eye the black and white photographs of the corpse, the green sheet and the pallid, waxy face. ‘The victim, Elizabeth Striker. She’s too bloody good.’

  ‘She’s dead, John.’ His wife didn’t need to remind him.

  ‘I know.’ He closed his eyes and let his head loll back. For the past few hours he’d sunk himself into his rest day, bitten the bullet that was his son’s birthday party, played all kinds of ghastly, exhausting games. But she was still there, Liz Striker, at his elbow. That and the fact that she was dead.

  ‘She taught Family Studies, whatever the hell that is, at St Bede’s, a Catholic comprehensive in Bournemouth. She was married to Leonard, two years her senior. He’s in computers in a local firm. They seemed happily married. No obvious financial worries.’

  ‘Was the attack sexual?’

  He sipped his beer. ‘No. At least, no signs of it. St Bede’s might give us a clue, of course. The guv’nor’s going over there tomorrow.’

  ‘Aren’t you going with him?’

  ‘No,’ her husband told her. ‘The natives at Carnforth are getting restless. One of them’s threatened to go tomorrow. My job is to try to stop him.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ McBride shrugged. ‘The guv’nor’s stuck his neck out keeping them all there this long. I didn’t expect that kind of thing from Warren. I hope he hasn’t overreached himself. Three days. I think he expected somebody to crack after three days.’

  ‘No sign?’

  McBride shook his head. ‘What did you think of your teachers at school, Cath?’

  His wife laughed. ‘They were all right, I suppose. Except old Pearson. Used to get the girls to stand on chairs if they got things wrong in Maths. I think they took him away in the end.’

  ‘Hmm. More than one weirdo at the Carnforth Centre, I shouldn’t wonder. The problem is deciding which of them wanted Liz Striker out of the way. Good old Liz, about whom nobody has a bad word. But somebody didn’t like you all that much
, did they, Liz? Somebody snuffed you out like an altar candle.’

  The lights burned late in Room 101 that Sunday night. Peter Maxwell had seen more Agatha Christies and police procedurals than Sally Greenhow had had hot flushes. Accordingly, he knew how it was done. On the plasterboard wall of his room, Supersleuth had pinned dozens of bits of paper.

  ‘You know, Max,’ Sally said, between puffs, ‘that lot is almost a flow chart. We’ll make an energetic go-ahead teacher of you yet, storming, norming and so on.’

  ‘Wash your filthy mouth out,’ Maxwell growled, putting the finishing touches to his deductive reasoning. ‘I look nothing like the American Commander in the Gulf. There. What do you think?’

  Sally looked at the arrows, names, question marks, all of them radiating out from the name ‘Liz Striker’ in the centre. ‘I think it is absolutely incomprehensible, Maxie.’ She smiled wide-eyed. ‘Are you sure you never lectured in a college of education? Perhaps if you talked me through it.’

  ‘Oh, ye of little brain,’ he sighed. ‘Watch the blackboard while I run through it.’

  She tucked her feet under her bum on the bed and listened carefully.

  ‘The murdered woman, Liz Striker,’ Maxwell said, ‘what do we know about her?’

  ‘I thought you were telling me,’ Sally said.

  ‘Now, come on,’ Maxwell wagged a finger at her, ‘question and answer. It’s a tried and tested classroom technique. I learned it at university, circa 1849.’

  ‘All right.’ Sally was game. ‘She was Head of Family Studies at St Bede’s, Bournemouth. Very keen on GNVQ.’

  ‘That’s it!’ Maxwell shouted.

  ‘What?’ Sally nearly jumped out of her skin.

  ‘Being keen on GNVQ is reason enough for anybody to be murdered.’

  ‘Maxie …’ Sally growled.

  ‘All right, all right. Keep your bra on. Oh,’ he glanced at her pert chest, ‘too late, I see. Right. What else?’

  ‘Urn … according to Jordan Gracewell …’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Maxwell’s roving finger strayed to another part of the wall, ‘the Gospel according to Gracewell.’

  ‘… according to him, she fancied him something rotten.’

  ‘Right. Well, let’s indulge his incense-induced fantasies for a little longer. Liz fancies Jordan …’

  ‘… who fancies Rachel.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Maxwell corrected her. ‘I think Jordan fancies Jordan.’

  ‘You’ll need to talk to Rachel.’

  ‘I know,’ Maxwell’s face darkened, ‘I know. That’ll have to wait till morning. When did she arrive?’

  ‘Liz? Thursday.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, heart,’ Maxwell apologized, ‘it’s the emotional strain. With whom?’

  ‘Don’t get all grammatical on me, Max,’ Sally said. ‘What I mean is, how do you mean?’

  ‘Well, was there a minibus from St Bede’s? Did they all come by car? Train? Tom Pearce’s grey mare? What?’

  Sally blinked. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We need to know that. We need to know how she got here and precisely when.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Then we need to know who else was here.’

  ‘The lot from St Bede’s,’ Sally said, ‘and the lot from Luton.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Maxwell nodded, ‘the lot from Luton. That’s Harper-Bennet and Co, isn’t it?’

  Sally shuddered. ‘He’s revolting,’ she said.

  ‘Harper-Bennet?’ Maxwell checked. ‘Is he? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sally shrugged. ‘Call it women’s intuition, but there’s something decidedly unsavoury about that chap.’

  ‘All right,’ and Maxwell wrote ‘weirdo’ alongside Harper-Bennet’s name.

  ‘Oh, now, steady, Max,’ Sally protested. ‘I mean, it’s only a gut reaction. We don’t know anything.’

  ‘Relax, Sal, this isn’t a court of law. In this room every bugger is presumed guilty until we can convince ourselves of his/her innocence. Come to think of it, that’s exactly like a court of law, isn’t it?’

  ‘What was she doing in that stock room?’ Sally asked, following the various arrows now in Maxwell’s mad diagram.

  ‘Beginning to smell, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Maxwell said. ‘A more pertinent question is: did she die there or was she put?’

  ‘How can we find out?’

  ‘“Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.”’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘“The Smugglers’ Song”,’ Maxwell told her, ‘Kipling. But instead of five and twenty ponies, it’ll be thee and me.’

  ‘Where?’

  Maxwell was already on his feet. ‘The scene of the crime,’ he said.

  ‘Max?’ She was still struggling to find her slip-ons.

  ‘Do you want to find Liz Striker’s murderer or not?’ he turned to ask her.

  ‘Yes,’ she told him.

  ‘Then, as Old Blue Eyes would say, we’ll do it my way. Come on. Last one in the basement’s a suspect.’

  There’s something eerie about a new building after dark. The assumption is that only ruins are haunted, only castles have ghosts. But there’s something about the echo of a new building, the smell, the total darkness of the unlit stairways. And what was worse, for Peter Maxwell and Sally Greenhow, was that they both knew they were walking in a dead woman’s footsteps.

  They took the stairs, running their fingers over the polished plastic handrail, and descended the two half-flights from the ground floor. Maxwell was busy mentally preparing his excuses if there was still a copper at the corridor’s elbow. None of them convinced him at all. He was pretty sure that Mr Security dozing on the front desk hadn’t noticed them. Sally was as lithe as a cat and Maxwell had taken his brogues off, so the collective sound they made was minimalist.

  There was no cordon across the corridor that led to the stock room. No sign of a copper on duty. All seemed well.

  ‘Shit!’ It was Maxwell’s most controlled whisper.

  ‘What?’ Sally asked him, equally sotto voce.

  ‘First degree bruising,’ Maxwell winced. ‘But an inch or so to the left and we’d be talking testicular trauma.’

  ‘It’s a little filing cabinet, Max,’ Sally hissed, ‘though when I say little, it’s at least two foot six high.’

  ‘Please.’ Maxwell waved his hands as though to make light of the collision. ‘Size isn’t everything. Here we are.’

  ‘Is this it?’

  They were looking in the darkness, to which their eyes had now become accustomed, at a plain wooden door marked ‘Reprographic Store’.

  ‘It must be.’ Maxwell tried the handle. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Locked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘Bugger indeed.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Sally ferreted in the back pocket of her jeans. ‘Turn your back if the tightness of my stonewasheds is too much for you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Maxwell whispered. ‘I was just wondering if now is the time … What the hell …?’

  Sally waved something at him in the near-darkness. ‘My flexible friend,’ she said and proceeded to slide the credit card up and down the door jamb.

  ‘Jesus!’ Maxwell was amazed as the girl flicked the handle and the door swung outwards. ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘I know your views on Special Needs, Max,’ she raised an eyebrow at him, ‘but there are times when such training is invaluable.’

  ‘I don’t think I need educational flatulence at one in the morning, Sally, if it’s all the same to you.’

  ‘All I was going to say was, it’s a two-way process. You learn as much from the kids as they do from you.’

  ‘Really?’ Maxwell was peering into the stock room.

  ‘Remember Rory Elliott?’

  ‘Do I ever?’ Maxwell muttered. ‘The only boy I ever felt compelled to drop a pile of textbooks
on during his first day at school. Don’t think I saw him after that.’

  ‘That’s because we had him – in Special Needs. Well, you know who his dad was, don’t you?’

  ‘Er … Wild Bill Elliott?’ Maxwell went much further back than Sally Greenhow.

  ‘Dave Elliott. Spent most of Rory’s life in and out of Parkhurst and places.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Armed robbery.’

  Sally nodded. ‘But a wizard with the old plastic’ She wagged her credit card triumphantly. ‘And on the rare occasions he was out, Dave passed on this fine family tradition to young Rory.’

  ‘Who in turn passed it on to you.’

  ‘Well, fair’s fair,’ Sally said. ‘I taught him to cope with numbers so he could read the dials on a safe and he taught me the rudiments of lock-picking. Mind you, I think we were dead lucky here.’

  ‘The rumour is that they found her there, behind those packs of paper.’

  ‘Not much room.’

  ‘Very perceptive, Mrs Greenhow.’ Max reached as far as he could into the darkness.

  ‘Could we risk a light, do you think?’

  Maxwell shook his head.

  ‘I said, “Could we -”’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell hissed, ‘I don’t want to advertise this little sortie. As John Paul Jones might have said, “I have not yet begun to sleuth.” We don’t want to be taken down town before we’ve had a good old rummage around. Odd, though.’

  ‘What is?’ Sally couldn’t see anything in the blackness beyond Max’s shoulder.

  ‘That the door opens outwards.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Doors don’t, these days. Oh, in a twelfth-century long house or a fifteenth-century dower house, anything might happen. To get to one of the bedrooms in the post office in Tintagel, you’ve got to use a ladder, but now … well.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, I suppose this room was an afterthought. Folks using a conference centre might need to run off copies of things and that means a store. So they had a cubby hole big enough, but to put the door in so that it opened inwards would kill all the space. So it had to open outwards.’

  ‘I don’t see what that tells us.’

  Maxwell was already closing the door. ‘It tells us three things,’ he said, feeling his way along the corridor. ‘One,’ and he wagged an authoritative index finger in the air, ‘the guy who built the Carnforth Centre was no Christopher Wren. Two – and perhaps more pertinently – the stock room door must have been unlocked and open for Lydia Farr and Alan Harper-Bennet to have seen Liz Striker’s body. And three …’ He paused and felt Sally bump into him.