Maxwell’s Flame

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Bloody hell, Max,’ she hissed, steadying herself.

  ‘Three,’ he’d turned to face her, ‘the murderer doesn’t work here.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because if he did, he’d have a key – or at least access to one – and would have locked the bloody door. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t cave in somebody’s skull in the first place.’

  ‘Well, that’s gratifying,’ Maxwell said. They’d reached the bottom of the stairs again now and a faint light in the foyer above lit the area. ‘Lie down,’ Max whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said –’

  ‘I know what you said.’ Sally lowered herself to the floor. ‘I just like hearing you talk dirty.’

  ‘Not like that. On your face.’

  ‘Max!’

  ‘Ssh. You’ll wake the dead.’ That was a one-liner Maxwell instantly regretted.

  ‘What am I doing?’

  ‘You’re being Liz Striker. I’ve just crept up behind you.’ He knelt as well as his old trouble would allow him beside her. ‘I’ve bashed you over the head – we know this from the dear old Chief Inspector. Now, I’ve got a problem. I’ve got to hide you.’ He looked up and down the corridor. ‘There’s no natural light. Assuming the lights weren’t on … Where’s the switch?’

  Sally sat up. ‘What do you want me to be – a corpse or Switchfinder General?’

  ‘That’s rather good,’ Maxwell hissed through gritted teeth. ‘In fact I wish I’d said it.’

  ‘You will, Oscar,’ she muttered, ‘you will.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the switch is over there. So, did she put the light on or not?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Don’t know. Don’t know.’ Maxwell was thinking out loud. ‘Lie down again. What do you weigh?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ She sat bolt upright.

  ‘Good God, Sally, calm yourself. It isn’t as if I’ve asked you how old you are. Mind you, I know that one already. You’re thirty-two.’

  ‘I’m twenty-nine!’ she snapped. ‘Would you like to guess my weight too, like a bloody currant cake at the school fete?’

  ‘All right,’ he whispered. ‘Er … nine stone seven.’

  ‘Bloody cheek. I’m eight stone four, in old money.’

  ‘Right. Oh, Jesus.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be saying that,’ she hissed. ‘Who said you could put your hands there?’

  He collapsed to his knees alongside her. ‘I’m supposed to be your murderer manhandling you prior to stashing you in the cupboard. I don’t suppose chummy asked Liz Striker her permission.’

  ‘Probably not,’ Sally conceded. ‘But I’m only prepared to take role play so far, you know. How do we know he didn’t kill her in the stock room?’ Sally asked, wiping her hands.

  ‘No room,’ Maxwell said. ‘By leaning forward I could touch the back wall. The only possibility is if she’d been looking into the cupboard when chummy struck. And I don’t think that’s likely.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because the door would be in the way. That’s not a conventional width. It’s too narrow. Chummy might hit the door frame in his exuberance and miss his mark completely.’

  Sally Greenhow looked up at Peter Maxwell. ‘You know, Max,’ she said, ‘you’re either bloody good at this or you’re a prize bull-shitter. I can’t make up my mind which. Are you seriously saying you can’t lift me up?’

  ‘Seriously,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘But then I am eighty-eight years old with a dicky ticker and three artificial hips so it’s hardly surprising. Do we know what Liz Striker weighed?’

  ‘Why is grass?’ Sally countered. ‘Honestly, Max, you do pose some imponderables.’

  ‘Ah, it’s the philosopher in me. The police would know.’

  ‘You aren’t going to break into their incident room, please God!’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell said. ‘It’s manned twenty-four hours. We’ll just have to ask somebody in the St Bede crowd. In the meantime, let’s make the assumption that chummy couldn’t lift her either. So …’

  He grabbed Sally’s wrists and began dragging her along the corridor.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Ssh!’ Maxwell hissed. ‘You’re supposed to be dead.’

  ‘Much more of this and I will be. Ow!’

  ‘Right.’ Maxwell had hauled her to the stock room. ‘If that’s how chummy got her here, he’d still have to lift her to put her in there.’

  ‘Which means?’ Sally was on her feet again. The experience of the floor was altogether too chilling.

  ‘Which means that depending on Liz’s weight, we’re looking for a strong bloke.’

  ‘Or woman.’

  ‘Woman?’

  ‘Why, Maxie,’ Sally grinned, ‘it’s very sexist of you to assume that our man is a man, if you follow me.’

  ‘I’ll follow you anywhere, Mrs Greenhow. Now, that’s enough sleuthing for one night. Come on. You can see me to my room. I’m afraid of the dark.’

  ‘We all are, Max,’ Sally said, suddenly very cold at that hour, in that place. ‘We all are.’

  7

  Monday morning brought the sun again. Inspector McBride had missed Peter Maxwell who had in turn missed breakfast. At her door in the wee wee hours, Sally Greenhow had decided to tackle the Luton lot on what they knew. She’d start, over breakfast, with Alan Harper-Bennet. Maxwell would have a go at the St Bede’s contingent. It didn’t take Sally three guesses to ponder who he’d start with, or, to quote Maxwell, with whom he’d start.

  But John McBride pulled rank and got Gary Leonard to open Maxwell’s room, just to see if he’d really gone. He hadn’t. Despite the fact that Maxwell had been seen driving off into the morning with Mrs King, his bags were still there, and his underwear. And briefly, before an unhappy Gary Leonard relocked the door, Inspector McBride had noticed, on Maxwell’s wall, what for all the world looked like part of an incident room. Maxwell was trying to solve Liz Striker’s murder by himself.

  Sally Greenhow made two mistakes that morning. She tackled Alan Harper-Bennet first and when she finally escaped, some hours later, it was to collide with the mannish Valerie Marks somewhere in the labyrinth of corridors that led to the sauna.

  ‘Sally, have you got a minute?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I –’

  ‘Coffee? Let me show you my room.’

  ‘Well, actually –’

  But Valerie Marks could be surprisingly persuasive in the leading by the elbow department and Sally found herself sitting primly in the room of the Head of Business Studies from Richard de Clare.

  ‘Did I understand you correctly when you said you were married?’ she asked as she busied herself with the kettle and the milk sachets.

  ‘That’s right,’ Sally said breezily, toying for a moment with confirming it by adding ‘to a man’. But she thought better of it and settled for reminding Valerie that she took her coffee black.

  ‘Do you happen to know,’ the herring-bone suited woman pointed a plastic spoon at her, ‘if Rachel King is married?’

  ‘Rachel? Er … divorced, I think.’

  ‘Ah, I wondered,’ and she rummaged for the sugar packets.

  ‘Er … no sugar, thanks.’ Sally craned round to see that the old girl wasn’t trying to slip her a Mickey Finn in order to have her wicked way with her. ‘Why … er … why do you ask?’

  Valerie Marks turned to face her and smiled. ‘No, dear,’ she said, ‘I’m not making a play for her. Or for you, so you can breathe again. What I didn’t choose to broadcast from the podium the other day when we were all ice-breaking is that I have been living very happily with Joan Clark for nearly twenty-five years. Of course, there’s nothing formal because this isn’t, thank God, America, but we’ll have a quiet little do come October, to celebrate our silver. Sally, you’ve gone quite crimson.’

  ‘Oh, Valerie,’ she said, ‘I’m so sorry, I feel … well, I feel ridiculous.’

  �
�Don’t worry, dear.’ The older woman patted the girl’s hand. ‘Here’s your coffee. No, I’m used to it. “Old Dyke”, “Butch Cassidy”, I’ve heard them all. Children are very perceptive, aren’t they? And very cruel. Now, about Rachel King …’

  ‘I don’t really know her,’ Sally said. ‘Maxwell does.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I thought I recognized a certain frisson there.’

  ‘They were lovers once … Oh, God!’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Valerie shook her head, smiling. ‘You haven’t betrayed him. It’s not actually Rachel I’m concerned with, but her husband.’

  ‘Her husband?’

  ‘She didn’t say she had one, did she? On the podium during ice-breaking?’

  ‘No. She did mention a daughter, though …’

  ‘She struck me as rather more conventional than that.’

  ‘Than what?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Than to have a child out of wedlock. I got the impression she was particularly organized. To the point of scheming, in fact. I can’t really imagine Rachel allowing her passions to get the better of her.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Valerie,’ Sally was searching for a soothing ciggie, ‘I’m not very with it this morning. Why are you asking me about Rachel?’

  ‘Well, it’s such a small world, isn’t it? If indeed I’m thinking of the same person. When I lived in Park Villas, Erdington – Joan and I moved last year – our next-door neighbour was a Jeremy King. Nice bloke. Charming wife. Three delightful children. We got to know them quite well. And one night, I’ll never forget it, Jeremy had had a few I suppose, over dinner, and he told me about his first wife. She was unstable. Accused him of beating her, whereas in fact you couldn’t imagine a kinder, more gentle soul. He’d divorced her after she tried to blackmail him. Her name was Rachel. Still, it couldn’t be the same one, could it?’

  Rachel King drove Peter Maxwell to the ancient town of Rye. On the way, he bored her to death with the town’s history. But she found herself loving the lilt of his voice and chuckling at his wisecracks as they drove, the roof of her Suzuki down and the wind in their hair.

  It was quarter to ten as she found a lucky parking space and they heard the gilded quarterboys chiming their cherubic hammers on the bells of St Mary’s. Maxwell gave Rachel his best Barry Fitzgerald and they found a coffee place with a terrace overlooking the sparkling brown waters of the Tillingham. Maxwell ordered.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘How can you possibly remember apple strudel after all these years?’

  ‘Ah, that’s not all.’ He smiled at her. ‘Let’s see, now. You had a pony called Tallulah, a dog called Gelert. And didn’t you have a pet spider?’

  ‘Georgina had the spider.’

  ‘Georgina!’ Maxwell slapped his forehead. ‘How could I have forgotten little sister George?’

  ‘Well, I do my best to,’ Rachel laughed. ‘She’s a granny now.’

  ‘Little Georgie a granny?’ Maxwell looked agonized. ‘Have you a loaded revolver in that handbag, Mrs King? I must put myself out of my misery.’

  The young thing who brought their coffee and strudels grinned stupidly at them, not quite believing that some silly old duffer and his wife could have anything left to laugh at after all the years they’d obviously been together.

  ‘Thank you for this, Max,’ Rachel said, pouring for them both.

  ‘Wait till you’ve tasted it first,’ Maxwell advised. ‘They’ve been a little over-zealous, I think, with the cinnamon.’

  ‘No, I mean, taking me out of Carnforth. It was beginning to resemble the Chateau d’lf.’

  ‘That bad?’

  He saw her smile freeze a little and that funny little frown he’d almost forgotten played around her eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter, Rachel?’ he asked, putting the milk down.

  ‘I’m afraid, Max,’ she said, smiling again. ‘I’m so afraid.’

  He took both her hands, burning one of his on the coffee pot. ‘Shit!’ he hissed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Liz Striker is dead and you ask me that?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I mean, why specifically? Do you think there’s a maniac loose at Carnforth?’

  ‘Isn’t there?’ she asked him. ‘Isn’t anybody who can do that to another human being a maniac?’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘I suppose so. But don’t worry. Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place, you know.’

  ‘No.’ She tried to smile again. ‘Unless the storm isn’t over, that is.’

  ‘The storm?’

  ‘I thought you were going home today,’ she said, freeing her hands to drink her coffee.

  ‘So did I,’ he nodded, tackling the second mouthful of the strudel. ‘I changed my mind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps because … because I don’t want to be a prime suspect.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It was made perfectly clear to me by Warren of the Yard that if I left he’d have me in the frame.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘He didn’t have to. I know the way the police mind works, Rachel.’ Maxwell restirred his coffee. He’d got a sneaky feeling she’d shortchanged him with the sugar lumps. ‘It’s the way they drive the lighted matches under your fingernails, loop your foreskin to the door handle, things like that.’

  ‘Oh, Max,’ and she swiped him with her napkin. ‘Well, whatever, I’m glad you’re staying.’

  ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Me too. Now, to cases. How heavy do you think Liz Striker was?’

  He saw that frown again. ‘How heavy was she? What a peculiar question.’

  ‘Just humour an old man,’ he said.

  ‘Well, all right. Er … let’s see. She was about five two, I suppose. Thick-set, though. She still wore her hair long as though it were the ’60s … I’d say she was about nine stone. Why?’

  He checked the other tables on the verandah to make sure that no one in earshot wore a tall pointed hat or had a tall, pointed head. ‘I’ve been making a few enquiries of my own,’ he said, in his best Jack Warner. ‘Chummy would have had to have carried or dragged Liz depending on his relative strength to her relative weight.’

  ‘A dead weight, of course.’ Rachel was carried along with Maxwell’s reasoning.

  ‘Exactly. If he lifted nine stone with no help at all, he’s likely to be Arnold Schwarzenegger’s big brother. If, on the other hand, he dragged her …’

  ‘There’d be blood on the floor.’

  ‘Precisely.’ It was Maxwell’s turn to frown. ‘You’re better at this than I am.’

  ‘Not really.’ She poured them both another coffee. ‘It’s just … well, I’ve tried to imagine how it was. How it must have been. For Liz, I mean. She must have been getting some photocopying done.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘There’s nothing else in that section of the basement.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I checked.’

  Maxwell’s senses were beginning to reel. Suddenly, there were two amateur sleuths at the Carnforth Centre. It wasn’t the upstaging that bothered him. It was something else. Something he couldn’t explain. Couldn’t give a name to. But it caused a pricking in his thumbs. ‘Did you?’ he asked her.

  ‘Max …’ She searched for the words. ‘How can I say this? Liz Striker was a colleague of mine. More than that, a friend. Oh, not a good one, I’ll grant you. I’m not going to pretend we were bosom pals now the poor woman’s dead. But I did work with her. I feel I owe her something, that’s all.’

  ‘Does Jordan Gracewell feel the same way?’

  ‘Jordan? I don’t know. Why?’

  ‘What about Michael Wynn?’

  ‘Ah.’ A smile crossed her lips as she took the cup in both hands. ‘Michael’s a real family man. Not to mention a pillar of the establishment. Chairman of Rotary, all that guff. Our Principal’s going next year. Barring miracles, Michael will take over at St Bede’s. That’s good for us all.’

  ‘I
wish I could be so up about headmasters. Mine’s a callow youth with a timetable for a heart.’

  ‘Ah, the new breed,’ she laughed.

  ‘Tell me about Jordan,’ he said.

  ‘Jordan? What’s to tell?’

  ‘Anything you can.’

  ‘Max,’ Rachel put her cup down, ‘what’s all this about? You’re not serious about your own enquiries, are you?’

  ‘Why not? You are.’

  ‘I told you my reasons,’ she said. There was suddenly a harshness about her, an edge he’d forgotten. Then it came flooding back. It was the first time they’d gone out together, walking in that grubby little market that permanently litters the square in Cambridge. There was an old man, he remembered, busking on the corner. He was in rags, with wild hair and swarthy face. Between discordant blasts on his mouth organ, he croaked ‘Moon River’ at passers-by. Maxwell had thrown him some change.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ she’d asked him.

  ‘Well …’ Maxwell hadn’t felt inclined to explain his own humanity.

  ‘I don’t approve of begging,’ she’d said.

  ‘It’s not begging,’ Maxwell had told her. ‘He’s singing for his money.’

  ‘Let me have your definition of singing, please,’ she’d said. He hadn’t liked her then. The look in her eyes, the hardness in her heart.

  And for an instant, he didn’t like her now. ‘I’m not sure I can explain mine,’ he said. ‘Call it a crusade, if you like; oh, a quiet one, I’ll grant you, but a crusade nonetheless. You see, murder is an affront to us all, isn’t it? I think we owe it to Liz Striker to do something. And we owe it to ourselves. Now,’ he sighed, glad to have got that off his chest, ‘what about Jordan?’

  She fluttered her hands. ‘I don’t know what I can tell you.’

  ‘Has he ever made advances to you?’

  She almost dropped her cup. ‘Advances?’ she laughed. ‘Max, I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but Jordan Gracewell has this peculiar little habit of wearing his collar back to front. He is a Catholic priest.’