Maxwell’s Flame

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Gregory!’ Maxwell hailed the man like a long-lost brother. The swivel-eyed git had a swivel chair too and he swung it round to greet the Head of Sixth Form.

  ‘Max!’ Trant extended a hand. ‘Thank you, George,’ he called after the already retreating prefect. ‘Oh, George?’ The boy turned. ‘Flies,’ and he pointed a finger at the lad’s nether regions. The lad looked down, only to hear Trant chuckle as he closed the door.

  ‘Gets him every time,’ the Deputy said. ‘Have a seat, Max. Can I offer you an indescribable cup of coffee?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Now, I know why you’re here.’ Trant switched off the computer he was working on. ‘Oh, bugger, just wiped the entire Year 10 records there. Never mind. Those women in the office don’t have enough to do, anyway.’

  ‘Do you?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘Do I what? Have enough to do? God, yes.’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘I mean, do you know why I’ve come?’

  ‘Yes. Or at least the gist of it. I had Alan Harper-Bennet bleeding his heart all over my carpet yesterday. Seems you accused him of being a knicker-sniffer, murderer and so on. I haven’t seen him so annoyed since I locked him in the shower last term.’

  ‘Oh, I think Alan’s over-reacting,’ Maxwell smiled, trying to decide which one of Trant’s roving eyes was actually doing the seeing.

  ‘I must admit, I do find it a little bizarre,’ Trant said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You asking all these questions.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it’s the job of the police, isn’t it? You don’t actually have any right.’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell agreed, ‘no more than somebody had the right to cave in the skulls of Liz Striker and Rachel King.’

  ‘Oh, quite, but –’

  ‘You’ll forgive me for saying this,’ Maxwell leaned forward so that the sun was out of his eyes, ‘but you appear to be more … how can I put it? Extrovert than you were at Carnforth.’

  ‘Really?’ Trant chuckled. ‘Well, I wasn’t well last week. Had a bug or something. It’s doing the rounds here. When I wasn’t actually at lectures or sessions at Carnforth, I was getting my head down. And I don’t mind confessing the sight of poor old Liz Striker in the stock cupboard wasn’t exactly a bundle of laughs.’

  ‘You were there on the Thursday, when Liz Striker died?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Look, Max –’

  ‘Humour me, Gregory,’ Maxwell cut in, sensing the man’s reluctance. ‘I hear you have something of a reputation as a humorist.’

  ‘Well, you know how it is,’ Trant said. ‘“You don’t have to be mad to work here …”’

  Maxwell nodded. He was mad and he didn’t work there. ‘So,’ he said quietly, ‘Thursday.’

  ‘Thursday.’ Trant shut his eyes to remember. ‘We got there in the minibus about eleven. Phyllida was keen to get her photocopying done –’

  ‘Photocopying?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘Yes. We had a presentation to give. As a school with some GNVQ experience. Phyllida’s a nice woman, Max, but she has the organizational abilities of a gerbil. She hadn’t had time to photocopy bits and pieces, so she used Carnforth’s.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Lunchtime? Yes, it must have been, because she was late in to lunch and said that’s where she’d been.’

  ‘Did you go down to the basement?’

  ‘No. My end of the presentation was the display boards. We had all those in the bus so I spent the day unloading and setting up. Alan Harper-B. was with me. By about three I’d had enough. I was feeling deathly, so I went to have a lie-down.’

  ‘In Room number …?’

  ‘Er … 218, I think. Yes, it was.’

  ‘Did you know Liz Striker beforehand?’

  ‘No. In fact, I didn’t ever meet her. Looking back, she must have been the woman I saw talking to Michael Wynn and that vicar bloke – Whatsisface? Gracebrothers?’

  ‘Gracewell.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Trant clicked his fingers. ‘That was when we arrived.’

  ‘Does this look familiar?’ Maxwell rummaged in his jacket pocket and handed Trant a letter, the second of his photocopies. The Second Deputy read it. ‘No,’ he frowned. ‘Should it?’

  ‘That’s a copy, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The original was found in Alan Harper-Bennet’s room on the night after Rachel King died.’

  ‘Really? Well, well, well. What is it?’

  ‘Quite obviously a blackmail note, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Ho, ho, ho. Well, I don’t want to be a bitch, Max, but I can quite see why Alan was so miffed. You thought he was being blackmailed.’

  ‘It did occur,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘So you locked Alan in the shower last term?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, yes, yes.’ Trant was still looking at the letter.

  ‘Make a habit of this sort of thing, do you?’

  ‘Well, it passes the time.’

  ‘Like embarrassing boy George there a minute ago?’

  ‘Oh, he’s used to it. No harm meant.’

  ‘Bit different with murder though, isn’t it?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Trant said, ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Alan says that someone slipped it under his door.’

  ‘Well,’ Trant giggled, ‘he would, wouldn’t he?’

  Maxwell had heard better Mandy Rice-Davieses.

  ‘I also talked to Dr Moreton yesterday.’

  ‘Andrew? How is the poor old bastard? I heard he was out. Why did the police hold him?’

  ‘Oh, come now, Greg, me ol’ mucker, you and I both know you know the answer to that one.’

  ‘Come again?’ Trant frowned.

  ‘The iron pipe with the bloody tape wrapped round it. A conventional piece of scaffolding, such as you have on your science block out there, for instance,’ Maxwell pointed to the building work in progress through Trant’s window, ‘adorned, for a better grip, no doubt, by the sort of gaffer tape you doubtless use in your school shows’ electrical set-up. What did you do this year?’

  ‘Er … Oliver.’

  ‘Yes/Maxwell nodded, ‘I somehow knew it would be.’

  ‘What are you saying, exactly?’

  ‘My, my,’ Maxwell beamed, ‘we are obtuse today. Must be why you’re only a Second Deputy, Greg.’

  ‘Now, look –’ The renowned humorist appeared to have lost his sense of humour.

  ‘The bottom line, Greg,’ Maxwell wasn’t smiling either, ‘is that someone caved in the head of Liz Striker because he thought she was blackmailing him. Why, I don’t know. When he realized his mistake, he demolished Rachel King’s skull likewise –’

  ‘Because she was the blackmailer?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Maxwell said, ‘I really don’t know. But however that turns out, our friend had a blackmail note and a murder weapon on his hands. He also had policemen swarming all over the Carnforth Centre. If he ran, they’d have him. My guess is that if he so much as left the building, he’d be followed – I was. So he couldn’t bury the bits of pipe anywhere. Then an idea occurred to him. Why not muddy the waters a bit? Why not slip the blackmail note into somebody else’s room – say Alan Harper-Bennet’s – and hide the pipe? The police would be bound to carry out a search sooner or later. And bingo! Two prime suspects.’

  ‘Are you saying I did that?’ Trant was astonished. ‘I framed Alan and Andrew? There are laws of slander in this country, Maxwell.’

  ‘Sod the laws of slander,’ Maxwell growled. ‘A woman I once loved is lying on a slab somewhere because of this, Trant. And I’m going to get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Trant was on his feet, the muscles in his jaw rigid. ‘I barely knew Rachel King …’

  Maxwell sat back in the chair. From his left the morning sun flickered across his view of Gregory Trant. Then t
he Second Deputy slumped into his own chair and sat staring at the floor – and the wall.

  ‘That’s one little gem I bet you didn’t tell the police,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘It’s not important,’ Trant said.

  ‘You’ll forgive me if I decide that.’ Maxwell clasped his fingers across his chest.

  ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ Trant snapped, blinking.

  ‘You know how it is,’ Maxwell said. ‘No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.’

  I don’t have to talk to you at all,’ Trant bellowed.

  ‘It’s me or the police,’ Maxwell told him. He reached for the phone. ‘Press 9, do I, for an outside line?’

  ‘All right,’ Trant took the receiver from him, ‘all right, you’ve made your point. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Your relationship with Rachel,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Relationship is hardly the word for it,’ Trant said. ‘I worked with her husband, Jeremy.’

  ‘In teaching?’

  ‘No. I came late to the profession.’

  Maxwell raised an eyebrow of derision. He at least had the excuse that he was young and naive when he started teaching. Going into the profession when you’re mature and with both eyes open – well, that was inexcusable.

  ‘Before that I was in insurance. No money in it, but somebody said the hours were good. Jeremy was my boss.’

  ‘And you met Rachel socially?’

  ‘Yes. We – my wife Gail and I – had the Kings round for dinner. We were still in Bournemouth then. I don’t want to talk ill of the dead, Maxwell, especially of someone you say you were fond of, but … well, not to put too fine a point on it, Rachel King was a bitch.’

  ‘Really?’ Maxwell could feel his knuckles whiten.

  ‘She was a first-class flirt. Gave me the come-on from that evening.’

  ‘The come-on?’

  ‘Do I have to spell this out?’ Trant grunted. ‘She got me into bed with her. Oh, it took a while. What was it? Two weeks? Three? Gail knew nothing, of course. I felt rotten about it.’

  ‘How very Brief Encounter of you.’

  ‘Look, Maxwell,’ Trant snarled, ‘I am, in my own warped and rather belated way, trying to help you. Now, this may not be what you wanted to hear –’

  ‘I want to hear the truth, for Christ’s sake,’ Maxwell shouted.

  A bell punctuated the silence that fell between them and they heard that familiar sound that haunts all schools – the rumble of an army on the move, of hell on the march as children went from one lesson to the next.

  ‘All right,’ Trant said, ‘the truth is what you’ll get. I fancied her. Of course I did. I was twenty-three then. Gail was pregnant with Harry. The bedroom was a tad boring. Well, if you loved her, you must remember what she was like. The older woman, but a body like … Well, anyway, we’d meet whenever we could. Jeremy was often away on various financial conferences and so on. I could come and go without Gail suspecting. It worked, in a cheap sort of way. I even – and this is the daft bit – I even found myself falling in love with Rachel. One day – I seem to remember it was a Friday, like today – I went to see her, unannounced. I knew Jeremy wouldn’t be there. What I didn’t know was that Phil was.’

  ‘Phil?’ Maxwell frowned.

  ‘I think that was his name. He was wearing one of Jeremy’s bathrobes and she was in the shower. There was the most almighty scene. I managed to get her on her own and told her how I felt. Do you know what she did, Maxwell? She laughed at me. Like I was a little boy. I could have killed her.’

  ‘Could you?’ Maxwell asked.

  Trant caught the look on his interrogator’s face. ‘That was then,’ he said quietly. ‘What? Ten, eleven years ago. I’m not talking about last week.’

  ‘What did you think?’ Maxwell asked after a while. ‘What did you think when you saw her again, at the Carnforth Centre?’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t seen her from that day, when we had our row. For months I kept expecting her to drop me in it, to tell Gail. In the end I left the job.’

  ‘Because of Rachel?’ Maxwell frowned.

  ‘Oh, not totally,’ Trant sighed. ‘Insurance wasn’t for me, anyway, I’d realized. Rachel King was just the icing on the cake. What did I think? I thought, “You bitch.” She was making eyes at Moreton, Harper-Bennet, had that snivelling snotnose chaplain dribbling over her. You were joined to her by the hip. When we came face to face she looked right through me. It was as if I didn’t exist. OK, so I didn’t feel on top form anyway; the flu, Liz Striker. But seeing her again, that was why I was so low last week.’

  ‘And now she doesn’t exist,’ Maxwell said softly.

  ‘You knew her before, obviously,’ Trant said.

  ‘Oh, yes. She was Rachel Cameron then. We were students together at Cambridge. It’s as if … as if she were a different person.’

  ‘Perhaps she was,’ Trant said. ‘Perhaps something made her change.’

  ‘Yes.’ Peter Maxwell stood up. ‘And I think that something was me.’

  It was one of those sunsets that evening. One of those moments of pure magic when everything is gilded and you want it to last for ever.

  ‘Thank God it’s Friday,’ Sally said, watching the rooks flap homewards against the purple lines of cloud. ‘Here’s looking at you, Max.’

  He raised his glass automatically and for a second it flashed in the dying sun. ‘Home tomorrow, Max?’ she asked.

  He looked at her, this girl who hadn’t wanted to come. She’d phoned in sick to Leighford High the day before. All she’d wanted was her home, her husband, the comfortable routines of whining, whinging kids with attitude problems. She hadn’t wanted lies and tears and blood. But that’s what she’d got. That’s what they’d both got.

  ‘Home tonight if you like,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she shook her head, ‘it’s getting on. And I don’t actually like driving in the dark. Look …’ She moved closer to him, shuffling forward and nudging his knuckles with hers. ‘You mustn’t read anything into what Gregory Trant said. About Rachel changing, I mean. If she sent that note to whoever she sent it to, that was her business. She had her reasons. And she’d have done it anyway, whether she’d ever met you or not.’

  ‘Would she, Sal?’ He looked at her. The Great Cynic was suddenly small, vulnerable. Sally Greenhow wanted to put her arms round him, hold him, tell him it was all right. ‘Would she? We’ll never know now, will we?’

  And he swigged back the last of his travelling bottle of Southern Comfort.

  ‘You didn’t tell me,’ he said, feeling the amber nectar sting his tastebuds. ‘Phyllida Bowles. What did the fair Phyllida confide?’

  ‘The fair Phyllida’s taken it rather badly. Apparently she’d given up smoking,’ Sally flicked her ash vaguely in the direction of the litter bin and missed, ‘before all this. What happened at the Carnforth Centre tipped her over the edge and she’s back on thirty a day.’

  ‘So, between puffs and coughs, you didn’t learn very much.’

  ‘Well, I strolled in the grounds with her, you know, away from the kids.’

  ‘Always therapeutic,’ Maxwell nodded.

  ‘I got her talking about our colleagues on the course.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I’m paraphrasing here, of course …’

  ‘Safer than paragliding, I’ve always found,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Well, she’s always thought Andrew Moreton was unstable. You only have to hear him bawling out kids apparently – makes Attila the Hun look like the Dalai Lama.’

  As an historian, Maxwell had often noted the physical similarity, but it would have spoiled Sally’s analogy had he pointed it out, so he shut up instead.

  ‘She’d got Trant pegged for an idiot. False fire drills and false noses aren’t her idea of professionalism apparently. Infantile was her final verdict. She felt uncomfortable in the presence of Valerie Marks – but then, any woman would. Except that I happen to know Valeri
e’s happily ensconced with some frilly type; has been for years.’

  ‘Sort of Nanette Newman in The Stepford Wives? Baking, preening and robotic?’

  ‘If you say so,’ Sally nodded, not always sure what Mad Max was on about.

  ‘How does Phyllie rate Alan Harper-Bennet?’

  ‘Impotent,’ Sally beamed.

  ‘She’s good at the one-word put-downs, isn’t she? Perhaps I can get her a job at Leighford High,’ and he rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

  ‘I think …’ It was Sally Greenhow’s turn to get a funny look in her eye.

  ‘Yes?’ Maxwell put on his best Frazier Crane.

  ‘I think Phyllida developed a bit of a crush for Michael Wynn.’

  ‘Really?’ Maxwell was all ears.

  ‘She mentioned him a lot. “Michael said this” or “Michael did that”.’

  ‘Did he reciprocate?’

  ‘If you’re going to talk dirty, Max,’ Sally winked, ‘I’m leaving.’

  ‘Fine,’ the Head of Sixth Form said, ‘but this is your room and you haven’t answered the question.’

  ‘Apparently not. He just showed her photographs of his wife and the boys.’

  ‘That’s what Rachel said,’ Maxwell suddenly remembered.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That Michael was very much the family man.’

  ‘Except that he was sweetly shy about it.’

  ‘Sweetly shy?’ Maxwell frowned.

  ‘Her words. He’d only show her the photos when they were alone.’

  ‘They were alone?’ Maxwell mouthed.

  ‘Apparently,’ Sally grinned. ‘I didn’t like to pry too deeply.’

  ‘Phyllida is a Miss, isn’t she?’

  ‘By a mile,’ Sally said. ‘Oops, there’s another sexist gaffe. Shot myself in the foot again.’

  ‘Did she say any of them could, in her opinion, be guilty of murder?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘She’s afraid, Max,’ Sally told him. ‘Even here, back on the old treadmill, she can’t get it out of her mind. She told me she can’t sleep and when she does, she has dreams of those corridors at Carnforth. She’s done no photocopying since she’s been back.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Maxwell said softly, turning to the red-gold of the sky, ‘I wonder if any of us can forget it. Ever. Anyway, she needn’t have worried about Michael Wynn. He was making eyes at Tracey the receptionist.’