Maxwell’s Flame

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Oh, I like to do a bit of research into my clients,’ Maxwell explained, ‘and what with you in the ground-floor flat, I thought perhaps you’d notice people coming and going.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ she said. ‘How do I know you’re who you say you are?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Maxwell toyed for a second with doing a runner, but he checked himself and held his ground.

  ‘Well, nothing personal, you understand, but I watched that Boston Strangler last night. The way that man could get into those women’s flats. It’s quite scary.’

  ‘Ah,’ Maxwell flattered, ‘but that was Tony Curtis. You’d let Tony Curtis into your flat, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Forty years ago, possibly,’ Mrs Verlander told him. ‘Now, I’m not so sure. Have you seen him lately?’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell assured her, ‘I can’t say that I have. Now, about Father Gracewell

  ‘You have to show me some identification.’

  ‘I have?’ Maxwell loomed over the frail old bat.

  ‘That nice Mr Ross on Crimewatch advises it.’

  ‘Ah, but he also tells you not to have nightmares, doesn’t he, Mrs Verlander? And do you?’

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘Have nightmares.’

  ‘Oh, yes. From time to time.’

  ‘Well, there you are.’ Maxwell spread his arms as though he’d just explained with dazzling clarity the mechanism of the Corn Laws to a bewildered Year Niner. ‘Now, Father Gracewell’s flat?’

  ‘Number Three,’ she told him without hesitation. ‘Two floors up.’

  ‘Thank you, dear lady,’ Maxwell sighed and replaced his hat.

  ‘By the way,’ she called as he turned his back.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re not unlike Albert de Salvo yourself, you know. The lift’s not working. You’ll have to use the stairs when you come back.’

  Maxwell did. He waited until the old girl had gone in, then took them two at a time. Jordan Gracewell’s door was just like Mrs Verlander’s, except that it was locked and the ringing of the bell elicited no response. Clearly, the Chaplain had gone to school like all good padres, which was precisely why Maxwell had taken his time over breakfast. The last thing he wanted to do at the moment was to come face to face with the man he was after. He’d have given his eye teeth at that moment to have had Sally Greenhow’s skill with a credit card. As it was, he’d have to try rougher methods. Mentally he threw back his poncho from his right hip, unlooped the leather thong that tied his gun hammer and bit down on the soggy cigar. In his head the wail of Ennio Morricone’s Fistful of Dollars filled the silent corridor. Then Maxwell’s right boot came up and crunched against the woodwork. The door swung wide.

  Still reeling from the effort and the surprise that it had worked, Maxwell hobbled inside and secured the door behind him, using the bolt as the lock was smashed. He’d now added breaking and entering to his crimes of withholding evidence and impersonating a police officer. Perhaps Mrs Verlander was right. He wasn’t unlike Albert de Salvo.

  There was much in Gracewell’s pad that Maxwell recognized in his own. Slippers discarded at rakish angles. The breakfast dishes unwashed. The light still on on the coffee machine; all the hallmarks of bachelorhood. And there were bits he didn’t recognize: the portrait of the Pope on the lounge wall, the untidy pile of back numbers of the Catholic Herald and the all-pervading smell of incense. It was a smell he’d smelt before. At Carnforth. He checked under the cushions of Gracewell’s settee, rummaged in the drawers of Gracewell’s computer desk, ferreted around in Gracewell’s CD collection. Nothing.

  Right. Try the bedroom. There was a brass crucifix on the wall, a rowing machine on the floor next to the bed. Clearly the good padre believed in muscular Christianity. Maxwell looked in the wardrobe, the bookcase, the dressing-table. Nothing. Nothing you wouldn’t expect to find in the house of an earnest young priest on the threshold of his ministry.

  Maxwell sat down on the settee. He was back in the lounge and back to square one. Yet Rachel King’s visitor had been Jordan Gracewell or Maxwell was a one-legged Negro transvestite. Nothing odd about that, though, was there? One colleague going to visit another? After all, everybody had said that Jordan Gracewell wasn’t much of a teacher. Lacked what it took in the balls department. Rachel King had helped him. Liz Striker had helped him. Michael Wynn had helped him. But that only made sense while Rachel King was still alive. Jordan Gracewell knew perfectly well yesterday that Rachel King was dead. So why had he gone to her house? Did he expect old Mr Jackson to let him in? Perhaps so that he could retrieve something he’d left behind? And was it only the presence of what he took to be a policeman that made him run? If that was so, then Jordan Gracewell’s teaching would be all to hell today. He’d be rattled. Wouldn’t have slept. The police were on to him. And Father Brendan, no doubt as honest as the day was long, would have told him that a Mr Maxwell had come calling and that he’d given Mr Maxwell Gracewell’s address.

  But there was nothing here. Nothing at all. ‘What did you expect, Maxie?’ the Head of Sixth Form mused to himself. ‘Four or five victims under the floorboards? Another six in the roof space?’

  The roof space. Maxwell dashed to the window, then ducked back in case he could be seen from the road. Gracewell’s flat was on the top floor of the block. That meant he had an attic of sorts. And Maxwell knew what treasures were hidden in his attic – an army in being, nearly four hundred plastic souls, saddled and waiting to ride down the Valley of Death. But more importantly, those toy soldiers were Maxwell’s heart; his life. It was what he’d spend his retirement completing. They and Metternich the cat were all he had in the world. And chosen and few were those who knew about them.

  So, he reasoned to himself as he hauled down Gracewell’s loft ladder, what secrets lay beyond the trap door? What little mementoes were locked away from the gaze of the heartless, cynical world? He lowered the door back carefully, so that it didn’t crash against the wall that supported it. There was nothing like the space up here that Maxwell had at home. He fumbled in the darkness and found a light switch. Then he rested on his elbows and shook his head, whistling softly.

  Jordan Gracewell had a video collection to rival Paul Getty’s – almost as impressive as Maxwell’s own. But there was no sign of the Road films or The Name of the Rose or Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. Instead, they were in plain wrappers with typed titles like College Girls, Fun in the Dorm and The Milkman Cometh. Most of the stuff seemed to be Dutch and promised, in slightly fractured English, to show young girls as never before, wild, wet and wolling. But it wasn’t the porn shows that interested Maxwell particularly. It was the dressing-up box alongside them. He raised himself up and peered inside the battered cardboard that once, apparently, held Spanish tomatoes. Now it held knickers by the dozen. Skimpy lace ones, blue gym ones, black thonged ones. Father Gracewell had enough lingerie here to open a branch of Woman at C&A. And among them, Maxwell knew, was a pair that once belonged to Sally Greenhow. And God knew who else besides.

  Jordan Gracewell had not had a good day. First, on his way to Evensong on the Sunday, he’d called at Rachel’s house. But the police had been there. And that was the last thing he’d wanted; to have to explain his presence there to the police. Making a bolt for it was hardly conducive to cool, but he’d panicked and probably made matters worse. He hadn’t slept, expecting a ring at his door bell at any moment. He’d cooked himself some breakfast, but couldn’t manage more than a mouthful and to cap it all, he had a sneaky suspicion that he’d left the coffee machine on.

  And then Father Brendan had told him that Peter Maxwell had been there, snooping. Not Father Brendan’s word, of course, but accurate nonetheless.

  It was worse than he’d thought as he reached his landing. In his anxiety of the morning, he’d even forgotten to close his door and he saw the daylight shining through. Thank God this was still a quiet neighbourhood, where no one was likely to just walk in.

  It was the screen he
saw first – the video on pause. A naked girl was kneeling up, a line of static across her blurred breasts. Her head was thrown back, her mouth open in a silent orgasmic scream. Behind her, a black-haired stud was thrusting away, or he would have been if someone hadn’t pressed the pause button. A hand extended from the armchair, the one with its back to the door. Dangling from the fingers was a pair of black lacy panties, swinging gently to and fro. They were joined almost immediately by the genial, smiling face of Peter Maxwell.

  ‘I estimate,’ he said, ‘bearing in mind the position of the girl and her gentleman caller, vis-a-vis each other, that his membrum virile is at least sixteen inches long. No wonder her eyes are watering,’ and he pressed the play button, so that the line vanished and the couple continued to gyrate to raucous dubbed music.

  Gracewell had crossed the room in a couple of strides and switched off the set. Maxwell did the same with the video.

  ‘Actually,’ the Head of Sixth Form said, ‘I’m glad you did that. I’d dismissed the low budget, the total absence of production values, and was actually getting round to admiring the girl’s bum. Tell me, Jordan, are you a leg or a tit man?’

  The padre was paler than an altar cloth and visibly shaking, the dark eyes bulging in his head. ‘Get out! Just get out!’

  Maxwell just sat there. Then he threw the black knickers to Gracewell who signally failed to catch them by not even trying. They fell silently to the floor.

  ‘Forgive me, Father,’ Maxwell said, ‘for you have sinned.’

  For a moment, Jordan Gracewell stood in front of the telly, for all the world like a schoolboy caught scrumping apples. Except, as Maxwell knew, schoolboys didn’t scrump apples any more; they sniffed glue instead. Then the Chaplain of St Bede’s crumpled like burning paper and dropped to his knees, his head in his hands, crying softly.

  Everything in Maxwell made him want to grab the man’s hair, jerk back his head and kick the shit out of him. Instead he reached forward and gently pulled the hands away. ‘You confessed something to me once,’ he said, ‘that you thought Rachel King was a murderess. Would you like to tell me anything now? Before I call the police.’

  ‘The police?’ Gracewell looked up suddenly in a blur of tears. ‘Surely, we don’t need the police?’

  Maxwell shook his head. ‘They don’t have ecclesiastical courts any more, Jordan. Criminous clerks like you have to take pot luck with the rest of us. I’ve got a nasty surprise for you – they abolished benefit of clergy too; 1831, I think it was.’

  ‘But this …’ He waved the arm he’d got free of Maxwell’s hand, at the television. ‘Oh, God, it’s horrible, I know, but loneliness … you’d know.’

  ‘I stick model soldiers together,’ Maxwell told him. ‘That’s how I cope with loneliness. Don’t – please, Jordan – tar me with your brush.’

  ‘It’s not illegal.’ Gracewell was sitting back on his haunches, defiant now. Maxwell had seen it all before, when he’d caught kids bang to rights. Especially girls. First the tears. Then, when that didn’t work, the excuses. And finally, the outrage.

  ‘The videos perhaps not,’ Maxwell said, ‘although I think I read something somewhere about pornographic material in the post. I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess how old some of these girls are. But you and I know we’re not talking about the videos, don’t we, Jordan?’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell watched the Chaplain’s eyes flicker, ‘yes, I suppose … I suppose you’re talking about the underwear.’

  ‘The …?’ Maxwell’s face betrayed for a moment his utter astonishment. Was it possible that Gracewell had blinded himself to all reality? That he’d blocked out the image of Liz Striker’s skull disintegrating under his blows with the iron pipe? The woman he’d told Maxwell he loved? That his tortured mind had cancelled out those frenzied seconds when he’d demolished the head of Rachel King? Maxwell sat back, remembering to close his mouth as he did so. Softly, softly. That had to be the approach now. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘tell me about the underwear.’

  Gracewell was still kneeling on his hearthrug, the tears drying now on his pale cheeks. ‘I don’t really remember how it all started,’ he said, the warm glow of confession sweeping over him. ‘Ever since I can remember – long before my teens and long, long before the Church, I had this … thing for women’s underwear. Oh, I expect a psychiatrist would have the answers. It’s a common enough fetish, isn’t it? I remember once, my sister … well, that was rather a long time ago.’

  ‘You stole them,’ Maxwell said flatly, ‘from clothes lines, gym lockers, launderettes. I assume it was the used ones you went for.’

  Gracewell nodded, unable to look the man in the eye.

  ‘And while you were a kid – or even a theology student – all this was fine and dandy, wasn’t it? The frisson of sneaking into people’s houses and snatching things from laundry baskets or back gardens – all very exciting.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Gracewell’s eyes were glittering. ‘You understand – Mr Maxwell, you understand.’

  The Head of Sixth Form nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I understand. But understand something yourself, Jordan,’ and now he was shaking his head, ‘I don’t condone.’

  ‘No,’ Gracewell’s optimism sank, ‘no, of course not. How could you? You aren’t a priest.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Maxwell said. ‘And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Once you were ordained – and once you got a job as a Chaplain – that put the squeeze on you. Suddenly, you were somebody in the community. It wasn’t only God watching your nasty little habits, but potentially any one of a thousand people or more – kids, colleagues, parents, the Bishop, the whole bloody College of Cardinals for all I know.’

  ‘How … did you know?’ Gracewell had to ask.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Maxwell said. ‘Not at first. But the parameters were there from day one. Contrary to popular belief, the murder of a stranger by a stranger is quite a rarity. Most murderers kill people they know. I went for that assumption at Carnforth. There were only two groups of visitors at the centre on the day Liz Striker died – the staff of John Bunyan, Luton and you lot from St Bede’s.’

  ‘Er … I don’t follow,’ Gracewell frowned.

  ‘All right. It could have been a member of the Carnforth staff. And yes, all right, they presumably had access to lists of conference members. So if someone there knew Liz or Rachel, then they’d have their victims under one roof. But the coincidence of that is pretty remote, isn’t it?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Gracewell asked.

  ‘In my long experience,’ Maxwell looked at the man steadily, ‘people don’t shit on their own doorsteps unless there’s absolutely no choice. Where, for example, does most of your little collection come from?’

  ‘Here and there,’ Gracewell said.

  ‘More there than here, I’ll wager,’ Maxwell persisted. ‘Hence the knicking of Sally Greenhow’s knickers at Carnforth. I knew I’d smelt the smell in this flat before. It’s incense, isn’t it? I was aware of it in the Carnforth pool, too. Must be something about the mix with chlorine that brings it out from your clothes.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gracewell muttered, ‘yes, I took them.’

  ‘So, I wrote off the Carnforth staff too. Now, I must admit, I had Alan Harper-Bennet in the frame for a while. Sally still thinks he’s got her knickers. But really, it had to be someone from St Bede’s, didn’t it?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’d known both Liz and Rachel. And with your little secret … well, it was only a matter of time before someone found out.’ Maxwell leaned forward. ‘You know what gets further up my nose about all this mess than anything else?’

  ‘No.’ Gracewell shook his head.

  ‘The unpalatable truth that Rachel was blackmailing you.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Gracewell blinked.

  ‘It took me a long time to come to terms with that.’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘She wasn’t the same girl I once knew. That I once loved.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell
–’

  ‘That’s not important now, though, is it?’ Maxwell said. ‘The point was that Rachel discovered your secret somehow and decided to cash in on it. You had too much to lose – your reputation, your job, your frock. So you looked big and paid up whatever it was she was milking you of and you bided your time. You waited until there was a chance. And all of you going off to the Carnforth Centre must have seemed a little miracle. A chance to get her on her own well away from St Bede’s, away from Bournemouth. What did you do? Ask Rachel to meet you in the basement? Or was it something more innocent, like could she do some photocopying for you? Oh, I can see how it happened. You were tense, keyed up. It was dark. You saw a figure in the corridor. A female figure. And you lashed out. Only then did you realize, when you turned her over, that you’d killed the wrong one. You’d killed Liz Striker by mistake.’

  Gracewell was on his feet now, pale again and quivering all the more. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No. For God’s sake.’

  Maxwell was standing with him, shaking him by the shoulders. ‘Face it, man,’ he growled. ‘Rachel sent you a note, didn’t she? This note.’ He wrenched it out of his pocket and held it against Gracewell’s nose. ‘You probably panicked for a moment. All right, you knew who it was from. You knew you were back to square one. Except that now it was worse, wasn’t it? Now, Rachel knew you weren’t just a pervert, you were a murderer too.’

  Gracewell’s hand snaked out and caught Maxwell a stinging slap across the face. For a second Maxwell’s vision spun. Then he brought his right hand back and sent the younger man crashing into the television and sprawling backwards. The priest curled up, covering his head with his hands and whimpering in the corner. Maxwell winced as he nursed his fist and stood looking down at the wreck by his feet.

  ‘You’re not so handy face to face, are you?’ he asked softly, his heart thumping. ‘Not without a bloody iron pipe, that is.’

  Gracewell was muttering something under his hands.

  ‘What?’ Maxwell hissed.

  Gracewell muttered again.