Maxwell's Chain

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Alibis,’ she said, leaning back, calm as the ripples on Willow Bay in summer, her voice soft, her gentle alter ego in the driving seat. ‘Can’t you just give me your alibis?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted, backing off himself, sensing the heat evaporate from the moment, though the blood still pounded in his ears. ‘I need my diary to say where I was on each day.’

  ‘It wasn’t very long ago, Mr Crown,’ the woman prompted gently.

  ‘I know, but sometimes I…well, let’s say that it can get a bit hectic, sometimes. I mean, just as an example, I got home the other day and there were a couple of coppers from Leighford in the house. It was about Lara. I had completely forgotten they were coming and I’d got…tied up. That happens. Sorry.’ He looked at her and saw no response. ‘Look, I’ve got expensive tastes, OK. I have to make a bit extra where I can.’

  ‘He’s even worse than we thought, guv,’ Jacquie whispered. That was what Maxwell loved about her. Underneath the CID exterior, there was still a little girl who, if she could no longer be shocked by anything, could at least disapprove.

  ‘Guiltier,’ agreed Hall. ‘I’m not sure that “worse” would cover it. He is a piece of work, though. His tracks won’t be easy to follow. He’s probably got a Mrs Robinson in every town in the county.’

  ‘They’ll all give him an alibi, guv, you’re right,’ Jacquie sighed. ‘If he can get to them first, that is…’

  ‘Mike,’ Helen Marshall was saying; if it weren’t for political correctness, she’d be offering him a ciggie about now. ‘I am not trying to frame you on anything, pin something on you you didn’t do. But you can surely see our position. What we have here is a person – yourself – who has been involved in two murder enquiries in a very short space of time. You claim that you are only involved involuntarily, as it were. You were related by marriage to one and tripped over the other.’

  He nodded sulkily. This cheeky tart was playing with him, having a smug joke at his expense. And he’d seen Waking the Dead too; who was watching all this from the other side of the mirror?

  ‘But, you see, it goes deeper than that.’ Helen Marshall was tracing little patterns on the Formica with her index finger, as though she was trying to work her way through the latest Sudoku. We know that you have been in Leighford recently; your car was caught on CCTV in the town centre.’

  Jacquie and Hall sat up straighter. This was progress.

  ‘It’s not far,’ he blustered. ‘I was shopping.’

  ‘Hmm, if you say so, of course. It’s a girly thing, I suppose, but I’d have thought Chichester, Arundel, even Littlehampton, had better shops. However, that leads us on to a few other things. A young man, Darren Blackwell, was murdered in Leighford earlier this week. At first we thought that had no links with your stepdaughter, but I have just received word from the Leighford forensic team and apparently, in tracking the numbers on Lara’s phone, they found that of Darren’s younger brother.’ She turned her head towards the mirror, as if asking apology from the two Leighford cops concealed behind it. She didn’t mean to steal their thunder, but it was too good a chance to miss. Helen Marshall was as much in awe of Henry Hall as he was of her. Stealing a march was the name of the game.

  ‘So what?’ Crown said. ‘Lara was a pretty girl. She attracted the boys, always did. Got that from her mother.’

  ‘Yes,’ Helen agreed. ‘She certainly was a pretty girl, but she didn’t mix in the same crowd as Darren Blackwell and he and his brother didn’t socialise. A slight family problem, I understand.’

  Oh yes, thought Jacquie. A slight problem when your brother is sleeping rough in a wood. Socialising is not perhaps quite the right word for it then.

  ‘Still don’t know the name Darren Blackwell,’ Crown told her. ‘I don’t usually take much notice of men, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Then,’ she ignored him and carried on listing her suspicions, almost as though he wasn’t there, ‘the body over which you tripped,’ Maxwell would have applauded the grammar, thought Jacquie, ‘is, we think, a missing person from Leighford. So, as you see, Leighford keeps on cropping up. All roads seem to lead there, don’t they?’

  ‘So I see,’ said Crown, leaning forward. ‘But I don’t live there, do I? So I don’t see where I come in to this chain of events.’

  ‘It may be because of the woman you have been seeing in Leighford,’ the DCI said suddenly.

  Crown leant back again. He mimed zipping his lip. ‘I’ll have my lawyer now, blondie, if you don’t mind,’ he said and stared resolutely at the ceiling.

  ‘Oh my word,’ breathed Hall. ‘He’s in trouble now!’

  The DCI got up slowly and walked to the door. She turned before she went through it and looked straight through the mirror. The grin she gave to Henry Hall was a facsimile of the last thing the unluckiest wildebeest sees as it goes under for the last time, just short of the banks of the Zambezi.

  Peter Maxwell didn’t need a lift back from Arundel, because he hadn’t gone. Henry Hall caught radio newsflashes too and anyway, Leighford nick was routinely apprised of school closures in the area, so he knew the current Head of Sixth Form would not be at the chalk-face. And he knew they’d found a potentially neighbourly body in Arundel, so Hall naturally assumed…but was not on the money there. What he did need was a sit down, a glass of water or a large Southern Comfort, whichever was the sooner and a whole heap of explanation. Opening his front door had been so easy. Just grab the knob, twist and fling. It was what was on his doorstep that was giving him trouble. There stood not one, but two Mrs Troubridges.

  They were dressed differently, he admitted, but the general style was the same. Pudding basin hat, pulled low on the brow. Scarf, one pale pink, one beige, tucked into a tweed collared coat, worn just long enough to top the ankles. Gloves, to match scarf. Fur topped boots, brushing the hem of the coat. This was February. The weather could be treacherous. But Maxwell knew, from very many years’ experience, that at least one of them would be wearing this selfsame ensemble until at least June, on the principle of cast ne’er a clout till May be out.

  ‘Mrs Troubridge?’ he almost whispered. Years of teaching had taught him to hide shock, horror, disgust in order to keep ahead of the little bastards who had caused it, like when he’d fallen down the stairs in the Tower Block or that nice Mr Vincent had been run over by the ambulance that time. He’d just dusted himself or Mr Vincent down and carried on as if nothing had happened. But this was beyond even his finely honed powers.

  ‘Yes,’ they chorused, shades of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Surely, Lewis Carroll at his maddest had foreseen this very moment and laid it down for posterity.

  ‘Which one of you is…my Mrs Troubridge?’ How else could he put it? The answer was immediate. The one who was giggling and poking him in the arm with one begloved hand.

  ‘Oh, Mr Maxwell,’ she tittered. ‘I am. And this is my sister, Araminta. Technically, she is Miss Troubridge. As you know, I married our cousin – wags said it was so I didn’t have to have my handkerchiefs resewn. We’re twins,’ she added, somewhat superfluously, ‘although I am, technically speaking, the elder by seven minutes.’

  ‘Are you?’ he replied, recovering himself a little. ‘Yes, now I come to look more closely, indeed you are.’ He stepped to one side. ‘Do come in, ladies. I’ll make you some tea, or something. I…’ again he was lost for words. ‘I’m really glad to see you, Mrs Troubridge. And of course you, Miss Troubridge. And I’m so glad you came round to see me. Jacquie and I were afraid I had upset you in some way.’

  ‘Not at all. Don’t mention it,’ they spoke as one. It was as if they had bestowed an honour on him and he shook his head to dispel the feeling of being down the rabbit hole. Mrs Troubridge threw him a puzzled glance, but her brow soon lightened. Though she was an expert at grudge-holding, she had already forgotten the news of the sleeping man on his sofa, vouchsafed by that ghastly little woman with the cigarette who seemed to visit her neighbour rather often, for reasons on which s
he tried not to dwell.

  He led them up the stairs and he heard behind him the twittering whisper of the Miss Troubridge to the Mrs, ‘You’ve done so much more with yours, dear.’ And the answering murmur of, ‘Long years as a bachelor, dear. Bound to take its toll.’

  Clenching his teeth, he turned to them with a smile as they trotted into the sitting room and sat disconcertingly at either end of the sofa. ‘Tea, is it then, ladies?’

  They nodded.

  ‘And how do you take yours, Araminta?’

  ‘Just the same as I do,’ Mrs Troubridge replied.

  That put Maxwell in a bit of a quandary. He couldn’t remember how she took hers either. Arsenic, was it? Old lace? Oh well, tray, pot and all the fixings it would have to be.

  While the kettle boiled, he hovered in the kitchen doorway. The Troubridges had occupied the sofa like a couple of bookends. Maxwell was just grateful it was Metternich’s day off. He wasn’t sure a cat of his years could quite handle all this. Inevitably, the question had to be asked. ‘Where have you been, Mrs Troubridge?’ he said. ‘We all thought you had gone missing.’ Unasked, the question ricocheted round his head, ‘Who did Mike Crown fall over last night?’

  ‘Well,’ Araminta began. ‘It was all a bit of silliness, really.’

  ‘I went to meet Araminta off the bus…’

  ‘…but I arrived early, so…’

  ‘…she went off to get a little drinkie, and I arrived on time and found her not there.’

  ‘So she, silly girl,’ Araminta smiled fondly, ‘set off to look for me.’

  ‘So Araminta couldn’t find me and booked into a hotel…’

  ‘…and she went off to see if I was still at home, hurt or something. Fallen down the stairs or some similar accident. As if!’

  ‘But before I did, I reported her missing…’

  ‘Wait.’ Maxwell held up his hand and broke the chain. ‘So it was Araminta who was reported missing?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Mrs Troubridge said. ‘Dear me, Mr Maxwell. Don’t tell me you thought it was me!’ The pair of them laughed like two demented budgies.

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said, hardly able to keep the amazement out of his voice. ‘Of course we did, Mrs Troubridge. We didn’t know until recently that you had a sister, let alone a twin.’

  ‘Had I not mentioned it?’ Mrs Troubridge was puzzled and sat there, one finger to her chin, casting her mind back, where it was happiest. ‘Not when I mentioned the late Mr Troubridge even?’

  ‘Because,’ Araminta couldn’t help herself, ‘that’s when we stopped speaking, of course. When she ran off with Mr Troubridge. You do know we were cousins?’ she asked, dropping her voice.

  Since Mrs Troubridge had reminded him not four minutes ago as well as at regular intervals over the years, he clearly did, but he couldn’t help thinking that there had probably been a lot of that sort of thing in the Troubridge family. You got a lot of that sort of thing in Tottingleigh in the old days. He nodded, smiling weakly. Finally, he said, ‘So, let me get this right. When you, Mrs Troubridge,’ and he pointed to his neighbour, ‘married Mr Troubridge, more years ago than you care to remember, you stopped speaking to you, Miss Troubridge.’ And he pointed to her sister.

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ Araminta said with a sigh. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. Of course that wasn’t how it was. I stopped speaking to her! I was affianced to Mr Troubridge first, you see. Then, my sister came home from spending some time abroad and he took one look and fell in love. Well, she was the elder by seven minutes and that will always tell, don’t you think? So like Victoria and Albert, only in reverse. She couldn’t resist and the rest you know.’

  Mercifully for Maxwell’s future sleep patterns, he didn’t know and didn’t want to – there were limits, after all, even to encyclopaedic knowledge such as his. ‘How…sad. But you have forgiven her, Araminta?’

  ‘At last. After all, life is short.’ The twins smiled at each other and, reaching across, took each other’s hand and clasped it warmly.

  A distant whistling brought Maxwell down to earth. ‘I’ll make the tea,’ he muttered and went gratefully into the normality of his kitchen. Cups, plates, the toaster – all the outward trappings of sanity. But round and round in his head went the question – who is the body and is there still a link? Suddenly, the phone rang, almost in his ear.

  ‘War Office.’

  ‘Max,’ came Jacquie’s voice. ‘You’re at home.’

  ‘I don’t want to carp,’ he said, ‘but today is very strange. If you didn’t expect me to be here, why have you rung? Metternich isn’t taking calls. And anyway, it’s his day off.’

  ‘I rang to leave you a message,’ she said. ‘For when you got back from Arundel.’

  ‘Arundel? I’m not in Arundel.’

  ‘No, but…’ she had the grace to sound embarrassed and he had the sense to keep quiet about his thwarted travel plans. ‘Never mind. It was just to say that we don’t know yet if the body is… you know, Mrs Troubridge.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You do what?’

  ‘Know if it’s Mrs Troubridge.’

  ‘We’re not talking hunches, Max, or making me feel better. We’re talking about a murder.’

  ‘I’m talking about Mrs Troubridge and also Miss Troubridge who are both sitting large as life on our sofa.’

  Jacquie went silent for a second then, ‘What? Are you all right, Max?’

  ‘I think so. Admittedly, I had a bump on the head playing silly mid-off for Jesus all those years ago, but it is all making sense in a very Troubridgean sort of way.’ He filled her in on the bus-station meanderings, trying to keep the element of farce to a minimum. ‘I think you need to be here to get the real impact. For now, perhaps you could pass the news on to Henry. It might help.’

  ‘Umm, yes. I will. And it might. I’ll see you later, Max.’ A pause. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Positive. But you might like to see if you can find out who the body is. Because, now, we’re looking for someone who isn’t missing, if you catch my drift. And as I am sure you know, yin of my yang, that is always so much more difficult, rather like meeting a man who wasn’t there. See you later.’ And Maxwell put down the phone, suddenly full of foreboding. Pulling himself together, he assembled the tea, broke open the Tesco’s Finest Hob Nobs and made the best entrance he could muster into the sitting room. ‘Hob, Miss Troubridge? Nob, Mrs Troubridge?’

  The sisters twittered and giggled like girls and Maxwell, recovered now from the virtually heart-stopping shock they had given him, smiled benevolently. Having a missing Mrs Troubridge was one thing – quieter for a start and less confrontational. Having a dead one would have been much nastier and he was glad that moment was staved off until the next time he felt tempted to push the old trout down the stairs.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jacquie flicked her phone shut with a thoughtful expression on her face and went back into the office where Henry Hall was waiting.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked. He knew her looks of old, the slight, imperceptible swings of mood that made for good days or better days. Henry Hall – and Peter Maxwell, come to think of it – had never had it so good.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In fact, I think this is where I say there is bad news and good news. Which would you like first? In fact, if I give you the good news, you will be able to guess the bad, I think.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ Hall said, clasping his hands in front of him like a Victorian schoolmarm. ‘Please don’t keep us in suspense.’

  While Jacquie had been in the corridor on the phone, Hall had been bringing his opposite number up to speed, especially on the Troubridge connection. Helen Marshall and Hall went back a bit. In fact, despite her husband and family, she had always carried a bit of a torch, being a sucker for the strong, silent type. Well, the silent type. He, safe behind his blank lenses, had always been unaware, much to the amusement of everyone else, who could tell at a thousand paces. She lived with it
these days and even had a laugh sometimes. Looking at him now, she still wanted to smooth that little wrinkle between his brows, brush the piece of lint off his jacket. That didn’t stop her from wanting to beat him at every turn, of course, just to prove that she could. She settled for getting him a cup of coffee and a piece of shrink-wrapped carrot cake. Where was Jamie Oliver when police canteens needed him?

  ‘The thing is, Helen, our missing person may well be Jacquie’s next door neighbour.’

  ‘That’s a bit of a co…’

  ‘Don’t say coincidence, please,’ he warned her. ‘There’s no such thing.’

  ‘OK, then. I won’t. But it is, don’t you think? And, don’t I remember hearing somewhere that her other half’s a bit too involved sometimes? He’s not like one of those nutters who phones it in when he’s done it, is he?’ Helen Marshall had known men like that – and it was always men, funnily enough, for whom the lure of fifteen minutes of fame was too great. They weren’t all serial killers with more previous than Harold Shipman, they were just sad old misfits who wanted the world to notice them, just once. She demolished half her cake in one bite.

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘There was a time when I thought so. There are staff in my nick who wish it were so. But…no. He’s just a bit too nosy, a bit too easily able to get Jacquie to tell him everything. And a bit too right, for some people’s taste. But,’ he could almost feel his throat closing over as the next words took shape, ‘his heart’s in the right place. He’s very, very bright and he knows almost everyone in Leighford and their cat. So, he’s got a bit of a march even on us. And, before you ask, it’s not him.’

  ‘Right. That’s one we can tick off. Just a couple of hundred thousand to go, then.’

  ‘Why stop there,’ he asked, dryly. ‘The population of the country is…let’s say sixty million, to keep the maths simple. Half women, so thirty million. Half too old, fifteen million. Half of that too young, seven and a half million. Most of those not related to the first victim. Make that one. Mike Crown.’