Maxwell’s House

by M. J. Trow

  ‘I am responsible for the academic and pastoral welfare of the sixth form,’ Maxwell told him. ‘Two hundred and eighteen sixteen- to nineteen-year-olds, with differing temperaments and from differing backgrounds. I’m a sort of cross between a Father Confessor and a policeman.’ He beamed his gappy smile at Johnson. ‘A nice policeman, of course.’

  The Inspector scowled back.

  ‘Did you know Jenny well?’ Hall asked.

  Maxwell looked at him. ‘You’ve seen her file?’ he asked.

  Hall nodded.

  ‘Then you know my sum knowledge of Jennifer Antonia Hyde,’ he said. ‘I predicted grade B at A level – Paul thought an A, but he’s young.’

  ‘Paul?’

  ‘Paul Moss, the Head of History. I’m second in the History Department in addition to my pastoral duties. Let’s see. She could construct a logical argument, read widely, had a mature, fluent style of writing.’

  ‘Is this useful?’ Johnson asked.

  Maxwell looked at him. ‘You asked me if I knew Jenny well,’ he said. ‘I’m giving you the full extent of my knowledge.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ Hall changed position, ‘but if I remember right, Jenny wanted to be a marine biologist. Isn’t it rather odd to be taking History A level?’

  ‘Intellectually, no.’ Maxwell leaned back in his chair. ‘I won’t bore you to death with the importance of History in the curriculum. Everything has a history, Chief Inspector. Even, I presume, marine biology. And certainly, the police force. As a discipline that teaches you to think on your feet, it’s second to none.’

  ‘Need to think on your feet a lot, do you, in your line of work?’ Johnson sneered.

  Maxwell smiled, and spoke to Hall. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Vocationally speaking, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense. It’s an insuperable problem. Kids choose subjects because they enjoy them, because they do well in them, because their best friends are doing them, because they fancy Sir. It has no rationale, really. Then they discover a career – and what they’re doing doesn’t fit it. Anyway, these things come and go, like the wind. A few years ago, when the Herriot series was first on the telly, half the sixth form wanted to be vets. I did point out that there was surprisingly little glamour in shoving your arm up a cow’s bum …’

  ‘And is that why Jenny Hyde did History?’ Johnson asked. ‘Because she fancied Sir?’

  Maxwell’s eyes narrowed against the venom of the remark. ‘I’m old enough to be her grandfather, Inspector,’ he smiled.

  ‘Yeah,’ Johnson grunted. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Did Crimewatch come up with anything?’ Maxwell asked. ‘I was on holiday at the time. It came as quite a shock, I can tell you. I almost dropped a stitch.’

  ‘Enjoy needlework, do you?’ Johnson asked.

  Maxwell shrugged. ‘It’s either that or a hole in my sock,’ he said.

  ‘Are you married, Mr Maxwell?’ Hall leaned forward.

  Maxwell looked at them both, the one passionless, the other wishing that hanging was back in vogue. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘The BBC were very helpful,’ Hall said. ‘We had a lot of calls.’

  ‘The scruffy lad – the one Jenny was seen talking to …’

  ‘Nothing useful on that,’ Hall said. ‘At least, nothing conclusive. Mr Maxwell …’ Hall stood up. ‘We’ve talked to all Jenny’s friends. And frankly, we’ve got nowhere. You see them on a daily basis, in a working atmosphere. Would you do us a favour?’

  ‘If I can,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Keep your ears open, will you? And your eyes? Someone must know something. They’re just not talking yet. We need a break, to be honest.’

  Maxwell stood up too and nodded. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said.

  And they saw themselves out.

  On the turn of the stair, Chief Inspector Hall glanced at Detective Inspector Johnson. ‘What’s the matter, Dave? You look as though you’ve just met the Krays.’

  ‘Smug bastards,’ Johnson said, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun. ‘Especially ones who wear pork pie hats – did you see it, hanging on his wall? And bow ties. What’s a teacher in a third-rate comprehensive school doing wearing a bow tie?’

  ‘I take it you didn’t altogether like Mr Maxwell, then?’ Hall grinned.

  ‘Let’s just say I think he’s about as straight as Jeffrey Dahmer. And there’s one other thing.’

  ‘Oh?’

  They reached the ground, where teachers stood talking in knots, carrying sheaves of papers, and a pale, pregnant woman scuttled past them.

  ‘There were bicycle clips on his desk,’ Johnson said. ‘Our Mr Maxwell rides a bike.’

  ‘We know he does. One of the constables we sent to his house reported seeing it in the holidays.’

  Johnson nodded. ‘I just like to have these things confirmed,’ he said.

  She’d had one of those things fitted, one of those fish-eye lenses in the door that make visitors look so horribly deformed. This visitor in particular looked more deformed than most, a bunch of chrysanths where his face ought to be.

  She clicked back the safety chain and let him in.

  ‘Well, y’all, Miss Martha,’ he drawled in his best Kentucky. ‘Ah declare, if’n you ain’t the purdiest little thing Ah ever did see.’

  ‘Thank you for these, Max,’ she said, taking the flowers from him. ‘I’d been meaning to cut them down myself. The wind plays havoc with my front.’

  ‘Not from where I am.’ Maxwell suddenly jack-knifed so that he was puffing an imaginary cigar, Groucho Marx style, at the level of her bosom. She tapped him playfully around the head so that his hat fell off.

  ‘Loosen your cycle clips,’ she chuckled. ‘I’ll find some water for these.’

  He joined his hat on the settee. ‘Any fear of a drink?’ he asked.

  He heard her clattering in the kitchen. ‘Help yourself,’ she called. He tugged off his clips and rolled on to his knees in front of the MFI cabinet. Pine, certainly. MFI nevertheless. Pernod. Vodka. Sherry. Ah, Southern Comfort.

  ‘Can I get you one?’ he shouted.

  ‘Got one.’ She was back in the lounge, a glass in her hand. ‘How was your day?’

  ‘“All Hell Day”, Nursie,’ he sighed. ‘I write it in my diary every year. I interviewed sixty-three little shits today, one by one, all of them, for reasons I can only guess at, wanting to join the sixth form. All of them clutching in their grubby little hands their results of the Greatest Cock-up Since the Eleven plus.’

  ‘I saw that toe-rag Henderson,’ she said, kicking off her shoes and stretching out on the settee. ‘Oh, sorry, Max, I’ve pinched your seat.’

  ‘Not often enough.’ He winked at her. ‘Yes, I didn’t interview Henderson. Alison did. One of the eighteen she had time for.’

  She caught his mood. ‘Now, Max,’ she scolded gently, ‘Alison is having rather a hard time at the moment. I thought she looked awful this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded, sipping his drink, ‘you’re right. She did. Not as awful as Henderson though, I’ll wager.’

  ‘I thought you said he’d be back in the sixth form over your dead body?’

  Maxwell looked at his watch. ‘There are four more hours of the day to go yet, Nurse Matthews. Who’s to say by the time it’s over I won’t be twirling from your banisters?’

  ‘I am,’ she said, moving smartly into the kitchen at the sound of a hissing saucepan, ‘because in a flat on the fourth floor you’d be hard put to it to find any banisters. Ratatouille.’ She announced the menu as though she’d read his mind. ‘OK?’

  ‘Delicious,’ he called back. ‘And knowing your culinary expertise, Sylvia darling, it’ll have just the right amount of rat. Talking of which, how is Roger Rabbit by the way?’

  He counted silently to himself with a rather silly grin on his face. In three seconds, well, a little less actually, she was framed in the doorway, a rather vicious-looking ladle in her hand. ‘If you are refe
rring to the Deputy Headmaster,’ she said, ‘you know very well that was a ridiculous rumour put about by …’ Then she saw his face and snorted, returning to her pots and pans.

  ‘… me, I expect.’ He joined her in the steam.

  ‘There’s only one man in my life,’ she said, clattering again and straining things over the sink. Then she stopped, quite suddenly, and looked at him. ‘And that didn’t work out, did it?’ She swept past him, busying herself hurriedly. ‘Will you open the wine?’

  ‘Oh, God!’ He banged his head on the cupboard. ‘I would, Sylv, but it’s lying disconsolately in my fridge at home. What an arsehole. Oh, pardon my French.’

  ‘Never mind,’ she smiled. ‘There’s a bottle of something Australian in the rack. No. To your left. That’s it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Sit down. The corkscrew’s on the table. Oh, can you carry this through?’

  He took the dish of steaming goodies and attacked the cork.

  ‘Max.’ She was suddenly serious as she sat opposite him, holding up her glass for him to fill.

  ‘Hmm?’ He poured for them both.

  ‘Who killed her, Max? Who killed Jenny?’

  He put the bottle down. Sylvia Matthews was still a striking-looking woman with a mass of auburn hair and bright eyes in which the candlelight danced. She’d been the Matron at Leighford High for nearly six years, at once Florence Nightingale and Claire Rayner, though she’d never been known to carry a lamp or call anyone lovey. ‘It’s been going through my mind,’ he said, passing her the salt. ‘How long have we been doing this, Sylv, you and I?’

  ‘What? Having dinner on the day before the term starts?’ She smiled at him. ‘For ever.’

  ‘For ever,’ he smiled back. ‘And in all that time, in all those for evers, have you ever known me unable to give you an answer?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

  ‘Well, this time, I can’t.’ He took his first mouthful. ‘Nursie,’ he moaned, closing his eyes, ‘you’ve excelled yourself.’

  ‘Did the police talk to you?’ she asked. I heard they were at school.’

  He nodded. ‘Some Chief Inspector named after a ’30s band-leader and a noxious sidekick like something out of The Sweeney.’

  ‘What did they want to know?’

  He looked at her, sipping his wine, biding his time. ‘The same thing you do,’ he said, ‘except they were less direct. They asked me what my relationship was with Jenny.’

  ‘Relationship?’ she repeated. ‘You didn’t have one … did you?’

  He leaned back in his chair. ‘Good God, Sylvia, if I’d known your line of attack I’d have worn my body armour – or at least my mac and trousers cut off at the knee with nothing above them.’

  ‘Oh, Max.’ She tapped his knuckles with her fork. ‘You were Jenny’s Year Head, that’s all. I know that.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he nodded, suddenly distant, elsewhere. ‘And that wasn’t enough, was it?’

  ‘You’ve nothing to reproach yourself for.’ She tore into the baguette.

  ‘Haven’t I?’ he asked her. ‘A detective asked me today what I knew about a dead girl, a girl I’ve taught for three years, and I was stuck for an answer. She was my responsibility, Sylv. I should have been there. What is it the Americans say – “for her”. I wasn’t there for her.’

  ‘Oh,’ she threw her napkin down and topped up their glasses, ‘now you’re being daft, Max. She was seventeen …’

  ‘Seventeen and four months,’ he reminded her.

  ‘All right, then, seventeen and four months. She had a mind of her own, that one. And she had parents. Your responsibility only goes so far, you know.’

  ‘In loco parentis, Sylv. That’s the phrase. How’s your Latin?’

  ‘Non-existent,’ she admitted. ‘Except for bits of the body, but that one I do know. Teachers are, under the law, said to be in loco parentis – in place of parents. But that’s during the day, surely? Nine to four?’

  He looked at her, sure, steady as she was. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I only know she was one of mine and she’s dead. And you know what?’

  ‘No. What?’ She smiled at him, recognizing that certain light that shone from his eyes.

  ‘I’m going to do something about it. Care to help?’

  They sat as the mock coal glowed flickering orange on the ceiling. Maxwell had removed his shoes, his tie and as much of the front he wore for the world as he was ever likely to. Sylvia Matthews curled up at the feet of the Great Man – her Alexander to his Aristotle; except that she had no worlds to conquer and his philosophy was born at the chalk face – a quarter of a century of civilization against the barbarian hordes.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be chewing a meerschaum by now?’ she asked.

  ‘Indeed, Watson.’ He flared his nostrils much after the manner of Basil Rathbone by way of Arthur Wontner. ‘A three-pipe problem and a seven and a half per cent solution.’

  She frowned up at him. ‘I’m sure that’s clever, Max, but I haven’t actually ever read any Conan Doyle.’

  He patted her head. ‘Nor I Gray’s Anatomy,’ he said. ‘Of course, if this were the ’50s, we’d be wearing trenchcoats and drinking tea and talking about “chummie” in terribly plummy voices.’

  ‘Weren’t you at Cambridge in the ’50s?’ she asked.

  He swiped her round the head with his scarf end. ‘’60s, dear girl,’ he said. ‘Early ’60s, I’ll grant you, but ’60s nonetheless. When you were screaming over the Fab Four, I was struggling with tripos complexities. And no, before you ask; I did not know Burgess and Maclean! How old do you think I am?’

  She patted his knee. ‘You’re timeless, Max,’ she said. ‘So what do we know?’

  ‘Jennifer Antonia Hyde.’ Maxwell leaned back on the settee. ‘Date of birth 16.3.76. God, I took a trip to the American Revolution Exhibition at Greenwich that year. Quite good. A bit expensive.’

  ‘Max!’ She brought him back to the present.

  ‘Sorry. I digress. Eight GCSEs. Currently taking Biology, Chemistry and History to A level.’

  ‘Form tutor?’

  ‘Janet Foster, spinster of this parish and Head of Art.’

  ‘Divorcee.’

  ‘Just a figure of speech,’ Maxwell said. ‘A woman of discernment, vision, finesse. And I’ve just remembered the old besom owes me five quid.’

  ‘When did Jenny … you know … When did it happen? Precisely?’

  ‘Well, that’s the bitch of it.’ Maxwell got up and freshened their drinks. ‘I was taking those three weeks in Cornwall and despite the assurances of the inventory they sent, the cottage telly was on the blink. I even missed the last Taggart episode as a result.’

  ‘It was the hotelier,’ she told him.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Had to be, really. Anyway, I pestered the owners who lived down the road and they got an engineer in. It was that night I saw Crimewatch.’

  ‘Didn’t you see a newspaper?’

  ‘You know I don’t read newspapers, Sylv,’ he said. ‘In the beginning God made newspapers for us British to wrap our fish and chips up in. Now that some Eurocrat has stopped all that, they have no function in society whatsoever. Anyway, you know I like to switch off entirely in the summer. Back to nature for a bit. You can reach out and touch the past. But you were here.’

  ‘Yes, I was. I didn’t get off till the following week.’

  ‘Tell me, then.’

  ‘Well, it was on the Saturday lunchtime news. I’d got it on for the weather forecast. I couldn’t believe it. It was awful. The next day, of course, the Sundays were full of it. The Mail had a double-page spread. That school photo of Jenny and one of Diamond.’

  ‘Ah, so Legs made the big time for a day, did he?’

  ‘It was the parents I felt sorry for. You know how the media hound people. They were there on Monday. Giving a press conference. It was awful. Just awful. Some bastard actu
ally asked Mr Hyde how he felt. Can you imagine that? He was younger than I expected, Mr Hyde. Have you met them?’

  ‘Once, I think. I wasn’t smitten. She was something of a cow, I thought.’ He held his hand up. ‘I know, you shouldn’t speak ill of the parents of the dead. But life has to go on.’

  ‘Is that why you’re doing this?’ she asked him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Investigating her death?’

  He chortled. ‘I’m not investigating her death,’ he said.

  ‘Well, what else would you call it, then?’

  ‘This?’ he asked. ‘Moving mountains, my dear girl, that’s all.’

  ‘I see.’ She looked up at him. ‘And tell me, Mr Maxwell, Mr I-Don’t-Want-To-Get-Involved Maxwell, whose mountains are they? Somebody else’s? Or yours?’

  He looked down at her, at her eyes bright in the firelight. Then he nodded. ‘They’re mine,’ he said. ‘My mountains.’

  She nodded. ‘Yours. Where will you start?’

  ‘That “you” has an appalling singularity about it, Sylvia darling. What happened to the “we” of earlier this evening, Kemo Sabe?’

  She rested her chin on his knee. ‘You can call round whenever you want to, Max,’ she told him. ‘I’ll burn the midnight oil with you. I’ll give you the benefit – for what it’s worth – of my feminine intuition. But more than that … No. You see, I saw their faces, the Hydes. I saw what it’s done to them. I’m not cut out for investigative journalism. Leave that to Fleet Street or wherever it is they keep journalists now. And the police. Leave it to the police.’

  ‘Is that what you’re telling me to do?’ he asked. ‘You just told me they’re my mountains. Jenny Hyde was my girl. As much as she was the Hydes’. Nobody kills one of my girls and says, “Lump it.” I’m not made that way.’

  She was smiling at him, her eyes glistening. ‘I know you’re not,’ she said, an iron-hard lump in her throat. Then she knelt up and kissed him hard on the lips. ‘Take care of yourself, Peter Maxwell. Because … because I’m afraid.’

  He smiled and held her face in his big, comfortable hands. ‘Why?’ he asked her. ‘Why are you afraid?’