Maxwell’s House

by M. J. Trow

  The boy sat in an agony of indecision.

  ‘Will you leave us … um … Timothy?’ Garrett said.

  Grateful for the way out, Tim Grey leapt to his feet, but he wasn’t fast enough for Mad Max with his hackles up. ‘Tim!’ he all but pressed his nose against the boy’s, gripping his shirt firmly.

  ‘Maz,’ he said. ‘They call him Maz. He hangs out round the Dam. That’s all I know.’ And he brushed past Roger Garrett into the corridor and was gone.

  ‘Well, thanks, Roger.’ Maxwell rounded on the First Deputy. ‘Timing immaculate as ever.’

  ‘You were asked to come to Mr Diamond’s office ten minutes ago.’ Garrett’s glasses were bouncing up and down on his nose.

  ‘Well, fan my flies!’ Maxwell said. ‘Sometimes, Roger, just sometimes, there are more important things in life.’ It was now that Maxwell began to take in the oddity of the situation. Legs Diamond wasn’t normally so insistent. Matters weren’t usually that urgent. And he’d never sent his Deputy in person before. To fetch Maxwell to the presence. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘and what does Himself want that’s so important?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’ Garrett was tighter-lipped than Maxwell had seen the man in his five years in post.

  ‘I see.’ Maxwell snatched up a biro he’d left on the desk and considered finishing his coffee, only it had gone cold and he really couldn’t face it. ‘Well, then.’ He beamed his most acid beam at Garrett. ‘Let’s go and see the Organ Grinder, shall we?’

  The Organ Grinder looked terse, embarrassed. Maxwell had just seen the Senior Mattress leaving the Head’s office as he arrived, so he knew there was something in the wind. It wasn’t just that he and Deirdre Lessing didn’t see eye to eye; it was that they weren’t even standing on the same ground.

  But there was somebody else in the Head’s office. Another suit of an altogether darker grey. And Maxwell recognized the charcoal man from the odd sally into the bowels of County Hall. It was Dr Jenkins, the Chief Education Officer, who had last seen the inside of a school from the angle of the chalk face nearly thirty years ago. And beyond him the unprepossessing features and leather jacket of John Graham, contract builder and Chairman of Governors.

  ‘Max,’ Diamond was the only one on his feet, ‘won’t you sit down? Thanks, Roger.’

  The First Deputy nodded in Maxwell’s wake and closed the door on his way out. There was only one chair free, on its own in the centre of the opulent office – well, opulent by the standards of that of the Head of Sixth Form. Ah, he thought to himself, the siege perilous, but he sat in it anyway.

  ‘Max.’ The Headmaster leaned forward, having resumed his seat. Words appeared to fail him.

  ‘There’s been an accusation,’ Graham cut in with all the directness of a contract builder. God alone knew how he’d got the job as Chair. It could only be that no one else wanted it.

  ‘Oh?’ Maxwell raised an eyebrow. He’d never suffered contract builders gladly. ‘Against whom?’

  ‘You,’ all the men chorused.

  ‘Jim.’ Dr Jenkins flashed an order-by-Christian-name to the Headmaster. His school. His territory. His job.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Diamond cleared his throat. ‘There has been an accusation, Max, that you … behaved improperly with a girl in your charge.’

  ‘Improperly?’ Maxwell repeated.

  ‘You touched her up.’ Graham crossed the ‘t’s for him.

  Maxwell sighed. ‘Anne Spencer,’ he said.

  ‘So you admit it?’ The Chairman of the Governors leaned towards him.

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Maxwell. ‘I deny it.’

  ‘You were quick enough to name the girl,’ Graham challenged him. ‘None of us did.’

  ‘That points rather to my powers of judgement of human nature than to my capacity for perversion.’ He knew he’d lost Graham already.

  Jim Diamond did his best to pour oil on the waters. ‘Max, I’m sure there’s nothing in it,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Headmaster. Then why …?’

  ‘Sexual abuse is in the headlines, Mr Maxwell,’ Dr Jenkins said quietly. ‘You know as well as I do that gross moral turpitude is one of the few things we can still dismiss teachers for.’

  ‘Interesting word, turpitude,’ Maxwell commented. ‘It means depravity, Mr Graham, baseness. Can you manage either of those?’

  The contract builder’s face was a picture. ‘I wouldn’t be so fucking flippant if I were you, son.’

  Bearing in mind that Maxwell could easily give John Graham ten years, the threat did seem a little idle. It also made Jim Diamond wonder anew what Chairmen of Governors were coming to these days.

  ‘I am here,’ Dr Jenkins thought it necessary to justify himself, ‘because the parents of the child in question wrote to me personally. As they did to Mr Diamond … and to Mr Graham.’

  ‘I’m afraid, Max,’ Diamond folded his arms, then thought the mannerism too smug and unfolded them again, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to suspend you. On full pay, of course. Just until this thing is settled.’

  Maxwell stood up. He dug his hand into his pocket and threw a piece of chalk on to the Head’s desk. ‘That’s how they do it in the movies, isn’t it? Clint Eastwood or somebody hands over their gun and their shield? Well, that’s my gun, Headmaster. And my shield.’

  ‘Max …’

  But John Graham cut the Head short. ‘I’ll make no secret of it, Maxwell,’ he growled, ‘I’ve never liked you. Too cocksure by half. Well, we’ll see. There’ll be a full enquiry. The police will be wanting to talk to you.’

  ‘No one said anything about the police.’ Diamond stood up.

  ‘I bloody did,’ Graham told him, ‘just then. And you,’ he jabbed a finger at Maxwell, ‘you stay wide of that girl and her parents, you dirty bastard.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Graham,’ Dr Jenkins cut in. ‘I feel we all understand your concern.’

  ‘We do,’ smiled Maxwell. ‘It’s quite touching in a Neanderthal sort of way. I assume, Headmaster, that you’d like my departure to be immediate and that my lessons for the rest of the day will be covered?’

  ‘Yes, Max,’ the Head said. ‘Paul Moss is in the picture. At least, as far as he knows, you’re not well. Please don’t discuss this with anyone. You’re entitled to have your professional association rep to speak for you, but I’m afraid it’s rather gone beyond that now. You need a solicitor.’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘What I need is some backbone,’ he said. ‘In those about me, I mean.’ He turned in the doorway. ‘And while you … gentlemen … are eagerly pursuing the allegations of Miss Anne Spencer, you might also ask her what she knows about the murder of Jenny Hyde.’

  They’d scaled down the incident room and Jacquie Carpenter was on her own when the call came through. ‘It was from Mr Hyde,’ she told Chief Inspector Hall later.

  ‘We’ve nothing new for him,’ Hall said.

  ‘No, it wasn’t that.’ The girl shook her head. ‘He just thought you ought to know. His wife is being pestered. By that Mr Maxwell, from up at the school.’

  10

  The mist lay like a spider’s web carpet in the hollows and lent a fairy light to the evening. Peter Maxwell left White Surrey at home that night, still saddled under the stars, the dew forming on crossbar and mudguard. He took the way that Jenny Hyde had taken that last afternoon, as if walking in her footsteps might bring a flash of light, a solution to the riddle. But this was no Damascus Road and the age of miracles, it seemed, was past.

  He’d never known why they called it the Dam, that three acres or so of copse where, in the twilight, lovers walked, hand in hand and heart on heart. When he’d first come to Leighford, all those years ago, he’d done some local research. Found that in Domesday it had three mills and land in demesne for ten teams. But the river meandered to the east, as it always had, give or take a curve or two, and there was never a dam on the site where the trees darkened and the last of the dog owners whistled their animals home u
nder the creeping September night.

  Maxwell eased himself down on the seat the Council had thoughtfully placed there in memory of Ethel Hazelrigg who, according to the inscription, had loved this place. The ground swept into the sea of mist before him and the bushes rose like dark islands dotted here and there. He saw the lights of Lower Harton twinkle and the little road winding up to join those of Harton-on-the-Hill.

  It had been a while since he had been here. He’d forgotten how lovely it was. And how easy to forget that two miles away the M27 thundered and that this was 1993 and that a girl was dead. He couldn’t place it precisely, that spot on the Crimewatch programme where the Jenny Hyde lookalike had been filmed talking to that lad, the tall one with the spots. He remembered that they had been arguing; a woman had heard her say ‘No’ several times.

  Then she’d walked along the old railway line where the locomotives of the South-Western rattled and snorted before Beeching, the mad axeman, had struck. Less than a mile in that direction lay the little village of Moorfields, where Alison Miller lived with one of the biggest shits it had ever been Peter Maxwell’s misfortune to meet. Beyond that, the Shingle and the Red House and the sea.

  But where did she go then? Straight to the Red House? Why? Mr Arnold, whose dog had ducked in there, had said it was too derelict for courting couples. And Maxwell agreed. The night that he and Smith had gone sleuthing, that was obvious. Unless she didn’t know it was derelict. Didn’t know the Red House. But then, surely, all kids knew the Red House. Didn’t they?

  He stood up. Sitting on that hard old bequest of Ethel Hazelrigg wasn’t going to get him very far, watching the mist wreathe the meadow and the stars come out one by one. Orion, he thought to himself. There’s Orion’s belt, Orion’s club and ah, there they are, Orion’s trousers. He smiled in the dim light and trudged on down the slope. It was cold now. An early autumn. Soon, it would be fires and cocoa and draughts at every corner of Leighford High … but what if for him there was no more Leighford High? He’d shut the events of the day out of his mind. They were a bad dream and he’d wake up shortly.

  But Peter Maxwell was awake and he heard some kids calling to each other in the deeper woods, scaring each other in a dummy run for Halloween. He tried to see his watch, but it was hopeless. Time, certainly, that those kids were in bed. Listen to me, he chuckled to himself, sounding just like a geriatric schoolmaster. What would he miss most about Leighford High, he wondered, and turned for home. The kids? No. The staff? Christ, no. After all, he knew his collective nouns; an arsehole of teachers. No, he realized as he reached the road and his scarf and his suit and his hat all turned a vicious orange under the street lights; he’d miss the graffiti. He ran through it in his mind. In the gents’ loo on the first floor of the Arts block – ‘No graffiti please’, to which some wag had appended ‘Mine do.’ He suspected Geoffrey Smith of that one. And next to the hot air button in the ladies (he’d been told), ‘Please press for a message from the Secretary of State for Education.’ He suspected Geoffrey Smith of that one, too.

  ‘Go home, Maxwell,’ he said out loud. ‘Your mind’s beginning to wander.’

  It was a little after eleven that the door bell rang. Maxwell was up in the loft he’d spent months converting for his own peculiar purposes. Shit! Who the hell was this, at this time of night? If only he had the technical expertise to install the intercom gizmo the Kleeneze man was talking about, all he need do was flick a switch, ascertain who his caller was and let him in. As it was, he had to hurtle down three flights of stairs only to find it was Paul Moss.

  ‘Max.’ The young man looked dishevelled without a tie, he who was usually so precise. ‘I know it’s late.’

  ‘It is, oh wise Head of Department.’ Maxwell bowed. ‘But you’d better come in. Look at those stars.’

  Moss didn’t. He was too busy climbing to have time. Here was a man of thirty-two, already Head of History, but the sands of time were running out. He more than most knew the historical precedents he was up against – William Pitt, Prime Minister at twenty-four; Napoleon Bonaparte, General at twenty-five. By their standards, Paul Moss was an old man. He followed Maxwell up to the lounge.

  ‘I’d offer you that one,’ his host said, pointing at a chair, ‘but it’s Metternich’s by day and you might catch something. Scotch?’

  ‘Why not?’ Moss sank into the sofa. ‘Jesus, Max, how are people supposed to get up from this again?’

  ‘Do you mind?’ Maxwell feigned outrage. ‘I really had to rummage down at the tip for that. You young fellas have no sense of the past.’

  He poured them both a stiff one and handed the glass to Paul Moss. ‘Here’s looking at you, kid!’ he snarled in a passable Bogart. In his heart of hearts he knew it wasn’t as good as Geoffrey Smith’s.

  ‘It’s all over the school, Max,’ Moss told him raising his glass in a silent toast.

  ‘Gross moral turpitude,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘Yes, I expect it is.’

  Moss studied the Great Man’s features for a moment – the mutton chop whiskers, the broad, long face, the gap in the teeth. ‘You’re taking this very lightly,’ he said.

  Maxwell shrugged. ‘What do you want me to do, Paul?’ he asked. ‘Sob? Tear my shirt? Stick my head in the oven? For a start, I haven’t got gas; there again shirts cost an arm and a leg and as for sobbing … well …’ and he smiled at some distant memory, a long, long time ago. ‘Been there,’ he said, ‘done that.’ But he saw the grim face of the Boy Wonder. ‘Well, Paul. What are they saying?’

  Moss sighed. ‘The bottom line is that you shouldn’t have been alone in your office with Anne Spencer.’

  Maxwell threw his hands in the air. ‘And I shouldn’t have stirred my coffee clockwise or blown my nose or scratched my arse. Come on, Paul, life’s too short.’

  ‘You’re too trusting, Max,’ Moss told him. ‘There’s no way I’d put myself in that situation. Not with the likes of Anne Spencer.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘But she’s not the worst by a long way.’

  ‘Garrett’s going around with a look of smug satisfaction on his face, like the cat who’s got the cream. I heard two or three colleagues ask him about you and he said he couldn’t actually say anything. Then he proceeded to blab it all out. I should have punched him on the nose.’

  ‘Keep out of it, Paul,’ Maxwell advised him. ‘It’s not your fight. The Senior Mattress was enjoying it all, too, no doubt?’

  Moss snorted. ‘She certainly had a craftier-than-thou air about her. There’s somebody the bloody Chairman of Governors ought to be gunning for. She put the turpitude in that quaint old phrase.’

  Both men fell silent. Neither of them had been in this situation before. They’d both read, as you do, about teachers who abuse their authority by abusing their children. But that was usually some hole-in-corner private school you’d never heard of in a county far away.

  ‘Presumably …’ Paul Moss was placing a toe into dangerous waters, ‘presumably, nothing actually went on?’

  Maxwell looked at the younger man. Was this the time to jab him in both eyes with his fingers? Kick him in the crotch and throw him downstairs? Or just take away his rusks and refuse to change his nappy? In the event, he practised as though before any enquiry that might be set up.

  ‘I just asked the girl questions about her friend Jenny Hyde.’

  ‘I see.’ Moss had got off lightly and he knew it. ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘She took umbrage and ran out. Over-reaction, if you ask me.’

  ‘To what?’ Moss badgered him. ‘What had you asked that upset her?’

  ‘Damned if I remember now,’ Maxwell said. ‘I know I asked her if the police had been to see her. Whether that question specifically triggered it or whether my asking her things at all was the cause, I don’t know. Either way, she did a runner. And ran, of all places, to Deirdre Lessing.’

  Moss rolled his eyes upward. ‘Yes, she’s that s
ort of girl. I remember …’ and his voice trailed away.

  ‘Mmm?’ Maxwell looked up.

  ‘Oh, nothing. Look.’ Moss checked his watch. ‘I’ve really got to be going, Max.’ He downed his drink and stood up. ‘Are you going to be all right?’

  Maxwell chuckled. ‘I expect so,’ he said.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘The Charge.’

  ‘What?’

  Maxwell looked at his man. ‘It’s not everybody I show this to,’ he said, ‘if you’ve got a minute …’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  The older man led his guest up the open plan stairs to the bedroom level and then up into the space under the eaves. Paul Moss was still surprised after two years to find that Peter Maxwell lived in a new town house. Where there should have been oak beams and open fires and flagstones, were breeze-blocks and radiators and Habitat-by-way-of-Oxfam.

  ‘Good God!’ Moss stood open-mouthed as Maxwell pinged on the light. In the triangular room in front of him stood a huge trestle-table and on it a diorama with sand and a scattering of bushes. Regiments of 54-millimetre horsemen, hand-painted in Humbrol, sat their horses patiently, as though waiting for the word of command. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Oh, Philistine,’ chided Maxwell. ‘If you hadn’t specialized in the impact of the enclosure movement on existential nihilism or whatever crap you did at Cirencester Tech …’

  ‘Keele University,’ Moss corrected him.

  ‘That’s what I said,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘If you hadn’t done that, you might have done some real history – like the Charge of the Light Brigade, for instance.’

  ‘Bloody brilliant.’ Moss moved closer, crouching to examine the figures from eye level. ‘Can I touch?’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell whined, ‘normally, you touch, you die, but seeing as ’ow you’re almost a historian, well, OK, but gently, mind. Polystyrene only goes so far, you know.’

  ‘God,’ Moss replied, ‘they’re all different.’

  ‘Of course they are,’ Maxwell said. ‘You’ve got Captain Oldham of the 13th Light Dragoons in your hand there. His boss, Doherty, was sick on 25th October 1854, so Oldham led the regiment. He was last seen in the Charge, unhorsed, pistol in one hand, sword in the other. They never found his body.’