Maxwell's Crossing

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ she remarked, with no inflection.

  Maxwell decided to be a good host. ‘Mrs Whatmough! Come on in out of the cold.’ He stepped aside to let her pass and she went up the stairs without a backward glance. He heard Jacquie greet the woman on the landing and he took three deep breaths before going up to join them.

  As he went into the sitting room, Jacquie was helping Mrs Whatmough out of her coat, which she handed to Maxwell without a word. He disposed of it tidily across the back of a chair and ushered the woman to a seat by the fire. They all sat round for a moment or so, with the Headmistress surveying the room, now de-tinselled but still bearing the signs of a recent Christmas, with board games still out and a by now slightly mangled ginger battery-driven hamster on the mantelpiece. She smiled as far as she ever did.

  ‘What a pleasant room this is,’ she told them.

  ‘Thank you,’ Jacquie said and sat waiting patiently for the point of the visit to be broached. Then, when nothing else seemed forthcoming, she added, ‘We like it.’

  ‘Is Nolan not here?’ Mrs Whatmough asked.

  ‘Having a nap,’ Maxwell said. ‘We’ve had rather a busy afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Tobogganing,’ she said. ‘Although we always called it sledging when I was a child. I hope he will be fully rested for school tomorrow.’

  Jacquie gave Maxwell a small triumphant smile. The sledging-versus-tobogganing question had been settled by the best possible authority. ‘He’ll be up shortly,’ she said. ‘Then it will be supper, bath and bed. He likes his routine.’

  ‘Routine is the key,’ Mrs Whatmough said, but without much enthusiasm. Unspoken sentences hung in the air of the room like smoke.

  Maxwell was never one to hang about when a murder investigation was pending. He had not been able to get any details out of Jacquie all afternoon, not even by attaching questions to casual remarks or placing lighted matches under her fingernails. His best attempt had been ‘Just look at those two fly down that hill, was she pushed do you think or did she fall?’ He was agog to know what Mrs Whatmough had to do with the whole thing but had been too polite to ask her on the doorstep. But enough was enough. Even so, he wrapped it up a little.

  ‘I’m sure that, like us, you don’t want Nolan to hear this conversation, Mrs Whatmough. Would you like to ask anything? Tell us something, perhaps?’

  This was the opening they had all been waiting for. Taking a deep breath, the Headmistress began.

  ‘I received a telephone call from the estranged husband of one of my staff this afternoon, a Reverend Mattley.’

  ‘May I interrupt, Mrs Whatmough?’ Jacquie said.

  ‘Do, please, call me Rosemary.’

  ‘Er … Rosemary …’

  ‘Only in this context, of course. Not in school.’

  Jacquie knew the rules. ‘Of course not. Where was I?’ she appealed to Maxwell.

  ‘Interrupting.’

  ‘Yes. The dead woman’s name was not Mattley. I wonder if we are at cross purposes.’

  ‘No, her name was Gregson. She and her husband had separated just before she came to work at my school,’ Maxwell would have sworn he could hear capital letters on those two words, ‘and I must say I was uncomfortable about having a woman in such a situation as a teacher, but as we all know these days, marriages don’t always last.’ She blushed faintly under the uncompromising layer of powder and carried on. ‘I received a call from him, and it was to tell me that his wife was dead. I think he was just trying to do the right thing, to let me know she wouldn’t be in on Monday.’ She stopped speaking and swallowed hard, as if the situation had just hit her. Telling the staff. Telling the children. It was not a task she relished, if only because of its unfortunate effect on discipline and routine. She coughed and continued. ‘Of course, I was shocked; she was only a young woman. When he told me the circumstances I was … well, Mr Maxwell, Mrs Maxwell, I was rather upset.’ Again, the small cough. ‘I had had some … personal contact with Sarah Gregson on Thursday and the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I should speak to someone. But—’

  Maxwell cut in. ‘But you didn’t want to go to the police and you thought that we might be the next best thing.’

  ‘Not really,’ she retorted. ‘I know I will have to speak to the police. But I doubt they will be doing much about this death, which I assume they will assign in the final analysis to suicide. I don’t think it was, Mr Maxwell, and I had heard that you …’

  ‘Interest myself,’ Maxwell offered.

  ‘Pokes his nose in,’ muttered Jacquie, then, louder, ‘You don’t have to worry, Rosemary. We have decided that this is murder. Officially.’

  Maxwell looked at his wife out of the corner of his eye. She had obviously made the decision to share in the interests of finding something out. With luck, she would end up the better for it.

  Rosemary Whatmough let her guard slip, even if only for a moment. ‘You agree? But why?’

  ‘There were various things at the scene which have made us lean towards conducting a murder enquiry,’ Jacquie said. ‘But, Rosemary, I would be interested to know why—’ Her head snapped up. ‘I’m sorry, can you wait while I go and see Nolan? I can hear him on the move. Unless …’ She looked meaningfully at Maxwell, who smiled and shook his head.

  ‘A boy needs his mother,’ he said, smugly.

  ‘Indeed,’ Mrs Whatmough agreed.

  Jacquie shot Maxwell a venomous glance and left the room.

  Maxwell waited until he heard her talking to Nolan along the landing and then turned to Rosemary Whatmough. ‘So,’ he said, ‘as Jacquie was about to ask, why do you think it was murder?’

  The Headmistress flicked a glance to the door. ‘Well, Mr Maxwell, I … To be quite frank with you, I thought that I would be at loggerheads with the police, but now that I find that they also suspect murder …’

  Maxwell decided to go out on a limb. He affected a hurt expression and said, ‘As they suspect murder, you don’t need my amateur bumbling.’

  ‘No, no, good heavens, no. I just mean that I should share my knowledge with Mrs Maxwell, as a senior police officer, rather than …’ She glanced up, met his eyes and made a decision. She folded her hands in her lap and leant forward. ‘On Thursday, Sarah Gregson came to me in great distress and asked for an advance on her salary.’

  Maxwell smiled. ‘Christmas is always an expensive time, Rosemary.’ He knew exactly how far teachers’ salaries went.

  ‘Of course,’ the woman agreed. Her small capon had been ridiculously overpriced, but had kept her and Yan Woo in leftovers for some days, to be fair to Messrs Waitrose. ‘But this seemed more than that. She was desperate and clearly didn’t have anywhere else to turn.’ She raised an unexpectedly self-aware eyebrow. ‘I can hardly imagine any of my staff would come to me with such a request unless they were quite, quite desperate, Mr Maxwell.’

  This was clearly a rhetorical remark, and he let it go without reply. ‘How much did she say she needed?’ he asked, instead.

  ‘She asked for two hundred and fifty, but I lent her five hundred pounds.’

  Maxwell’s jaw dropped. He indulged in a moment’s imagining that he would be lent five hundred pounds by Legs Diamond and somehow the picture refused to take shape. Only the usual squadron of pigs roared and squealed their way across the sky, vapour trails entwined. ‘That was … incredibly generous of you, Rosemary.’

  ‘I happened to have it on me. I wouldn’t have, as a rule. I assumed she was being blackmailed.’

  ‘That’s a very unusual conclusion to which to jump,’ he said, wondering again what sort of people had been unleashed to teach his son. ‘And also, if I may say so, would that not, were it true, be a very good reason for suicide?’

  Rosemary Whatmough looked at the man before her, at his trousers, slightly baggy at the knees and still bearing a faint trace of bicycle clip creases at the cuffs; at his jumper, pulled at random places by Metternich’s rare expressions of affection;
at his barbed wire hair, his side whiskers, newly trimmed for a new term; at the questioning half-smile. But most of all, she looked into his kind knowing eyes and found herself to be in floods of tears.

  Maxwell was immediately on his feet. He passed her a box of tissues from the coffee table and stood by her side, a hand hovering over her shoulder, which he finally decided to risk patting. The contact seemed to pull her together and she recoiled slightly, leaving him to return to his chair, hostly duties performed to perfection.

  She blew her nose. ‘I apologise,’ she said. ‘I have been through a rather worrying time lately.’

  ‘It hasn’t shown,’ Maxwell said. He knew that he could bestow no greater compliment.

  She heaved a huge sigh. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m glad. My school means everything to me and I have been worried that … well, it means everything to me.’

  The light went on in Maxwell’s head. ‘Rosemary,’ he said gently. ‘Are you being blackmailed?’

  ‘Ha.’ The attempt at a laugh was mirthless. ‘Whatever would anyone be able to blackmail me about?’

  ‘Well, I have no idea,’ Maxwell told her. ‘I assume it is a secret, or how would you be being blackmailed?’ It seemed pretty obvious to him.

  ‘You are a very intelligent man, aren’t you, Mr Maxwell?’ she said. ‘Not just intelligent, but you know how to put two and two together.’

  ‘Maths is probably my weakest area,’ Maxwell said, ‘but following the analogy, I do indeed know how many beans make five. Would you like to tell me about it?’

  She blew her nose again, in a ladylike fashion. ‘Not really, Mr Maxwell.’ She leant down and picked up her handbag and started to get up. ‘This was a mistake. I should go, really. Please give my apologies to your wife.’

  The door opened and Jacquie walked in. ‘Apologies?’ she asked, taking in the woman’s tear-stained face. ‘What for?’

  The Headmistress stood up and went towards her coat. ‘I made a mistake. I must go home. Please don’t speak of this, Mr Maxwell. I assure you that as far as I am concerned it is forgotten already.’

  ‘But, Mrs Whatmough. Rosemary,’ Maxwell said, touching her arm. ‘Jacquie can help you, I’m sure.’

  ‘No. Please. I must go.’ She struggled into her coat and was through the door and off before either of them could stop her. The door at the bottom of the stairs slammed behind her, and in the ringing silence, Jacquie turned to her husband.

  ‘Was it something I said?’

  ‘No, and it wasn’t something I said, either. My gob is, however, metaphorically smacked. Is Nole getting up?’

  ‘No. He’s decided to stay in bed and watch a DVD with a bowl of Coco Pops. I keep meaning to ask you, as a bit of an expert on children; are they all this easy?’

  Maxwell thought briefly of his last experience of fatherhood, but knew that wasn’t why she asked the question. ‘By the time they get to me, they have passed through so many hands it’s hard to tell. Half of them are degenerates, a quarter sociopaths and I don’t even want to think about the other forty per cent. But Nole certainly seems to be little trouble, I’ll give him that. What’s he watching?’

  ‘He was trying to decide between Despicable Me and Howl’s Moving Castle. Nightmares either way, but the way he is about choosing, he’ll be asleep before he watches either. Anyway, that’s enough prevarication. What was Rosemary’s problem? What did you say to her?’

  ‘Well, I began with asking her why she thought it was murder.’

  ‘And why did she?’

  ‘It all took a bit of a funny turn from then on. She, Rosemary, suspected that she, Sarah, was being blackmailed.’

  ‘That’s grounds for suicide, surely.’

  ‘As a rule. But Rosemary Whatmough has her own set of rules. And if she hasn’t committed suicide because of blackmail, she doesn’t really see why anyone else would. I think that was the gist.’

  Jacquie leant forward, her mouth open. ‘Mrs Whatmough’s being blackmailed?’

  ‘She didn’t say so, but … yes.’

  ‘You do know that I’ll have to follow this up? I can’t ignore it.’

  ‘Yes, I know you can’t ignore it, but can I follow it up? Pretty please.’

  ‘Max—’ The phone shrilled and they both looked round wildly trying to locate the handset. Jacquie remembered first and dashed into the kitchen. Maxwell heard her say, ‘Oh, hello, guv.’ There was a pause and then, ‘We were out on the Dam, sledging. We’ve not been back long.’ Maxwell noted with pleasure that she didn’t mention Rosemary Whatmough. ‘Well, of course,’ he heard her say. ‘We’ll be here. Bye.’

  She came back into the room, the phone still in her hand. ‘Henry’s coming over,’ she told him. ‘Apparently, he thinks we might know the murderer personally and he wants to have a chat.’

  Their eyes locked and their minds echoed each other with the same phrase. ‘Surely not Mrs Whatmough?’

  Henry Hall was a methodical man above all else and he sorted out his desk before he headed off to 38 Columbine. As is always the way of it, this meant that he got caught by umpteen people who had been trying to catch him all week, and so it was gone seven by the time he rang the bell. Jacquie opened it, on a waft of roast chicken. Hall was not a policeman for nothing, and noting the smell and the small drool of gravy on her chin, he apologised at once.

  ‘You’re eating. I’m sorry; I’ll come back later.’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish, Henry. We’ve saved you some. I rang Margaret and said we’d feed you, if that was all right with her.’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘Yes. Apparently she had already had a low-fat cauliflower surprise.’ Jacquie paused halfway up the stairs and looked back at him. ‘It sounds delicious.’

  ‘Does it? Well, now, that’s something I suppose.’ Hall realised that he had had nothing except chocolate since a snatched breakfast. ‘Do I smell stuffing?’

  ‘Of course. Here at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, all the trimmings means exactly that. Having only thrown the turkey out last week I think it may be a little soon to have poultry again, personally.’

  Henry Hall had learnt in what he called the Diet Years, in other words every single day that had passed since his youngest son was weaned, that it was never too soon for stuffing and followed her gratefully up the stairs. At the kitchen table there was a fourth place set, with wine glass already half filled with a thoughtfully parsimonious half a unit of wine. Wouldn’t do for a detective chief inspector to be breathalysed by One of his Own. Nolan was leaning on his elbow at one of the other places and seemed to be asleep halfway through a Brussel sprout.

  Jacquie picked him up and removed the speared Brussel from his unresisting hand. ‘Get Henry’s dinner on the table, would you, sweetheart?’ she asked Maxwell. ‘I’ll just put Sonny Jim to bed.’

  Maxwell sketched a kiss at his son who waved a tired hand in everyone’s general direction.

  ‘Night night, Nolan,’ Hall said. He had forgotten, through all the spotty teenaged years of his own boys, how endearing they had looked at Nolan’s age. He sat down to his dinner, freshly out of a warm oven. ‘Max, you’re a lifesaver. I didn’t know I was so hungry.’

  ‘You’re in luck,’ the Head of Sixth Form-turned-Masterchef said. ‘We usually eat at lunchtime on a Sunday, but we went out instead.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hall said, slicing into a chicken leg. ‘Jacquie said you had been out at the Dam.’

  ‘Yes, we went with Hector Gold, our exchange teacher. American, but very nice chap. He and Nole get on like a house on fire.’

  If Maxwell noticed Hall pause in his chewing, he gave no sign.

  ‘Jacquie did say you had an exchange teacher. Who is he in exchange for?’

  For the briefest of moments, Maxwell saw a grim black-and-white Fifties noir moment, of spies passing each other on bridges somewhere in central Europe. The reality was a little less colourful. ‘Paul Moss. I think you’ve probably met him from time to time.’ Bot
h men knew that this meant from the occasional murder case, but they were still too deep in social mode to say so.

  ‘History,’ Hall said.

  ‘That’s right. Hector is a very good European historian as it turns out, bearing in mind his colonial pedigree. It’s a shame. His family are the in-laws from hell, so we won’t be seeing much of him. His wife is a panther, or some such feline.’

  Jacquie came in at this point. ‘I think you must mean cougar,’ she said, sliding back into her seat.

  ‘That’s the critter. Anyway, she is a bit older than Hector.’ He paused in a gentlemanly way to give Jacquie time to snort.

  Jacquie snorted. ‘A bit!’

  ‘She is older than Hector by a fair old margin and that’s all you’re getting out of me. His mother-in-law is more or less permanently drunk as far as I can tell. She pinched the sherry when they came over before Christmas. Mrs Troubridge did some detecting and found out for us. The father-in-law … Well, I’ll let Jacquie take over on this one.’

  ‘Yes. Hector’s father-in-law. Where to begin? We’ll leave out any personal prejudices I may have and just say that he is a sexist bully. He was a police officer in the States, but was removed from his post for various as yet unspecified misdemeanours.’

  ‘Malfeasance,’ muttered Maxwell.

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ Jacquie explained to her boss, ‘has taken the opportunity to do lots of take-offs of Francis McDormand in Fargo. I must apologise. Where was I?’

  ‘Jeff O’Malley,’ Hall prompted.

  ‘That was clever.’ Maxwell was on him like a ninja. ‘I don’t remember telling you his name.’

  ‘I’m sure Jacquie mentioned it,’ Hall said, smoothly imperturbable as always.

  Maxwell narrowed his eyes, but gestured to Jacquie to continue.

  ‘His son-in-law obviously hates him and quite rightly. When Mrs Troubridge took me into the kitchen to tell me about where the sherry went …’ she raised an eyebrow at Hall to see if he was with her so far and he nodded, ‘Hector just let it drop in conversation that everyone hates Jeff. His wife – Jeff’s wife, that is – was similarly indiscreet when Jeff claimed to have retired. That’s really the only reason I think he was removed, that and the fact that I don’t like him. But why are we having this conversation? We thought you were here to ask about Mrs Whatmough.’