Maxwell's Inspection

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Um … right here in Leighford, sir. A B and B in Cherrygin Street.’

  ‘You spoke to Mrs Lummis?’

  ‘House to house did.’ Baldock pulled up a chair unbidden. ‘And this is the good part. She suspected dear old Ken of being up to no good and bearing in mind he runs a software company, he’s worth a bob or two. So she employed a local photographer to follow him.’

  ‘A local photographer called Craig Edwards?’ Hall checked.

  ‘Exactly. One night, he got lucky.’

  ‘Right.’ Hall sat back in his chair, his hands cradled behind his head. ‘So we’ve confirmation that Edwards took shady photographs. Does that get us any nearer to his killer?’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘No, constable, it doesn’t. What it actually does is open a whole new can of worms. So thanks for that.’ He got up, brushed past his man and bellowed into the outer office, ‘Has anybody seen Jacquie Carpenter?’

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Has anybody seen Jacquie Carpenter?’

  Peter Maxwell was standing in Reception at Leighford police station, waiting for an answer. The desk man looked at him through the protected glass.

  ‘Now, why would you want to know that, sir?’ he asked. Politeness and correctness went with the job.

  ‘Because she’s just won a dream kitchen for two in our The Only Intelligent Policeperson competition. Is she here?’

  ‘If you’re going to be flippant, sir …’ Politeness and correctness and a mastery of repartee.

  Peter Maxwell didn’t often lose his cool, but when he did, it was worth the wait. ‘And if you’re going to be a stupid, obstructive wanker, sergeant,’ he roared so that the glass partition rattled, ‘you may be responsible for the death of a colleague. Now, where is she?’

  The desk man blinked. ‘You’re Peter Maxwell, aren’t you?’ He asked quietly; the moveable bits in the office behind him had stopped shaking now.

  ‘I am,’ Maxwell told him.

  ‘Could you wait a moment, sir?’ and the desk man was gone.

  All the way down from the Dales, Peter Maxwell had been trying his mobile again. Useless. His batteries were deader than Queen Anne. Duggsy’s had gone missing at his last gig and Wal’s had never been the same since it landed in somebody’s beer. Iron Man never used mobiles – they damaged your brain cells, he knew that. And the two or three times they’d found a call box unvandalized on the way south and Maxwell had got through, no answer. Just Jacquie saying calmly, ‘I can’t come to the phone right now …’

  He’d tried the station, not once, but several times, to be met by the same stonewalling he was getting now.

  ‘Mr Maxwell.’ A dark-haired, worried-looking copper popped his head round the door. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Bathurst. What seems to be the trouble?’

  The diners at the Cunliffe weren’t quite ready for the cabaret that accompanied their evening meal.

  ‘Hello, Mr M…’ but loquacious George never finished his sentence. Bathurst and Maxwell hurtled through Reception, batting open the double doors at the end and swerving around waiters, looking this way and that for their quarry. Please God, please God reverberated around both their brains. A table went flying, soup, crockery and cutlery spattered and scattered in all directions. Nothing. They stood there, like a pair of bulls in a china shop, as the silence they’d engendered turned to angry complaints and the flinging down of napkins. People had paid good money for this.

  They turned simultaneously back to the foyer, racing for the lounge and the stairs. Then they stopped in their tracks. In the corner, a little alarmed by the noise and ruckus from the next room, sat two women. One was a rather demure spinster, knitting with a feverish speed. The other was Jacquie Carpenter.

  ‘Max?’ She was on her feet.

  ‘Jacquie!’ he rushed to her, held her close. But she stayed rigid. Cold. ‘Thank God you’re all right.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ she frowned.

  Bathurst looked at Deborah Freeling. ‘Blind alley,’ he said. ‘Miss Freeling, would you excuse us?’ and he took Jacquie aside, leading her past George’s counter while Maxwell made small talk with the old girl.

  ‘Police.’ He flicked a warrant card at George. ‘I’m borrowing your office for five minutes.’

  ‘Righto.’ George was still a little bewildered from the grand entrance of a few minutes ago, mindlessly polishing glasses as he still was.

  ‘What did you get?’ Bathurst asked Jacquie when he’d closed the door.

  ‘Not a lot,’ she admitted.

  ‘You’ve been here for bloody hours,’ the DI reminded her.

  ‘Yes, Phil, I’m sorry,’ Jacquie said. ‘I thought she was worth working on. Softly, softly, you know.’

  ‘Why did you want to re-interview Deborah Freeling in the first place?’

  ‘A tip-off,’ Jacquie said.

  ‘Who from?’ Bathurst wanted to know.

  ‘I can’t say.’ Jacquie Carpenter would be loyal to Peter Maxwell to the end.

  ‘Yes, you can, Jacquie and he’s not a million miles from us as we speak. What did Deborah Freeling tell you?’

  She looked at him. What was Max doing here? What were they both doing here? ‘Thank God you’re all right,’ Max had said. Why? Could there be anything more harmless than the old girl he was chatting to in the lounge out there? For once, Max’s famous intuition had let him down. The Great Man had got it wrong.

  ‘Paula Freeling has a record,’ she said. ‘For shoplifting. Oh. Ofsted didn’t know anything about it, of course. She’d deliberately kept that particular bit of achievement out of her CV. She’s a klepto, apparently. If it’s not nailed down, she’ll have it. That’s why she had no friends and why her sister was more than a little distant.’

  ‘It also explains the threatening letters,’ Bathurst nodded.

  ‘Exactly,’ Jacquie concurred. ‘Although Deborah pretended not to know why she was receiving them. But as for murder, Phil,’ the girl was shaking her head. ‘I don’t know what M… my informant was thinking.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ Bathurst said. ‘You only got half the message, that was the problem. Fancy making an arrest tonight?’

  Peter Maxwell made his own way home from the Cunliffe. He walked. The Hippos, his Irregulars, had dropped him as near to the nick as any of them dared, given their lifestyles, and he’d eventually been able to explain the whole thing to DI Bathurst. Jacquie had jumped to the wrong conclusion, but it was the only safe one. And she was fine. They however, were not. When he’d hugged her, it was like grappling with a tree, hard and unyielding. When she and Bathurst left the hotel, in a hurry, she’d looked at him. Just looked. No smile. No sneer. No sign that until days ago, these two were lovers. And she’d gone.

  He wandered along the Front that night as the last signs of day sank below the misty levels of the sea. The drunks weren’t out yet and the kids had gone to bed. It was that brief window of peace, when you could still see the sky and the sea and the beauty of it all as it must have been before it had been ruined by man.

  He stood on the edge of Leighford Beach and breathed in, watching the sea’s frothy ripples curl white in the darkness ahead and he looked out to the sweep of Willow Bay. Armed with the information he’d given Bathurst, the DI would make his arrest tonight and that would be a feather in his cap and hopefully in Jacquie’s. But Maxwell felt a shiver along his spine and after the heat of another day, it had turned suddenly cold. This, he knew, as he turned for the long trudge home, wasn’t over.

  ‘Could you tell us about your relationship with your late husband, Mrs Whiting?’

  ‘My relationship?’ Pamela Whiting was sitting across the desk from DI Bathurst and DS Carpenter. It was the loneliest place in the world. The neon strip lent a cold, harsh light to the room and the blinds were drawn. The furniture was plain, cheap and institutional. Even the tape recorder, its spools whirring silently inside, had seen decidedly better days. ‘He was my husband.’

  Bathurst
rested both elbows on the table. ‘You see, Mrs Whiting, when a husband or wife dies in suspicious circumstances, we automatically consider, I’m afraid, the involvement of the spouse.’

  ‘I see,’ Pamela bridled. She was not at her best. There had been a knock on her hotel door at a little before ten and Jacquie Carpenter had stood there, warrant card in her hand, requesting that she accompany her to the station. Time-honoured words, a time-honoured tradition. But Pamela Whiting had been ready for bed. She had not expected the Spanish Inquisition. ‘Are you accusing me of murder?’ she asked, her voice brittle, her eyes hard. ‘For that, I believe you have to establish means, motive and opportunity. Would you like to try to do that?’

  Bathurst leaned back. The woman was clever. She was confident. She was fencing with him. And all he had to go on was the instinct, the gut-reaction of Peter Maxwell. All the way from the station to the Cunliffe, the Head of Sixth Form had been bombarding the Detective Inspector with theories, facts, suppositions, scenarios. And he’d been doing it at high speed as Bathurst’s car screamed around Leighford’s streets, burning rubber to get to Jacquie who was facing a killer on her own. Except that Jacquie was facing the wrong sister.

  ‘Let’s look at motive.’ The DI was happy to fence at the moment. ‘It’s not financial. We know that. Your bank was very helpful in providing the necessary details, Mrs Whiting. You are a reassuringly wealthy woman in your own right. Your husband was insured, but not for a fortune.’ He looked at her clothes, her jewellery. ‘And I don’t think you needed the money.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I didn’t kill Alan for his money.’ She looked at them. ‘What, then?’

  ‘There are surprisingly few motives for murder, Mrs Whiting,’ Jacquie said. ‘Financial gain, lust, jealousy, revenge. We can rule out the first and the second …’

  ‘Well, that’s something at least,’ Pamela said.

  ‘But that still leaves us with the last two. Jealousy and revenge.’

  ‘You’ll have to enlighten me further, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘It’s not making much sense so far.’

  ‘You told us you thought your husband was having an affair,’ Bathurst said, her signed interview notes with Hall in front of him.

  ‘It happens.’ She dismissed it. ‘Men of a certain age…’

  ‘…Men of a certain age,’ Bathurst cut in, ‘are seduced by their fiancée’s sister. Oh, it’s not their fault exactly. Bit of cleavage, lots of “Come hither”, plenty of availability. It’s all part of a little game you’ve been playing for years, isn’t it?’

  Pamela Whiting looked at her watch. ‘I think I’ve been patient long enough,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed your little fishing expedition…’ and she was on her feet.

  ‘Sit down, Mrs Whiting!’ Bathurst roared. For a moment, the woman swayed, hesitating, uncertain what to do. Then she sat, arranging her skirt just so and composing herself. ‘I’d like a solicitor present,’ she said.

  ‘Do you like films, Mrs Whiting?’ Jacquie ignored her. ‘Horror films in particular?’

  ‘What?’ Pamela was thrown.

  Jacquie was in Peter Maxwell country by now, but she had a point to make. ‘Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?’ she said. ‘Do you know it?’

  ‘I really don’t see …’

  ‘It’s about two sisters,’ Jacquie went on. ‘Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. They’re old, they’re ugly and they hate each other. And in between severe tantrums and serving roast rat with the Sunday lunch, they’re trying to bump each other off. Oh, it’s in black and white and wonderfully over the top, but you’re the living embodiment of it, aren’t you? You and your sister.’

  Only the ticking clock disturbed the silence.

  ‘My sister?’ Pamela said.

  ‘Sally Meninger,’ Bathurst blurted. ‘We haven’t had time to check records yet, Mrs Whiting. The boys back at the station are doing that as we speak. So I can’t give you Ms Meninger’s maiden name, except that it’s the same as yours.’

  ‘What of it?’ Pamela snapped. ‘So Sally and I are sisters. Where does that get you?’

  ‘It gets us to two little girls,’ Bathurst said quietly. Peter Maxwell had coached him well, he realized, on their way to the Cunliffe. ‘One clever, the other cleverer; one pretty, the other prettier; one the apple of Daddy’s eye, the other not. How many times I wonder did you metaphorically stab her in the back? Drown her in the bath?’ And he took a leaf from Jacquie’s film book, itself borrowed from Mad Max. ‘Drive at her in your car?’

  ‘This is nonsense,’ Pamela insisted.

  ‘No, Mrs Whiting,’ Jacquie said, shaking her head. ‘It’s fact. Oh, Sally was the jealous one, eaten up by resentment, waiting for her chance of retribution. You even stole her man, didn’t you? Alan. And that gave her her chance. Oh, she didn’t deliberately set out to do it, I don’t suppose, but when the Ofsted situation at Leighford High presented itself, it all fell into place. She’d seduce him all over again, get proof to you that it had happened, send you photographs of them at it, rub your nose in it, for all the years of you always being in the limelight, always being number one.’

  ‘This is preposterous,’ Pamela said. She was on her feet again now, twirling round the room, her hands in the air. ‘I’m not listening to any more of it.’

  ‘The point is,’ Bathurst looked up at her, ‘you’ve won again, haven’t you? I don’t suppose Sally would see it that way, but you have. She was planning to wreck your marriage when you had your own plans to do that, permanently and forever. It’s a nice little twist she couldn’t possibly have expected.’

  Pamela Whiting stopped whirling as a thought struck her. She turned back to face the pair, sitting, oh, so smugly, side by side.

  ‘If you think you’ve established motive,’ she said, resting her knuckles on the desk and supporting her weight on her arms, ‘that still leaves you with means and opportunity. You seem to forget that I was in Matlock when my husband died. That’s one hell of a long barbecue skewer, isn’t it?’

  ‘You hired someone,’ Jacquie told her. ‘Just as Sally hired a photographer to take compromising pictures of her and Alan, you hired a hitman to kill him. Poor bastard was going to get it either way, wasn’t he?’

  ‘A hitman?’ Pamela scoffed. ‘Can you people hear yourselves? This isn’t some cheap, trashy Raymond Chandler thriller. People like that don’t exist.’

  ‘Oh, but they do, Mrs Whiting,’ Bathurst said. ‘Killing is a skill, just like any other. No, not like any other, because to do it several times and get away with it, well, that’s damned near impossible.’

  Pamela slid back her chair and sat down. The cat and mouse game had gone on for long enough. ‘It said in the papers – quoting your beloved Chief Inspector, if I remember rightly – that Alan, Paula Freeling and Craig Edwards were all killed by the same hand.’

  ‘We believe so,’ Bathurst nodded.

  She leaned back. ‘All right,’ she said, smiling. ‘Let’s suppose I go along with your idiocy that I engineered my husband’s death. Did I also engineer that of another Ofsted Inspector and a seaside photographer? And what little psychodrama from my girlhood would you conjure up to explain the slaughter of these particular innocents? Well, I’m waiting.’

  Peter Maxwell had reached the rise overlooking the sea by a little after half ten. All the way down from the Dales he’d been wrestling with it and every minute since. Pamela Whiting was behind her husband’s death – that much he knew. But she couldn’t have done it herself. She wasn’t the Boiler Man who had sneaked unobserved into Leighford and set the fire alarm before pinning Whiting to his chair. And although she was in Leighford by the time of the other two deaths, she hadn’t popped unnoticed into the Cunliffe and abducted an Ofsted Inspector or rung a photographer’s doorbell bright and early last Saturday morning. And if it wasn’t Pamela Whiting, then …

  ‘Mr Maxwell?’

  He turned at the sound of his name to see a white van growling at
the grassy kerb next to him.

  ‘Hello, Iron,’ he said. ‘I was wondering when you’d come calling.’

  The drummer switched off his engine and got out of the van. There was a gleaming blade in his hand, long and tapering and he held it out horizontally, pricking the skin of Maxwell’s neck.

  ‘Taking a bit of a risk, aren’t you?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Using the Hippos van? I’d have thought you’d have used your other one, which I assume is plain. Out for a late night barbecue?’

  Iron Man shrugged. ‘I’ve been a bit sloppy on this one, Mr Maxwell,’ he granted. ‘Now, you just walk ahead of me, slowly and level, all right? It’s just a bit too open up here for my liking.’

  Maxwell obliged, taking each step one at a time, knowing that Iron Man’s skewer could be through the back of his neck before he could break wind. The breeze from the sea ruffled his hair under the tweed cap and he looked out at that breathtaking view for perhaps the last time. The drummer was taking him steadily downwards, away from the road and into the gorse bushes, darker still against the dark pearl of the night sky.

  ‘Far enough,’ Iron Man tapped his man on the shoulder with the skewer.

  Slowly, Maxwell turned to face him. ‘Before you use that thing,’ he said. ‘Can you fill me in a bit? I’m naturally curious, you see, can’t help myself. I’d hate to die not knowing why.’

  Iron Man looked at him. He was close enough so that if he extended his arm now, he’d kill the Head of Sixth Form. One swift, sudden thrust and the blood would spurt above the ludicrous bow tie as it had from the throat of Alan Whiting.

  ‘You’re a clever bastard,’ Iron Man said. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

  ‘All right,’ Maxwell was already counting his blessings. He couldn’t imagine the man giving Alan Whiting time to wheedle. And he was desperately playing for time. ‘I will. But first, you’ve got to tell me something, Iron. How did you … get into this in the first place? I mean, at school, when you were filling in those endless careers forms, what did you write? Professional murderer?’