by M. J. Trow
He rang the bell, an elaborate, ornate, wrought-iron thing that appeared to have genuine verdigris, not the type you can buy by the yard in Past Times. He heard the echo dying away in the hall beyond the heavy studded oak of the door. A gargoyle letterbox yawned at him from the frame.
‘Who is it?’ a disembodied voice, like something out of Oz, called out to him.
Maxwell stepped back, trying to find life, perhaps in an upstairs window. ‘I’m looking for Richard Alphedge,’ he said. ‘The actor.’
There was a click to his left and he spun round to stare down the double barrels of a shotgun. A decidedly nervous Richard Alphedge stood at the other end, one eye shut, with Maxwell in his sights.
‘For Christ’s sake, Alphie. Is that thing loaded?’
‘Max!’ Alphedge lowered the barrels. ‘You scared me to death.’
‘I scared you?’ Maxwell crossed to him. ‘I’m just glad I’m wearing my brown trousers. Have you got a licence for that?’
‘What? Oh, no, don’t need one. Sorry, Max, it’s a film prop. The most I could have done was nip your fingers in the firing mechanism. What are you doing here?’
Maxwell shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I should have called first.’
‘No, no, don’t be daft. It’s good to see a friendly face. Come in, will you? Cissie won’t be long.’
He showed his old oppo into a low vaulted entrance hall that led into a sitting room with glowing oak floors and sheepskin rugs. Alphedge propped the shotgun in the corner and threw back the doors of his drinks cabinet. ‘You’ll have a snorter?’ the actor asked.
‘Well …’ Maxwell sank into the coach-hide furniture. ‘It’s a little early for me.’
‘Nonsense. Scotch?’
‘You haven’t got a Southern Comfort, I suppose?’
‘Er … no, sorry.’
‘Scotch it is, then.’
Alphedge poured for them both. Maxwell noticed how unsteady the man’s hands were, how he jumped at every sound, every rustle of the leaves on the windowpane.
‘Well …’ The actor sat down opposite Maxwell and raised his glass. ‘Here’s to who’s left of us.’
Maxwell drank with him. ‘You know about Cret, of course.’
‘Of course.’ Alphedge swallowed hard. ‘It’s all over the bloody papers. On the telly. Funny how everybody takes it seriously, because he was a High Court bloody judge. The likes of you and me …’
‘Come off it, Alphie. We’re not in the same category, you and I.’ Maxwell waved at the trophies around the room and the photographs that plastered the wall. ‘Look at that lot – you and John Gielgud, you and Larry Olivier, you and Michael Caine … well, look at you and Gielgud and Olivier anyway. My walls are covered in group photos of 7F at Chessington World of Adventure.’
Alphedge chuckled. ‘And I can’t help thinking you’re better off for it. Right now, I’d trade all this in for a bit of peace. It’s not much fun being high profile when there’s a maniac on the loose. Have the police been to see you?’
‘They tried, apparently,’ Maxwell said. ‘I wasn’t there. Half-term.’
‘Oh, of course.’
‘You?’
Alphedge nodded, taking another swig to steady himself. ‘Some pushy sergeant called Vernon. He brought a WPC with him, for Cissie presumably. She was fine, of course; played more cop shows than I’ve had walk-on parts. I don’t know what I’d do without Cissie; a tower of strength, an absolute tower.’
‘They want to see if our stories are still the same,’ Maxwell said. ‘Whether we’ve remembered anything.’
‘Have you?’
Maxwell sighed. ‘I wish I could. Alphie, had you met up with any of the Seven – recently, I mean?’
‘Recently? God, no. You know how it is. I thought some of them would be dead. Oh, Christ, now they are. The awful thing is not knowing who’ll be next.’
‘You really think there’ll be a next?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘That depends.’
‘Don’t be such a cryptic bastard, Max; what are you talking about?’
‘Whether all of us have pissed the murderer off to the extent that he wants to kill us all or whether there’s something else I haven’t got my head round yet. What did you do after Halliards? RADA, wasn’t it?’
Alphedge nodded. ‘Then a spot of rep. I got my first West End break in ’68 – Hadrian VII. I understudied Alan Bennett in Forty Years On. My first film was Where Eagles Dare … for fuck’s sake, Max, what do you want my CV for?’
‘Clutching at straws, I suppose,’ Maxwell said. ‘Think back, Alphie. At any time, did any of us try to contact you? After all, you’re undoubtedly the most famous of us.’
‘Jesus, Max, I don’t know. In my line you get fan mail, groupies, people writing to you asking for parts, auditions. I could fill a bloody pantechnicon with the mail I’ve received. Can I put my hand on my heart and say one of those letters wasn’t from Stenhouse or Cret or Ash or you? No, I can’t. Ash came to see me once in the West End – I think I told you; but that was years ago. What does your policewoman make of all this?’
‘My policewoman?’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Well, it’s difficult for her, Alphie. Professional ethics and all that.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Alphedge nodded, staring into the bottomless amber of his glass. ‘The sanctity of the confessional or whatever. Talking of which … the Preacher.’
‘What about him?’
‘What ab … ?’ Alphedge’s eyebrows rose in search of his vanished hairline. ‘Max, am I the only one to pick up the subtle nuance that the man is as mad as a wagonload of monkeys? What the hell is the Church of God’s Children, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Takes all sorts, Alphie.’ Maxwell sipped his Scotch.
‘Don’t come that politically correct mumbo-jumbo with me, Peter Maxwell. This is me, Alphie, remember? We’d have crossed the road to avoid a chap like Wensley in the old days.’
Maxwell nodded. ‘Or given him a good smacking.’
‘You must admit, he’s odd. Oddly enough, I don’t remember him being as odd as that.’
‘Nor I,’ Maxwell agreed. ‘Perhaps that’s what I’m looking for, Alphie. While you were bearing the third spear and rounding out your vowels at RADA and I was wrestling with the History Tripos at Cambridge, what, I wonder, was the Preacher doing? What’s he done since?’
The doorbell provided an answer, ricocheting around the enormity of Alphedge’s living room. The actor visibly jumped and reached for the gun. No one had used the word ‘culture’.
‘Just me, darling,’ Cissie’s voice called from the hall.
Alphedge just as visibly relaxed. ‘It’s our little arrangement,’ he told Maxwell. ‘We usually go out together, but if we don’t, we use the doorbell rather than coming in quietly.’
‘Mr Maxwell.’ Cissie had joined them, wearing a sheepskin coat and old trousers.
‘Max.’ He was on his feet and she hugged him.
‘This is a pleasant surprise.’
‘I was passing …’ Maxwell began, then he laughed. ‘No, I wasn’t. I’m trying to make sense of all this, Cissie.’
‘You’re sleuthing, aren’t you?’ she said, throwing her coat on to a chair. She sat on the settee and patted it for Maxwell to join her. ‘At Halliards, we girlies spent a little time together. Jacquie told me you had a propensity for it.’
‘Did she, now?’ Maxwell raised an eyebrow.
‘Don’t be hard on her, Max. We were all a bit stressed, you know. Oh, nothing like you boys, of course, finding poor George Quentin like that. And now, Anthony Bingham. What was he doing there, Max?’
‘Cret? He’d come to see me.’
‘To see you?’ Alphedge asked.
Maxwell nodded. ‘Ryker Hill is a stone’s throw from my place. Perhaps he’d tried my home first and had no luck. Anyway, he left a message on the school answerphone. There’s only one high school in Leighford, so it didn’t take a High Court judge to fathom that one o
ut. Said he’d be along to see me at five-thirty – that was a week last Monday.’
‘What did he want?’ Cissie asked.
Maxwell shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s my guess he was doing what I’m doing now – sleuthing as you put it, dear lady.’
Cissie smiled.
‘He didn’t come here, presumably? We all swapped addresses.’
‘Richard would have shot him,’ Cissie whispered to Maxwell, then smiled understanding at her husband. ‘This is really all so bizarre.’
‘How would Inspector Morse solve this one?’ Maxwell asked her.
She chuckled. ‘Well, for a start, there’d be three more bodies than we’ve got by now. He’d have a few pints in the local, snarl at poor Lewis and bore us all to death with Wagner. Can you beat that?’
Maxwell laughed. ‘Not at the moment,’ he said.
‘Have you been to see anybody else, Max?’ Alphedge asked.
‘I’ve followed up on Cret and Quent,’ Maxwell told him. ‘Did you know Quent was gay?’
The Alphedges looked at one another.
‘Quent?’ the actor repeated. ‘Gay? You mean, as in homosexual?’
‘I do,’ Maxwell said. ‘Do you remember anything like that at Halliards?’
‘Well,’ Alphedge worked his memory, ‘there was the chaplain …’
‘No, Alphie,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’m talking about Quent.’
‘Good God, no. RADA, now, there’s a different kettle of fish. I tell you, if I ever decide to hang up my five-and-nine and write my memoirs, there’ll be a few people suddenly off to South America. For instance …’
‘Richard,’ Cissie cut in. ‘This isn’t exactly helpful, dear.’
‘No, you’re right.’ Alphedge sighed. ‘Sorry. Max, do you really think it’s one of us?’
Maxwell’s eyes wandered to the shotgun. ‘You clearly do. You did at the Graveney.’
‘We’re just careful, Max,’ Cissie said, and crossed to her husband’s chair. She placed her hands on his shoulders. ‘I’ve got the dearest, sweetest man in the world here,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to lose him.’
Maxwell smiled. ‘Well, we’ll just have to see that that doesn’t happen, won’t we?’
Maxwell caught the train south and alighted at Haslemere shortly after teatime. He’d had lunch with the Alphedges and had never seen a man whose nerve had so far gone. On the way to the gate, where the cab he’d called was waiting, Cissie had held his arm and had looked up into his eyes. ‘You’ll keep him safe, won’t you, Max?’ she’d asked. ‘It’ll be all right, won’t it?’
By the time he’d reached Haslemere, Maxwell wasn’t sure that it would. He’d smiled and kissed Cissie’s forehead. He was warm and strong and good, as he was to Jacquie, as he was to anyone who really needed him; Don Quixote without the horse.
The windmill that was Andrew Muir sat huddled over a PC at the top of a tasteful town house. He was wreathed in smoke, the wisps snaking around his white beard.
‘Max, you bastard,’ and he scrabbled to his feet and shook the man’s hand. He’d let him in on the front door buzzer and left it to Maxwell’s sense of direction thereafter. The attic room in which he worked was very like Maxwell’s own but, say it himself as shouldn’t, with far less character. For a start, there was no Light Brigade forming up for the Charge in the centre; neither was there a piebald beast prowling the shadows.
‘I didn’t see you smoking last weekend, Stenhouse,’ Maxwell said, noting the pile of fag-ends in the ashtray.
‘That’s because I wasn’t facing a bloody deadline then, dear boy.’
‘Ah.’ Maxwell found a seat amid a litter of paper. ‘Spectator? Economist?’
‘Horse and Hound,’ Muir confessed. ‘The vanishing countryside is big at the moment. BSE, CJD, foot-and-mouth; we’ve had the lot. When did you last see a field?’
‘Er … about ten minutes ago,’ Maxwell said. ‘Surrey and Sussex are full of ’em, you know.’
‘Where’s your poetry, Max?’ Muir asked. ‘I’m the last in a long line of hyperbolists. The end of civilization as we know it is good copy. It keeps Janet in booze.’
‘Janet not in?’
‘Fuck knows. What time is it?’
‘Half four.’
‘Tuesday, isn’t it?’
Maxwell nodded. It had been the last time he’d looked.
‘Bad hair day. She’ll be popping from Pompadour’s in the High Street to Jennifer Poulter’s about now for their daily gin-and-aren’t-men-bastards bash.’
‘That’s daily?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Twice on Thursdays.’
‘Well, I’m glad to see you so chipper, Stenhouse,’ Maxwell told him, leaning his back against an upright. ‘I’ve just come from Alphie’s.’
‘Oh, yes. Is he under par?’
‘You might say that. Ever seen a nervous breakdown?’
‘God, really?’ Muir groaned, and leaned back from his computer screen.
‘Oh, he’s rational enough at the moment,’ Maxwell told him. ‘Logical, keeps focused on a conversation and so on. But he’s terrified, Stenhouse, absolutely shitten. He and Cissie only go out when they have to and if that has to be separately they have an elaborate ritual of doorbell-ringing and calling. He keeps a shotgun up his trouser-leg.’
‘Jesus!’
‘But the laughable thing is, it doesn’t work. It’s a film prop.’
‘Jesus!’
‘Have you heard from anybody?’
‘The law were round yesterday.’
‘Who?’
‘Er … a DC Pines. Surly bastard from the Warwickshire CID. He had some WPC in tow.’
‘To talk to Janet.’ Maxwell nodded.
‘Yes, well.’ Muir scowled. ‘I don’t know how much help she was. Look, Max, it’s great to see you again and all, but …’
‘I know.’ Maxwell held up his hands, as Muir settled himself back in front of the screen. ‘You’ve got a deadline and I’m in the way. The thing of it is, Stenhouse, it was bad enough when it was just poor old Quent. But now it’s Cret too, well …’
‘You’re right.’ Muir pushed his swivel chair away from the keyboard and lit another cigarette. ‘For the last ten days, I’ve been trying to pretend everything’s normal. All hunky-dory. But it’s not, is it?’
Maxwell shook his head. ‘Talk me through it again, Stenhouse,’ he said. ‘From the beginning. How did you find us all?’
Muir ran the fingers of his non-smoking hand through his hair. ‘The beginning was right here in Haslemere, funnily enough,’ he said. ‘There’s a firm called Swinton’s, property developers. I was interested in buying some land on the edge of town. Janet’s daughter by her first marriage breeds horses and is looking for new pasture. I got chatting to the fellow at Swinton’s and in the course of the conversation it turned out they were handling the sale of a school in Warwickshire. Our school, Max.’
‘To turn it into a conference centre?’
‘Yeah, they had various clients interested. The place shut down as a school over a year ago. I saw it in the press then, property papers. So I contacted the local papers, Leamington Courier and so on, and got the gen. I hadn’t seen any of you buggers for years …’
‘Let me stop you there,’ Maxwell broke in, ‘because I can’t help thinking this may be important. Who did you last see of the Seven, after we left Halliards, I mean?’
‘Oh, God, now you’ve asked me. Ash, I think.’
‘Ash? When? Where?’
‘Bloody hell, Max.’ Muir got to his feet, pacing the room. ‘You’re pushier than any copper.’
‘Maybe that’s because Alphie might be right,’ Maxwell told him. ‘Any one of us may be next in some macabre reworking of an Agatha Christie classic.’
‘Come on,’ Muir scoffed. ‘This is the real world.’
‘Yes, it is.’ Maxwell was grimly serious. ‘And the Seven are dying, Stenhouse. Quent and Cret have gone. Who’s next? Alphie? Me? You? When did you see A
sh?’
Muir stopped pacing and stretched. All morning he’d been huddled over that bloody PC, trying to be rational, trying to get on with his life. ‘It would have been three, three and a half years ago.’
‘Where?’ Maxwell asked.
Muir looked at him, then stubbed out the cigarette and pulled a curtain aside. He handed Maxwell an exquisite bronze statuette of a goat-footed satyr, kneeling over a naked girl, his long bronze tongue snaking away between her legs.
Maxwell nodded. ‘Elegant. Not perhaps the perfect centre-piece for the table when the vicar comes to tea.’
‘No, it’s not to Janet’s taste either. That’s why it’s up here. It’s eighteenth-century Italian, Max. Cost me a pretty penny, I can assure you. I came across it in a little art shop in St Christopher’s Place, all rather Bohemian, if you know what I mean. And who should be behind the counter but Ash! You could have knocked me down with 3D porn, but it was him all right. The oily bastard hadn’t changed a scrap.’
‘And this is what he does?’ Maxwell passed the object back.
‘Quaint, isn’t it? Oh, the window’s full of art deco and nouveau and ghastly Clarice Cliff et cetera, but Ash makes his real money with under-the-counter stuff like this. You wouldn’t think, would you, in this age of video nasties, there’d still be a market for Victorian smut? More your sort of thing, I suppose, you being a historian and all.’
‘Thanks,’ said Maxwell.
‘Anyway, we kept in touch on and off. As soon as I heard about the Halliards closure, I rang him, suggested the reunion. Finding the others wasn’t too hard. Cret we knew via the press. His chambers in the Temple were a matter of public record. Alphie, of course, I reached via his agent, a particularly reptilian mid-Atlantic type. Oddly, it was Cret who knew about the Preacher – or at least his church.’
‘He did?’
‘The Church of the Children of God,’ Muir said. ‘It’s all on the Net. I’ll give you a print-out if you like.’
