by M. J. Trow
‘All right, I did. Ethel.’
Ash’s face said it all. ‘Get away. Big girl? Teeth?’
‘Right on both counts.’
‘Still, good in the sack, though, eh?’
‘I really wouldn’t know, Ash.’ Maxwell sighed. ‘We discussed revision all night – remember, it was our O-level year. The only thing conjugal about Cranton ’61 was the odd Latin verb. It did get quite interesting later, though, as the sun came up over the cricket pav; we got on to films. Sean Connery had just had his first break in The Frightened City, Newman was in The Hustler and Audrey Hepburn was having Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’
‘I think I remember the song,’ Asheton said. ‘And has any of this got anything remotely to do with Quent or Cret?’
Maxwell sighed, shaking his head. ‘Buggered if I know, Ash,’ he said. ‘But what we’re missing is motive. Let’s assume that Cret died because he knew something. Or had found something out; whatever. He wanted to tell me, get my perspective. Whoever killed him, knew he knew and stopped him.’
‘Why you?’ Asheton asked. ‘I don’t remember you and Cret being particularly close.’
‘We weren’t,’ Maxwell agreed. ‘No more than the rest of us. The Preacher was always the odd one out.’
Asheton nodded. ‘Odd indeed. I’ve always been very suspicious of these Holy Rollers, Max. Cults and weirdoes. God knows what motivates someone like that. Wensley was a little cranky at school, but he’s off the bloody wall now.’
‘Does this mean Stenhouse is in the clear, in your eyes?’
‘What about both of them?’
Maxwell looked the man in the eye. The old charmer had lost none of his sparkle. For a while the Head of Sixth Form toyed with asking whether he could have a look at the portrait in Asheton’s attic. ‘Both of them?’
‘Yes. Look; whoever killed Quent bashed in his skull first. Well, okay, any one of us could probably do that. If I remember old Frisby’s physics lessons, it’s all to do with force and gravity and whatnot. But hoisting him up in Old Harry’s bell rope, well, that’s a job for two, isn’t it?’
‘The police think so.’
‘Do they?’ Asheton frowned. ‘Ah, of course. Jacquie.’ He smirked. ‘She can handcuff me any time. All right, then. Stenhouse and the Preacher lure Quent to Halliards – that’s why the Preacher was late; he had to arrange things. One of them engaged him in conversation on the landing while the other one clobbered him. Then they hoisted him up on the rope and Bob’s your uncle.’
Maxwell threw his hands wide. ‘Again, Ash, where’s your motive?’
Asheton got up and paced the rug for a while. ‘Financial,’ he said.
‘Financial?’
‘Quent was a City type, wasn’t be?’
Maxwell nodded. ‘Vandeleur Negus.’
‘Well, there you are, then. What’s Stenhouse’s situation, Max? Comfortable, would you say? You’ve been there, haven’t you?’
Maxwell had. ‘Modest enough town house in Haslemere,’ he said. ‘I don’t think Janet works, though she probably drinks most of what Stenhouse makes.’
‘There we are, then. Envy. A deadly sin, isn’t it? Quentin’s loaded. Stenhouse isn’t.’
‘And the Preacher?’
‘These religious types are always after a buck. If it’s not for retiling the church bloody roof, it’s for buying that oh-so-essential Roller for getting to open-air rallies. Trust me on this, Maxie. It’s Stenhouse and the Preacher.’
Maxwell finished his drink. ‘On that basis, I should be the killer, me and my little ol’ thirty grand before tax.’ He stood up and took one last look at Asheton’s apartment. ‘And you, Ash, you’re my next victim.’
Now Peter Maxwell knew a thing or two about cults. From the Templars to the Wackoes from Waco, he’d been around. He’d even met the odd Mormon, clean-cut young men in dark suits who’d talked to him about the importance of a family. He who didn’t have one. He’d never met a Templar, but that was because they’d burned the last of them in 1314.
The taxi dropped him at the Lodge a little after six. The October evening was closing in after a day of dazzling sun, and long shadows stretched across the lawns and the gravel on which his feet crunched. Amesbury was a late Georgian pile, probably some rich man’s country house, with its windows reaching to the ground and its shutters latticed with the bones of wisteria. Someone had painted the place pale blue and it looked like a wedding cake, as though the Brighton Pavilion had gone down to the sea and pupped.
A large woman in a scarlet kaftan answered the doorbell’s ring.
‘I’ve come to see the Reverend Wensley,’ Maxwell said.
‘Do you have an appointment?’ The woman’s accent was West Coast with a hint of Johns Hopkins.
‘No, I’m an old friend. Peter Maxwell.’
‘Wait here.’
She showed him into a cold vestibule hung with multicoloured banners with hand-stitched slogans, reassuring the newcomer that Jesus Reigns, that God is Good and that No Man Stands Alone.
‘Max.’ A voice like thunder reverberated from the top of the stairs and the Preacher stood there, in a long white robe, looking for all the world like the Son of Man. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’
Wensley floated down the sweep of the spiral staircase and led his man into a small anteroom with a single table and two chairs. All that made this different from a police interrogation room was the wall-to-wall books. Maxwell took in their spines – Kant was there, Spinoza, Descartes and Hume; philosophers long dead, ideas played out.
‘You know Cret is dead?’ Maxwell cut the preamble. He was tired, jolted from one alien lifestyle to the next. He missed his Light Brigade, he missed his cat; God help him, he even missed some of the kids he taught; but most of all, he missed Jacquie.
Wensley scraped back a chair and sat facing the Head of Sixth Form. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The police told me.’
‘It’s all over the papers. High Court judge and so on.’
‘We don’t get papers here,’ Wensley told him. ‘The Church of God’s Children are not concerned with that.’
‘So.’ Maxwell slapped his thigh and looked about him. ‘This is the Guildford chapter, is it?’
‘We’re not Hell’s Angels, Max,’ the Preacher said. ‘But we are used to being mocked.’
‘I’m sorry, Preacher,’ Maxwell said earnestly. ‘I didn’t mean to give that impression. Why were you late at the Graveney that Friday?’
Wensley looked at him, as though the question was a little preposterous. ‘My taxi-driver got lost,’ he said. ‘He was fine in Coventry, but the back doubles threw him rather.’
Maxwell nodded. ‘What did the police ask you? The second time, I mean.’
‘Whether there was anything else I could remember, anything I wanted to change in my statement, that sort of thing.’
‘And was there?’
‘I saw a car in my wanderings.’
‘A car?’ Maxwell frowned.
‘It had slipped my mind.’ Wensley shrugged. ‘After the dinner, I couldn’t sleep.’
‘The dinner on the Friday night?’
‘Yes. I walked to Halliards.’
‘You told the police this, the first time, I mean?’
‘Of course. What I didn’t remember was the car.’
‘Where was this?’
‘On the road near the main gates.’
‘Whose was it?’
Wensley shrugged. ‘I’m not good on cars, Max,’ he said. ‘Like you, I never use them. It was a dark colour, that’s all I know.’
Maxwell was racking what passed for his brain. Wensley was right. He wasn’t a car man, either. Other than Veronica’s silver Audi and Jacquie’s primrose Ka, he didn’t have a clue who drove what. ‘You didn’t see anybody? Anything?’
‘A rat,’ Wensley remembered solemnly, ‘scampering over the rubbish in the pool.’
‘What made you go to Halliards, Preacher?’ Maxwell asked him. ‘It must be five or s
ix miles from the Graveney.’
‘I wanted to see it again,’ he said. ‘On my own. Without the rest of you.’
‘Why?’
The Preacher looked at him. ‘I told you – I wander; it’s what I do. I have my reasons, Max,’ he said. ‘Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’
‘Is that what you told the law?’ Maxwell asked. ‘And were they happy with that?’
‘Only the Lord brings happiness, Max,’ the Preacher told him. ‘He works through us all from time to time. But to answer your question, no, I don’t think they liked it at all.’
Maxwell looked at the robed apparition in front of him. ‘You know you’ve put yourself in the frame, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘I have?’ The Preacher frowned.
‘Think, man. You get there later than anyone, except Quent. Why?’
‘I told you …’
‘Yes, you did. And can your taxi-driver vouch for you? Would you know him again? Did you get the number of his cab?’
Wensley was shaking his head to all three questions.
‘So we only have your word for that.’
‘We?’ Wensley frowned.
‘I’m playing devil’s advocate here, Preacher. I have to. David Asheton thinks you did it. So does Richard Alphedge. So, unless they’re myopic, must the police. Why did you go to Halliards?’
‘Let it go, Max,’ the Preacher warned.
‘You’ve told the police you walked through a wet, miserable night, a walk that took you … what? A couple of hours? Not exactly a constitutional, is it; it was peeing down and windy. You must have been soaked. For what?’
The Preacher was on his feet. ‘Thank you for coming, Max,’ . he said. ‘Now, I really have to go.’
Maxwell stood up too. ‘Preacher.’ He put his hand on the man’s arm and gazed steadily into his eyes. ‘I’m on your side, believe me.’
Wensley patted Maxwell’s hand and removed it firmly from the kaftan sleeve. ‘There’s been enough blood, Max,’ he said. ‘I don’t ever want to see any more.’ And he was gone, the door clicking softly behind him.
Maxwell stood to his full height. He’d talked to them all now – Alphedge, Muir, Asheton, Wensley; the men who were boys when he was a boy. He swung his scarf across his shoulder and hauled up the overnight bag he’d left in the hallway. The building was silent, cold. The Preacher had vanished on his sandalled feet and there was no sign of the lady in red. He crossed the polished floor, catching sight of himself fleetingly in the mirror next to the front door, then he was out into the long shadows and the evening air.
The stars were bright above him, promising a bitch of a frost. And he was still looking at them when they went out, as in one of the more weird sci-fi films of his boyhood. He heard the thud, but didn’t connect it with the sickening, deadening pain in the back of his head, the ricochet of vision as his eyes rolled upward and his face hit the grass.
The rest was silence.
11
Where the hell do you park in London? Jacquie Carpenter hadn’t often had to face the question, but now she did. It was all of half an hour before an obliging Renault swung out into the traffic and she was in. It hadn’t been very convenient, DCI Hall had told her, for her to take a couple of days now. Yes, it was her right and, yes, the leave was overdue, but they were in the middle of a murder enquiry and nothing was breaking. Jacquie knew all that. And ordinarily Jacquie would not have dreamed of asking, but something odd had happened. Peter Maxwell had disappeared.
This was Friday, the day of a teacher’s half-term when he realizes that the blessed week has all but gone. But the sun was still shining on the multicoloured bark of the plane trees as DC Carpenter went in search of the man in her life.
‘Yeah.’ The crone who ran the hotel in Sussex Gardens had suddenly cooled when she saw the warrant card. ‘He was here all right. Bit of a weirdo, if you ask me.’
‘I didn’t ask you,’ Jacquie reminded her. ‘Did Mr Maxwell have any visitors?’
‘Dunno. I don’t bother my guests, they don’t bother me. Better all round.’ The crone sucked feverishly on a ciggie as if her life depended on it. ‘What is he? Child molester, I’ll bet. One of them paedophiles. I knew it as soon as I clapped eyes on him. That’s why I told him, I said, we had no Net facilities. I won’t have no downloading of that filth in my place. No electronic how’s your father here.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Jacquie told her. ‘When did Mr Maxwell leave?’
The crone padded in her fluffy mules to the desk and flicked through a ledger. ‘Wednesday,’ she said. ‘Quite early. He had toast.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’
The crone became confidential. ‘Look, dearie, if he’s not a child molester, you’ll have to admit he’s off his rocker. I didn’t understand most of what he was talking about. I’ll tell you what, though, I was within half an ace of getting Alf to check his bags, wasn’t I, Alf?’
Jacquie hadn’t seen Alf before. He was like a chameleon, blending in with the ghastly wallpaper and the lurid carpet. Only when he moved did Alf show signs of life at all. With half a mile of fag ash dangling from his chin, he grunted something incomprehensible to the crone, his wife.
‘I thought you didn’t bother your guests,’ Jacquie said.
‘Not unless they bother me,’ the crone countered. ‘And this one was beginning to bother me. ’Ere, he’s not an international terrorist, is he? Working for that Saddam Hussein or them Arab Filamentalists?’
‘No.’ Jacquie couldn’t help but smile. ‘Nothing like that. Did he say he intended to come back here?’
‘I wouldn’t have had him,’ the crone ranted. ‘I’d have got my Alf to chuck him out, wouldn’t I, Alf?’
Alf grunted again, passing back the way he had come. Bearing in mind he reached Jacquie’s shoulder – and that in a good light – she would really have enjoyed seeing that.
She knew from Maxwell’s phone calls that he’d gone first to see Richard Alphedge, and that was on Tuesday. She had the addresses of them all, all six of the Seven who had gone to the Halliards weekend. She put the information to good use now.
‘I’m afraid poor old Richard isn’t up to interviews today,’ Cissie Alphedge told her, in the kitchen of the Lutyens house, passing the cup of coffee.
Jacquie was patience itself. ‘Mrs Alphedge, I’m not from a fan club, I am a police officer.’
‘I know, my dear, but even so … Can’t I help?’
Jacquie looked at her. It’s odd to come face to face with a face you’ve seen so often in your own living room. She was a murderess in Morse, Jacquie remembered, a mindless old bag lady David Jason felt sorry for in Frost, the vicar’s wife in Midsomer Murders. Cissie probably knew more about police procedure than Jacquie did. ‘Peter Maxwell,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to find him.’
‘Max?’ Cissie paused in mid-sip. ‘Why? What’s happened?’
Jacquie’s cool grey eyes faltered for the first time. ‘Nothing, I hope. He hasn’t checked in.’
‘Checked in?’
‘Been in touch. He was in a London hotel … well, bed and breakfast, really, on Tuesday night.’
‘He was here on … let me see … Tuesday? Yes, Tuesday morning.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Jacquie said. ‘Where was he going then?’
‘To the Muirs, I think. Yes, he was. He’s a good man, your Mad Max; takes things on himself.’
Jacquie smiled. ‘He has that tendency.’
‘How long have you known him?’ Cissie asked.
‘Max? Nearly six years.’
‘And he still hasn’t made a decent woman of you.’ Cissie tapped the girl’s ring finger.
Jacquie laughed. ‘I thought I was pretty decent already.’
‘Jacquie …’ Cissie didn’t know how to begin. ‘Look, we don’t know each other very well, but … oh, this sounds just awful. It … it couldn’t be Max, could it? The murders, I mean?’
Jacquie’s face said it all.
She looked Cissie squarely in the face. ‘No, it couldn’t. What about Richard?’
Cissie’s handsome face folded into a smile. ‘Touché, my dear.’ She laughed. ‘And again, an emphatic “no”. Richard is a darling, but he’s not the strongest of men. This whole thing has rattled him. I’ve lost track of the medication he’s on at the moment. And even when you catch the killer, I’m not sure he’ll ever be quite the same again. Are you making any progress?’
Jacquie sighed. ‘It’s a complex case,’ she said. ‘There are three forces working on it now.’
‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’ Cissie asked.
Jacquie looked at her. Perhaps the old girl wasn’t quite as clued up as she thought. ‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘Three times the input, brainpower and shoe leather, three times the risk of mistakes. That, as Max would say, is the way the cookie crumbles.’
‘Yes, I see. Are you able to tell me anything?’
‘Very little, I’m afraid, Cissie. Goes with the territory – you know.’
‘Yes, of course. You know, it’s funny, I’ve done countless telly involving cops and robbers. Murders by the score. But the real thing is different, isn’t it? Quite horrible, in fact.’
‘Nobody wins,’ Jacquie told her. ‘That’s the really depressing part. Nobody’s life gets back to normal. It’s not only your husband who won’t be the same again. What time did Max leave?’
‘Ooh, let me see. It must have been shortly after lunch. I’d been shopping and Max had a bite with us and then left soon afterwards. I’d have driven him to the station, but I’d already left Richard alone for long enough that day. He’d have had the ab-dabs if I’d slipped out again.’
Jacquie finished her coffee. Then she saw the shotgun propped by the fireplace. ‘You do have a licence for that, Cissie?’
‘Oh, it’s a replica, my dear. Richard used it in The Eagle Has Landed. It wouldn’t do any good, of course, if push came to shove, but it comforts him.’
Jacquie got up and walked to the hallway. ‘He’s taking it badly, then?’ she asked.
Cissie glanced up the stairs and led her to the door. Under the arch of the veranda she held her arm. ‘He cries,’ she said, ‘in the small hours. You know the time, my dear, that terrible time between three and four …’
