Maxwell's Mask

by M. J. Trow

  ‘I’ve got to tread softly here, Max,’ she told him.

  ‘Of course, sweetstuff,’ he beamed. ‘I understand. But do at least tread, there’s a good girl. Shall I tell you something odd?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When I had my last conversation with Martita Winchcombe, on the night she died, it was Dan Bartlett who interrupted us.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, until earlier tonight, I sort of had the late Artistic Director in the frame. He seemed anxious to shut the old girl up, warn me off, dismissing her as barking. Perhaps, I thought, he wanted to shut her up permanently.’

  ‘Then he upped and died,’ Jacquie said.

  ‘Precisely,’ Maxwell nodded, half talking to himself. ‘Now why would he do a thing like that?’

  ‘Who’s on last movements?’ DCI Hall wanted to know. That Wednesday morning saw a tired and tetchy Incident Room. Henry Hall had had no choice now but to create one and they’d moved out of the overcrowded nick, lock, stock and computer system, to Tottingleigh. Yes, the public would murmur; yes, some might over-react; but some might just provide answers.

  ‘That’s me, guv.’ Tom O’Connell was still wrestling with his tuna mayo wrap, which he felt he’d better ditch in preference to spraying everybody with its contents. He lunged for his notepad, buried under piles of bumf. ‘We’ve got an approximate time of death from Dr Astley of ten to ten-thirty. Bartlett was found by his wife the next morning, i.e. twenty-four hours ago. We know from Ashley Wilkes, the theatre manager, that Bartlett was at the Arquebus the previous day, i.e. the one in question.’

  Jane Blaisedell leaned across to an oppo at her elbow. ‘Remind me how he made DS again,’ she hissed in an aside.

  ‘What time was that?’ Hall wanted it narrowed down so that the whiteboard made sense.

  ‘Er… Half-two,’ O’Connell confirmed. ‘He and Wilkes were going over plans for a possible theatre extension that’s in the consultative stage.’

  ‘Is that a general erection,’ Jane whispered, ‘or something specific?’

  ‘Just the two of them?’ Hall asked.

  ‘Um…’ O’Connell was double-checking. Didn’t want to get it wrong in front of the DCI. ‘Mrs Goodacre joined them at one point. That was somewhere around four. She stayed for an hour, then left. The meeting between Wilkes and Bartlett broke up about six.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Wilkes knocked off for the night and left Bartlett to oversee the rehearsal.’

  ‘What rehearsal?’ Hall was putting them through their paces.

  ‘Little Shop of Horrors, Leighford High School,’ the DS told him.

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Er…rehearsal began at seven, finished a little before nine.’

  ‘Who was on that?’ Hall scanned the murder team ranged before him, faces he knew, men and women he trusted.

  ‘That’s me, guv,’ Gavin Henslow admitted. ‘I spoke to the producer. A woman called Deena Harrison. She said the rehearsal finished at eight-fifty and they all went home. Bartlett was still in the theatre, as far as she knew, when they left.’

  ‘And Peter Maxwell?’ Hall felt he had no choice but to ask.

  ‘Guv?’ Henslow felt a little out of the loop on this, fast-track graduate or not.

  ‘Peter Maxwell,’ Hall sighed with the air of a man worn down by the cares of the world. ‘Head of Sixth Form at Leighford High.’

  Ripples of comment ran round the room and Hall let it happen. He did catch the phrase ‘interfering bastard’ a few times. ‘I understand he’s keeping an eye on rehearsals.’ He looked straight at Jane Blaisedell, when it came to Maxwell his right-hand woman. ‘Did you talk to him, Gavin?’

  ‘Er…no, guv; sorry.’

  Many people had been sorry they hadn’t talked to Peter Maxwell and some of them wore blue uniforms. ‘Follow it up,’ Hall ordered. ‘What about the cast?’

  ‘Kids,’ Henslow shrugged. ‘The couple I spoke to didn’t seem to understand the question. There was a…Sally Spall. Downtrodden little thing with a lisp. Um…Alan Eldridge – he plays Seymour…’

  ‘Yes, I don’t think we need the entire programme notes here, Gavin,’ Hall interrupted to the accompaniment of sniggers. ‘Did any of them tell you anything relevant to Bartlett?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Henslow admitted. ‘Not a sausage.’

  ‘Go into Leighford High tomorrow,’ Hall said. ‘Jane, go with him. I want exact confirmation of Bartlett’s movements on the day he died. He was a stickler for timings. Should be easy to chronicle. Giles, the dead man’s computer?’

  Finch-Friezely blew outward at the memory of the task he’d been on for what seemed the last twenty-four hours solid. ‘Vast amount of luvvie stuff,’ he told the Incident Room. ‘Old Vic, National Youth Theatre, begging letters to Kevin Spacey, Tim Rice, the Arts Council.’

  ‘Anything private?’

  ‘Er…thirty-eight unidentified females in regular or casual correspondence via his emails.’

  ‘We have names?’

  ‘Of a sort,’ Finch-Friezely snorted. ‘Dimples springs to mind. Cuddlekins, Lash La Rue. I think we can assume the late Mr Bartlett lived life to the full.’ That the team could still raise chuckles was a good sign.

  ‘They’ll need to be checked out,’ Hall said. ‘Especially in the light of testimony from his ex-wife.’

  ‘Helluva lot of femmes to cherchez, guv,’ Finch-Friezely whinged.

  ‘Welcome to Murder Squad, sonny,’ Hall nodded, having heard it all before. He wasn’t a man interested in moans or requests for overtime. He seemed to remember having a family once. ‘Bill, what have we got on the man’s bungalow, apart from dodgy electrics?’

  ‘Signs of female visitation,’ DS Robbins said. ‘And recent. He had at least one visitor on the evening he died.’

  ‘Do we know who?’

  Robbins shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Prints?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Saliva on a glass.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘At the moment.’

  ‘Bedroom?’

  ‘His bed hadn’t been slept in. SOCO are still working on the sheets, but we’re not hopeful.’

  ‘Right.’ Hall was scanning the whiteboard now, looking at the chain of events, the circumstantial links that marked a man’s passing. ‘So the last time Bartlett was seen by more than one person was at the Arquebus at shortly before nine. Presumably he drove home in that his car was in his garage; and he had a female visitor at some time after that who took at least one drink. No evidence of sex.’

  ‘Probably did it on top of the wardrobe,’ was Giles Finch-Friezely’s suggestion. Everyone looked at him a little oddly. Perhaps that was the way your mind worked when you had a double-barrelled name at a comprehensive.

  ‘We know from Astley,’ Hall swept on, ‘that Bartlett was dripping wet when he died – in fact, it was a combination of water and shredded cable that killed him. The bath was full of cold water, which was presumably hot when he left it on his way to meet his maker.’

  Jane Blaisedell looked up at the guv’nor. He wasn’t usually so poetic.

  ‘Calm Me, guv,’ Finch-Friezely said. Everyone looked at him again. ‘It’s the stuff in the bath,’ he explained quickly. ‘Relaxing foam.’

  ‘Did he have a little duck too?’ Henslow grinned. Guffaws all round.

  ‘People, people,’ Hall’s quiet, sensible voice brought them back into line; men who were tired, women who were wilting. ‘We’re missing something here. Why did Dan Bartlett get out of the bath, having got in?’

  ‘Somebody at the door?’ DS Robbins suggested.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Hall nodded, slowly.

  ‘Somebody on the phone,’ Jane Blaisedell volunteered.

  ‘Right.’ Hall leaned forward, supporting his weight with his hands on the cluttered desk. ‘Has anybody checked Dan Bartlett’s phone?’

  Nobody had.

  Time for action.

  Kick ass.

&
nbsp; CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In the beginning, God made chief constables. Whether He made them in His own image was difficult to say, but that was more or less how Derek Slater saw it. But then, as he was Chief Constable, he would, wouldn’t he?

  Henry Hall wasn’t so sure, especially that Wednesday as the purple clouds over Winchester gathered and rolled, the glittering bars of dying sun between them like a cosy, electric fire you remembered always burning at your granny’s. The point was that Hall had been at the joint Hampshire/West Sussex Police Service Symposium now for the best part of six hours. It was, as usual, all about targets and community relations and PR and ethnic sensitivity. Nobody mentioned the cops and the robbers at all. It seemed more like a fortnight had passed by the time it was his turn to sit across the Chief Constabularian desk and look the man in the face.

  It was the silver braid you saw first, as with all senior policemen, contrasting with the battleship grey habitually worn by the DCI. Then, Hall’s attention was drawn to the curious centre parting and the small, dark, dancing eyes. Every move was precision, every mannerism choreographed. Derek Slater had nervous breakdown written all over him.

  ‘To cases, Henry,’ he said, shuffling papers like a fastidious faro dealer and peering over his impossibly antiquated pince-nez. ‘This business at the Arquebus in Leighford. What progress?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Hall was the picture of unflappable immobility. ‘I’m not sure the link is as obvious as it seems.’

  ‘Oh? And what do you think the link is?’

  Henry Hall, had he been a flippant man, would have said it was a mobile phone shop. Peter Maxwell, had he been asked, would have said it was a pro-Nazi organisation in Thirties England. Horses for courses. Neither quip crossed the Chief Constable’s desk. ‘The theatre itself, sir.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Slater nodded, as though Hall was outlining the various theories of the origin of the universe. ‘Say on.’

  ‘Gordon Goodacre dies in the theatre.’ Hall felt he’d better guide the man. It had probably been a long time since he’d been directly involved in a case at all, still less a murder. ‘Actually on stage. Martita Winchcombe was the place’s Treasurer. Daniel Bartlett was its Artistic Director. I don’t really see how I can be clearer.’

  ‘No.’ Slater cleared his throat. ‘Quite. Quite.’

  ‘Now, we could be looking at some sort of conspiracy…’ and as soon as the words left Henry Hall’s lips, he regretted them.

  ‘Ah, so you’re a conspirationist, are you, Henry?’ Slater’s slightly twisted smile seemed smarmier than ever.

  ‘If you mean, can more than one person be involved in the commission of a crime, indubitably. Burke and Hare, Leopold and Loeb, Craig and Bentley.’

  ‘That’s folie à deux, surely?’ Slater was anxious to outsmart his longest-serving DCI and Henry Hall had a killer to catch. Neither of them had time for the niceties of criminal history.

  ‘It is possible that there is some common ground relating to the theatre we haven’t uncovered yet. We’re still checking the books, for example.’

  ‘Miss Winchcombe’s?’

  ‘Not exactly. She was Treasurer only in a nominal sense by virtue of her long association with the place. The finances are actually handled by a committee spearheaded by Ashley Wilkes, the Manager. They are regulated by the expertise of the theatre’s secretary, Patrick Collinson, in that he is a Chartered Accountant.’

  ‘Anything untoward there?’

  ‘As I said, sir, we’re still checking. You know how long financial checks can take.’

  Slater nodded wisely, but Henry Hall knew men like him. Peter Maxwell believed Hall to be a copper of the new school, all graduate and fast-track and smart alecry. By comparison with men like Slater, Hall was Dixon of Dock Green meets Inspector Lestrade.

  ‘What’s known about these victims?’ the Chief Constable wanted to know. ‘Anything in their background?’

  ‘Again, sir, it’s under way. A murder inquiry is a slow business.’

  ‘And three murder inquiries three times as slow, eh?’ Rosters. Timesheets. Expenses. Those things were bread and butter to Slater. He’d long forgotten, if he ever knew, the human cost of murder.

  Hall shrugged.

  ‘Your report casts doubt on the first one. No evidence of murder at all.’

  ‘That’s right. No doubts about the others, though. And they’re definitely linked.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Similar MO,’ Hall told him. ‘Both Martita Winchcombe and Daniel Bartlett died in their homes, both as a result of an apparent accident. And both, incidentally, quite sloppy.’

  ‘So we’re not talking about a hit man, here? A contract killing?’

  ‘No, sir. Definitely not.’

  ‘So what are we talking about?’

  Hall twisted a little in his chair. Squirming might have to come later. ‘I’m not sure yet,’ he said. ‘Let’s just say I’m keeping an open mind.’

  The Chief Constable leaned back in the large swivel obliging taxpayers had bought for him. He had an odd look on his face. ‘Are you?’ he beamed. ‘You don’t know how glad I am to hear you say that.’

  ‘Really?’ Hall’s eyebrows appeared over his glasses’ rim. He was beginning to smell a rodent.

  The Chief Constable slid a business card across his desk and got up and strolled to the window. He gazed down on the well-kept lawns that fell away from police HQ and the knots of coppers, in and out of uniform, waiting in the car park at the end of a long day. When he turned back, Henry Hall sat there open-mouthed.

  ‘A psychic consultant?’ he said.

  Slater sat back down. ‘Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,’ he said. ‘Modern policing, Henry. No barriers. No frontiers. Pushing the limits. Testing the water. We’ve worked inside the system. Dammit, we are the system.’ He got off his soap box and relaxed, the little pulse in his neck subsiding. ‘And we’re not getting results, are we? What have we been hearing all day, from both Services, West Sussex and Hampshire? The public don’t trust us. The public don’t like us. We’re not getting results. Henry,’ he leaned towards his man. ‘We’re not getting closure.’

  What a ghastly word, Henry Hall thought. Peter Maxwell would have had a fit.

  ‘And you think this will help?’

  ‘It’s been done, Henry,’ Slater frowned. ‘It’s a proven aid. I’ve just come back from the States. No less than eighty-one police authorities use psychic investigation as routine. So does the FBI.’

  And the Pinkertons, no doubt, thought Hall, but perhaps this wasn’t the place to say so.

  ‘Think about it, Henry,’ Slater urged. ‘There was a time when DNA was rubbished by the police service. Fingerprints; Hell, there was a time when unless a man was caught red-handed, there’d be no prosecution at all. I want that open mind of yours on this.’

  ‘So you’re suggesting I try this…Magda Lupescu.’

  Slater frowned, leaning back in his chair to remind Hall of the operational gulf between them. ‘I’m not suggesting, Henry,’ he said. ‘I’m ordering it.’

  That was the morning they came for Peter Maxwell, in a body. Like Father Gapon leading his thousands to the Winter Palace on Bloody Sunday long, long ago in the snow of a tragic year, Dominic Reynolds thudded down the mezzanine corridor on his way to the Great Man’s office. Mad Max was Head of Sixth Form, like Nicholas II was the Father of All the Russias. He would understand. Behind Reynolds trooped his cast of thousands – Sally Spall of the broken heart, who played Audrey; Andy Grant as the mad dentist; Sian Golding, Woman in Shop; Alan Eldridge, geekier than Seymour; David Balham, colliding with the corridor corners; and all of the Tendrils, without a ra-ra or a beehive in sight.

  Unlike Tsar Nicholas back at the Winter Palace, Mad Max was at home. His number two, Helen Maitland, not unused to trouble herself, beat a tactical retreat and let her Lord and Master deal with this one. She was a good woman, was Helen. Large and white, hence her nickname, the Fridge. Maxwell could r
ely on her in a crisis. But she’d spread herself a little thin recently – let Max take the heat for a bit. And he’d seen it all in his time – the Shorts Issue, the Skirt Length Controversy, the Smoking Room Remonstrance, the Mobile Phone Texting Civil Liberties Debate. He’d fielded them all with a mixture of bonhomie, cold reason, wheedling and, it had to be said, a long time ago, a couple of cuffs round the ear. That was the way with Enlightened Despots. And they didn’t come much more enlightened, or more despotic, than Peter Maxwell.

  ‘So,’ Maxwell settled into his chair as they all squeezed into his office. ‘Who’s going to bell the cat?’

  ‘Sir?’ Benny Barker spoke from the back. Maxwell hadn’t even seen him come in.

  ‘Who’s doing the talking?’ It was pure Humphrey Bogart but no one in the room was old enough to realise.

  Sally nudged Dominic. ‘Go on,’ she hissed in one of her best stage asides.

  ‘It’s Miss Harrison, sir,’ the plump lad said. ‘Deena. She’s impossible.’

  Maxwell had seen this building for some time and the appearance of the disgruntled mob didn’t surprise him in the least. He was just glad they weren’t wielding scythes and pitchforks and grumbling à bas les aristos. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Well, she’s mad, Mr Maxwell.’ Sally couldn’t simply stand there while Dominic lost his bottle. She had to strike a blow for womankind. Alan looked geekier than ever and if there was ever a moment that proved how miscast Andy was as the psycho dentist, this was it.

  ‘So am I, Sally,’ Maxwell smiled.

  ‘Ah, yes, but…no, but, I mean…’ Sally blushed bright crimson. ‘No, I mean you’re…’

  ‘Mad nor-nor-west,’ Maxwell helped her out, although the Bardic quotation was sadly lost on the A-level Theatre student. ‘Good of you to notice.’

  ‘She’s a nutter, sir,’ Benny chimed in. ‘Mr Maxwell, may I speak freely?’

  Maxwell spread his arms in a beatific gesture. This was the twenty-first century. Titles had been abolished and women had the vote. The end of civilisation.