Maxwell's Mask

by M. J. Trow

  ‘And you believe my Gordon’s death was not an accident.’

  ‘Martita Winchcombe didn’t think so,’ he told her.

  Matilda sat upright, blinking behind her chained spectacles. ‘Martita Winchcombe talked to you about this?’

  ‘Briefly,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Before the tide of modern living tore us apart.’

  ‘What did she mean?’ Matilda asked.

  ‘Murder, Mrs Goodacre,’ he said.

  She whipped off her glasses, letting them dangle, and turned dramatically to the window. ‘Do you know how that makes me feel?’ she said.

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ he said. ‘I’d be furious.’

  ‘Furious?’ She turned to face him.

  ‘If my nearest and dearest died in suspicious circumstances, I’d move heaven and earth to find the person responsible.’

  ‘And I suppose you are heaven and earth?’ she asked, straight-faced.

  ‘Mrs Goodacre.’ He rose and stood beside her. ‘I’ve just told you – I don’t know how I get involved in these things, but I do. Three people linked to the Arquebus have died suspiciously in as many weeks.’

  ‘The coroner’s verdict was that Gordon’s death was misadventure – an accident.’

  ‘Coroners have been wrong before,’ Maxwell told her. ‘Their job is to speculate on evidence placed before them. If the evidence isn’t there…’

  ‘Then the police must investigate.’

  It was Maxwell’s turn to spin away. He could match Matilda Goodacre move for move and he crossed to the window. The lawns fell away to a neat hedge and beyond that the chiselled gardens of the West Ground, laid out in the Hungry Thirties to provide work for the unemployed, hope for the hopeless. Beyond that was the sea, endless and with no horizon. ‘Do you know Henry Hall?’

  ‘The Chief Inspector? Yes, I’ve met him.’

  ‘So have I. He’s a good copper. By the book. Honest, bright, efficient. But he doesn’t have a nose for these things. He’ll go by the coroner’s verdict. There’ll be stones left unturned.’

  ‘Whereas those stones will be turned by you?’

  ‘I know where to find them,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘How long had you and your husband been married, Mrs Goodacre?’

  Time for another theatrical move, regal, imperious, St Joan condemned at Rouen, Eleanor leaving Chinon for the last time. Years of playing deranged French women had given Matilda Goodacre a legendary quality, an aura of the untouchable. ‘Thirty-three years,’ she told him. She picked up a photograph of the dead man, the only one in the room that wasn’t of her. ‘I shall miss him.’

  ‘That’s a thirty-three-year advantage you have over me, Mrs Goodacre. I never knew your husband. An awful lot of stones gather over thirty-three years.’

  She looked at Gordon again, smiling at her from the silver confines of the frame. Then she looked at Peter Maxwell. ‘I understand from the children working at the Arquebus that they call you Mad Max. Is that right?’

  ‘Among other things,’ he smiled. ‘In the Seventies, I was the Blue Max, courtesy of George Peppard in the film of the same name; in the Eighties Max Headroom. Mercifully, dear old Mel Gibson came to my rescue, roaring through some ghastly Australian Future Neverland, or I might be called Pepsi by now.’

  ‘All right,’ she smiled. ‘Mad Max. What do you need to know?’

  ‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Everything you can tell me about the man who was Gordon Goodacre.’

  ‘Gordon Goodacre.’ Graham Larter kicked his swivel chair across the flotex to reach a filing cabinet. ‘Yes. Yes. Tragic.’

  Peter Maxwell had skived off his last two lessons at the great centre of excellence that was Leighford High. He had no lessons and the looming nearness of the Oxbridge UCAS entry deadline could loom for a day or two yet. Thingee One, the switchboard operator newly promoted to doing the day’s cover, had tried to pass him one of the ominous green sheets that meant that Maxwell had to babysit a Chemistry lesson. He would normally have just raised an eyebrow and consigned the sheet to the bin, but Thingee was new in post and the job carried more opprobrium than that dished out to traffic wardens and Conservative MEPs, so he had the courtesy to give her an explanation of why he couldn’t do it. He could have told her he’d rather die than enter a science lab. He had a degree for God’s sake, in History! He had allergies to the smell of Something or Other Phosphate and he’d come out in hives. His sciatica wouldn’t stand the backless torture of the lab stools. And the vertigo! Dear God!

  As it was, he just said, ‘Thingee, darling. Find somebody else, there’s a good girl.’ And he threw the sheet into the bin. Game, set and mismatch.

  So here he was, still cycle-clipped from his hurtle across town that Wednesday afternoon, sitting in the MD’s office at Ampleforth Components. The MD looked about six, longing for the day when his acne would leave him and he could have his first shave. But he had a plastic name on his desk and an air of being in control. For the moment, Maxwell would go with that.

  ‘What exactly is your interest, Mr Maxwell?’ he asked, lifting out a manila folder with a dead man’s name on it.

  ‘I am here on behalf of Mrs Goodacre,’ Maxwell told him.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Larter was the soul of concern. ‘How is she? I wasn’t able to attend the funeral, I’m afraid.’

  ‘She’s suspicious,’ Maxwell told him.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Not happy with the coroner’s verdict. Asked me to step in.’ Technically, this was Maxwell’s script, not Matilda’s, but would a six-year-old Managing Director of a company that made components be aware of that?

  ‘So you’re a private detective?’

  ‘Such a dramatic term, don’t you think?’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Smacks of Philip Marlow, Sam Spade, guys in trench coats with broads and attitudes.’ He’d lapsed into his best Bogart.

  Larter looked oddly at him. Yep, he was six. Nope, he wasn’t aware that Maxwell was running the show. ‘This,’ he held up the file, ‘is, of course, confidential.’

  ‘Of course,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Do you know Henry Hall?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Local DCI based at Leighford nick. He’s about to re-open inquiries.’

  ‘Is he?’ Larter asked. ‘Into what?’

  ‘The murder of Gordon Goodacre.’

  ‘Murder?’ Larter blinked.

  ‘Oh, damn,’ Maxwell clicked his tongue. ‘There I go again. Sorry. Death. Death of Gordon Goodacre.’

  ‘How do you know?’ The six-year-old suddenly looked four in the grey afternoon light.

  Maxwell drew back, crossing one cycle-clipped leg over the other. ‘How do I know the police are about to launch a new inquiry, Mr Larter?’ he said. ‘That’s an irrelevance, really, isn’t it? What do you actually make here at Ampleforth Components?’

  ‘Components,’ the MD told him, increasingly nonplussed by this interview.

  ‘And you have a fine reputation in the area.’

  ‘Well, we like to think…’

  Maxwell held up his hand. ‘Now, now, Mr Larter. This is no time for false modesty. The name of Ampleforth Components is known the length of the south coast. Didn’t I hear dear old Declan Whatsisface give you a plug on Breakfast last week?’

  ‘Did you?’ Larter was astounded. ‘I didn’t know…’ His PR people were letting him down big-time.

  Maxwell waved him aside. ‘And then this nasty business with Gordon. Well, it’s a shame.’ And he stood up. ‘Give my regards to Henry,’ and he flipped his shapeless tweed cap onto his head and turned for the door. ‘When he arrives.’

  ‘Wait,’ Larter shouted, on his feet too. ‘Wait.’ Calmer now, trying to smile. ‘Isn’t there some way out of this? I mean, can’t we keep the lid on things?’

  Maxwell sighed, frowning, thinking it over. ‘I don’t really see how,’ he said. ‘I mean, they’ll want access to all your records. Personnel, audit, tax, sales. They’re quite clinical, those fore
nsic accountants. Still, it’s in a good cause.’

  ‘No, no.’ Larter was fumbling at the door as Maxwell opened it. ‘Look, er…what do you need?’

  ‘Me?’ Maxwell asked, bewildered. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Larter, I got the distinct impression that you couldn’t help me.’

  ‘No, no.’ The MD’s smile was as broad as it was brittle. He suddenly looked like Tony Blair on Election Night, a rabbit in the headlights of a fading majority. ‘All I meant was, this dossier on Gordon…well, it’s confidential to the firm. Delicate. I can’t just give it out to… Can you divert the police? I mean, is there a way…? Perhaps a word from you?’

  Graham Larter knew when he was beaten. He hadn’t been MD long and had only got the job because it was his daddy’s firm anyway. And Daddy would be furious if he thought great hairy coppers with their size elevens were trampling all over his creation. And against Maxwell? Well, AVCE Business meets History Honours, 1st Class, Cantab. Done and done. ‘What do you need?’ he asked.

  ‘That folder.’ Maxwell pointed to it lying on Larter’s desk. ‘For five minutes.’

  ‘All right,’ Deena Harrison shouted through the darkened auditorium. ‘Take five, everybody.’

  It wasn’t going badly tonight. Alan Eldridge had almost got Seymour’s words right and Andy Grant, the dangerous dentist, was warming to the essential psychopathy of his part. The Tendrils crashed into varying positions of gratitude around the auditorium. Their ra-ra skirts, black lacquer wigs and Fifties platform shoes were all in place by now and were combining to kill them.

  ‘Miss Harrison.’ Ashley Wilkes padded down the auditorium steps to where the director was lighting up. ‘You are aware of the No Smoking nature of the theatrical tradition?’

  Deena flicked off the lighter. ‘God,’ she sighed. ‘Mr Wilkes, I am so sorry. It’s been a long haul.’

  He smiled. ‘OK.’

  ‘Oh, Ashley.’ She followed him into the darkness.

  ‘You don’t mind if I call you Ashley?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Could I have a word?’ And some of the cast couldn’t help but notice that she had a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  Would you Adam and Eve it? White Surrey had a puncture. And it was pissing down with rain. But Peter Maxwell had once been a Boy Scout, with an armful of badges for proficiency in everything from Woodcraft to tying a knot in his granny. So such reversals held no terrors for him. Had he got a puncture kit? No, of course not. He just belted Surrey a few times à la John Cleese in Fawlty Towers and pushed the battered old thing along the edge of the Dam, squeaking and rattling as they went, and out towards the Flyover. He would have been late anyway, because all evening, over a particularly challenging baguette of gargantuan proportions, he and Jacquie had been wrestling with the quickly photocopied contents of the late Gordon Goodacre’s dossier. The boy MD had winced as he’d watched him do it, smarming around his Girl Friday, but the whole thing was – literally – out of his hands now.

  Gordon himself had been Personnel Manager at Ampleforth Components for nearly sixteen years. In that time, he’d hired and fired his share of people, from shop floor machine operators to boardroom execs. Maxwell focused on the fired, that list of the damned whose faces hadn’t fitted, whose time-keeping was suspect, whose hands were in the till. Any one of them could have hated Gordon Goodacre. Peter Maxwell had never known the pain, the despair, the hopelessness of redundancy, the curt order to clear your desk, the ignominy of being escorted off the premises. But in the real world beyond the halcyon existence that was teaching, such things happened. And sometimes, people didn’t get mad; they got even.

  ‘My money’s on this one,’ Maxwell had said, as another spring onion shard got right up his nose. ‘Martin Lincoln.’

  ‘What about him?’ Jacquie had hoped their conversation would drown out the gurglings from her stomach; Sonny Jim on the rampage again.

  ‘Lost his job at Ampleforth’s two months ago. Something dodgy in accounts. I’d chanced my arm getting Goodacre’s file from Larter. I thought asking for somebody else’s was pushing it a bit.’

  ‘You should send that lad of yours,’ Jacquie had suggested. ‘Whatsisface? Anthony Wetta. See if he can break in and burgle it for you.’ She had stolidly attacked her prawn mayo wrap.

  ‘Do I detect a note of disapproval in your usually dulcet and supportive voice, Woman Policeman?’ Maxwell had asked.

  ‘This is very naughty of you, Max,’ she had scolded him. ‘You had no right to see this file. You bullied the man into it.’

  ‘Careful, Woman Policeman,’ the Head of Sixth Form had warned. ‘Your training’s showing. To me, the rules don’t apply.’

  She had blown a raspberry at him. ‘So what’ll you do with the information, now you’ve got it?’

  Maxwell had scanned the notes he had made. ‘Find this Martin Lincoln,’ he had said. ‘See where he was on the Night in Question.’

  ‘Max.’ Jacquie had become serious about then. ‘You know all this is flying in the face of reason, don’t you?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Maxwell had nodded, looking laughingly into the steady grey eyes of the girl. ‘But at least it’s flying.’

  ‘Hello?’ He rattled the theatre’s side door along Bakewell Street, where it turned its sharp angle to curve towards the river. The rain had stopped now, but Surrey was wet and heavy as Maxwell leaned the clapped-out creature against his bum. ‘Bugger!’ he muttered as he realised he’d missed the whole shooting match. All was locked and barred and no one was tying a dark red love knot into her long, dark hair. He hoisted Surrey to the upright and trudged off into the darkness. Squeak. Rattle.

  They lay in the back of his Mondeo, blowing cigarette smoke to the roof.

  ‘Isn’t this where I come out with another cliché?’ Deena Harrison asked. ‘Asking how it was for you?’

  Ashley Wilkes laughed. ‘And if this was television, you’d get up with an entire sheet wrapped around you as if I’d never seen your body before.’

  She ran a hand down between them, cradling his manhood and smiling. ‘Not bad,’ she mused.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘For a man of your age, I mean.’ And they both burst out laughing.

  ‘I’d better get you home,’ he said.

  ‘I’d rather go to yours.’ She began moving her hand backwards and forwards, stroking his stiffness again.

  ‘Uh-uh.’ He removed her fingers reluctantly. ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘Mrs Wilkes?’ She looked up into his face.

  ‘Mrs Wilkes departed the scene a long time ago,’ he told her. ‘By mutual consent. Exit stage right. She was only ever a bit player. What about you? Anybody in your life?’

  Deena’s face darkened, even in that darkened back seat with its steamed-up windows. ‘Not any more,’ she said solemnly.

  ‘Well, it happens.’ Wilkes reached across to stub his cigarette out.

  ‘Suicide? Yes, I suppose it does.’

  ‘Suicide?’ Wilkes repeated.

  ‘It’s nothing…’ and she extinguished her cigarette too.

  ‘No.’ He stopped her, cradling her left breast as she lay there. ‘No, it’s not nothing. Tell me.’

  ‘It was – like you – a long time ago.’

  He laughed softly. ‘Deena. How old are you?’

  ‘I’m twenty-two,’ she told him.

  ‘So,’ Wilkes nodded. ‘How can anything be a long time ago? Tell me – please.’

  She shrugged, snuggling down into his embrace. ‘I knew a boy at Oxford. His name was Alex. He was tall, dark and handsome. There we go with those clichés again. A little vulnerable, perhaps. A little…other-worldly, really. He came from the country, from the south-west. His wild, singing county, he called it. He wrote folk songs. A bit retro, really – sort of John Denver meets Neil Young. Something of an ingénu, I guess. Well… I fell for him big-time.’

  ‘He was reading Drama?’

  ‘No,’ she smiled fondly. ‘No. Alex wasn’t
an extrovert. He’d never actually perform the songs he wrote. He was reading Chemistry. We loved each other. Oh, we had such plans. You know how it is.’

  Ashley Wilkes couldn’t remember when he’d had plans of the kind Deena Harrison was talking about. Had he been that blind, once? That young? That hopeful?

  ‘But Alex had his problems,’ Deena sighed, nuzzling into Wilkes’ naked shoulder. ‘I didn’t see it at first; couldn’t see it. He found people difficult. He hated college. There’s no privacy, of course. Endless hall dinners and coffee at so-n-so’s. I was into the party scene. We Thesps, you know?’

  This time Wilkes did know. He hadn’t been sober for six years between his undergraduate days and landing the Arquebus job. He knew all about that.

  ‘Alex got worse,’ Deena remembered. ‘He’d dipped out of parties, was too busy to go punting. Just stayed in his rooms, twanging the guitar. Eventually, he started missing lectures. Couldn’t handle the pressure.’

  ‘It must be a hothouse at Oxford,’ Wilkes commiserated. ‘There were moments at Manchester… What happened?’

  The girl was gripping his arm until her knuckles were white. ‘In the end, he started avoiding me. I felt crushed. Left out. All at once, I was just “people” as he called all his old friends. We’d talked marriage, kids, the whole nine yards. One day…’ Her voice trailed away.

  Wilkes lifted her face. It was sweet and smooth and soft and streaked with tears.

  ‘One day,’ she struggled on, ‘I found him in his rooms at Balliol. He’d…taken an overdose. I thought he was asleep at first. He was lying on his bed, his face turned to the window, staring at the sky. The window was open. I remember hearing the birds singing. I just…just sat on the bed. Our bed. I sat and held him. They say I was still talking to him hours later when they found us both.’

  ‘You poor darling.’ Wilkes kissed her forehead, his own problems forced into perspective by the dazed, broken girl in his arms. ‘How can you get over a thing like that?’