Maxwell's Mask

by M. J. Trow

  He caught the girl’s eyes as she switched off her VDU. ‘Jane,’ he said. ‘Can I have a word?’

  Jane Blaisedell had gone home to Mum and Dad, exhausted, broken. She who’d never told them about Uncle Tony and his disgusting, wandering hands, still couldn’t tell them now. That was because Uncle Tony had been cleaning his car one day on that steeply sloping drive of his. He’d been working on the rear number plate when, quite suddenly, the handbrake had slipped and the vehicle rolled backwards.

  There had been a dull thud as the car’s weight hit Uncle Tony’s head and slammed him backwards like a puppet, to crush his pelvis against the garage wall.

  And Jane could never tell her parents all about that, now could she? That she’d been sitting in the car at the time. And if anybody else should ask, in the years ahead, she’d tell them that Uncle Tony had been a strange one and had hanged himself because he couldn’t live with his guilt. Jane was learning to live with hers.

  So she’d made some lame excuse about needing a couple of days’ break and a spot of R and R. And now, she was back, words unsaid, business that she thought was finished, suddenly unfinished. Unspoken thoughts made vivid and vocal by a strange, gaunt woman who knew things…things she couldn’t possibly know.

  ‘Jane?’ Henry Hall said again. ‘Are you all right?’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  She drove out along the Flyover as the darkness gathered. The lights of the Front shone in the dying days of the season, although the Factory Fortnight was an institution fast disappearing in the world of extended ‘sickies’ and stress-related holidays. She felt awful. It wasn’t just the problem of squeezing behind the wheel of the Ka these days, or indeed of where she was going and why. She really felt awful because she hadn’t told Max about any of this. And Max was half her soul as she was his. They’d made no vows as such. No plans for a wedding with bells, books and candles. Not even a brief fifteen minutes with some dotty old Registrar. No rings, no twining knots of true love. There was a time when, perhaps, they’d both wanted that, when they were younger and brighter-eyed and bushier-tailed. Now, it was just quiet understanding and the touch of hearts by the electric firelight. But it was real nonetheless and it was true. And Jacquie hated herself because she hadn’t told Max.

  There was the house she’d heard about through the garbled snippets she’d got from an increasingly hysterical Jane Blaisedell. Quite smart as bungalows went, but a bungalow nonetheless. Laying aside Max’s endless tirade against the tastelessness of bungaloid growth, it was not exactly the sort of house you buy if Bill Gates occasionally rings you up for a loan. Jane had told her that Dan Bartlett’s wife had said the dead man was loaded, rich as Croesus. It didn’t show.

  She parked the car round the corner, a habit born of years of police experience and earlier, furtive meetings with Max, neither of them wanting to put the other on the spot. The night air struck cold after the warmth of the Ka and she pulled her coat tighter round her. The night sky was a purple haze with a pale moon already making a mystic appearance; bad moon rising. She heard the rising breeze rustle the privet leaves as she negotiated the hedge; it would be a windy night. There was a fence to her right, a low wall and the privet to her left. Dan Bartlett’s love nest was quite secluded, for all it was on the edge of an estate. Anyone could have come and gone after dark without causing any fuss whatsoever. Various neighbours had seen people come and go and had reported it to Henry Hall’s team. But who had they missed, behind the privet and the Cotswold stone?

  She heard her feet crunch on gravel. A silent approach wasn’t an option, unless there was a way in from the back. She tried that next, while there was still enough light in the sky to let her. A lawn, rather less neat probably now there was no one to mow it. Flower beds. But the fence was unbroken. There was no back gate; no other way in that might have masked the arrival of a murderer. Chummy, as Max would no doubt call him, must have arrived by the front.

  It was as she turned back to the squat blackness of the house that her blood froze. Like that scene she hated in one of Max’s favourite films, The Innocents, a gaunt woman stood in the half shadows, like Quint’s dead mistress in the waving reeds where she died.

  ‘I’m Jacquie Carpenter,’ she said, hoping her own voice would inject normality into the situation. ‘Are you Magda Lupescu?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ the woman asked. She was still in the shadow of the house and had not moved.

  Some psychic, thought Jacquie, but she didn’t want to sour their relationship from day one. She walked forward, holding up her warrant card and the little torch with it that she always carried for moments such as these, identification in the dark. ‘I’m with Leighford CID,’ she said. ‘Jane Blaisedell’s replacement.’

  ‘Why is Jane not here?’ Magda wanted to know.

  ‘She’s not well. DCI Hall has asked me to take over for her.’

  Magda looked the woman up and down. ‘You are expecting a child.’

  Wow, thought Jacquie. Perception upon perception. She clicked her tongue. ‘One little mistake,’ she said.

  ‘You do not want this baby?’

  Jacquie was already fumbling for the house keys, but stopped and looked hard into the woman’s eyes. ‘Yes, I do,’ she said firmly. ‘Very much. But that’s enough about me. I need you to tell me what you can about the last days of Daniel Bartlett.’

  ‘One moment.’ The Psychic stopped her. ‘May I hold the key?’

  It was Jacquie’s experience that something held the key in every case, but she already knew two things about Magda Lupescu. She was weird and she had no sense of humour whatsoever. She passed it to her. The woman held the Yale in her hand, then closed her eyes and pressed it against her forehead. Then she passed it back.

  Jacquie waited for some meaningful pronouncement, but Magda said nothing, so she unlocked the door and in they went.

  ‘No,’ Magda said as Jacquie fumbled for the lights. ‘We don’t need those.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ Jacquie said, flicking out her pencil torch again. ‘As you so rightly surmised, Miss Lupescu, I’m pregnant. And for Sonny Jim’s sake if not my own, I’d rather not fall over anything, thank you all the same.’

  Magda stood inside the front door. Ahead of her, the corridor ended in darkness. The dim light from the hall window formed a backdrop to the darting rays of Jacquie’s torch, bouncing off hall tables, mirrors and a hat stand draped with coats. The Psychic started here, running her bony pale hands over the Barbour, the long, affected scarf, the little Roman Polanski cap. ‘He is unhappy,’ she said. ‘Disturbed.’

  Jacquie hadn’t moved. All the way over here from Columbine, indeed ever since Henry Hall had asked her to take some work leave from her maternity, she’d decided to play it this way. Jane Blaisedell had played it wrong, let the moment and this woman get to her. She wasn’t going to be sucked in. This was just a house. It was new, for God’s sake. Miss Winchcombe’s place may have been old and creaky and spooky, and the Arquebus Theatre had been a warehouse since God knew when. Such places had a right to ghosts. But there was nothing other-worldly about an Eighties bungalow on the south coast. She would keep some perspective. And the woman in front of her, frowning now as if in pain, was just…what? at best, just an expert witness; at least, a meddling old fraud. And it was inconceivable that such people could ever be used in court. What would happen? The defence would bring in their medium to rebut the prosecution’s medium and pass the Tarot round the jury while the judge gazed into his crystal ball? She shook herself free of the image.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Magda was saying. Her eyes were closed, but she was walking ahead. Jacquie went with her, training her torch on the woman’s face. Her eyes were closed the whole time, yet she was negotiating furniture like a sleepwalker, she who was wide awake. ‘There’s trouble here. A woman.’

  ‘From what we know, there were lots of women in Dan Bartlett’s life,’ Jacquie told her.

  ‘Not like this one.’ Magda
stopped, cocking her head to one side, listening. ‘This one’s different.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Jacquie was used to ID parades, witness statements, depositions. No time for nonsense. Cut to the chase.

  Magda was moving along the corridor now, running her fingers over the woodwork of door frames, sliding her hands over the chunky furniture. Jacquie knew that the SOCO team had been all over this place already, at least once. If she knew the DCI, he’d be sending a team back any day now to double-check, not the forensics this time, but all the little ways a man’s life could be pieced together – the contents of his computer, his freezer, the personal shorthand he’d scribbled on his kitchen calendar, his taste in books, music, films. All of it was there, the residue of a life that might leave a clue about the death. But what this strange, silent, compelling woman was doing was something different, something else.

  ‘There was someone here,’ Magda said, standing in the middle of Dan Bartlett’s lounge, silhouetted like a ghost against the window. ‘On the day he died. She sat here.’

  ‘Who?’ Jacquie persisted. ‘Who are we talking about?’

  Magda had dropped suddenly and silently to the settee. Again, her eyes were closed. Her hands were roaming over cushions, the arms, the window ledge behind her, like a demented spider spinning its web. ‘She is troubled. I see water now. A boat.’ She stood up just as quickly, frowning. Her eyes were open. She was shaking her head violently, as if a wasp was buzzing around her, threatening, deadly. She left the room, Jacquie in her wake, relying again on the torch now that they were in the total darkness of the corridor. To the right lay the kitchen and Magda seemed to have no inclination to go there. They turned the curve of the corridor, snaking to the left. Jacquie hadn’t seen the plans of the place as Jane had and Henry Hall had not been forthcoming. There would be blow-ups in the Incident Room at Tottingleigh, photographs of each room, SOCO’s telltale notelets fluttering from the whiteboard, measurements, links, speculation, guesses even – but all of it rooted in reality. In the dead man’s house, both women were, in all senses, in the dark.

  Magda shrieked, leapt back, her hand against the wall; Jacquie’s heart was pounding as she watched the woman recoil. She flashed her torch at the floor. Charred carpet. This is where it happened. Where Dan Bartlett died.

  ‘There is a ringing,’ Magda moaned, as though struggling through unspeakable pain. ‘A doorbell. He was on his way to answer the door.’ She stood bolt upright, fists clenched. Then she felt her cheek. ‘Were there marks?’ she asked Jacquie. ‘Here, on his face?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Henry Hall had been at his wheedling best when he’d rung Jacquie at home, but he only half expected her to go through with this anyway, given her condition. When she’d said yes, he’d metaphorically fallen off his chair and hadn’t given her all the detail she needed. Or perhaps that was deliberate. You never could tell with Henry Hall.

  ‘He felt pain,’ Magda continued, ‘before he died. Pain and ecstasy. Perhaps they were one.’

  ‘Who was with him?’ Jacquie pressured her. ‘Was someone here when he died? When the doorbell rang? Was he alone?’

  ‘Fucking bitch!’ Magda snarled, rounding on Jacquie in the darkness of the corridor. But it wasn’t her voice. It was a man’s. And her face was odd, hard and distorted.

  ‘Why?’ Jacquie could feel the hairs standing on her head, her whole body cold and rigid. The torch was dangling uselessly in her hand, illuminating the carpet in little circles of light. She was terrified. She knew exactly what Jane had experienced and she wanted to run. To get out of that house and be running, Sonny Jim or no. Get out and back to Max, to the man she loved with his cat and his soldiers and the heart he wore on his sleeve. She wanted to tell Henry Hall where to stick his bloody favour. And his bloody job. She understood now the tears and the terror from Jane. But she was a copper. Tried. Tested. And if ninety-nine per cent of her being told her that Magda Lupescu was a con woman, that shaky one per cent couldn’t let it go. ‘Why am I a bitch?’

  ‘You know why,’ the man’s voice goaded back. ‘Kicking a man when he’s down. And you’ve got it. You’ve got it all.’

  ‘What have I got?’ Jacquie asked, her heart thumping somewhere under her chin. ‘What is it that you want? Magda? Are you Magda? Who are you?’

  But Magda was sliding down the wall, the strange light gone from her eyes, her features softening, her own voice returning in a whisper. Jacquie went with her, as far as her bump would allow, and checked the woman’s pulse. Then her eyelids, flashing the torch into the tiny black dots that were her pupils. She’d fainted. And Jacquie blew all the breath that she could muster, feeling the goosebumps ripple up her arms. She could have got some water, slapped the woman around the face to revive her. Instead, she struggled upright and switched on the lights, first in the corridors, then in the kitchen. She rummaged in Dan Bartlett’s cupboards for Dan Bartlett’s tea and put on the kettle. She’d let Magda come to in her own good time and in the meantime she went through the calming, routine ritual of a housewife; doing the basics, returning to normal. There was nothing amiss really. In the hallway outside, a psychic was lying in a heap, having turned into a dead man in front of her. Just one of life’s little trials.

  While the kettle noise grew into bubbling life, Jacquie opened her coat and the blouse underneath. She couldn’t help smiling at the bump that met her, the skin stretched and shiny, with the bugging wire across it, the one Henry Hall insisted she wore. She hauled out the mini tape recorder from under her armpit and pressed replay. It was faint, distorted, but it was there. An inrush of air, then, ‘I’m Jacquie Carpenter. Are you Magda Lupescu?’

  Jacquie found herself staring at the contraption. What was the matter with the bloody thing? Henry’s boffins had sold her a pup. All she could hear was a sort of…sighing. Then, loud, crackling, as though directly into her ears. ‘Look, who’s there? I’ve had enough of this.’ Silence. A click. The tape had ended. Jacquie pushed buttons, rechecked. The tape had minutes to go yet, but the bloody machine had switched itself off.

  The kettle bubbled to boiling point behind her and she heard a low moaning from the corridor. Magda was back.

  ‘That was a helluva drinkie with the girlies last night,’ Maxwell said through a mouthful of toast. ‘What time did you get in?’

  ‘Late,’ Jacquie told him. ‘I slept in the spare room – didn’t want to wake you.’

  ‘You thoughtful old thing,’ and he chucked her ’neath the chin. ‘Was Jane there?’

  ‘Jane – er…no.’

  Maxwell took the toast out of his mouth and looked at Jacquie. She looked pale, a little fragile. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her. It had been a long time since Peter Maxwell had had a pregnant woman in his house. He’d forgotten the symptoms.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she smiled. ‘What’s today?’

  ‘God knows,’ he sighed, stuffing books into his already bulging briefcase. ‘Monday, I think. That must mean – ah, yes, History teaching. You?’

  ‘I’m having lunch with Jane, all being well. You know Henry’s taken her off the case.’

  ‘Has he?’ Maxwell slurped some coffee. ‘Common sense at last.’

  ‘Well, at least the psychic part of it.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Madame Arcati. I’d love to meet her.’

  ‘Would you?’

  Again, Maxwell stopped, wiping crumbs from his bow tie. ‘Darling,’ he closed to her. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Just tired,’ she said. ‘Some days – Sonny Jim, you know. You should try it some time.’

  ‘D’you know,’ he winked, ‘I think I might. I’ll have a word with dear old Doc Shipman and see if I can get the op on the NHS. But in the meantime, hey nonny-nonny. See you later, darling heart,’ and he kissed her and was gone.

  She watched him from the lounge window as he led Surrey out down the garden path. He’d fixed the puncture now and the contraption’s chrome sparkled in the weak October sun. He raised his shapeless
hat to Mrs T, forever clipping the other side of their communal hedge. He turned to wave as he wobbled out into the road, doffing his cap to her and bouncing low in Surrey’s saddle. She smiled and loved him all over again. Mad as a tree.

  ‘Look after yourself, Peter Maxwell,’ she whispered. She went to the bathroom and mechanically turned on the taps. Then she looked in the mirror. ‘God, Jacquie,’ she heard herself saying. ‘Not only do you feel like shit, you look like it too.’

  While the Stress Relief bath pong spread bubbles in the water and the steam coated mirror and window, Jacquie rang Leighford nick. ‘Dave?’ She recognised the desk man’s quiet, calming tones. ‘Jacquie Carpenter. Put me through to the guv’nor, will you?’

  ‘This,’ Peter Maxwell had halted temporarily on his way into Leighford High that morning, wheels spinning on the gravel as his laser eyes caught sight of an erring child, ‘is what I believe the working classes call a football.’ He was spinning the thing in his hand. ‘That, not ten yards from it, is a plate-glass window. The oldest known in Western Europe was made for General Lucius Lucullus so he could look out and enjoy his stupendous garden in bad weather. Know what happens, Joshua, when one meets the other at several miles an hour?’