Maxwell's Mask

by M. J. Trow

  Everybody was on his back on this one. The Fourth Estate, those gallant, sensitive and helpful gentlemen and ladies of the Press, had done little but ridicule Hall and his entire investigation ever since the leak about psychic detection. At least they did not have the name of Magda Lupescu – yet. But it could only be a matter of time. Fiona Elliot may have been trusting of messages from the Other Side, but she seemed particularly keen that the terrestrial police from This Side solve her late aunt’s murder and pdq. And the grating Carole Bartlett was almost a daily visitor, demanding to know what had happened to the missing copy of the Sheridan play and how long it would be before her husband’s entangled finances were sorted out.

  Jane Blaisedell was flaky. Jacquie Carpenter was better. But that was another odd thing for Henry Hall: not that Jacquie had agreed to act as Jane’s stand-in – he knew instinctively that she would – but that Peter Maxwell hadn’t gone ape-shit about it; he knew instinctively he’d do that too. In the silence and the solitude, Henry Hall allowed himself the teensiest of smiles. Peter Maxwell would go ape-shit, all right; it was just that, with Peter Maxwell, you could never be sure exactly when. And many was the kid, and the colleague and the copper, who had rued the experience.

  Christ Church meadow lay wreathed in the October mist as Jacquie’s Ka purred past, grateful to be off the A338 and gliding past the Thames.

  ‘Isis,’ said Maxwell, apparently dozing beside her, slumped in the passenger seat with his tweed hat over his face.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘The Thames becomes the Isis when it goes past Oxford. Christ knows why. Pure snobbery, of course.’

  ‘You don’t like this town, do you?’ she smiled, vaguely aware that the number of cyclists whizzing around her had trebled in the last few minutes.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right.’ He stretched. ‘Nobody lives here now, of course, after all those serial killings in the Morse series. Entire population’s been wiped out. It’s a ghost town. Rumour has it there’s a university here somewhere.’

  ‘Which college did you say you wanted?’

  ‘Corpus Christi,’ he told her, straightening up and pulling the cap off his face. ‘That’s body of Christ to you non-Classicists.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ she snorted and hung a right. They were in the High now – Oxford students for generations apparently being congenitally unable to pronounce the word ‘street’.

  ‘Founded in the year of Our Lord 1517.’ Maxwell was giving Jacquie the guided tour. ‘The same year in which Fr Luther upset everybody in Christendom with his ninety-five theses pinned to the door of Wittenberg cathedral. God, I had trouble just doing one. There are twenty-seven sundials in Front Quad, topped with a pelican pecking out its own heart; like you do. Corpus is the only college to have its original founder’s plate. All the others gave theirs to Charles I for his war effort. So…’

  ‘So?’ It had been a long time since Jacquie Carpenter had done the Tudors and Stuarts.

  ‘So either the college was tight as a gnat’s chuff or they were secret parliamentarians. Like I said, they’re a dodgy lot in Oxford. Next right.’

  ‘How do you know?’ She jammed on the brakes to avoid yet another cyclist. ‘All these buildings look alike.’

  ‘I have a nose for academe.’ Maxwell duly tapped it. ‘That’s Merton, with the oldest library in England – after mine – built in the 1370s. Didn’t start out too well, mind. Even Geoffrey Chaucer had more books than they did and he was a bloody customs officer. Here we are.’

  She stopped the Ka. ‘There’s nowhere to park.’

  He smiled. ‘Welcome to Oxford.’

  On his way up the stairs, Peter Maxwell tossed a coin.

  ‘Heads,’ Jacquie said, steadying herself on the banisters. She’d been here before, not Corpus Christi College, Oxford, but wheeling and dealing with Mad Max.

  ‘Sorry, heart,’ he consoled her. ‘It’s tails. My way, then.’ His Sinatra was perfect. Flat and heartless.

  ‘Thank you, Frank,’ she grinned. ‘I just hope it works.’

  As they reached the door, he leaned to her. ‘Trust me, lady, I’m a Cambridge man.’

  In the lobby, a grey-haired woman in a starched white blouse appeared to be a leftover from the days of Gibson girls, with an upswept bun of a hairdo and a pearl-clasped choker, longing for the day when they invented brassieres and gave girls like her the vote.

  ‘Good morning.’ Maxwell swept off his hat and beamed. ‘I wonder, is Professor Usherwood in?’

  The Gibson girl looked over her pince-nez, sizing up the pair. Effete, over-the-top gent with his pregnant daughter. She looked a little long in the tooth for someone hoping for a place, but the Gibson girl had known stranger attempts to get into Oxford, circumventing little things like A-levels and university-applications procedures. Usually it was fathers and pushy mothers who claimed they’d gone to the college in their day and surely, there was some obscure little bursary…

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  Rather churlish riposte, Maxwell thought, the sort of comeback he’d expect on Leighford sea front of a Saturday night, but it merely confirmed what he’d always maintained about Oxford. ‘I am Peter Maxwell,’ he told her. ‘This is Ms Jacquie Carpenter. An old pupil of mine suggested if ever I were in Oxford, to look up the Professor.’

  ‘Really?’ The Gibson girl rose and crossed to the counter on which Maxwell lolled. ‘And who may this pupil be?’

  ‘Deena Harrison,’ Maxwell said.

  The Gibson girl looked vacant. ‘Don’t know her,’ she said.

  ‘How long have you been at Corpus, Mrs…?’

  ‘For two years,’ she said. ‘And that’s Miss.’

  ‘Yes, of course it is,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Well, Deena came down this summer – the one that’s just gone, I mean. She was reading Drama.’

  ‘As I said,’ the Gibson girl was standing her ground. ‘I have never heard of her. You must have the wrong college.’

  Maxwell was about to launch into Plan B when a warrant card flashed into the air inches from his nose.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Carpenter, West Sussex CID,’ Jacquie said, looking the woman straight in the eye. ‘You are?’

  ‘Helen Burden,’ the Gibson girl blinked, taken off guard. This was an unheard of way to get into Oxford.

  ‘Is Professor Usherwood in?’ Jacquie was in work mode. The ground shook.

  ‘Yes, yes of course. I’ll tell him you’re here.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The secretary hurried to her intercom and pressed it. ‘Professor, there are some police officers to see you.’ A pause. ‘Do go through. First door on the left.’

  ‘Looks like I should have won the toss after all,’ Jacquie whispered out of the corner of her mouth. ‘We wasted three or four minutes there.’

  ‘I’ve got to get one of those.’ Maxwell pointed to the warrant card disappearing into Jacquie’s handbag and did a double take at the door. ‘Oh.’

  Professor Paul Usherwood sat in his oak-panelled study, decorated with wall-to-wall leather volumes that Laurence Llewellyn Bowen would not have remotely understood. He was seventy if he was a day and he was sitting in a wheelchair.

  ‘Police,’ the man was beaming. ‘How very exciting. Do, please, have seats.’ He pressed a button on his intercom. ‘Coffee, please, Helen. Now, how may I help?’

  It had taken Gavin Henslow nearly three weeks to sequester the bank records of the late Daniel Bartlett. The Nat West had been forthcoming; so, astonishingly, had Lloyds TSB. Jowetts were a little more obstructive, muttering pompously about client confidentiality. How tin-pot little firms like these had survived the Bank Charter Act of 1844 men like Peter Maxwell didn’t know. Men like Gavin Henslow, for all his fast-track insidery, had never heard of the Bank Charter Act of 1844. The Swiss banks, all of them allegedly run by gnomes, were silence itself, until the oddly quick-witted Henslow breathed the word ‘Interpol’ in his phone conversation, and then they thought they might just be able to fin
d a way to cooperate.

  ‘He’s skint, guv,’ was the financial whizz-kid’s summation of his inquiries. ‘Next time his wife comes in asking who’s nicked that bloody Sheridan copy, the answer is likely to be nobody. He hocked it himself.’

  Henry Hall nodded, trying in his own mind to see how this related to anything. ‘So what’s he spent it on?’ he thought aloud.

  ‘If you mean the paltry sum he paid me in alimony, yes, I suppose it was enough, just.’ Carole Bartlett had indeed called in again, late that afternoon, to check on how Hall’s team were pursuing their inquiries. She was sitting in Hall’s Interview Room Number One. And she hadn’t even mentioned the Sheridan when the DCI was asking questions of his own. ‘But don’t let the amount fool you,’ she snarled. ‘The bastard owed me every penny for the mental cruelty he put me through.’

  ‘You took him to the cleaners,’ Hall observed.

  Carole Bartlett was, momentarily, stuck for an answer. ‘I hope that’s not some sort of chauvinist rallying of the ranks,’ she said eventually. ‘The financial arrangements I had with my husband are no one’s business but our own.’

  ‘Normally, I would agree with you,’ Hall said. ‘But murder has a habit of publicising a lot of things that would ordinarily remain private.’

  ‘I see.’ Carole Bartlett was needled, pursing her lips and flashing daggers at Hall and the squat figure of Jane Blaisedell who sat beside him. ‘So having made no progress at all on this case, you are now falling back on the tired old nonsense about spouses being the most likely killers of their husbands, hmm? Tiresome and hardly progress.’

  ‘The statistics lean that way,’ Hall nodded. Such things were his bread and butter.

  ‘I would hardly kill the golden goose, would I?’ the woman snapped.

  ‘That’s just the point,’ Hall said. ‘Your husband wasn’t golden anymore, was he? There are other motives for murder.’

  Carole Bartlett was on her feet, the tape still whirring in the corner. ‘Are you sitting there, in your bare-faced incompetence, and accusing me of murdering my husband?’

  ‘No, no.’ Hall shook his head. ‘There is a form of words for that, Mrs Bartlett, and rest assured, had I intended to charge you, I would already have used them.’

  ‘That’s outrageous!’ she blurted. ‘You will be hearing from my solicitor.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ said Hall. ‘Could you see yourself out?’

  ‘Floosies.’ Carole Bartlett stopped in mid-fume. ‘The many little trollops who have crowded, inexplicably, into my husband’s bed. That’s where his money has gone. You mark my words.’

  As they heard her heels clatter away down the Leighford nick corridor, Henry Hall turned to Jane Blaisedell. ‘Have we marked her words?’

  Jane was getting back to something approaching normal now. She still had nightmares when the night came cold and gusting from the north. And she still didn’t like flat, dimly lit areas because they reminded her of the stage where Gordon Goodacre died. And soft, padded carpets scorched black that marked the end of Dan Bartlett and the old-lady smell of the house of Martita Winchcombe. But worst of all she didn’t like the bad breath of middle-aged men and their sweaty fingers…

  ‘Jane?’ Hall noticed, and not for the first time, the faraway look in the girl’s eyes.

  ‘Sorry, guv,’ she flustered. ‘What was the question?’

  ‘Floosies.’ Hall repeated the widow’s words. ‘How many of Dan Bartlett’s little trollops have we found to date?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Geraint Horsenell’s musicians moved into the Arquebus that night. If anything, Ashley Wilkes was a little more heartened by this lot than he was by Deena Harrison’s cast.

  ‘Girls with cellos, eh, Geraint?’ Maxwell beamed at his colleague, unwrapping himself of scarf and hat.

  ‘Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.’ The Head of Music winked, struggling at the theatre’s side door with a bass drum.

  ‘Are you talking about the cellos now or the girls?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘You dirty old bastard,’ Geraint snorted. As heads of Music go, Horsenell was one of the more congenial. In Maxwell’s experience, they were either up-themselves no-hopers, bitter because they were not concert pianists and with egos the size of the Albert Hall, or they were social misfits who thought that bashing the furniture with bits of wood passed for percussion. Mercifully, Geraint Horsenell was somewhere between. Besides, he was refreshingly human, told a darned good knock-knock joke and mixed Martinis drier than his native west Wales used to be in the Good Old Days of a Sunday. ‘This is nice.’

  He was looking at the orchestra pit, streets ahead of the corner of Leighford High’s hall where they usually put him and his motley crew, to punctuate passably good drama with a bit of terpsichore.

  ‘Christ, is that Benny Barker?’ He caught sight of the techie flashing past in the dim light swathed in cables.

  ‘Hello, Mr Horsenell,’ the lad waved.

  ‘I’ve lost count of the microphones that bastard buggered up for me at school. Not to mention the PA system lovingly bought by the Friends of the School when we all thought we were going to perform at the Dome.’

  ‘Ah, heady days,’ Maxwell remembered. ‘Still, I’m sure he meant well.’

  ‘Don’t tell me somebody’s let him loose in the real world? God, the place will be devoid of apparatus by Christmas. Talking of which…’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Max.’

  ‘No, Geraint.’ The Head of Sixth Form was adamant, helping Davinia Whatserface up the steps with her French horn. He knew exactly what was coming and refused to give an inch.

  ‘But your Twelve Days of Christmas are legendary,’ Horsenell pleaded, arms outstretched.

  ‘Agreed, and that’s is legendary, by the way. It’s a single piece. Let one of the youngsters have a go, Geraint. Christ, man, I shall be ninety next birthday. Why don’t you make the Christmas concert more modern this year? What about this new sound? What’s it called? Jazz?’

  ‘Oh, hah! Murphy, will you watch it with that bassoon? I assume you know, from the hunted look on your father’s face in the car park just now, how much these things cost. Well,’ Horsenell became conspiratorial, whispering in Maxwell’s ear, ‘is she here?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who, he says. Who? Deena Harrison, that’s who. I couldn’t believe it when Diamond told me she was directing The Shop. One or both of you must be barking.’

  ‘Are you talking about me and Diamond, now? Or me and Deena? Either way, you may have a point.’

  The cast were in the Green Room, along the corridor and down the stairs from the stage. Only David Balham was in the wings, emoting inside the full size Audrey II and pulling cords like a maniac to get the thing to open its throat and swing its tendrils. Nobody told him when Mrs Carmichael did the casting that he’d need muscles like Arnie Schwarzenegger for the role. The night they brought the band in was always a break in service in any production. The orchestra had to acquaint themselves with the lighting, the seat distribution, the acoustics of the theatre. It took over an hour for Geraint Horsenell to set up the speakers and his own podium and he felt sure that Benny Barker was fighting him every inch of the way, with insucks of breath and tuts and ‘Well, I don’t know, Mr Horsenell. You’re the expert, of course.’

  Of Deena Harrison, there was no sign. And that was a pity, because Maxwell particularly needed to speak to her.

  ‘Mr Wilkes.’ The Head of Sixth Form had left the squabbling musos to it and bearded the Theatre Manager in his lair, the soundproofed control box high above the gods. From here, Maxwell could see Audrey II’s tendrils vibrating as David Balham got into his stride and Geraint Horsenell fussing like the old Welsh hen he was, clucking from one muso to the next, endlessly pandering to their little peccadilloes. These were the pampered few, the last of a dying breed – the children of grammar school children, to whom the piano, along with elocution, ballet and the gymkhana, were still the
arbiters of breeding. Everything else was a sop to the masses, the great unwashed.

  ‘Oh, evening, Mr Maxwell. It’s coming on, I see.’ Wilkes was nodding to the scene below.

  ‘Indeed,’ Maxwell nodded, finding a swivel chair alongside an instrument panel that appeared to have been borrowed from NASA. ‘Talking of coming on, how are things with Deena?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You might well be,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Many of us might be, in all sorts of ways.’

  Wilkes hauled the headphones from around his neck. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

  Maxwell was gazing around him. ‘You’ve got some woofers and tweeters here, haven’t you? Do your own wiring? I mean, you are familiar with electrics?’

  ‘Maxwell.’ The ‘Mr’ had gone. It’s always the first thing to disappear when people are rattled. ‘I think you’d better explain what you’re talking about.’

  Maxwell leaned towards his man. ‘About you raping Deena Harrison.’

  The Theatre Manager blinked, swallowing hard. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Violation, Mr Wilkes, the taking of virginity in some cases, compromising a lady’s honour. I could be more graphic, but I went to a good school and I’m sure you get the drift.’

  ‘It was consensual,’ Wilkes blurted. ‘The lying little bitch…’

  ‘You needn’t bore me with positions,’ Maxwell said. ‘But I will need other details.’

  ‘Details?’ Wilkes frowned. ‘You fucking weirdo. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? That’s how you get your kicks. Hearing about things. I’ve read about teachers like you. Well, I’m not playing your perverted games.’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing perverted about catching a murderer, Mr Wilkes.’