Maxwell's Mask

by M. J. Trow

  ‘A m— Now, wait just a minute…’

  ‘What happened with Deena?’ Maxwell was shouting.

  Wilkes licked his lips. The odd man in the bow tie and the tweed jacket was staring at him. There was no escape, no compromise, no middle ground. Just Peter Maxwell, the one the kids called Mad.

  ‘She…came on to me.’ The Theatre Manager was calmer now, trying to compose himself. ‘Giving me a sob story about how messed up her life was.’

  ‘And you took advantage of her?’ Maxwell’s voice was steady, like the turns of the rack. Regular. Slow. Relentless.

  ‘No, I…well, I suppose, in a way. Look, Maxwell, we’re all human. She’s an attractive girl, for God’s sake. We’re consenting adults.’ He stopped for a moment, thinking. ‘Is she saying I raped her?’ His voice was rising again.

  ‘She is,’ Maxwell nodded, ‘to some people. And yet not to others.’

  ‘What? You’ll have to pass that by me again.’

  ‘She told Patrick Collinson you raped her. She told me you didn’t.’

  ‘Then why…’

  ‘Because there’s something wrong with Deena, Mr Wilkes. And I had to be sure before I go further.’

  ‘Be sure about what?’

  ‘That what she told Collinson wasn’t true. And what she told me was.’

  ‘So you believe me?’

  Maxwell let the man sweat a little before nodding. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I do. About Deena, I mean.’

  ‘So what’s all this about murder?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah, well.’ Maxwell was on his feet, making for the door. ‘That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it? If I were you, Mr Wilkes, I’d make very sure I wasn’t alone with Deena again.’

  Where was Anthony Wetta when you needed him? Actually, it was just as well the lad wasn’t with Maxwell that Thursday night. After all, it was one thing to shop him to the law for his night-breaking activities – that was merely what a responsible and caring teacher would do, impossibly pulled as he was between duty to his charges and duty to society. But to encourage the boy to hone his skills on the Harrison household, with said charges pending, might have been considered criminal conduct unbecoming.

  Maxwell leaned Surrey against the hedge and peered in through the darkened windows. He’d been here before, of course, but only once and it took him a while to get his bearings. He rattled locks and checked window catches at the front, well screened as he was by the high privet. Thank God for the Englishman’s obsession with his castle and the privacy it brought. He was wearing the hoodie and trainers he’d worn in his little night raid with George Lemon. He’d half-inched them from Lost Property at school. Not only did he look the part of a congenital waste of space; he smelt like one too.

  ‘Shit!’ He stubbed his toe on a roller someone had left lying about behind the house. Hard, aren’t they? The garage to his right looked deserted, abandoned. No Deena. And he needed to talk to Deena. The kitchen door was locked too and none of the ways in had those little catches he knew how to force. If he wanted entry this time, it would be an elbow through the glass or a brick against pane. And anyway, what could he learn? Nothing he didn’t already know, thanks to the nice man from Oxford, the one in the wheelchair. He checked his watch by what light there was. Half-ten. His Jacquie would be asleep now. She’d have waited up as she always tried to do, but would be quietly snoring in the crook of the sofa. Time to bounce ideas off his other companion of a mile. The black and white one.

  ‘Now, you’re not going to accuse me of anything, Max, are you?’ Patrick Collinson held up both hands in something approaching alarm. He was sitting in his office again, Doris primed for action in the ante-room as before.

  Maxwell laughed. ‘I think I’ve made enough of a fool of myself for a while,’ he said. ‘I was hoping you had a minute.’

  ‘As it so happens,’ Collinson said, ‘my ten o’clock cancelled earlier. Just as well; he doesn’t need an accountant, he needs a miracle worker. Grab a seat.’

  Maxwell plonked himself down in Collinson’s comfortable armchair. The man was doing all right for himself, despite the rather ghastly wallpaper – still, there was no accounting for taste.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Martita Winchcombe,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Collinson’s face fell a little. ‘Tell me, are the police making any progress?’

  ‘If they are, none of it’s come my way,’ the Head of Sixth Form said. ‘You must have known her quite well. What sort of woman was she?’

  ‘I thought you were concentrating on Gordon Goodacre.’ Collinson leaned back in his chair behind the enormous desk.

  ‘I was,’ Maxwell admitted. ‘But the trail’s gone a little cold there. If there was a trail at all, of course.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning, what if Gordon were just an old-fashioned accident, after all? Nothing to do with what happened to Martita?’

  ‘Helluva coincidence, isn’t it?’ Collinson frowned.

  ‘It happens,’ Maxwell said. ‘Remember when Jill Dando was killed?’

  Collinson did.

  ‘She was on the front cover of the Radio Times the previous week. And on the back of said magazine was an ad for whodunits, some book club or other. The word at the top, in bold red type, was “Murder”. If you opened the mag out and read, as we Europeans are wont to do, from left to right, the sentence was a clear instruction. “Murder Jill Dando”.’

  ‘My God,’ Collinson muttered. ‘So you mean, that was some sort of divine message for a nutcase?’

  ‘No.’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘I mean it was a coincidence. You want another one? Seven Seven. Suicide bombers on London streets. The Number Thirty bus in Tavistock Square. Know what was advertised on the side?’

  Collinson didn’t.

  ‘“The Terror”,’ Maxwell quoted. ‘“Bold and Brilliant”.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t see anything bold or brilliant behind that. Act of appalling cowardice.’

  ‘That’s because you aren’t a Muslim fanatic with jihad on your agenda and paradise in your sights. Let’s get back to Martita. How long had you known her?’

  ‘Ooh, let’s see. Ever since I moved to Leighford.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Twenty years ago – give or take.’

  ‘You knew her via the theatre?’

  ‘Not at first, no. She was a client.’

  ‘Was she?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Collinson wagged a finger at Maxwell. ‘I’m not going to lecture you on client confidentiality. Let’s just say the old girl’s house was in order.’

  ‘Did she have any family?’

  Collinson shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nobody.’

  ‘I heard there was an indiscretion years ago,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Indiscretion?’ Collinson repeated. ‘Martita? Ooh, how juicy.’ He was chuckling.

  ‘And the indiscretion led to a child, a son.’

  ‘Well,’ Collinson sighed. ‘There’s nothing in the old girl’s paperwork to that effect. I’ve shown the police, of course. They do seem to be quite thorough.’

  ‘Who did you have?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Who interviewed you?’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ Collinson frowned. ‘Now you’ve asked me. They all look alike, don’t they? In our day, Max, a copper was about forty with shoulders like tallboys. Now they’re children who weigh about six stone dripping wet. Look…I don’t want to labour the point – about Deena I mean. But I don’t mind telling you, that whole business shook me up a little. I even confided in Doris, I was so shook up. I mean, why would she invent things like that?’

  ‘Why indeed, Patrick,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Why would someone stretch a piece of wire across Martita Winchcombe’s stairs? Why would someone carefully fray Dan Bartlett’s wiring system?’

  ‘My God.’ Collinson’s eyes widened. ‘You think it’s the Harrison girl, don’t you?’

  Maxwe
ll looked at his man. ‘When she was eleven, she set fire to the toilets at Leighford High. She’d just celebrated her twelfth birthday when she threw a little boy called Oliver Wendell down some stairs.’

  ‘Good Lord.’

  ‘In your double life, Patrick, as Chartered Accountant and Theatre Secretary, have you come across many serial killers?’

  ‘Er…I should hope not,’ the man chuckled.

  ‘Well, you probably have,’ Maxwell said, matter-of-factly. ‘But they don’t always stand out. It’s well known among the psychiatrists who study them, that most of those who go on to serial slaughter exhibit three tendencies as children. They call them the Triad. The first is an obsession with fire. They love nothing better than to see things burn. The crackle of flames, the flare, the panic it causes – it excites them. Deena and the toilet block – sounds like one of JK Rowling’s earlier, little-known efforts. The second is a compulsion to torture animals. Now, it’s unprofessional of me, I know, but young Oliver Wendell could easily have been mistaken for an animal – and Deena threw him down the physics lab stairs, his head bouncing on all six; count them. The third tendency? Well, that’s rather a delicate one, really. The third tendency is wetting the bed. Perhaps we should ask Ashley Wilkes?’

  She lay in the darkness, listening to the dog barking somewhere to the west and the stray growl of a passing car. When she sat upright, her head against the cold metal of the bedstead, the room was bathed in light, bright, painful. Why didn’t they switch it off? Why, even though she knew it was the wee, small hours, didn’t they let her sleep?

  She could see them looking at her through those holes in the walls, their eyes bright and leering. And she could hear them laughing, laughing at her pain, her torment. She, who had borne so much, must bear still more.

  ‘Mrs Sanders?’ Fiona Elliot peered down the red-lacquered passageway. The place looked like a knocking shop in downtown Amsterdam. Not that Fiona Elliot had much experience of those.

  ‘Rowena,’ the woman said, opening the door. ‘You’re Fiona, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Is this a good time?’

  ‘It is always a good time in the spirit world, Fiona, you know that.’

  ‘Yes,’ the large woman said. ‘Yes, I do. And that’s a comfort.’

  Rowena Sanders was a little, bird-like woman with spiky, orange-tipped hair and a mass of cheap jewellery. Had Peter Maxwell been at her house in Acacia Grove, the one that had been the vicarage, he’d have assumed she was rehearsing for the Leighford Carnival. She led Fiona into a small room, its aggressive squareness softened with long, low, padded furniture, scatter cushions and throws. There was an indefinable smell in the air which would have had Henry Hall reaching for his truncheon and the tons of paperwork consistent with an arrest for possession of illegal substances.

  ‘Sit here, Fiona,’ Rowena said. She had a soft sibilance that was soothing to a woman who had spent the last three weeks battering her head against the brick wall of police officialdom. Rowena held both her hands and sat cross-legged on the cushion opposite her. She closed her eyes. ‘Sadness,’ she said. ‘I feel sadness. But at the same time, an anger.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Someone close to you has passed over.’

  ‘Not all that close,’ Fiona had to admit, although the anger was fair enough.

  ‘We all become close on the Other Side,’ Rowena said, almost intoning. ‘You seek closure, don’t you? An explanation. Answers.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Fiona told her. ‘And I want to arrange a séance.’

  Rowena let the woman’s hands go. ‘A séance?’ The voice was harder.

  ‘A full séance,’ Fiona went on. ‘As soon as you can arrange it. You do have the expertise?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ An odd look flitted across Rowena Sanders’ face. ‘Yes, I have the expertise.’

  ‘Will it be here? In this room?’ Fiona wanted to know.

  ‘No. Not here. Across the hall. I could show you.’

  ‘No.’ Fiona shook her head. ‘Not now. There will be time enough.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Well, obviously,’ Jacquie was freshening Maxwell’s coffee, passing him the sweeteners as he poured his own milk, ‘Patrick Collinson knows nothing. Martita Winchcombe’s got no family, indeed! What about Fiona Elliot?’

  ‘What indeed?’ Maxwell was dipping his digestive until it had just the right amount of dunk. ‘Who’s Fiona Elliot?’

  ‘According to Jane…’

  ‘…and where would we be without her?’ Maxwell raised his mug in salute.

  ‘Amen to that,’ Jacquie agreed. ‘Fiona Elliot is the old girl’s niece.’

  ‘Ah,’ Maxwell mused. ‘Do I smell inheritance?’

  ‘You’re just a crabby, suspicious old git,’ she told him, in the nicest possible way.

  ‘Fill me in, my darling. My paternity leave ends today and Ten Aitch Three are yearning to hear my war stories.’

  ‘Oh?’ Jacquie raised an eyebrow. ‘Which war is that, then?’

  ‘Take your pick,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘Anything from Hannibal onwards, really. I remember ’em all. Don’t get me started on them now. Fiona.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jacquie leaned back gratefully in Maxwell’s, now their, kitchen. She’d be the last to admit it, but getting around was getting harder these days, the rounder she got. And sitting in one position with a miniature David Beckham inside you was pure murder. Not that she used the analogy in front of Maxwell. To him, it was more likely to be Jonny Wilkinson. After all, he’d gone to a good school. ‘Well, Jane told me…’

  ‘That was last night’s four-hour phone marathon?’

  ‘It was barely twenty minutes,’ Jacquie corrected him. ‘But last night, certainly. Jane told me that Fiona Elliot is pretty rabid in the pushing things to a conclusion stakes. She’s told Henry she wants action.’

  ‘Not unreasonable, I should have thought.’

  ‘But rumour has it she’s calling in the Spook Squad.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Spiritualist circle. There’s one in Leighford apparently.’

  ‘Along with the synagogue, the mosque and the Church of Christ Skateboarder; yes, I know.’

  ‘Be serious, Max,’ she scolded him. ‘They’ve been going for years, apparently.’

  ‘A hundred and forty-nine to be exact. They were founded by Jedediah Urwin, whose wife used to do manifestations.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Phantasms,’ he explained, reaching for his last biscuit. ‘Ghosts. It’s all in the Museum archives. Mrs Urwin’d go into a cubicle, draw the curtains; Mr Urwin’d ask if anyone was there and lo and behold, da-daa, a glowing mass of ectoplasm that looked extraordinarily like Mrs Urwin in a lump of cheesecloth.’

  ‘Fake, then?’

  ‘They all were,’ Maxwell told her. ‘And the extraordinary thing was how readily everybody fell for all that, back in the good old days. Physicists like Sir William Crookes, philosophers like Henry Sidgwick, doctors like Arthur Conan Doyle – they all bought into the table-rapping bit hook, line and sinker. It was a more gullible age, the faking Fifties and beyond.’

  ‘Well, be that as it may, Jane says the rumour is that Fiona Elliot wants to set up a séance.’

  ‘In the hope that Aunt Martita will pop round for a go on the planchette?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Spirit writing. The medium sits with a slate on her lap – or used to in Victorian times, anyway – and the spirit would move in her, so to speak. Hey, presto, a text message from the Other Side.’

  Jacquie leaned forward again as Sonny Jim caught her a sharp one in what felt like her chin. ‘But this will be no ordinary gathering. She wants everyone connected with her aunt to be present – Ashley Wilkes and Patrick Collinson from the theatre. Magda Lupescu, whose work – and I quote from Jane – “she values highly”, the medium herself, Rowena Sanders and Deena Harrison.’

  ‘Deena?’ Maxwell sat up. ‘I don’t think, knowing what we do, that’s a very good id
ea, do you?’

  ‘I don’t think any of it is a good idea, Max,’ Jacquie said. ‘I’ve seen too many kids go off the rails playing with Tarot cards and ouija boards.’

  ‘It’s all in the mind, dear heart,’ he smiled, shaking his head.

  ‘So’s murder,’ she reminded him. ‘And there’s one other name on the list.’

  ‘Oh? Whose?’

  ‘Henry Hall’s,’ Jacquie said. And they both collapsed into fits of hysterics.

  ‘I’m going round and round on this one, guv,’ Bill Robbins had to confess. It was a dull, wet Friday morning and he hadn’t seen his family for three days. The bed in the Incident Room was not exactly his idea of home comforts, but as Gavin Henslow reminded him in one particularly bitter exchange, it was better than the station house any day of the week.

  ‘Talk to me, Bill.’ The DCI lolled back, his jacket slung on the chair behind him, his hands behind his head, looking across the desk to his sergeant. ‘It can help sometimes.’

  ‘OK,’ Robbins began. ‘We’ve identified five women who have been seen in the company of Dan Bartlett in the last six months. Two of them were one-night stands. Lorraine Cusiter from Tottingleigh – Bartlett picked her up at the Last Man Standing disco on Bayer Street at the end of August.’

  ‘Form?’ Hall asked, although he’d read the reports himself and knew the answer.

  ‘Hardly, guv. Just left school. The disco was a celebration of her A-level results.’

  ‘One of Maxwell’s Own, eh?’ Hall was half talking to himself. ‘Better not tell him. I sense his nose up our collective arses as it is. Anything useful on the girl?’

  ‘Bartlett took her home and got into bed with her. She’d had a skinful and couldn’t remember much of it.’

  ‘Not exactly Don Juan, then?’ Hall commented.

  ‘She was a bit pissed off when he expected her to walk home the next morning. What with it pissing down and her in a thong and fuck-me shoes. And not knowing quite what she’d say to Mummy and Daddy.’