Maxwell's Mask

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Life’s a bitch,’ Hall nodded. ‘Who’s the other one-night stand?’

  ‘Andrea Reed.’ Robbins checked his notes. ‘Works in Top Man in the High Street. Last Man Standing again. September 6. At least this time he gave her the taxi fare home.’

  ‘Is there no end to this man’s largesse?’ Hall wanted to know. ‘Either of them could have swiped his Sheridan, I suppose, the heirloom most coveted by the winsome Mrs Bartlett?’

  ‘They could,’ Robbins agreed. ‘But I doubt whether either of them would know it was a book, let alone a valuable one. No, I’d put my money on one of the others.’

  ‘Ah,’ Hall nodded, leaning forward and picking up his pen. ‘These are what you might call the long-term relationships?’

  ‘Well, it’s all relative,’ the Sergeant sniggered. ‘I think we can safely say when it comes to Mr Bartlett, the only person whose company he really liked was Mr Bartlett’s. Relationship number one was Pearl Reilly.’

  ‘Pearl?’ Hall frowned. He’d read the name too and couldn’t really believe it. ‘Named after the harbour, do you think? I thought Carole Bartlett said he liked them young.’

  ‘She was only twenty-three, guv,’ Robbins explained. ‘Just that her parents must have been a bit retro, that’s all.’

  ‘Links with Bartlett?’

  ‘They met in a pizzeria. One of his weaknesses, apparently, pizza. And nothing posh and Italian, either. Just your bog-standard dough from the High Street. They went out a couple of times, or should I say stayed in, but according to Ms Reilly she’s very adventurous in bed and dear old Dan didn’t live up to expectations.’

  ‘I trust you had a WPC present when this interview took place, Sergeant Robbins.’

  ‘Better than that, guv,’ Robbins winked. ‘I had Mrs Robbins with me. You can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Long-term relationship two.’

  ‘Well, I saved a bit of leg work here, guv. Long-term relationship two quickly merged with long-term relationship three. Laura Pettingell, something in sales at Leighford Garden Centre, and Susan Ledbetter, a teller with HSBC. Mrs Pettingell was first – Bartlett was buying some garden furniture to make a “room”, whatever that is, by his pond. Nice girl, Laura…’

  ‘Oh?’ Hall’s left eyebrow appeared over the top of his glasses frame.

  ‘She remembers being a bit suspicious of Bartlett when they first met because his cheque bounced.’

  ‘Did it now? How much was it?’

  ‘Er…’ Robbins checked his records. ‘Three hundred and forty-four pounds. There was a special deal on.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘July. Bartlett explained there was – and I quote Laura – “a silly mix-up at the bank”. And the bank in question…’

  ‘…was the HSBC.’ Hall finished the sentence for him.

  ‘Got it in one, guv,’ Robbins smiled. And he and Hall went back far enough for the Sergeant to risk, ‘You should have been a copper.’

  Hall, of course, wasn’t laughing.

  ‘Bartlett seems to have been two-timing them throughout late July and August, but by the end of that month, they were having threesomes. “Theatre Artistic Director Gets His Leg Over – Twice” as the Advertiser might have said had they known.’

  ‘You very definitely had Mrs Robbins there for that interview,’ Hall checked.

  ‘No, guv,’ Robbins laughed. ‘I just keep playing the tape over, you know. Pick up a few pointers.’

  ‘Was all this still going on at the time of Bartlett’s death?’

  ‘No.’ Robbins was adamant. ‘First of all, Mr Pettingell got wind of it and threatened to put Bartlett’s lights out. Bearing in mind he’s a body-builder with more attitude than I’ve recorded juicy interviews, Bartlett got the message and dropped Laura like that proverbial hot potato. Susan – she’s a nice girl, too – hung on in there, but the bank got wind of it. Now, there’s no actual law against employees having it away with clients, but the manager there is a born-again Christian and he takes a dim view. So Susan backed off – a position I believe she often assumed when the ménage was at full throttle.’

  ‘So,’ Hall was trying to tie in all the disparate ends. ‘Am I right in assuming that all these women’s DNA, prints, whatever, have been found in Bartlett’s bungalow?’

  ‘Yes, guv. Along with others, of course. We’ve had no luck tracing anybody else’s yet. Of course, it’s early days.’

  ‘No, it’s not, Bill.’ Hall shook his head. ‘The clock’s ticking. And did you, in all your over-zealously close questioning of these young ladies, discover whether any of them was a dab hand with electrical wiring?’

  There was no Deena Harrison at the Arquebus again that night, so Maxwell had put on his Trevor Nunn meets Kevin Spacey act and directed like there was no tomorrow.

  ‘Dentists are by definition unpleasant people, Andy,’ he had to remind the Shop of Horrors psycho. ‘I want to feel the pain the first time you appear on stage. I want to hear that high-pitched whine, smell the acrid pungency of burning nerve-endings and feel the ghastly sense of drowning with that gurgling thing down my throat. Unless the audience feels that, you just won’t convince. Now, from the top, just one more time!’

  He sat down in the darkened auditorium and shook himself. All he had to do was put his hands on his hips and he’d actually become Deena Harrison.

  There was a deep stillness as Leighford approached the witching hour. Private William Pennington was all but complete now, sitting his bay charger in fifty-four millimetre splendour and waiting for the off. Peter Maxwell had no idea – nobody did – exactly in what position Pennington rode the Charge, so he placed him in B Troop, diagonally behind the impossibly petulant Lord Cardigan before the difficult old duffer decided to pull the 11th Hussars back into what would become the second line to ride down the Valley of Death. Maxwell had put a little book into the soldier’s right hand as though he was rehearsing for a part on some stage – perhaps Leighford’s all those years ago. It was artistic licence and the book wasn’t likely, but if you can’t take a few liberties with the subject that is your raison d’être, what can you do?

  Maxwell smiled. Another one completed. He liked it when a plan came together. Then he turned to his other plans and topped up the level of his Southern Comfort in the lamplit shadows of his Inner Sanctum under the eaves. He eased himself down into his modelling chair and slowly and methodically cleaned his brushes.

  ‘A séance, Count?’ He glanced at the black and white beast watching him from the top of the old linen basket. ‘I thought you’d never ask. Once upon a time there were two little girls, the Fox sisters, who lived in Hydesville, New York State. This was in 1848, when your Lord and Master was a mere stripling applying for his first teaching job, and the girls claimed to be able to communicate with the spirit of a dead drummer – that’s travelling salesman to you and me – whose body had been stashed under the floorboards in their home many moons previously. Are you taking notes, by the way? I shall be asking questions later. All this not unnaturally caused a bit of a stir in Hydesville – I suppose it was a bit like Leighford without the slot machines. Folks came from far and wide and when the investigators held the knees of the girls – and we won’t ask why it occurred to them to do that – the mysterious rappings by way of communication with the spirit world abruptly ceased.’

  Maxwell took a languid sip of the amber nectar. ‘Well, it’s obvious why, Count, if only you’d give it a moment’s thought. Listen.’ He pressed his toes against his shoe and produced a clicking sound. ‘One knock for yes and two for no,’ he said. ‘I’m just doing that with my feet. The Fox sisters could apparently dislocate their knees at will to make a similar noise. I know – makes your eyes water, doesn’t it? The point is that spiritism as it was called should have died the death there and then. Two silly little girls faking it to gain attention – how often have I seen similar ploys in my own legendary career, I hear you ask. Deena Harrison, for instance… Anyway, back in 1848, it w
as au contraire. The craze caught on and spread to France and England. It got more exotic – table-rapping, essentially what the Fox girls did, became table-tilting, spirit writing with the planchette, levitation and finally, full-blown manifestation. There’s barely a house in England that hasn’t got some sort of ghost.’

  He stood up, stretching, looking at the pale sliver of moon that shone on the silent sea now that the rain had stopped and the clouds had broken. ‘Oh, you and I know it’s all bunkum, Count, but we’re men of the world, educated, refined, sophisticated. Some people are afraid of their own shadows. In fact, shadows are what ghosts are all about. All right, so you’ve got twenty-twenty vision and can hear a dormouse fart three fields away. But how often have you caught sight of something, oh, just fleeting, just now and again and thought to yourself “What the hell was that?” And then, you see, Count, unlike you feline types, we humans have this wretched thing called imagination. And we like to be scared shitless. That’s why we watch video nasties. That’s why the hapless heroine in a spooky old house after dark never switches on the lights. What would be the fun? Hand-held cameras wobbling jerkily in Minnesotan woods; Japanese girls crawling, silent and hideous, out of wells; that drowned, rotting corpse that gets Harrison Ford in What Lies Beneath; we just love it.’

  He sat back down again, hanging the forage cap on its peg. ‘So, a séance is just an extension of all that really. It’s people sitting in a circle, some of them sad, some of them silly, trying to do the impossible and reach the Other Side. Except there is no Other Side. Life’s a beach and then you die.’

  He caught sight of the photograph of Jacquie on the shelf above him, smiling at a party with a copper’s helmet tilted over her left eye. ‘Well,’ he smiled. ‘Perhaps not so much of a beach after all. And as for dying,’ he sighed, finishing his glass, ‘not just yet awhile. Now,’ he clambered to his feet and switched off the lamp, ‘be off with you and reduce the Leighford rodent population, there’s a good chap. It’s past my bedtime – you won’t mind if I don’t wait up?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘What’s all this about, Ashley?’ Patrick Collinson was perplexed. He stood in the Committee Room at the Arquebus with a letter in his hand.

  ‘Surely, final tax demands don’t hold any night terrors for you, Patrick?’ The Theatre Manager had not had a good day and it wasn’t yet lunchtime. On Saturday mornings, the Little Extras playgroup took over the Arquebus and although the entire committee agreed that it was admirable, in theory, to encourage the next generation of players and playgoers, the reality was altogether different. And the reality hit Ashley Wilkes every week. They arrived with pushy mothers, each convinced that their little darling was the next Shirley Temple, Jodie Foster, Nahum Tate or Dakota Fanning, depending on their taste in Hollywood stardom history.

  The little darlings were all over Wilkes’ theatre now, squawking and squabbling in the auditorium, stuffing crisp packets down the backs of seats, scattering Smarties in all directions. The Little Extras’ leaders were of the limp-wristed, pinko-liberal persuasion. Secret lefties to a man and woman, they had no concept of control and resorted to so many countdowns to silence that the concept became meaningless. Only half an hour to go, so Wilkes was prepared to grit his teeth for a while longer.

  ‘Tax demands be damned,’ Collinson roared. ‘I’ve been invited to a séance.’

  Wilkes blinked at him. ‘You too?’ he said, grim-faced.

  ‘What?’

  The Theatre Manager rummaged in the debris that was his desk. ‘Snap, I suspect,’ and he held up a letter of his own.

  Collinson snatched it, comparing the pieces of paper. Identical. From an address in Acacia Grove. Good address. Word-processed. And signed by the same hand. ‘Who is this Rowena Sanders?’ he demanded to know.

  ‘Some local medium,’ Wilkes told him. ‘You know, tea leaves and “You’ll meet a tall, dark, handsome man, dearie. Cross my palm with silver”.’ For a non-actor, Ashley Wilkes could turn out a mean characterisation when the mood took him.

  ‘That’s a fortune teller, Ashley,’ Collinson said. ‘I suspect this Sanders woman would take serious umbrage at you mixing the two.’

  ‘What does it matter, Patrick?’ Wilkes said. ‘It’s all a load of bollocks anyway. I can’t see why you’re upset.’

  ‘I’m not upset,’ Collinson retorted. ‘But we’re all busy people. And I find it quite bizarre.’

  Wilkes turned to face him, ignoring the screaming coming from the stage. ‘Don’t you want to know who killed Martita?’ he asked. ‘Dan?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Collinson said, flinging himself down into his usual chair around the committee table. ‘But I’d prefer it if twelve jury people decided that after due deliberation and the process of law carried out by a competent police force. Some fairground faker mumbling and swaying from side to side isn’t going to do it.’

  ‘Well,’ Wilkes shrugged. ‘No one’s going to force you, Patrick. It’s still, despite ominous rumours to the contrary, a free country. You can have your own chair of course.’

  ‘Chair?’ Collinson looked confused.

  ‘The séance is being held here.’

  ‘What?’ Collinson was on his feet. ‘How do you know? It doesn’t say that in the letter.’

  ‘No,’ Wilkes agreed. ‘I had a phone call from Ms Sanders this morning – on that very phone, spookily enough – asking if we could hold it here.’

  ‘And you said yes?’ Collinson was incredulous.

  ‘Too right I did. And I’m charging the mad old biddy.’

  ‘This is a committee matter, Ashley.’ No one had a higher horse than Patrick Collinson when he chose to saddle up. ‘We must all discuss hiring policy.’

  ‘Policy, yes,’ Wilkes corrected him. ‘Not day to day operations. That’s my job.’ He held up his hand against Collinson’s further blustering. ‘It’s a done deal, Patrick. Lighten up. If you don’t want to join us tomorrow night, you don’t have to. I’ll let you know who dunnit.’

  Collinson fumed, but inwardly this time. He knew Wilkes was right. ‘Do we know who else is joining this charade?’ he asked.

  ‘A séance, Henry?’ Margaret Hall had heard some pretty bizarre things from her husband over the years; most recently, the hiring of Magda Lupescu. It went with being a copper’s wife and the mother of a copper’s kids.

  ‘That’s what the letter says.’ Hall was trying to concentrate on his newspaper.

  ‘You’re not going?’

  He looked at her. Darling Margaret, honest, good, dependable. She could always be relied upon to bring in that hint of common sense when everything else seemed to be falling apart. ‘Is that a question?’ he asked her, ‘or a statement?’

  ‘Well,’ she sat down across the kitchen table from him, ‘are they legal?’

  In the safety and sanctity of his own home, Henry Hall smiled. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘A lot of people laugh at them. Some people are unnerved by them. Say they tempt fate. Open the gates of Hell, depending on how rabid your religion is.’

  ‘Do you know this Rowena Sanders?’ she asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said, folding away the paper, since clearly he wasn’t going to get much chance of reading it. ‘But I know the woman who’s set the whole thing up.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Unless I miss my guess, it’s Fiona Elliot, the niece of the dead woman. She’s into spiritualism. Seems to think we can get some words of wisdom from Martita Winchcombe on the Other Side.’

  Margaret snorted. She couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Snigger away,’ Henry said quietly, looking into her eyes. ‘But about now, I’ll take all the help I can get.’

  They were still looking at each other, locked in the silence of their different perspectives, when the phone rang. Margaret got there first, with the speed born of long years of things that go ring in the night.

  ‘Hello, Tom,’ she said resignedly. Didn’t that bloody place ever give her husband some time t
o himself? She passed the cordless. ‘Tom O’Connell.’

  ‘Tom?’ Hall said. ‘What’s up? Hmm. Really? All right. Wilkes. Yes. And Collinson.’ A pause. ‘Really? Well, that is interesting. Do we have an address? Right. Bring her in.’ He checked his watch. ‘I’ll see you at twelve. Interview Room One. Don’t let her make her call before I’ve had a chance to talk to her. And don’t let Jane Blaisedell anywhere near this one. Thanks, Tom. Good work.’

  And he hung up.

  ‘A breakthrough?’ Margaret asked. In all the years they’d known each other, PC Henry Hall hadn’t given too much away; DC Henry Hall had said even less; DS and DI Hall were positively monosyllabic and the DCI in front of her today sometimes took a Trappist vow. But when that moment came in a case, then Henry Hall could be positively garrulous.

  ‘Could be,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it took a while, guv,’ Giles Finch-Friezely said. ‘As you know we fingerprinted everybody connected with the Arquebus, except…er… Mr Maxwell and his kids from Leighford.’

  ‘Just as well.’ Hall was getting outside a coffee in his office at Leighford nick. Peter Maxwell would have invoked every civil liberty since Magna Carta to explain why the taking of fingerprints was an option and that Englishmen had never bowed to arbitrary arrest, suspension of habeas corpus, deforestation or the levelling of hedgerows without a bloody good reason. Perhaps even Peter Maxwell would concede that murder was reason enough, but Hall didn’t want to go there unless he had to. ‘Hit me with it.’

  ‘We’ve got Ashley Wilkes’ and Patrick Collinson’s dabs all over the Winchcombe and Bartlett houses.’

  ‘No surprises there,’ Hall nodded. ‘They all work at the Arquebus.’ He riffled through the pile of depositions on his desk. ‘Both of them admitted to visiting both places on several occasions. Tell me about the others.’

  ‘Partials,’ Finch-Friezely admitted, ‘but clear enough for our purposes. In the kitchen, lounge, bathroom and bedroom at Bartlett’s bungalow and Deena Harrison – the saliva on the glass. No question.’