Maxwell's Mask

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Deena Harrison,’ Hall repeated. ‘Any link with the Winchcombe house?’

  Finch-Friezely shook his head. ‘Not a dicky bird, guv. I’d stake my reputation on it.’

  Hall looked at the lad, earnest, dedicated, hard-working. ‘You may have to, son,’ he said. ‘So,’ he took a sip of the ghastly stuff that passed for coffee, ‘what was Deena doing in Dan Bartlett’s house? And more importantly, when? When that great day dawns when science gives us that little advance, Giles, you and I can hang up our truncheons and go home. Any word from Tom?’

  Tom O’Connell slammed his fist down on the roof of his car. He snatched the walkie-talkie out of the open window and patched through to the nick.

  ‘Guv? Tom. I’m at the Arquebus. There’s no sign of Deena Harrison at her home. Place looks kind of shut down to be honest. I’ve tried the theatre. The Manager says he hasn’t seen her for days. She’s done a runner. Yeah. Sure. I’ll probably find one in the house somewhere. Yeah. Right. OK. Sorry, guv. All points it is.’

  The phone rang at 38 Columbine a little after lunch. Jacquie was out shopping, insisting she still had the use of her legs, had some spotty kid to help her pack and if, indeed, her waters were to break, what better place than Tesco’s? Spillage in Aisle Fourteen.

  So Maxwell sat at home, worrying and only half concentrating on the load of old tat produced by Nine Eff Three in lieu of a decent piece of homework. Like a bullet from a gun, he was out of his chair and bounding across the room. The cat called Metternich raised one exhausted eyebrow. What was that all about, that ludicrous ritual? A shattering and repeated ringing and humans talking into white plastic things. It defied belief.

  ‘War Office,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Max. It’s Jane.’

  ‘Hello, darling.’

  ‘Is Jacquie there?’

  ‘’Fraid not. Can I help?’

  A pause. Jane Blaisedell had spilled a lot of beans to Peter Maxwell over the last few days. Surely, one more couldn’t hurt? ‘There’s an all points out for Deena Harrison,’ she told him. ‘You haven’t seen her, have you?’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell told her. ‘Not for a few days. I wanted to talk to her myself, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Oh, why?’

  Jane Blaisedell may have spilled beans to Maxwell, but in the bean-spilling department, he was rather more circumspect. ‘About the show,’ he said. ‘We’re on in a couple of weeks and it’s all getting a bit fraught about now.’

  Jane knew that feeling.

  ‘Why are you looking for her?’ Maxwell asked, although he was fairly sure he knew the answer.

  ‘Sorry, Max,’ Jane said, her voice hard, her demeanour professional. ‘That’s classified.’ And the brrr told him she’d gone.

  It started just before nine o’clock. Jacquie had tracked down a DVD of the ever-elusive Seventh Seal as a treat for Maxwell and they were just about to settle down to watch a very young Max von Sydow playing chess with chilling Death when there was a ring of his bell and shouts in the night.

  Maxwell crossed the lounge in a couple of strides. His front lawn was obscured by a crowd of people, men and women, looking up at his windows and muttering. All they needed was flaming torches and they could have been the extras from the village marching on Frankenstein’s laboratory to stop his hellish experiments.

  ‘Come on, Maxwell!’ he heard one of them shout. ‘We know you’re up there. Come on down. We want some answers.’

  ‘Max?’ Jacquie was alongside him. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell frowned. ‘It could be the new style Ofsted inspection,’ he said. ‘We were warned there’d be a new approach. Little advance notice. A more direct attack. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Max!’ Jacquie screamed at him as they thumped his glass partitioned door again. ‘Be serious.’

  ‘Seriously.’ He moved her away from the window. ‘The one with the mouth is Mr Spall, father of my leading lady – oh,’ he caught the fear in her face, ‘after you, of course, sweetness.’

  ‘Max, you’re not going down?’ She gripped his arm.

  ‘Just think of it as an ad hoc parents’ evening,’ he told her. ‘A sort of proactive PTA.’

  ‘Max, this is dangerous,’ she said.

  He knew that perfectly well. Parents didn’t normally arrive in a body at a teacher’s house. ‘Dinna fret yoursel,’ he said. It was a perfect Mel Gibson as William Wallace.

  ‘I’m calling for back-up,’ she told him, snatching up the cordless and thumping buttons.

  ‘I’m not sure how much use Legs Diamond, Dierdre Lessing and Bernard Ryan are going to be in a crisis,’ he chuckled. ‘But try them anyway. And you,’ he pointed to her. ‘You stay here, Woman Policeman.’ And there was iron in his voice.

  He took the stairs slowly, one by one, listening to the babble outside. As he wrenched the door open, it stopped and the gaggle stood there, staring at him in their parkas and anoraks. Some faces he knew. Some he didn’t. He was John Wayne. He was Robert Mitchum. He was Dean Martin. In any of the remakes of Rio Bravo you care to name, defending the jail against the rowdies bent on freeing the baddies. Except that this was Leighford. West Sussex. England. And the people in front of him were mums and dads. And they were more scared than he was.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Maxwell said quietly. ‘How good of you to call.’

  ‘What’s going on, Mr Maxwell?’ the mouthy Mr Spall wanted to know. ‘In the theatre. People are dying and our children are in the middle of it.’

  Cries of ‘Hear! Hear!’ and a sudden cacophony of agreement. Maxwell held up his hand. He’d been expecting this for days. The great British public is slow to anger, slow on the uptake, but once they’re roused… They were oxen in the furrow, she-wolves defending their cubs.

  ‘How did you know where to find me?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re in the bloody book, Maxwell,’ a burly man snarled. ‘It ain’t rocket science.’

  At last. A ringleader. Maxwell’s target. The Head of Sixth Form stepped out to stand with his nose inches away. ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ he said.

  ‘You’re in charge of this crap,’ the thug said. ‘It’s your fucking responsibility.’

  Maxwell stepped even closer. ‘By “this crap”, I assume you mean the forthcoming production of Little Shop of Horrors, Mr…er…?’

  ‘Grant,’ the man grated, slightly taken aback. ‘Grant’s my name.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Father of Andy, the psychotic dentist. He’s not bad, but, having met you, I’d have thought he’d be better.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Get this!’ Maxwell shouted so that they could all hear. ‘I don’t know what all this vigilante nonsense is all about or why it’s taken you brave people this long to get your respective acts together. But there is a procedure for all this, you know. If you’d care to ring Leighford High School at nine o’clock on Monday morning, the delightful young lady on the switchboard will be only too pleased to make appointments for each and every one of you to meet me and voice your complaints.’ The smile vanished. ‘But for those of you who haven’t the first idea of how to conduct yourselves, let me summarise my response to such a discussion. Between nine and four for thirty-nine weeks of the year, come rain, come shine, I am you. We teachers call it in loco parentis – in the place of parents. I’ve wiped your kids’ noses, listened to their whinges, kept them on the right track for ever. That’s what I do.’ He wandered along their front, less united now than it had been. ‘That’s what I’m doing still. In rehearsals, at the Arquebus, at school – it doesn’t matter where. Your kids are safe, people. There’s nothing to see here.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell.’ Another father stepped forward, a little shame-faced. ‘We…we don’t mean any disrespect. We’re scared, that’s all. For our kids.’

  ‘I know, Mr…Reynolds, is it?’ The Head of Sixth Form was looking straight into the eyes of Mushnik senior, who had come over to Ellis Island in the hopes of a fresh start, accord
ing to Deena Harrison. The man nodded. ‘Three people are dead,’ he told him and the rest of them, ‘and the youngest of them was pushing fifty. I don’t pretend to know what’s happening at the Arquebus – not yet – but this much I can promise you. Your children are safe. Now, go home, people.’

  One by one they broke away, couples huddling together, shuffling, shame-faced. One woman reached out and touched Maxwell’s sleeve, mouthing ‘Sorry’ as she left. They weren’t a baying mob any more, they were mums and dads, confused, bewildered, desperate.

  ‘I ain’t satisfied.’ The dentist’s dad had not moved. He was standing legs apart, fists locked, the muscles in his jaw jumping. He could take Maxwell out, no trouble.

  ‘Satisfaction’s not his job, friend,’ a female voice called out. Strictly against orders, Jacquie had waddled down the stairs and was standing alongside Maxwell.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Grant sniggered. ‘And who the fuck are you? Mrs Maxwell?’

  ‘Yes,’ Maxwell interrupted. ‘And if you use the F word again, you thick shit, I’ll be scattering your teeth over the pavement.’

  ‘You what?’

  That warrant card was in the air again, inches from Grant’s nose as he tried to focus on it. ‘I’m sure you’ll have seen one of these before, Mr Grant,’ Jacquie said. ‘Now, you get on home, sir. ’Cos if you don’t, three things will happen. First, I will arrest you for threatening behaviour and disturbing the peace. Second, I will turn a blind eye while Mr Maxwell here carries out his threat. And third,’ she held up her hand and placed it behind her ear. ‘Let’s reverse that order, shall we? Hear that siren? That’s my colleagues coming to the rescue.’

  So it was. The sound of sirens. Blue lights flashed at the end of Columbine and clanging police cars shot, white and terrifying, along the quiet street, dispersing knots of parents scurrying into their cars. When Jacquie turned back, the dentist’s dad was history, hurtling away into the darkness as she and Maxwell applauded the arrival of Jacquie’s colleagues, the boys in blue.

  ‘What kept you?’ she laughed at Dave Walters, first, as always, on the scene.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Maxwell said, shaking his head. ‘I’ve got to get one of those.’ He was pointing at her warrant card.

  ‘Max,’ she turned to him, suddenly serious, suddenly afraid. ‘Please don’t do that again. Play chicken with nutters.’

  He smiled lovingly at her, quoting the Duke of Wellington – sort of – ‘I don’t know what you do to the enemy, Police Woman Carpenter, but, by God, you terrify me.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  There was a raw wind rising the next morning as Peter Maxwell put sole to pedal. Sunday, bloody Sunday. The gentlefolk of Leighford paced their living rooms, desperate for the supermarkets to open or the papers to arrive. The younger generation, anybody under thirty, was still driving them home in the snoring department.

  Mrs Troubridge would ordinarily have been up and pruning. She didn’t sleep so well these nights, so dawn clipping was no hardship for her. Today, however, one of those erratic, temperamental gusts might blow her over, so she stayed indoors and demolished an illicit bacon sandwich.

  Metternich the cat watched Maxwell go, pedalling down Columbine like a demon, his cycle clips flashing in the early light, his scarf flying in the wind. Metternich the cat got back to his breakfast, founder member of the Pigeon Fanciers’ Club as he was. The trouble with that mad old bastard on the thing with wheels is that he didn’t appreciate the finer things in life.

  The wind was against Maxwell – it wasn’t just his paranoia – it was an easterly and it took him a little longer than usual to reach the Arquebus. He recognised Ashley Wilkes’ car in the car park along the riverbank as the ducks quacked at him, annoyed by the wind ruffling their feathers. Then he was in at the front door, dashing up the stairs to the man’s office.

  ‘Mr Maxwell.’ The Theatre Manager was in his shirt sleeves, shredding cables with a Stanley knife and not a little skill. ‘You’re early. I thought we said five.’

  ‘We did,’ Maxwell told him. ‘But something’s come up.’

  ‘It has indeed,’ Wilkes responded. ‘I was about to ring you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘There’s been a double booking.’

  Maxwell frowned under the rim of his tweed. Ashley Wilkes seemed to be reading from his script. ‘There has?’

  ‘Yes, look.’ The Theatre Manager got up from the job in hand. ‘This is all a bit embarrassing, really. I mean, I know you guys have your technical rehearsal tonight – hence my wiring – but…well, I’ve had a request.’

  Maxwell never did requests, but he was older school than Wilkes.

  ‘A Mrs Elliot has booked the stage this evening.’

  ‘For a séance,’ Maxwell nodded.

  Wilkes blinked at him. ‘How the hell did you know that?’

  ‘“I’d be a fine soothsayer if I didn’t!”’ he snarled, bulging his eyes and throwing his arms in all directions; but his Zero Mostel on his way to the Forum was lost on Ashley Wilkes. ‘I’ve been invited too.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘I came over to ask you to reschedule. I was wondering how we’d all squeeze in.’

  ‘Why you?’ Wilkes was suspicious.

  ‘Why here?’ Maxwell countered.

  ‘Gordon,’ the Theatre Manager explained. ‘Apparently this Rowena Sanders woman was going to use her place, but one of the invited is Matilda Goodacre and she insisted, since her late husband is potentially going to be there, that we hold it at the spot where Gordon died, i.e. down there.’

  Both men looked at the stage, deserted now save for three differently sized incarnations of an altogether terrifying carnation, Audrey II, the man-eating plant. An apparition wandered across it, draped in cables.

  ‘Is that Benny?’ Maxwell peered through the gloom. ‘I need to have a word. Remind me of the time again, Ashley.’

  ‘Eight,’ Wilkes told him.

  ‘Do we have to bring anything?’

  ‘An open mind, apparently,’ Wilkes shrugged.

  ‘Well, that’s a bit of a tall order,’ Maxwell smiled.

  ‘You’ve said it,’ Wilkes agreed. ‘I’ve got to make a few calls. I couldn’t get through to all your kids yesterday – hence Benny this morning.’

  ‘No reply from Deena, I suppose?’ Maxwell checked.

  Wilkes’ face fell. Needling from this man was something he didn’t need. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No reply.’

  Maxwell beamed broadly and bounced down the plush-carpeted stairs to the ground floor and the auditorium. ‘Benny Barker as I live and breathe.’

  ‘Morning, Mr M.’ The lad peered round an outsize speaker system.

  Maxwell rested his elbows on the stage and his chin on his folded arms. ‘Tell me, Benjamin: are you familiar with the Scottish play?’

  Maxwell was a little late for lunch that day. Jacquie didn’t scold. After the night before, they’d lain awake for hours, each afraid for the other, neither saying so. Parents’ evenings weren’t normally quite so scary.

  Her chicken was, as usual, splendid, but neither of them was much in the mood and they drove their veg around their plates for a while before giving up with a shake of the head and an inane grin.

  ‘There’s an all points out for Deena Harrison,’ Maxwell said as he pushed his plate away.

  ‘I know,’ she nodded. ‘The guys were talking about it last night.’

  ‘In view of that,’ he said, ‘and in view of what we discovered in Oxford, don’t you think you ought to have a chat with Henry?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘I thought you told me I had to stay away.’

  ‘I know,’ he sighed. ‘And I hate to have to change my mind, but Henry needs to know what he’s up against.’

  She nodded. ‘I think he’s got a pretty good idea already,’ she said. ‘But I’ll have a word.’ And she got up, fumbling for her keys and her coat.

  ‘Aren’t you going to call?’ he asked.

  Jacquie loo
ked at him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Some conversations you’ve just got to have face to face.’

  At the top of the stairs, she stopped and turned, waddling back to him and cradling his head as he sat there. ‘Max,’ she said. ‘This séance tonight. You will be careful, won’t you?’

  He got up and held her, kissing her forehead. ‘We have room,’ he said, ‘for a few ghosts.’ It was pure Charlton Heston in El Cid, but Jacquie wasn’t listening to the characterisation. She just heard the word ghosts. And it frightened her.

  They came in ones and twos under the overhanging span of the Flyover, solemn, silent; the only noise the clatter of their feet on the tarmac.

  Then the hiss of tyres as the last one arrived – the uninvited. They acknowledged each other briefly in the portico, where the great and not so good of Leighford’s am dram over the years smiled down at them from tired posters. The crimson carpet was reflected in pools of light and the double doors to the auditorium were thrown wide open.

  ‘Welcome.’ Ashley Wilkes met them there and ushered them into the theatre itself. It struck cold here after a day’s emptiness, with that indefinable mustiness that theatres acquire when they have been warehouses and places of death, dramatic and real.

  The Theatre Manager had followed Rowena Sanders’ instructions to the letter. Centre stage in a dim pool of blue light stood an oval table and around it eight high-backed chairs. One by one, they trooped down to the front, divesting themselves of their outdoor clothes. With a natural sense of leadership, Rowena Sanders began pointing to the chairs, arranging the arrivals for what was to come.

  ‘No.’ The imperious Matilda Goodacre was having none of it. ‘First, I want to know who these people are,’ she said, along with St Joan and Blanche du Bois and Eleanor of Aquitaine.

  ‘That is not the way,’ Rowena said, frowning. ‘The spirits know everybody.’