Maxwell's Chain (27 page)

Nick Campbell spun on his heel. ‘You’re as barking as her dog, Maxwell,’ he called. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I took my hat off to you earlier, Nick,’ Maxwell called, ‘That was a pre-arranged signal. If you’ll look to your left.’

Across the grass ahead of him Jacquie Carpenter stood, wondering which way he would run.

‘And to your right.’

The uniformed constables were approaching from the rise to the lily pond. Still others were trickling over from the car park. In the event, it
was Maxwell who reached the boy first, because he’d stopped and stood stock still on the hospital forecourt. His old Head of Sixth Form looked into his eyes. ‘Why, Nick, why?’ he asked. ‘There’ll be no Clarence Darrow to save you now. Great advocates are a thing of the past. He saved those boys from the electric chair, but you know as well as I do that Nathan Leopold was fifty-three when he got out. What a waste.’

‘Why, Mr Maxwell,’ Nick repeated. ‘You asked me why.’ He stood up tall as they clicked the cuffs on his wrists. ‘Because I could, that’s why.’

Maxwell and Jacquie stood on the first landing of their sleeping house. The Troubridge sisters napping on the sofa were making small whiffling noises in their sleep, almost indistinguishable from those they made when awake. Nolan’s post prandial mutterings, eerily amplified down the baby alarm, were as yet lacking in his usual urgency. With luck and a following wind, he would sleep for a few more minutes yet. Metternich, having availed himself to the maximum of the Troubridges’ generosity in the pilchard and lap stakes, was stretched full length on the chair and was noisier than the other three put together, snoring down his battle-scarred nose in a rhythmic rattle and hum.

Maxwell turned Jacquie towards him and enfolded her in his arms. She leant in to his warmth and snaked her arms around him, inside his coat. She could have happily stayed there for ever. So what if there would be a mountain of paperwork? So what if the press would be all over the nick, Columbine and Leighford High for weeks? Here, for the moment, time could stand still.

After a while, Maxwell stirred and pulled away slightly, looking down into her tired, but still frank and open eyes. He cleared his throat, very quietly, so as not to waken the sleepers. ‘Jacquie,’ he said, seriously. ‘I’ve been giving a problem a lot of thought lately and I’ve got to ask you…’

He saw her eyes widen as she looked over his shoulder through the landing window. A grin broke over her face and transformed her into the
seven-year
-old he had never known. She shook herself free and ran to lean on the sill, her nose pressed against the cold glass. She turned, eyes sparkling. ‘It’s snowing!’ she said, and so it was. Those same big, lazy flakes of years before were spiralling down and already covering Leighford with a blanket of purest white. They stood there and watched for a moment.

‘Nolan’s first snow,’ Maxwell said, quietly.

‘And ours,’ she said and turned to put her arms round him again. He kissed her on the head and laughed.

As if on cue, Nolan’s muttering became a torrent, Metternich wandered by and clawed Maxwell’s ankle in an absentminded sort of way. The Troubridge twins both broke into a cacophony of coughing but even so, beneath it all, Peter Maxwell heard his true love say, ‘And yes, Peter Maxwell, I will marry you. But only on one condition.’

‘Name it,’ he said, ‘And it’s yours.’

‘Bill Lunt has to be the photographer.’

He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘That’s a mercy. For a moment, I thought you were going to ask that the Troubridges could be bridesmaids.’

‘How lovely,’ came the chorus from the sitting room.

‘A spring wedding,’ added Mrs Troubridge. ‘How romantic. And we’d
love
to be your bridesmaids, Mr Maxwell.’

We hope you enjoyed this book.

Do you want to know about our other great reads, download free extracts and enter competitions?

If so, visit our website
www.allisonandbusby.com
.

Click to sign up to our monthly newsletter
for exclusive content and offers, news of our brand new releases, upcoming events with your favourite authors and much more.

And why not click to follow us on
Facebook
and
Twitter
?

We’d love to hear from you!

M.J. T
ROW
has recently retired as a history teacher – he has been doubling as a crime writer for twenty-six years. He is the author of the Inspector Sholto Lestrade and the Kit Marlowe series and twenty-one
non-fiction
books as well as the Peter ‘Mad Max’ Maxwell novels.

In the Peter ‘Mad Max’ Maxwell series

Maxwell’s Match

Maxwell’s Inspection

Maxwell’s Grave

Maxwell’s Mask

Maxwell’s Point

Maxwell’s Chain

Maxwell’s Revenge

Maxwell’s Retirement

Maxwell’s Island

Maxwell’s Crossing