Maxwell’s Curse (11 page)

‘Did you see that?’ Bernard Ryan, Leighford’s Second Deputy, was watching from his eyrie in C block. He was that most dangerous of teachers – one with too much time on his hands.

‘Hm?’ Deirdre Lessing, the Senior Mistress, flapped her leathery wings as she hung upside down in the cupboard next to him.

‘Maxwell going off with some bloke.’

Deirdre straightened and stared after the vehicle just vanishing through the front gates. ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ she sneered. ‘He’s a funny age.’

The tall man took the flyover beyond the Shingle and skirted the rolling open ground of the Dam before cutting through the back doubles north of Tottingleigh. The Green Man’s doors were welcoming as ever and sparkled silver in the icy sun of a January midday.

‘What’s your poison, Chief Inspector?’ Maxwell asked at the bar of the Snug. Hall didn’t appreciate Maxwell’s humour and he’d never heard of William Palmer, the Rugeley poisoner who’d supposedly made the phrase famous.

‘Orange juice, please.’

Maxwell’s face said it all. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ he beamed to the girl behind the bar. ‘Muriel, isn’t it?’

‘No.’ She made no attempt to lodge her chewing gum anywhere.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘worth a try. And a Southern Comfort, please.’ He shot a glance at Henry Hall. ‘Large.’

Henry Hall found a seat near the fire. The place was all but deserted.

‘If you’re having lunch,’ the girl-who-wasn’t-Muriel said, ‘the stroganoff’s off.’ That little news item didn’t surprise Maxwell one bit. He paid up and carried the drinks to the corner.

‘Here’s to a bloody war and a sickly season,’ he gave the old cavalry toast.

‘Cheers,’ said Hall more prosaically.

‘May I say you’ve been unusually tight-lipped on our way here,’ Maxwell reproached him, ‘and whereas I’m flattered by the attention …’

‘Don’t be,’ Hall urged him. ‘What do you make of this?’

Maxwell took the little bundle of rags that Hall had placed on the table next to the Trumans’ ashtray. ‘It’s a doll of some kind,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘You’re an historian, Mr Maxwell.’ Hall leaned back. ‘I thought perhaps you’d know something about its significance.’

Maxwell looked closer. Someone had marked eyes at different levels and a crooked smile on the face in black marker pen. There was a similar patch of red felt tip at the back of the neck and a white-headed pin had been stuffed into it.

‘Dressmaker’s pin,’ Hall answered the unspoken question. ‘You can buy them anywhere. The rags appear to be bed linen, old, unremarkable. The string tying the limbs and neck is your common-or-garden hardware store.’

‘Where did you get this?’ Maxwell asked.

‘I can’t tell you that,’ Hall told him.

Maxwell leaned back, feeling the coarse cloth in the palm of his hand. Henry Hall was a cryptic bastard, the boss of the girl who had come to fill the yawning gap in his life. Clearly the DCI still had his arse in his hand. ‘Then I can’t help.’

‘Mr Maxwell, we routinely call in experts of various kinds to help us with our inquiries.’

‘Our inquiries?’ Maxwell checked him.

‘Police inquiries,’ Hall clarified.

‘And what kind of expert am I?’ the Head of Sixth Form wanted to know.

‘That depends on what this is,’ Hall’s face was expressionless behind the rimless specs.

‘All right,’ Maxwell sighed, ‘but I’m chancing my arm here, you understand?’

Hall nodded. Ten days into a murder enquiry and he was ready to take a few chances.

‘It’s not my period, of course,’ Maxwell was covering his back. He saw Hall’s knuckles white around the orange juice and almost let a smile escape. ‘I’ve never seen a real one, only photographs, drawings …’

‘Mr Maxwell.’ The voice was firm. Curt.

‘I think it’s a poppet.’

‘A what?’ Hall was in mid-swig as he said it and his face turned pale.

‘A doll,’ Maxwell shrugged, ‘used in sympathetic magic.’

‘You’ll have to pass all that by me again, Mr Maxwell,’ Hall put the glass down, leaning forward now, all ears.

‘Like I said, it’s not my period, the witch fever. Reformation and beyond. Sixteenth, seventeenth century. Black and grey witches used to make these dolls in the likeness of a victim …’

‘A victim?’

‘Yes,’ Maxwell put the doll down and took up the menu. ‘I fancy a ploughman’s, I think.’

‘What sort of victim?

‘Anybody they didn’t like. It was vital the victim knew he was a target or the doll wouldn’t work.’ He leaned forward until he was filling Hall’s face. ‘I couldn’t help noticing the pin in the neck and the red ink. Anybody you know been stabbed in the neck recently, Mr Hall?’

For once the dull eyes blinked, the steady gaze fell away. Hall picked up his menu. ‘Ploughman’s?’ he said, nodding. ‘Sounds good.’

Henry Hall unleashed Peter Maxwell back on the unsuspecting waifs of Leighford High that afternoon, watching as the cantankerous old bastard made his way across the quad, confiscating walkmen and chewing gum, those twin evils of the twentieth century lingering on into the twenty-first. For a moment, Maxwell fancied he heard the warble of a mobile phone, then thought better of it. No one would dare – not in his hearing.

Hall drove like a madman back to the nick as the sun died and a raw biting wind rose from the north-east.

‘Martin,’ he all but collided with a still waiting DS Stone in the foyer. ‘What news on Mrs Cruikshank?’

‘Abusive and tight-lipped in almost equal measure,’ Stone told him. ‘Shame euthanasia isn’t on the menu.’

‘Who’s with her now?’

‘Jacquie Carpenter.’

‘Right.’ And he checked himself before opening the door.

‘DCI Hall entering the room,’ Jacquie spoke for the benefit of the tape recorder, ‘at two twenty-eight.’ The DC looked tired and pale, like police officers do when faced with a suspect who’s clammed up, who knows her rights, whose lips are sealed.

Hall scraped back the chair next to his DC. ‘For the record,’ he spoke clearly, ‘I am showing Mrs Cruikshank the rag doll I showed her yesterday. You said it was a poppet, Mrs Cruikshank.’

The old woman sat as if frozen, her narrow shoulders hunched, her hands flat on the table in front of her. She looked at the doll, then at the man. ‘Where’s that fucking lawyer? He’s supposed to be here by now.’

‘What is a poppet, Mrs Cruikshank?’ Hall was pursuing his inquiries.

Jane Cruikshank leaned back, folding her arms with a finality that was frightening. ‘I ain’t saying nothin’ to you people. Not no more.’

For a moment Hall stayed sat there, his elbow still on the desk, the doll in his fist. Then he stood up. ‘Very well. Thank you, Mrs Cruikshank. Interview ended at two thirty-two. You’re free to go.’

‘Eh?’ the old girl blinked, looking up at him through watery eyes.

‘That’s it. We’re finished. There’s still the little matter of the shotgun, of course. We’ll sort that out later.’

‘I …’

Jacquie was on her feet too, the tape recorder switched off.

They waited until Jane Cruikshank had reached the door. ‘Oh,’ Hall’s voice stopped her with impeccable timing. ‘Your poppet,’ he said.

He wouldn’t have believed a woman of her age could move so fast. ‘I told you,’ she growled. ‘’T’ain’t mine.’ And she was already striding down the corridor, calling back, ‘I never seen it before.’

When the door had closed, Jacquie made to follow. ‘Let her go,’ Hall said. ‘What happened to her brief?’

‘Legal aid,’ shrugged Jacquie. ‘Could be anywhere.’

Hall nodded. ‘Some kid still wet behind the ears.’

‘What was all that about the doll, sir?’ she asked.

‘Hm? Oh, the poppet.’ Hall was making for the door. ‘You’d better ask Peter Maxwell.’

‘Still nothing, then?’ It was almost a knee-jerk reaction. You saw Martin Stone; you asked the question. The DS was thinking of pinning badges to his lapels – ‘No news yet’.

He shook his head, peering through the gloom of a January afternoon. ‘We’ll just have to wait for God’s own time,’ he said.

Jacquie Carpenter looked at him for a second. She didn’t know Stone well, but she hadn’t got him down for the religious type – God’s policeman.

‘I appreciate this, by the way,’ the DS was saying, joining the traffic on the flyover, ‘on your own time and all.’

‘I just wish I thought it would lead to anything,’ Jacquie was unscrewing the flask. ‘Cuppa?’

‘Great. No, I know it’s a long shot, but it’s the little things in murder, isn’t it? The devil’s always in the detail. I couldn’t get out of my head Kev’s info about that bogus newsman. Who is he? What does he want?’

‘Just some creep,’ Jacquie poured with the expertise born of hours on the road; visits, surveillances, a thousand follow-ups to a thousand leads. ‘A ghoul. The world’s full of them, Martin.’

He took the flask top, grinning at her. ‘So young, so cynical,’ he said.

‘Maybe. But even if this vicar can give us a good description …’

‘It doesn’t get us any nearer the murderer of Elizabeth Pride, no, perhaps not. And that’s Rector, by the way; the Reverend Andrew Darblay.’

The Reverend Andrew Darblay wasn’t home. He was lying in the nave of his own church, laid out like the great knight whose tomb was spattered with his blood. His feet faced the altar and his arms were crossed over his chest, his right hand clutching a crucifix which was upside down. His head was thrown back, a dark crimson pool radiating out like a liquid cushion beneath it, making the ancient stones slippery and the heavy-duty carpet stiff. His sightless, sunken eyes were fixed on the floral bosses that studded the roof, his face pale against the blood and his mouth twisted as though with boredom at the view he had looked at now for too long.

Stone had made the phone calls to Leighford, stabbing out the basics his colleagues needed to know. An ambulance, photographers, the SOCO team and the guv’nor, who’d probably be SIO when the time came – they’d all be on their way now, snarling up the A25, hurtling through the quiet country lanes. There’d be no wailing sirens, no flashing blue lights – all that was for
The Bill
and
Liverpool One
. Stone estimated fifteen minutes before their arrival, perhaps more. That gave him some time to steal a march, even a few Brownie points.

‘The attack began there,’ he told Jacquie, pointing to the first blood spot by the West door. She followed the trail. She was all right with this one, as all right as you can be when you find a man with his skull smashed and his brains all over his place of work. Her initial reaction was to vomit, then to run, but she’d resisted both. She wasn’t going to play the girlie in front of Martin Stone. All her working life she’d been aware of that one, ready for the snigger, the smirk, the chauvinistic inference that she couldn’t cope. ‘I’d say he ran, maybe stumbled would be more accurate, across that way.’

They stood together at the font, with its tell-tale brown drips of blood marbling the stone. ‘He was still alive here; see, he slipped sideways, round behind these pews.’ Jacquie solemnly followed Stone and the blood trail to the Gothic tomb. ‘And here, he rested for a while. What were they doing? Having a breather? A chitchat? There’s a lot of blood.’

‘Had he hit him again?’ Jacquie squatted to check the direction of the spurts.

‘I’d say so,’ Stone was checking the angles of the church. ‘Back there, a second blow at the font. Here, a third. It was the fourth that brought him down. Slap bang in the aisle.’ The DS crouched over the body, lifting the left elbow just a little. ‘Rigor,’ he said. ‘He’s been dead some time. I dare say Astley will have some words of wisdom on that. Jesus.’ Stone had been looking behind him, towards the altar with its canopy and its stained glass. He was on his feet now, Jacquie beside him. A great deal of blood had saturated the white altar cloth, dripping down from something dark and slimy on the altar itself. On either side, two tall black candles stood unlit in their brass candlesticks and someone had painted something on the polished Victorian tiles at their base.

It was a circle with a star of five points.

‘Max, how the hell are you?’

He didn’t recognize the voice. Not at first. Earlier in the evening he’d wrestled with the complexities of his Year 10 coursework marking. Was that piece of plagiarised misspelt drivel a level 4 or level 5? The worst aspect of all this was that people often mistook him for the sort of teacher who gives a fuck. But, then, that was because they were right.

Now, he’d put away his red pen, hied himself to his attic, put the gold-laced Crimean forage cap on his head and settled down to the important things – breathing life into 54mm pieces of plastic.

‘It’s Prissy,’ the voice crackled on the other end of the phone, ‘Prissy Crown. I’ve been meaning to call you since the other night. How’s the head?’

‘Oh, it’s twice its usual size,’ Maxwell said, ‘but that’s because I’ve been named Leighford High’s Teacher of the Year for the thirty-eighth year running. It’s quite embarrassing. I really must turn down the Bolly and the fortnight in Klosters this year – give somebody else a chance.’

‘I was worried, Max,’ she ignored him.

‘No need,’ he breezed, searching frantically for Trumpeter Crawford’s bridoon rein among the bits of plastic on his desk. ‘It was my own fault.’

‘Well, that’s just it,’ she said after a pause. ‘I’m not sure it was.’

He stopped ferreting. ‘I’m sorry?’ She had his attention now.

‘Max, look. I can’t talk over the phone. There’s something going on, at Beauregard’s I mean. Do you fence?’

‘Fence?’ He nearly fell off his chair. ‘Well, I used to, but, Christ, Prissy, that was years ago. I’ve been on the piste of a different kind since then.’

‘I’d meet you elsewhere, but I’m competing tomorrow night at the Club. Can you make it, say, half past six? I can get you togged out. Are you an epée man?’

‘Sabre,’ he said. ‘But Prissy …’

But she’d gone. He hung up and looked at the cat. ‘I’ll have you know,’ he said, ‘that in my day at Cambridge, I was a beau sabreur of beaux sabreurs – and a pretty good fencer, too. Ah,’ he leaned back, hands behind his head, reliving the Granta days, ‘the sins of the flèche.’

Jim Astley was at it again, green-gowned the next morning, bent double over the dead. In his more fanciful moments he saw himself as one of those embalmers of ancient Egypt, pouring chemicals into Pharaohs, tipping them upside down and hooking their brains out through their noses. They had worshipped baboons and jackals and ibis. He worshipped science. Who was to say who was right?