Maxwell’s Curse (18 page)

‘Yesterday,’ they chorused dutifully and trudged out to their waiting buses or the parked cars of their slightly older mates, the hell drivers of Year 13.

Maxwell put his books away in the dingy little cupboard in H4 and sauntered into his office next door. He wasn’t quite ready for the visitor who sat there.

‘Mr Hall,’ he said, closing the door. ‘This is becoming something of a habit.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Hall said, ‘and to arrive unannounced. I wanted a word.’

‘Coffee?’ At the end of a long Monday, it was always Maxwell’s first thought.

Hall shook his head. There was a tap on the door and Mrs B. stood there, a halo of ciggie smoke around her head. ‘Gawd, it’s Monday already, ain’t it? Oh, you’re busy. I’ll call back, shall I? Do that old cow Lessing first. That’d be best.’

‘It is indeed, Mrs B.,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘I am, rather. Please do. Yes, I’m sure Deirdre’s bovine needs are greater than mine. It would, I feel certain.’ And he closed the door again. ‘Heart of gold,’ he told Hall. ‘Nothing quite like a school cleaner, is there? A breed apart, that’s what they are. Oh, you don’t mind if I do?’ Maxwell waved a coffee cup at him.

Hall shook his head. The DCI was being particularly tight-lipped this afternoon. Maxwell busied himself with the coffee. A gaggle of hysterical sixth formers tottered past his door. He yanked it open. ‘Home!’ he bellowed and the hysteria stopped. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr Hall?’

‘Did you know Alison Thorn, head teacher at Wetherton primary school?’

Maxwell looked blank and sat on the spare chair opposite his visitor, who still dutifully wore the stick-on label given to him by Thingee Too in reception.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Should I?’

‘Not really,’ Hall said.

‘What’s Wetherton, four, live miles from here? Not a village I know well.’

‘It’s three and a half miles as the crow flies,’ Hall told him.

Maxwell shrugged. ‘Let me explain something to you about teachers, Mr Hall. A primary teacher and a secondary teacher – well, we’re chalk-face and cheese, really. One wipes the bastards’ bums and mops floors and encourages free expression. The other tells the by-now-much-bigger-bastards to shut up and write this down. We both get results of a sort. But the methods … ah, well, the devil’s in the detail.’

‘It’s the devil I wanted to talk to you about.’

Maxwell frowned. ‘You’re not still looking for poppets, Chief Inspector? Voodoo or whatever.’

Hall shook his head. ‘I can’t afford to make light of this, Mr Maxwell. The lady I mentioned a moment ago, Alison Thorn, the headteacher at Wetherton, is dead.’

‘Dead?’ Maxwell looked up. ‘Murdered?’

Hall nodded, knowing Maxwell well enough to know the speed with which the man put two and two together. ‘Where were you on Sunday?

‘Yesterday?’ Maxwell got up to fill his coffee mug. ‘At home.’

‘All day?’

‘No,’ Maxwell threw caution and his arteries to the winds and threw in three sugars for good measure. ‘Not all day. I went walking on the Shingle after lunch.’

‘Alone?’

‘Alone except for a few hardy perennials exercising their dogs. I didn’t see anybody I knew.’

‘So, no one can vouch for you?’

‘No, Chief Inspector,’ Maxwell looked at his man over the rim of his mug, the one that told the world, rather incongruously, that he loved David Essex. Henry Hall looked tired and as grey as his suit. He’d come alone again, as he had the last time, without the usual entourage in tow. As far as anyone could ever tell with Hall, he seemed to

Maxwell to be a man on the edge. ‘But then, can anyone vouch for you?’

‘My wife and kids,’ Hall nodded softly.

‘Ah, well,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘There you have the advantage over me. But if you’re suggesting I cycled over to Wetherton, killed this poor woman and cycled home again, I’m afraid I’ll have to come out with the cliché about straws and methods of grabbing them.’

‘Ms Thorn didn’t die in Wetherton, Mr Maxwell,’ Hall told him. ‘She died in her flat in Whitesmith Street. You can almost see it from your window.’

‘What killed her?’

‘Forensic will tell us that in due course. I’m much more interested in who. Tell me, did you find anything at Myrtle Cottage?’

‘Where?’

‘Don’t be evasive, Mr Maxwell, please. The home of Elizabeth Pride. You went there.’

‘You wanted me to.’

‘Did I?’

Maxwell chuckled. ‘Mr Hall, I could go on fencing with you all day, I really could, but I honestly don’t think that would get either of us anywhere, do you?’

‘Perhaps not,’ Hall said without a trace of a smile. ‘You appreciate I had to ask – about Alison Thorn, I mean.’

‘On the grounds that you’re probably asking everybody else in Leighford, yes, of course. And it’s very flattering to have the personal attention of a Detective Chief Inspector.’

Hall stood up suddenly, half turning for the door. ‘If I wasn’t so damned fond of you, Maxwell,’ he said, ‘I might take a really personal dislike; know what I mean?’

Maxwell’s mouth was still open as the DCI saw himself out. It was an extraordinary thing to hear from Henry Hall.

Extraordinary because it proved the man was human after all.

‘Jacquie?’

‘Max?’

The Head of Sixth Form was lolling in his attic, Trumpeter Hugh Crawford sitting this one out while his recreator was busy dappling the flanks of his horse, standing patiently nearby.

‘I had a visit from your guv’nor today.’

‘Hall? What did he want?’

‘Well, that’s just it; I’m damned if I know. I suspect a confession would be favourite, but I got the impression he’d have settled for some counselling. He asked about Myrtle Cottage.’

There was a pause. ‘What did you tell him?’

‘Basically that Queen Anne was dead. What have you told him?’

Another pause. ‘How do you mean?’

‘The calendar. I seem to be in possession of a pretty important clue and officially your people know nothing about it.’

‘I know, Max. I don’t know what to do about that. It’s a matter for your own conscience.’

‘My own …’ Maxwell hauled his feet off his modelling desk and sat upright, tugging off the forage cap. ‘I’m sorry, I must have misdialled. Is this Jacquie Carpenter, companion of a mile,
anima divida mea
or is it the bloody Samaritans?’

‘Max,’ he heard her sigh, ‘we’ve had this conversation so often. You know I can’t tell you things.’

‘Alison Thorn,’ he said. ‘At least tell me that.’

‘I can’t.’

‘It was on the local news tonight. Hall specifically told me she’d been murdered. All you’d be doing is crossing tees and dotting eyes.’

This time the pause was longer. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘She died on Sunday – am I right?’

‘Astley thinks mid to late afternoon.’

‘How?’

‘Poison. He doesn’t know what, yet. Something organic.’

‘You mean plants?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘What do we know about this woman, Jacquie? Alison Thorn?’

‘She was a head teacher,’ he heard the voice on the end of the phone sounding less and less like the Jacquie he knew. ‘We’ve only just started on this one, Max. I can’t tell you any more. Look, I’ve got to go.’

And she did. There was no love. Not even a goodbye. He didn’t notice her throw the phone across the room; didn’t see her tired face crumple; didn’t hear her start to cry.

‘And it’s good night from her,’ Maxwell said softly. He caught the eye of the great black and white beast in the corner, sitting on the pine chest like the sphinx. ‘I don’t know, Count, in answer to your unspoken question. What’s going on? What do we have here? A hot friend cooling? The hang-up that denotes a hang-up? Something I said? Or didn’t say? Christ knows!’ And he sat back in his canvas camp chair, staring at the half-finished warrior distorted under the bright light and the magnifying lens. Above him, through the skylight the canopy was a rich velvet studded with stars.

‘All right,’ he shook himself free of Jacquie, her distance, her coldness. He was old enough to be her father, for God’s sake. If it was over, before it had really started, well, perhaps that was how it was meant to be. All part of the grand plan of the Great Timetabler in the Sky, ‘back to basics’. For a weak, fleeting moment, he longed for Roger Garret’s flipchart, that sad invention dreamed up for captains of industry to handle their presentations. Why use a few well-chosen words when flow diagrams and pie charts were so much more appealing? The infection had snuck itself into schools where Deputy Headmasters were particularly prone to it. Looking at the cat as he was now, however, Maxwell thought the dim creature might appreciate it. Never mind, he’d have to imagine.

‘First – and I will be asking questions later, Count, so pin your ears back – Elizabeth Pride is left like an unwanted Christmas present on my doorstep. She has been frozen. Why? Because – yes, you’re getting into your stride now, aren’t you? Because she was murdered earlier and had to be kept for a while. Now why is that – of course, your next logical question – and I don’t know the answer to that one. Which date is significant? The last of the old Millennium, with its first footers and strange men and long leggety beasties? Or the shortest day – St Thomas grey, St Thomas grey? Or both?’

The cat wasn’t talking.

‘The old girl was poisoned,’ Maxwell leaned back, his hands cradling his head, looking at the stars. ‘So was Albert Walters; so, allegedly, Alison Thorn. Andrew Darblay is the exception. No poison, just the caving in of his skull.’ He slid back the chair and began to pace the attic room, mechanically checking his half-finished Light Brigade for cobwebs. ‘Common factors – three of the four died by poisoning. Two of them had wounds in the nape of the neck. One of them – Darblay – with overt symbols of devil worship all around him; right in the middle of his own church. What’s the link?’

He crouched suddenly to check the Brigade’s line-up – Lord Cardigan with his arm nonchalantly on his hip, Lewis Nolan trotting over to William Morris to ask his permission to ride with the 17
^th
. There was a gap where the Italian observers Govone and Landriani were going to go. For three years, he’d put off modelling them; he hadn’t a clue what uniforms they wore. ‘The link, Count, is … nonexistent!’ And he stood upright again. In the end, he succumbed and poured himself a large Southern Comfort, wincing as it hit his tonsils.

‘Elizabeth Pride, widow,’ he recited to himself from the mental CV he’d put together from his conversations with Jacquie and gleanings from Darblay and the media. ‘In her seventies, lived alone, apart from several of your kind – and, no, I don’t think any of them are as gorgeous as you, you vain bastard. She was a bit of a dragon, apparently. Had a reputation as a witch. Had the evil eye,’ Maxwell shot a glance towards his cat, ‘not unlike your good gentleman self. People who wanted her dead? The Cruikshanks in particular, Romanies who bore an ancient grudge. Plus, presumably, anybody else at whom she looked funny. Possibly, even, the Reverend Darblay.’

He sat down again, sipping the spirits that cheered, warming to his theme. ‘Andrew Darblay. Nice bloke. Vicar of the old school. Probably hated the thought of women priests and gay clergy. Widower. Lived in Wetherton. Housekeeper came in during the day and said in the
Advertiser
that she didn’t think he had an enemy in the world – which, I have to admit, runs counter to every vicar I’ve ever met. They usually manage to offend somebody. Even Father Ted upset the Craggy Island Chinese Community, if you remember that classic episode, Count.’

Metternich didn’t. He’d been out on the tiles at the time, testicles or no testicles. Come to think of it, no testicles.

‘His body was found by the police themselves, who’d presumably gone to interview him, as I did, about Elizabeth Pride. Jacquie told me he’d already reported a bogus journalist, namely, moi, provider of vitamin-enriched slime for your delectation and delight. Now, is that why they called back, I wonder? Or had something else occurred to them?’ He looked ruefully at the phone. ‘No good asking Jacquie as things stand at the moment,’ he mused. ‘The good clergyman was battered to death with your proverbial blunt instrument at some time on the Thursday morning. There was no poisoning or incision in the neck. But there were the black candles, the pentagram, the sheep’s heart. By bell, book and candle, eh, Count? I knew I should have called you Pyewacket. Or Grizzle or Greedigut.’ He leaned towards the animal’s broad, flat head. Metternich looked at him through one contemptuous eye and sauntered away, tail held high, bum at a rakish angle.

‘No need to take offence, Count,’ Maxwell called after him as the beast bounded down the attic stairs. ‘It’s no slur on your character, they’re just the names of familiars, witches’ imps that worked for the devil.’

No reply.

‘Greymalkin!’ Maxwell shouted. ‘I could go further and call you Paddock! Not,’ he saw his reflection in the skylight and raised his glass, ‘that I’d be so vituperative.’

He sat down on the chest the cat had just vacated. ‘Ah,’ he smiled, ‘happiness, Count, is a warm bum.’

But Metternich was gone, out through the lounge in its half light, down the stairs to the cat flap in the kitchen and the night’s long hunt.

‘Albert Walters,’ Maxwell was still talking to himself, ‘lived and died on the Barlichway. What’s that, about five miles from Wetherton? He was of an age with Liz Pride and Jane Cruikshank. Did they know each other? Is that the link? And if it is, where does this Alison Thorn come in? They said Liz Pride was a witch. And Barney Butler told me old Albert was a magician. So who was Alison Thorn – Queen Mab?’

The little ones had all gone by the time Peter Maxwell opened the classroom door at Wetherton First School. Time was of the essence and he needed to catch someone there before the caretaker shut up shop for the night. He’d dragooned the long-suffering Sylvia Matthews again, assuring her with all his charm and suavity that he didn’t just love her for her car, useful though the invention was. A year ago, six months even, Sylvia would have winced at that, but now she was more up-together and could hold Peter Maxwell at arm’s length. Even so, she told him, she couldn’t handle what he was about to do. She’d wait in the car.