Maxwell’s Curse (7 page)

He waited. There wasn’t going to be any more. Not there. Not then.

‘Would you like to come in?’ he asked, half-dreading the answer. She hit the ignition and crashed the Shogun into gear. ‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’d better get back.’

‘To the party?’

‘Yes,’ she tried to smile, ‘to the party. I live there, Maxwell.’

‘You … I see. So Willoughby …’

‘… is my husband, yes,’ she said quietly, ‘but that’s just a cross I have to bear. No one’s afraid of Willoughby, Maxwell.’ She flashed her indicator, revving the engine. ‘Except Willoughby, of course.’

And he waved as he dropped down from the Shogun and watched her drive into the night.

5

Metternich raised his lion’s head and scented the wind. Bacon sarnies. Heaven. That meant it must be Sunday morning already. What was the betting He Who Must Be Ignored would ruin the appeal of any scraps he might leave by plastering them all with that noxious brown stuff.

‘Running low on the old HP, Count,’ Maxwell called through from the kitchen, as though it were somehow the cat’s fault. He had to get back to Myrtle Cottage, that less-than-chocolate-box place in the folds of the Weald, his only link with the woman who had ended up on his doorstep. He needed the daylight and he needed time. He looked at the pile of A-level essays on his coffee table, taunting him, haunting him.

‘Later, everybody,’ he muttered, finishing his coffee. ‘Today belongs to the late Elizabeth Pride.’

When he’d gone, the black bomber, the great white hope, slunk off the pouffé and checked out Maxwell’s plate. Yup! Just as he thought – that brown stuff was all over the sliver of bacon the old bastard had abandoned. Metternich sneezed in disgust and wandered away.

Maxwell left White Surrey in the shed. He couldn’t call on Jacquie; she was too sensitive about the whole business.

Neither could he bother Sylvia again – it hardly seemed fair. So he swallowed his pride and caught a bus. That way he saw a lot of the West Sussex countryside at an incredibly leisurely pace and overheard conversations that normally only Alan Bennett is privileged to hear.

‘I had an accident this morning, Beryl.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘I used my spray deodorant, you know … down there. Only it was polish.’

‘Oh dear.’

Maxwell didn’t dare look around in case the old girl in question slid the length of the aisle.

Chanctonbury stood silent in the hoar frost. Shortly before dawn the cold had come and the brass monkeys scampered and chattered over the uplands, still silver in the mid-morning. He felt his feet crunch on the grass as he left the road and he saw the rooks wheeling and bickering as they skirted the tall trees on the Ring. He paused on the ridge, as the iron men of the Iron Age had before him and looked at the broad sunlit sweep of the valley below. He saw the winter-hard furrows of the ploughlands and the knots of sheep huddling along the hedgerows for shelter. A single tractor rattled its way across the hill, a solitary black and white dog padding in its wake.

Myrtle Cottage looked larger in the sunlight, nestling against a bank of dead brambles that coated the hillside like the barbed wire tangles in the trenches of Christmas 1914, silver and deadly. Maxwell strode down, glad of his scarf and gloves, his breath snaking out and wreathing behind him as the wind took it.

It was only when he reached the cottage’s rusting gate that he realized he was not alone.

‘Hello,’ a voice called. Standing in the lee of the cottage was a man, perhaps thirty, perhaps not, with a sleeveless sheepskin jacket and a scruffy flat cap. His dark face was hidden in the shadows and he was smoking a roll-up between pinched lips.

‘Morning,’ Maxwell switched to cheery mode.

‘What do you want?’

‘Peter Maxwell,’ the Head of Sixth Form was through the gate and on the broken bricks of the path. ‘
Littlehampton Mercury
. Is this Elizabeth Pride’s house?’

‘Was,’ the man said. He was still leaning on the cold brickwork, like Shane when the Ryker boys came threatening Van Heflin.

‘Yes, terrible, isn’t it? Mr … er … ?’

Now the man straightened. ‘Whaddya want to know my name for? Your bloody paper?’

‘Just doing a piece on the murder,’ Maxwell told him. ‘Did you know the old girl?’

‘I might of.’

Maxwell knew kids like this. Chips on their shoulders Harry Ramsden’s would be proud of. He flipped out his wallet, watching the man’s reaction and reminded himself of Sir Robert Walpole’s wisdom – ‘every man has his price.’

A crisp tenner stood stark in his fist. ‘How well?’

‘Well enough,’ and the man had snatched it.

‘Shall we go inside?’

‘No.’ The answer was sharp, sudden, emphatic.

‘All right,’ Maxwell smiled and rested himself on the low wall that circled the garden, ‘but I’ll need a bit more than “well enough” for a tenner.’

‘Like?’

‘Like your name for a start.’

‘You’ll only use it.’

‘No, no,’ Maxwell assured him. ‘It’s the paper’s policy not to print anything which is unattributable. It’s also the paper’s policy not to print names if we’re asked not to.’

‘Cruikshank,’ growled the man after some hesitation. ‘I live yonder.’

‘Yonder?’ Maxwell wondered if he’d stumbled into a time-warp, if the old continuum had come round and smacked him in the face.

‘Who’s this, Joe?’ another voice made both men turn.

‘Some reporter bloke,’ Joe said, dragging on the stub.

‘What’s he want?’ The newcomer was a broader version of the first, a shapeless willy cap pulled down over his ears.

‘Information about Elizabeth Pride,’ Maxwell told him.

‘Bitch, she were,’ the newcomer snarled, squatting on the dead woman’s wall along from Maxwell, shading his eyes from the watery sun.

‘Indeed, Mr … er …’

‘Cruikshank.’ He grinned a gappy smile. ‘Same as him.’

‘I thought I detected a likeness,’ Maxwell said.

‘I’m not surprised she’s dead.’

‘Really?’ Maxwell raised an eyebrow. ‘Why’s that?’

‘Had it coming, didn’t she?’ Joe said, throwing his fag into the weeds.

‘Killed our dog,’ muttered the other one.

‘Killed? Really?’

‘You’re like a fuckin’ stuck record, mate.’

‘Easy on, Ben,’ Joe said. ‘Bloke’s only doing his job.’

‘Have the police talked to you yet?’ Maxwell asked.

‘The police don’t talk to us, mate. And we don’t talk to them.’

‘See, we’re travelling people,’ Joe volunteered. ‘Romanies. Rubbish, we are. Vermin. We steal and vandalize and rape, don’t we, Ben?’

Ben sniggered. ‘Every chance we can get,’ he said. ‘Look, we don’t steal horses and sell pegs and lucky lavender any more and we ain’t got one of them fancy sod-off gyppo vans neither, so why don’t you stick your poncy nose into somebody else’s business?’

‘If you’re hanging around Elizabeth Pride’s house,’ Maxwell said, ‘I think you are my business.’

‘Do you?’ Ben had shambled to his feet.

‘My brother told you.’ Joe was closing along the path. ‘The old cow killed our dog.’

‘Why?’ Maxwell asked.

Both brothers grunted. ‘Why not?’ Joe asked.

‘Because she fuckin’ could,’ Ben growled.

‘What we don’t know is how,’ Joe went on. ‘One morning it was right as rain. Next day she looked at it. Just bloody looked, mind. Nothing else. Dropped dead right in front of us.’

‘So you killed her?’ Maxwell was chancing his arm.

‘That’s right, mate,’ Ben said softly. ‘With this.’ Suddenly there was a knife in his hand, glinting in the sunlight. Maxwell hadn’t moved. ‘Now, why don’t you fuck off?’

‘While you still can,’ Joe underscored the situation for his brother.

For a moment Maxwell hesitated. Either of the brothers could just about pass for his sons. They were leaner, tougher, nastier, more armed. Time enough for valour on some other field.

‘Well, that’s settled then,’ he smiled. ‘I’ll just have a look round.’

‘No you won’t, mate.’ It was Joe who blocked his path.

‘You don’t wanna go in there, son,’ Ben assured him.

‘Really? Why not?’

‘Look,’ he pointed to the door. ‘Know what that is?’

‘Garlic.’ Maxwell basked in Sylvia Matthews’ reflected glory. He didn’t know one plant from another, though the smell would have given it away in time.

‘Precisely,’ Ben snarled. ‘Now, you take heed of that, mate. And off you fuck.’

Maxwell smiled. ‘It’s been … an education,’ he said, tipped his hat and retraced his steps up the rise to the Ring.

The dead man lay cold in the North Transept, his hands clasped on his chest, his sword at his side. Somebody, be it Cromwellian soldier or souvenir hunter had taken his legs away. No wonder he was frowning under the rim of the bascinet.

‘Sir John Viney,’ a voice called from behind him. ‘Commanded the left wing at Crecy.’

‘Three leaves azure on a field argent,’ Maxwell said, his voice ringing slightly in the vaults of the church, ‘Viney. The old canting ploy. A pun on the owner’s name.’

‘Ah, a student of heraldry,’ the voice said. ‘I’m impressed.’

So was Maxwell. It had been a long time since he’d translated cross-hatching from a sepulchral brass. The owner of the voice padded into view, a tall, white-haired spectre of a man who wore his tell-tale collar back to front. ‘Would you care to hazard a date?’

Maxwell took in the jupon with its folds and the extent of plate armour. The knight’s likeness glinted dully in the afternoon light and the stained glass threw blues and golds onto the stone canopy on which he lay. ‘Thirteen seventy, thirteen eighty,’ he guessed.

‘Thirteen seventy-two,’ the vicar beamed. ‘Now I really am impressed. Andrew Darblay,’ he extended a sinewy hand.

‘Vicar?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Rector,’ the old man smiled. ‘But who’s counting?’

‘Peter Maxwell.’ Maxwell shook the man’s hand.

‘Just visiting our lovely old church?’ Darblay asked. ‘Or are you early for Evensong?’

‘Either or,’ Maxwell said. ‘You’ve a fine collection of tombs.’

‘The Vineys built this place,’ the rector told him. ‘Sir John’s father endowed it. His great grandson built the Lady Chapel and his great-great-great-grandnephew put in what laughingly passes for central heating. Are you an historian, Mr Maxwell?’

‘Of sorts,’ Maxwell confessed, ‘but I’m actually here on less pleasant matters.’

‘Oh?’

‘The murder of Elizabeth Pride.’

‘Ah.’

‘I understand she shopped here in the village.’

‘May I ask your interest?’ Darblay tried to get the measure of his man. College scarf. Too much hair for his strict Anglican tastes, vaguely resembled a greying hippy.

‘
Littlehampton Mercury
,’’ Maxwell explained on the grounds that if you’re going to lie, be consistent about it. ‘I’m writing a piece.’

‘Oh,’ Darblay smiled wryly. ‘So you’re a paparazzi, are you?’

‘No,’ Maxwell shook his head, smiling too. ‘I am a reporter.’

The old man took him by the arm and led him down the transept, turning briefly to bob before the altar. They turned into the nave. ‘In my less charitable moments I sometimes think that when the Good Book tells of “tax gatherers and others” it refers to journalists. Then my sense of Old Testament history takes over and I know better.’

‘Good to hear it,’ Maxwell smiled.

‘Would you care for a small sherry?’ Darblay asked him.

‘A small sherry would be delightful.’

The Rectory at Wetherton was one of those unpretentious fourteen bedroomed jobbies that really miffed people and had turned the Victorian deferential tenant into the Marxist yobbo of the twentieth century consumed by the politics of envy. Darblay pointed out his magnificent rhododendron bushes, the superiority of his wisteria and showed Maxwell the lake where the herons dipped of a summer’s evening.

38 Columbine would have fitted quite snugly into Darblay’s hall and his study could easily have swamped Leighford High’s gym. Still, Maxwell said nothing, preferring to wallow in his own hyperbole. The old cleric’s sherry was particularly old peculiar to a palette corroded and destroyed by the delicious bite of Southern Comfort, but it hit the spot well enough on a freezing Sunday afternoon.

‘I’m not sure I can be that helpful,’ Darblay stretched before the open fire. ‘Old Mrs Pride wasn’t one of my parishioners in the fullest sense.’

‘She was married in the church?’

‘You’d have to consult the registers. We’re not allowed to keep them any more, alas. They’ve all been consigned to Winchester and, what is worse, placed on microfiche.’

Maxwell tutted. That annoyed him too.

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Darblay went on, rubbing a cadaverous finger around the rim of his glass, ‘but it’s only done for the convenience of the Americans. You’d be amazed how many of them we get in the summer, trying to find their roots.’

‘Hairdressers’ nightmare,’ Maxwell nodded solemnly. ‘You didn’t visit her, I suppose?’

‘Mrs Pride? No, I’m afraid not. Oh, I did make one house call, so to speak. A long time ago, when I first got the parish. Sticks in my mind, though.’

‘Oh?’

‘Don’t you people tape record interviews?’ Darblay asked, ‘Or at least take notes?’

‘No need,’ Maxwell tapped his temple. ‘Photographic memory.’

‘How fascinating!’ Darblay put his glass down and leaned forward. ‘I have a theory …’

‘Er … Mrs Pride?’ Maxwell wanted the man back on track.

‘Oh, yes. Yes. Well, I went up to her house, the one near the Ring. No one answered for what seemed ages. I was just about to go when she appeared. It was odd, really. A sizzling hot day – August 1, I remember – and I didn’t hear a thing. Not a rustle of clothes, not the padding of feet. She was just … there. At my elbow. I confess, Mr Maxwell, I was startled. I was even more startled when we got talking.’

‘Oh, why?’

‘Well, I introduced myself and said I hoped we’d see her at church. Do you know what she did? She spat.’

‘Really?’

‘As God is my witness. Spat, then and there, quite volubly, on the garden path. Then she asked me if I knew what day it was – that’s how I remember it so well. I said “Yes. It’s August 1
^st
.” “Lammas,” she said. “It’s Lammastide.”’