Maxwell’s Match (18 page)

The Count, of course, couldn’t count. And there wasn’t that much evidence that he could think. There was a rhythmic richness to His Master’s Voice, though, and die rather than admit it, he had missed the old duffer over the past week. That foul old sow who removed his favourite smells each week was now coming in daily, scaring him witless with that thing she plugged into the wall and roared over the carpets with. Many was the tasty giblet she’d sucked up with that and just when he’d saved them for later.

‘What do we have?’ Maxwell rested his brush, on the top of the paint pot and leaned back, hands behind his head and forage cap peak over his eyes. ‘One William Pardoe, revered Housemaster of the old school, not a million miles, I suggest, from your beloved master in terms of the cut of his jib. But was he loved? Feared? Hated? You know what kids are, Count.’

Metternich lashed his tail, just the once.

‘Private sector, public sector. Eton, Dotheboys Hall, Leighford, they’re all the same. It’s not considered cool to be keen or interested or smart if you’re under nineteen. The junior schools have all that – smelly little buggers with their hands in the air, all shouting “Me, sir, me Miss. Me, me, me.” Standing by you as you listen to them read and sticking their tummies out. At university, they’re keen again. Oh, it’s laced with smack and nights down the boozer, but they’ll do their work on water when it comes to Finals and Seminar-time. And in the middle? What’ve we got? In between are the teenage years,’ he paraphrased the old Val Doonican song that only he could still remember, ‘you’ll remember all of your life. They’re still sticking their tummies out, or at least the girls are, but that’s just to show off their navel jewellery. And that, Count, is why they love you, or hate you, or fear you. Because they’re teenagers. And you don’t always know which.’ He yawned and rubbed his eyes. ‘I haven’t talked to the kids yet. And that’s what I’ve got to do.’

He sipped the Southern Comfort in the dim light. Across the room, the black tapering lances of the 17th prickled against the sky as the horsemen of the Light Brigade waited to ride into legend.

‘If you wanted to end it all, Count, would you leap off a tall building? With your four feet and nine lives, of course, you’d be okay, wouldn’t you? Bill Pardoe didn’t have your advantages, unfortunately. But what was wrong with a bottle of pills? A one-way drive in the car? A razor to the wrists? Why didn’t he walk, like Virginia Woolf, into the water with his pockets weighed with stones? Why was it all so bloody public?’

He took another swig, larger than the first.

‘And then there’s Mr Robinson, the poor marker, the indifferent fencer. Mr Nobody. Captain Nemo. No past,’ he balanced the paintbrush on his index finger and watched it tip one way, then the other. ‘No future. Now here, Count, we have a different kettle of fish, can of worms, whatever culinary metaphor you care to conjure up. Mr Robinson didn’t kill himself and there’s no point pretending he did. Somebody stove in his head and dumped him in the boating lake. Let’s assume for a moment that the same person was responsible for both deaths – that Bill Pardoe was pushed and by the same hand that caved in Tim Robinson’s skull. Why so crafty the first time and so cack the second? Murderer losing his edge? Panicky? Frightened? Both bodies visible, no attempt to hide them. Two very public deaths.’

He emptied the glass of its amber liquid.

‘Bill Pardoe received pretty strong porn through the mail. Mail that was posted in Petersfield. What’ve we got, Count, a thriving porn industry in downtown Petersfield? Beggars belief, doesn’t it? Tim Robinson lived in downtown Petersfield. Is that the link? Something going on between the two?’ He shook his head, going round in circles as he was. ‘But why post this stuff when they saw each other every day? What would be the point? And where is it all now? I saw at least one similar mag on Bill Pardoe’s desk. But the law went over his room like locusts and they didn’t find any more. And then,’ he found himself reaching for the Southern Comfort again, ‘there’s that tape. The blackmail tape or whatever that was. Who left that outside my door? And why me? Was it just a souvenir of Grimond’s? Did somebody get the wrong room?’

He ran his finger round the rim of the glass, sticky now with the residue of the amber nectar and looked up at Metternich, the cat. ‘You know, Count, and I don’t say this lightly, sometimes I think you’re no bloody use at all. No offence.’

11

‘A free afternoon?’ Maxwell was incredulous. You didn’t get those in the state system.

‘Ah,’ Jeremy Tubbs was already three sheets in the wind and it wasn’t even half-past-one. ‘There’s no such thing,’ he burbled, ‘as a free afternoon. I’m on prep duty tonight.’

‘Hmm,’ Maxwell nodded, finishing off his Cheddar ploughman’s. ‘What a bummer.’

Jeremy Tubbs taught Geography, always, as a subject, the poor relation among the Humanities. There was something rather pathetic about him, an air of idiocy, as though he’d always been the butt of everybody’s jokes and was only now becoming aware of the fact. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-five but had the ample girth of a fifty-year-old and his hair was already deserting him. But he’d finished his ploughmans and the glass of water and the wine gum were already making him tipsy.

Peter Maxwell knew he was taking his life in his hands doing this. Tubbs had driven him out to the Swallow’s Nest, the old coaching inn along the Portsmouth Road, refurbished courtesy of the Harvester chain and would have to drive him back. How would three G ‘n’ T’s register on the coloured straws of Mr Plod, waiting in the laybys of the back-doubles to pull over such as he?

‘This chap Robinson,’ Maxwell swirled the Southern Comfort around the glass. ‘What do you make of it all?’

Tubbs scowled at him. Perhaps Maxwell had been misinformed. Perhaps Gaynor Ames had got it wrong. Just how much of Maxwell’s pitiful salary would it take to loosen this man’s tongue?

‘Well,’ the Geographer leaned forward in their corner of the snug and Maxwell was about to find out. ‘There was talk, of course …’

‘Really?’ Maxwell leaned back by the ingle-nook, for all the world as if he’d rather be talking about Byzantine foreign policy.

‘Our Mr Robinson was rather a one for the ladies.’

‘Really?’

‘Does this sort of thing go on in your sort of school?’ Tubbs wanted to know.

‘This sort of thing?’ Maxwell was all innocence in his fishing trip, an ingénue with a mind like a razor.

Tubbs nudged his elbow as if about to launch into an old Monty Python sketch. ‘Wanderings in the dorm. Oh, but you don’t have dorms, do you? Even so, there must be temptation. I mean, the sixth form sirens are only a few years younger than our new recruits.’

‘Robinson was older, surely.’

‘Well, yes, but it doesn’t necessarily follow. Here we are, brains the size of the great outdoors, and shapers of young minds … They’re bound to have crushes, aren’t they? I remember one girl …’

‘You were telling me about Tim Robinson,’ Maxwell had no wish to wander down memory lane with this one.

‘Was I? Oh, yes.’ Tubbs grimaced as a jolt of gin hit his tonsils. ‘Well, it all started with that tart Cassandra James, you know, of Austen House.’

‘Yes, we’ve met,’ Maxwell said.

‘Trollope House, more like. Well, I must admit she’s a cracking bit of crackling, isn’t she? I mean, all professionalism aside and ignoring the
loco parentis
business for a moment, I could imagine getting my leg over her.’ He closed to the Head Sixth Form. ‘They say she goes like a train.’

‘Who says?’

‘They,’ Tubbs shrugged. ‘Everybody.’

‘So, Robinson was getting his end away, was he?’

‘Allegedly,’ Tubbs smirked.

‘What about Bill Pardoe?’

‘Pardoe?’ Tubbs blurted, causing heads in the snug to turn in his direction. ‘Good God, no. If anything, Bill swung the other way.’

‘Boys, you mean?’

‘You know what they say, Max,’ Tubbs sniggered. ‘Choirmasters, Housemasters. Not so long ago, it went with the territory; virtually
de rigeur.
In the fifties, allegedly, it was on people’s CVs.’

‘Allegedly,’ Maxwell smiled.

‘No, I never heard of Bill showing the remote interest in the fair sex.’

‘There wasn’t a Mrs Pardoe, was there?’

‘Not that I knew,’ Tubbs leaned back and shook his head. ‘But I’ve only been at Grimond’s for seven years. My God, what an apprenticeship.’

Maxwell was secretly impressed. A
Geographer
who knew the traditional length of an apprenticeship was a rare phenomenon indeed. ‘So, what’s your evidence for Robinson and Cassandra then,’ he asked.

‘The boat-house.’ Tubbs rattled the ice in his glass. ‘Grimond’s equivalent of Lovers’ Lane. Think about it, Maxwell. Robinson’s a Games master, access to the boat-house keys. Probably took one of those PE mat things they use in the gym to lie down on. The Arbiters won’t like …’ and his voice trailed away.

‘The what?’

‘Look,’ Tubbs was checking his watch, comparing it with the clock over the fireplace. ‘I really ought to be getting back.’

‘I thought you had a free afternoon,’ Maxwell reminded him.

‘No, I’ve just remembered; I’ve a meeting, with that appalling Shaunessy woman at three. Some wretched girl can’t cope with A level Geography. I ask you …’

It did seem unlikely, Maxwell had to agree, but somewhere, somehow, he’d touched something of a raw nerve with Tubbsy and now wasn’t the moment to pursue it.

They ambled out to the great outdoors, Maxwell hoping the fresh air would have something resembling a sobering effect on his driver. Briefly, their feet crunched on the gravel and they bundled into Tubbsy’s battered MG and roared the country lanes, via various verges, to the Grimond’s gates.

‘Mr Tubbs!’ a local journalist called out as the car jolted to a halt by them. ‘Any comments for the Echo?’

‘Yes,’ Tubbs had wound his window down. ‘Why don’t you people get a proper job?’ And his foot hit the floor as the crowd of paparazzi jeered and hooted.

‘Somebody got out of bed the wrong side this morning,’ somebody said.

‘Who was that pissed man?’ another asked, paraphrasing the question eternally put to the Lone Ranger all those years ago.

‘Jeremy Tubbs; fat bastard teaches Geography.’

‘Who was that with him?’

‘Somebody Maxwell,’ the
Echo
man confided ‘Larson told us he was seconded from somewhere else. Not actually on the team.’

‘Worth a few lines, though.’

‘Nah. Rumour has it he works in a comprehensive. It’s the weirdoes who teach at Grimond we’re after.’

DCI Hall looked over the rims of his specs. It was Monday afternoon and the end of the day seemed years away.

‘I thought you’d be shorter,’ he was saying to Peter Maxwell. ‘In fact, let’s not beat about the bush, I thought you’d be Jeremy Tubbs. We’ve been expecting him since the day before yesterday.’

‘Mr Tubbs is a little indisposed.’ Maxwell slid the chair out from under Hall’s desk. ‘He may or may not have a meeting with Miss Shaunessy about now, but I happen to know he’s sleeping it off in the San. The Matron here is, apparently, dab hand with black coffee. You’ve been avoiding me, Henry.’

‘Jacquie,’ Hall threw his pen down on the desk. ‘Could you leave us?’

‘Sir?’ The girl hadn’t expected this. Not Maxwell’s gate-crashing nor Hall’s reaction to it.

‘Now, please.’ Hall didn’t care for the woman’s hesitation.

She stood up, Maxwell smiling at her as she went. ‘I won’t be far away,’ she said. And both of them thought she was talking to them. Maxwell slid a large white envelope across Hall’s desk, littered as it was in Sheffield’s anteroom, with depositions without number.

‘What’s this?’ the DCI asked.

‘Evidence,’ Maxwell said, ‘which may have a bearing on Bill Pardoe’s death.’

Hall flicked through the book’s pages with his biro tip, his face expressionless as always. He looked up at Peter Maxwell. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘Parker, the steward. It was unopened in Pardoe’s post. Arrived the day after he died.’

‘And you opened it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mr Maxwell.’ Hall leaned towards him, putting the pen away and clasping his fingers. ‘I’ve lost count of the times you have taken it upon yourself to trample over police investigations. In the past, I’ve always thought twice about bringing charges against you. Now, I’m inclined to change my mind. This is not my patch and I don’t have any hint of leeway.’

‘You must do as you think fit, Chief Inspector,’ Maxwell said. ‘And if that means playing things by the book, then so be it. But you and Jacquie are woefully short-staffed here.’

Hall sat upright, frowning. ‘Are you offering your services?’ he asked. ‘Only, I’m not sure that the rights of citizens’ arrest extends to carrying out interrogations of witnesses and suspects.’

‘Do you have any?’ Maxwell leaned back, fencing with the man as he had so often before. ‘Suspects, I mean?’

‘I’m looking at one right now,’ Hall told him.

‘Come on, Henry,’ Maxwell laughed. ‘Short staffed you may be, but stupid you ain’t.’

Hall looked at his man. ‘You’re carrying out investigation of your own, aren’t you?’ he asked.

Maxwell shrugged. ‘I’m asking questions, yes. Can’t help myself, I suppose.’

‘Getting any answers?’

‘Some,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘You?’

Hall sighed.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’ll do you a deal. Let’s swap. Remember
Strangers on a Train
? Dear old Robert Walker trying to swap murders with innocent, stupid Farley Granger. Criss Cross. I’ll give you one piece of information in exchange for one of yours. We can get round to swapping murders later.’

‘Which one of us is the innocent stupid one and which of us is mad?’ Hall asked. ‘And anyway, I don’t do deals.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Maxwell growled. ‘That’s why West’s back in the saddle at Selborne and you still here, on your own. What’s all that about if not some sort of deal with the Chief Superintendent?’

‘How the …’ Hall had gone a deathly white, then his colour flooded back. ‘Oh, I know.’

‘No.’ Maxwell shook his head, reading man’s mind. ‘This has nothing to do with Jacquie. I’ve got a little portable telly in my attic room, Chief Inspector. I watch the news. Your Incident Room is at Selborne. Last Tuesday you were interviewed by Meridian; yesterday it was West. That interview, by the way, I watched on my own telly, at home. When did you go home last?’