Maxwell’s Flame (9 page)

‘Your wife?’

Maxwell nodded. ‘No, Jenny was taken from me’, he said, ‘by the chance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. With Rachel, it was different. It was a conscious decision. I let her go.’

‘Why?’ Sally asked.

Maxwell chuckled. ‘I’m damned if I know now. Then, when I was twenty-one and my whole life was before me … Well, it all seemed so different. I hadn’t lived alone for twenty years then. Hadn’t sent myself a big, red, indiarubber ball for Christmas. Maybe if I had … Then, I felt trapped. How does the Bard put it? “Cabined, cribbed, confined.” I felt I was being smothered, Sally. And I needed to breathe.’

‘How did she take it?’

‘Badly,’ he remembered, watching John McBride emerge into the sunlight a hundred yards away beyond the sloping lawns. ‘We’d gone for a walk along the river, by the Backs. It was an evening like this, the May Ball – which, Cambridge being Cambridge, is always held in June, of course. I’d paid a bomb for the tickets, hired a dinner jacket – I wasn’t used to a bow-tie then; the damned thing was killing me. Rachel looked lovely. She’d hired a ball gown, powder blue with sparkly bits. We danced. We sang. We drank. Probably not in that order. I hadn’t planned to tell her, to spoil the evening. It was magic. I could see it in her eyes. But along the Backs, just passing King’s, it all came out. My pathetic sermonizing. Cliches about not being right for each other, not working out. She cried. I cried. I offered to take her home … well, back to her digs, I mean. She wouldn’t. The last I saw of her she was standing on that little bridge at King’s, still lovely, still adorable …’ His voice tailed away until Sally gripped his arm again.

‘She sent me a letter,’ Maxwell went on, staring ahead again. ‘It was vitriolic, Sal. In all my fifty-odd years, I’ve still never read anything like it. She said cruel things, untrue things. Hurtful … I couldn’t blame her.’

‘Perhaps you had a lucky escape, Maxie,’ she said softly.

‘Oh, now,’ he smiled, squeezing the hand that held his arm, ‘you’re not going all dewy-eyed on me, are you?’

‘No,’ Sally choked back the tears, ‘no, you old bastard, you don’t deserve it.’

‘I thought you were going home today,’ Maxwell said.

‘Yes,’ Sally sniffed, ‘I thought I was too.’

‘Mr Maxwell.’ The voice made them both look up. It was a uniformed constable neither of them recognized. ‘Mr Warren would like to see you. In the incident room.’

Chief Inspector Warren had been missing for two days. No one at Carnforth had seen him on the Monday. And now it was Tuesday evening, it seemed he’d turned up for the first time.

Maxwell was ushered into the pool of light in the incident room. He noticed what looked like the stub of one of Margot Jenkinson’s Camels in the ashtray. Warren, sitting opposite him and next to John McBride, looked older. Years older.

‘I don’t have long, Mr Maxwell,’ the Chief Inspector said, looking at his watch. ‘John.’

McBride flicked the switch. ‘Interview commenced nineteen eighteen between Chief Inspector Warren and Mr Peter Maxwell; Inspector McBride in attendance.’

‘Mr Maxwell,’ Warren began, ‘you know of course that Mrs King is dead.’

‘Yes.’

‘What was the nature of your relationship with her?’

‘We were … old friends.’

‘Friends?’ Warren checked, letting a pencil stub slide through his fingers.

‘Yes,’ Maxwell said.

‘How old?’ McBride jabbed in.

‘Until this week, I hadn’t seen Mrs King for nearly thirty years.’

‘That’s a long time,’ Warren nodded, narrowing his eyes. ‘Where did you know her?’

‘At Cambridge,’ Maxwell said. ‘I was at Jesus, reading History. She was at Homerton, down the road.’

‘That’s a college of education?’ Warren asked.

‘It was then,’ Maxwell told him. ‘I believe it’s part of the University now, affiliated in some way.’

‘Did you know that Mrs King was going to be here? On this course?’ McBride asked.

‘No. She was Rachel Cameron when I knew her. And in any case, we weren’t sent lists of personnel in advance. It wasn’t until we were having coffee on the first morning that I realized who she was. Tell me, Chief Inspector, how did Rachel … how did Mrs King die?’

Warren flashed a glance at McBride. ‘She was beaten to death,’ he said flatly, with no emotion at all. ‘Just like Liz Striker.’

Maxwell closed his eyes. While he was doing that, Warren looked at his watch again. ‘When did you see Mrs King last?’ he asked.

‘Er … yesterday afternoon. At a session.’

Warren consulted the schedule on the desk in front of him. ‘That was “Managing the Mechanics of GNVQ”?’

‘Was it?’ Maxwell said. ‘I really couldn’t tell you.’

‘You were working with Mrs King?’

‘No. I was with Lydia Farr. Rachel was with Dr Moreton, I believe. We’d been paired off for that particular exercise.’

‘Did you not have dinner with Mrs King?’ McBride asked.

‘No, I’d gone for a sauna. By the time I got back, she’d been and gone, I was led to believe.’

‘What time was this, sir?’ McBride asked.

‘The sauna? Oh, I don’t know, half-six or so. I don’t remember exactly.’

‘What time did you get to the dining-room?’ Warren asked him.

‘Ooh … about seven fifteen, seven twenty.’

‘Anyone else in the sauna?’

‘I don’t think so. Why?’

Stony Warren leaned forward for the first time. ‘Because Mrs King didn’t come into dinner last night, Mr Maxwell. While you were soaking away in the steam or tucking into your prawn cocktail, somebody was caving in the skull of an innocent person.’

Maxwell blinked. ‘But …’

‘Yes?’ Warren said slowly, moving back from his man, giving him space.

‘I was told she’d been in. I asked.’

‘Who did you ask?’ McBride snapped.

‘Margot. Margot Jenkinson.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Warren said, glancing at McBride. ‘Tell me, your … er … colleague, Sally Greenhow. Spends rather a lot of time in your room. And you in hers.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ If Maxwell’s blood pressure had been any guide, his bow-tie should have been whizzing round by now.

‘Do you really think we’d set up an incident room here and not be aware of what’s going on?’ McBride sneered.

‘I think I shall be forced to say something about invasion of privacy shortly.’ Maxwell did his best to keep his temper in check. ‘Cliché though it may be.’

‘Look!’ Warren slapped the palm of his hand down on the desk so that the Camel stub flipped out of the ashtray. ‘Some bastard has demolished the skulls of two women under this fucking roof inside five days. I don’t give a tinker’s fuck about your pissing privacy.’

Warren stood up sharply, staring down at Maxwell. ‘Luckily for you, it’s not my problem any more. As of …’ He checked his watch again, ‘… three minutes ago, I handed jurisdiction of this case to Inspector McBride.’ He walked away, out of the pool of light, and Maxwell heard him cross to the door. ‘Unluckily for you,’ the Chief Inspector said, ‘Inspector McBride feels exactly the same as I do.’

The door slammed. And he was gone.

9

‘So what happens now?’ Sally was sorting her tops.

‘They’ll let us go unless I miss my guess.’ Maxwell was tapping the walls of Sally’s room.

‘Why? Why now of all times?’

‘Because they’ve cocked it up,’ Maxwell told her. ‘Warren had no jurisdiction to keep us here.’

‘He didn’t force us,’ Sally reminded him.

‘He made it pretty clear he’d come down like a ton of bricks on anybody who left. I know. I was that course-leaver,’ Maxwell reminded her. ‘And he must at least count it a likelihood that if he hadn’t done that, Rachel would be alive now.’

‘Max, what are you doing?’ she had to ask.

‘Checking for bugs,’ he told her.

‘Bugs?’ She stood back from her laundry pile. ‘Are you serious?’

‘The fuzz know I’ve been spending time here. They know you’ve visited me in my room. Stands to reason they’re eavesdropping.’ He yelled loudly at the lamp.

‘Oh, come off it.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘You’ve seen too many Cold War movies. For a start it’s illegal and secondly, it costs a bomb. Just because they know we’ve been cohabiting occasionally doesn’t mean they’ve got a transcript of our conversations.’

‘You’re right.’ Maxwell flopped into Sally’s chair.

‘How are you now?’ she asked him. There were times when Sally Greenhow didn’t just look like a little girl, she sounded like one – as a kid might enquire after somebody who’d come off his skateboard.

‘I’m fine,’ he told her, smiling. Sally looked as if she had troubles of her own. Maxwell wouldn’t add his to hers. Anyway, he didn’t know how he was. Rachel Cameron had been a long time ago. Rachel King was only four days old. You can’t mourn somebody you’ve only known for four days. And yet. And yet …

‘Max,’ Sally said suddenly, ‘I’m going tomorrow. I really am. I stayed today because … well, I felt I owed it to you.’

‘That was kind,’ Maxwell said.

‘But tomorrow,’ she pulled herself together, ‘no more Mrs Nice Girl. As our American cousins would say, “I’m outta here.”’

‘As I said,’ Maxwell got up, ‘I think we all will be. Sally …’

‘Hmm?’

He took her hand. ‘When I’ve gone I want you to lock the door.’ She nodded. And for an instant he thought he saw her lip tremble, but it was probably just a trick of the light.

It wasn’t the best of times; it wasn’t the worst of times, but Maxwell couldn’t sleep anyway, so he thought he’d risk the wrath of the law a little further by paying a call on Margot Jenkinson. Her room was number 63, on that stretch of corridor where the doors were painted green. He wasn’t quite sure what colour Margot Jenkinson was painted as she peered round it, but he felt quite sure Laurence Alma-Tadema would have killed for it in one of his Roman canvases, showing the blood and dust of the arena.

‘Yes?’ She tried to focus, no mean feat at nearly midnight when your liver and you are slowly bidding each other a fond farewell.

‘Peter Maxwell, Margot. I’m sorry to inflict myself on you at this hour.’

It was the witching hour, aptly enough. Twenty-four hours since Maxwell had hovered, heart thumping, outside Rachel King’s room. He’d never do that again.

‘What do you want?’ She was a little suspicious.

‘Just a chat,’ he smiled gappily. ‘Are you decent?’

‘The question is, are you?’ she said. ‘Mr Maxwell, two women have died.’

‘Not by my hand,’ Maxwell said. ‘Please call me Max. Everybody does.’

‘Well …’ she dithered. ‘All right, then, just for a while,’ and she let him in.

The smell of gin hit Peter Maxwell like a wall. A pessimist would have said that the bottle of Gordon’s on the dressing-table was half empty. Margot Jenkinson had a sufficiently gin-tinted outlook on life to regard it as half full.

‘Drink?’ she asked him.

‘Why not?’ Maxwell smiled.

‘Oh, do have a seat.’ She whipped her inappropriately named smalls off the chair. ‘I’ve only got gin, I’m afraid. Right out of It.’

‘I often feel like that,’ Maxwell sighed. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Rachel.’

‘It’s dreadful.’ Margot’s hand trembled a little as the bottle hit the glass. ‘Just dreadful.’

‘I must have misheard,’ he said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Last night. I thought you said that Rachel came in to dinner.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Margot frowned, ‘I thought she did. I must confess, Max, my eyes aren’t what they were. I get the wobbles sometimes. I’m at a funny age, I think.’

‘I have been for years,’ Maxwell said.

‘You knew Rachel from way back, I understand.’ She passed him his drink.

‘That’s right.’ He raised the glass to her. ‘From a time before time.’

‘That’s very poetic, Max,’ she smiled. ‘Not at all like my Gerald.’

‘Your Gerald?’

She waggled a gold-ringed finger at him. ‘Other half. Poor dear has a drink problem, I’m afraid. Oesophageal varices the size of submarine cables. But you can’t tell him. No, Gerald was never poetic. Now Michael Wynn is poetic.’

‘Is he?’

‘Well …’ She looked about her, as though the Spanish Inquisition were about to spring, scarlet-coated, from the wardrobe. ‘I shouldn’t say this of course, but he was busy chatting up Tracey yesterday something furious.’

‘Tracey?’

‘The receptionist, you know. Has her make-up done by Dulux.’

‘I’d got Wynn down for a family man,’ Maxwell said, echoing what he remembered Rachel saying.

‘Oh, he probably is. He’s very proud of his children.’

‘Hmm,’ Maxwell nodded.

‘No.’ She sieved the gin through her teeth. ‘I know men. Away from the nest, you’re all inclined to spread your wings.’

‘Maybe,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘But one of us has spread a little too far, wouldn’t you say?’

‘That depends.’ Margot pursed her lips as the gin hit her tonsils.

‘On what?’ he asked.

‘On whether you assume the devil in our midst is a man.’

‘You interest me strangely,’ Maxwell told her.

‘I didn’t assume, Max, I’d interest you any other way.’

The thought police arrived at Room 101 at seven sharp the next morning. Wednesday. Maxwell had no time to savour the fact that he would be missing Sixth Form Assembly, nor to worry what a dog’s breakfast Deirdre Lessing might be going to make of it in his place. The iron fist of the Kent Constabulary hammered on all the guests’ doors at the same time. It was the nearest thing to a dawn raid that Maxwell was likely to experience.

‘Could you assemble in the Whittingham Suite, please, sir?’ a bobby whose face he didn’t know asked him. Another one barged the first aside, waving a piece of paper.

‘Is it peace in our time?’ Maxwell said.

The constable was unmoved by wit and had a job to do. ‘I have a warrant here to search these premises,’ he said.

‘Do I have the right to be present?’ Maxwell asked him.

‘You do,’ the straight-faced copper told him.

‘Then I waive it,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘But I know exactly how much has gone from that courtesy bar,’ and he wagged a finger at the officer as he padded out into the corridor.

‘How exciting!’ Michael Wynn joined him on the next landing. ‘A pyjama party!’

Maxwell couldn’t help chuckling. At least Wynn had had time to get a dressing-gown on, even if it was yellow with black spots. A similarly weird array of night attire met them en route to the Whittingham Suite. Only McBride and his heavies were properly dressed.

‘I apologize, ladies and gentlemen,’ the Inspector had to shout above the hubbub, ‘but as of eight o’clock last evening, I have taken temporary charge of this case pending the arrival of Superintendent Malcolm from Divisional Headquarters in Maidstone. As you will know, my officers are now carrying out routine searches of your rooms under warrant. When they have finished, unless we need to detain any of you, you will be free to go.’

As could have been predicted in a stroppiness of teachers, McBride was bombarded with complaints and cries of ‘Outrageous!’ Only Alan Harper-Bennet seemed happy enough to stand near Sally Greenhow, deep in meaningful conversation while ogling the lace trim of her negligee.

Maxwell was just about to swing into the saddle of his white charger and thunder to her rescue when he was waylaid by Dr Moreton, the over-qualified Head of Science of John Bunyan School, Luton.

‘Funny business, this, Mr Maxwell,’ he said, rummaging in his pockets for his pipe. ‘I don’t know, no sooner do you and I have a chance for a chat, but we’re being sent home. Funny business.’

‘As you say, doctor,’ Maxwell nodded, keeping one eye on Harper-Bennet lest his hands should stray. The other eye was trying to focus on Valerie Marks, whose Oriental silk thingummie was clashing horribly with Sally’s boudoir boutiquerie.

‘Who’s your money on, then?’ Moreton was cramming a particularly repulsive-looking shag into the bowl of his briar.

Maxwell looked him right between the eyes. ‘You, actually,’ he said.

Moreton paused only briefly in his cramming, then smiled slowly and said, ‘Oh, very good.’

‘Think about it,’ Maxwell said. ‘You were here at the Carnforth Centre on the day Liz Striker died. You were here yesterday when Rachel King was murdered.’ Maxwell reached out and squeezed the man’s right arm. ‘Biceps like bidets,’ he commented.

‘I keep myself in trim, yes,’ Moreton agreed, ‘but you’ll have to do better than opportunity. Logically speaking –’

‘You’ll have to give me more time,’ Maxwell interrupted him. ‘And in my experience, murder and logic have very little to do with each other.’

Moreton’s face flashed amber as he lit his pipe. ‘Had a lot of experience, have you – of murder, I mean?’

‘Some,’ Maxwell nodded.

‘Oh.’ Moreton appeared a little crestfallen, but a triumphant look spread across his face in an instant. ‘Well, I hate to disappoint you.’

‘Oh?’ Maxwell raised an eyebrow. ‘Now don’t tell me you’re going to deny you did it? Aw, shucks! Looks like I’ll have to pin it on somebody else.’

‘I had the opportunity to kill Rachel King, yes, as indeed did you, Mr Maxwell. But I couldn’t have killed Liz Striker.’

‘Really? Why so?’

‘Because I wasn’t here.’

‘But Sally … I was led to believe the Luton lot arrived on the Thursday.’

‘The others, yes. But I didn’t arrive until Friday morning, shortly before you. You see, I had been on interview the day before.’

‘I see. Did you get it?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The job,’ Maxwell had to explain. ‘Did you get the job?’

‘No.’ Moreton blew smoke in the direction of Gregory Trant. ‘No, it wasn’t for me. I pulled out.’

‘Ah,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Some schools do that to you. Look good on paper, but when you get there –’

‘Oh, my dear boy, this wasn’t a school.’

‘Oh?’

‘No, it was rather a plum number with the World Health Organization. I’m a biologist, you see.’

‘Oh, bad luck,’ Maxwell frowned.

Suddenly both men were aware of a presence at their shoulders. Or to be precise, the shoulders of Dr Moreton. Maxwell had never seen McBride look so serious, not even when he had announced the discovery of Rachel King’s body.

‘Dr Moreton,’ the Inspector said, ‘might I have a word?’

And no sooner was the pipe out of the Head of Science’s mouth than he had disappeared into the throng of the pyjama party and beyond, through the door into the Trevelyan Suite marked ‘No Admittance’.

All in all, the searching constabulary had left Maxwell’s room in reasonable nick. As he showered, shaved, dressed for the road, he couldn’t help wondering why Andrew Moreton should have been fingered. Maxwell had deliberately hung back in the Whittingham Suite until the searches appeared to have finished. Indeed, until McBride reappeared through that deadly door from whence Moreton had not returned. No one else was taken up by the thief takers. So why Moreton? Had they found something in his room? Or was the foulness of his tobacco in itself a civil offence? Maxwell would give his eye teeth to know. But of course, these things only happened in fiction, didn’t they? The private investigator had a buddy on the force or a nephew who was running the case and so all kinds of classified information were passed to the hero. How bloody unlikely. McBride might as well take to the Carnforth roof and shout with a loudhailer so that everybody knew. What a bugger!

‘I’m not sorry to see the last of that place,’ Sally Greenhow said, adjusting her driving mirror as she pushed the accelerator to the floor. ‘I suppose we’d better get back to school, Max. Tell Diamond.’

‘You tell him what you like,’ Maxwell said, only now remembering to put on his seat belt. ‘I’ve still got two and a half days off.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t leave it there, Sal.’ He shook his head. ‘Two women dead. One of them … a friend.’

‘But the police have got somebody,’ she protested, craning to see if the road was clear. ‘Moreton.’

She waved and grinned sweetly at the paparazzi mouthing questions at her.

Maxwell wound the window down and said, ‘I am not now, nor have I ever been a Communist,’ and he wound the window up again.

‘I wish you wouldn’t talk to the press,’ she scolded him.

‘Do you know how many people were arrested on suspicion in the Ripper case?’ Maxwell asked her.

‘I’m only an honorary historian, Max,’ Sally reminded him. ‘I’m Special Needs, remember?’

‘Learning Support,’ he corrected her. ‘Over two hundred,’ the real historian went on. ‘And they let ’em go again.’

‘That was a long time ago, Max/Sally said.

‘Ah, but it’s the principle, Sally,’ he said. ‘All right, so we can assume the rozzers found something incriminating in Moreton’s room. But he couldn’t have killed Liz Striker. He was on interview that day.’

‘What?’ Sally frowned. ‘But I was told …’

‘What?’ Maxwell cross-examined her.

‘I was told he was there. With the others in the minibus.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Alan Harper-Bennet … Oh, Christ!’

‘Sally?’ Maxwell turned as far as the seat belt would allow. The tall kid had gone a funny colour. ‘Sally, what’s the matter?’

‘Max …’ She was shaking, her knuckles white on the wheel. ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you. Something I shouldn’t have done … Oh, God!’