Maxwell's Island (4 page)

‘It's Millie laughing. She has a rather robust sense of humour. Nolan is entertaining her, as only he can.'

‘Farting or card tricks?' His son was an adept at either.

‘A bit of both. Anyway, come upstairs and spread the load.'

So, hand in hand, like Hansel and Gretel approaching the gingerbread house, they crept up the stairs.

Maxwell's impression of that morning had not been wrong. That Mrs Troubridge and Millie Muswell were related was beyond all doubt. But whilst Mrs Troubridge looked rather like a small rodent who had just come through a bad winter, food-wise, Millie looked like a capybara which had had a darned good season foraging on the pampas. She wasn't fat; she was just huge, with hands like plates and thighs like wardrobes. Nolan was leaning on one of them now, and had ample room to do his favourite card trick of Find the Lady. He was getting very good at it, Maxwell was glad to see. With the kind of reference he would be getting from Mrs Whatmough, he would probably need the money.

Maxwell advanced into the room, good public schoolboy that he was, with hand outstretched. ‘Millie. May I call you Millie?' She cuffed him playfully in assent and nearly dislodged a rib. ‘So nice to get to meet you properly. Mrs Troubridge had never mentioned you.'

‘She didn't know about me until recently,' Millie rumbled. ‘I started tracing our family tree and I'm afraid I was very lazy and started with the easy bit. Troubridge is such an unusual name.'

‘Indeed,' Maxwell agreed. That wasn't the only
thing unusual about Troubridge, but it would be unneighbourly to say so.

‘So I went on to Genes Reunited, Ancestry, that kind of thing. And I found that Araminta was doing the same. Two heads are definitely better than one when tracing family.'

Mrs Troubridge leant over and hissed in a stage whisper, ‘Mr Maxwell doesn't really know much about computers, dear.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry,' Millie said, patting his hand as though tenderising a steak. ‘Do say if you don't follow. I do love my computer.' Unbidden into the Maxwell heads came a picture of Millie holding a laptop and making it look like a pocket calculator. Jacquie knew from their stiffened shoulders and averted eyes that they didn't dare look at each other. Three minds with but a single thought. ‘Anyway, I googled the name and away I went. I found Araminta first, and then she put me on to Jessica here.'

‘It's a great shame,' Mrs Troubridge added, ‘that Araminta and I are where Millie's trail runs out as far as this branch of the family goes. Mr Troubridge was an only child, of course, as I may have mentioned. His father and my father were brothers. Although they had several sisters, only two had children and of course they weren't called Troubridge on their marriage.'

‘Unlike you,' Maxwell smiled at her.

‘We can't all be lucky enough to find our Mr
Troubridge within the confines of the family,' Mrs Troubridge nodded complacently in his direction.

It was just as well, Maxwell thought. Otherwise by now everyone would be hopping around on a single webbed foot. What he said was, ‘No, indeed.'

Mrs Troubridge looked at him as though she had momentarily been able to read his mind. ‘My father's sister Margaret is Millie's grandmother, so I suppose that we are second cousins, rather than cousins. Even so, I think if you look closely you might spot a slight family resemblance.' The two women turned their faces to Maxwell and tilted them to the light. ‘Just across the eyes, perhaps.'

Jacquie thought it was time she came to the rescue. ‘It's very striking in the right light, I must say,' she told them. Maxwell was trying to land back on Earth, having got a little giddy orbiting Planet Troubridge. ‘Have you found many other relatives, Millie?'

‘It's been fascinating,' she boomed. ‘Sad as well, of course, because one does find that some people have died before I got to them.' She managed to make it sound like mismanagement on their part. ‘Then, of course, there is the distressing habit of divorce these days.' She dropped her voice so as not to alarm Nolan. ‘Co-habiting.' The next words weren't even spoken, just mouthed. ‘Civil partnerships. Illegitimacy.' Her voice came back to its normal million-decibel level. ‘It makes my job very difficult, but I am very determined. I estimate that I am almost halfway there.'

‘Well done,' Maxwell said. The historian in him had to applaud her efforts. ‘How far back have you managed to get?'

Millie's eyes lit up. She took a deep breath and embarked on a whistle-stop tour through the Troubridge line, via the Muswells and sundry side lines. Maxwell was impressed. She had got back as far as compulsory registration in the 1830s without missing a beat. Before that had been more tricky, but by going to parish records and the lucky find of some family papers, she had made the first few steps into the eighteenth century. ‘We are lucky, really,' she said. ‘As a family, we have always been rather drawn to unusual names. Araminta, for example, isn't something you find every day. And my name, of course.'

‘Millicent? It is unusual now, I suppose …'

She became coy. ‘No, it's not Millicent.'

‘Er … Mildred?'

‘No – I'll tell you; no one ever guesses. It's Millamant, from Congreve, you know.'

‘How unusual.' There didn't seem much else to say. The Congreve with whom Maxwell was most familiar designed rockets for the Horse Artillery against that boundah Bonaparte.

‘Yes. I must say it wasn't much fun at school. Still, my brother came off rather worse. My parents called him Mirabell, from the same play.'

‘Ooooh.' Jacquie was sympathetic. ‘It's a bit hard to find a shortened form of that, isn't it?'

‘Yes. We all called him David, in the end. Poor soul.'

Mrs Troubridge, Storm Crow to her friends, came galloping into the conversation with news of fresh disasters. ‘Yes. He died recently. An accident at home. Very sad.' She mimed a lifted glass and raised an eyebrow.

Millie wiped away a gathering tear. ‘He is the reason that I started the family search, really,' she said. ‘So much gets lost, when people die. We hadn't been close and I'm afraid I have lost touch with his family altogether. There was a wife – ex, now, I'm afraid. And a child, I believe. I'm tracking them down as we speak.'

‘Well, good luck with that,' Jacquie said, picking up the cups and walking into the kitchen. ‘I'd love to be able to chat a while longer, but we have some packing to do, that sort of thing. I hope you'll excuse us.'

Mrs Troubridge jumped to her feet. ‘Of course, dear. Nolan, do I get a hug?' For some reason, Nolan and the old besom were best friends, except when football met tulip, and he gave her a ferocious squeeze that nearly toppled her over. Millie gave him an affectionate pat on the head and nearly changed its shape for ever.

‘Lovely little chap,' she boomed. ‘Very like you to look at.' She beamed at Jacquie and then down at his curly head. ‘So that's nice, isn't it?' She smiled beatifically all round and shook hands with
Maxwell. ‘It has been so nice to see you all. Jessica has spoken so well of you. I'm glad she has you next door.' She dropped her voice to a yell. ‘She's not getting any younger.'

‘No, indeed,' Maxwell said. ‘Which of us is, after all?' He found it difficult to think of Mrs Troubridge as Jessica. He wouldn't presume to call her by it and she would be horrified if he did so.

Millie looked him up and down. ‘I'm surprised to see you so relatively limber, Mr Maxwell,' she remarked. ‘After what Jessica has been saying. Still, children keep you young, don't they?' And with that, she was gone, momentarily blocking out the light at the top of the stairs. Maxwell and Jacquie held their breath until both women were out of the house and severally trotting and lumbering down the front path. Had Millie fallen and landed on Mrs Troubridge, the consequences didn't bear thinking about.

When his ears stopped ringing, Maxwell turned to Jacquie. ‘We haven't really got to start packing today, have we?' he asked, rather tremulously. If there was one skill that he had never quite managed to master, it was the packing thing.

‘No, no,' she said. ‘That was just to get rid of them. My head was starting to vibrate. Why don't you nip up to the loft and do a bit of painting? What with Mrs Whatmough and Millie, you probably could do with some R&R. I'll send Metternich up to get you when supper is ready.'

‘Do you know, Mrs M,' he said, sketching a kiss towards the top of her head. ‘You are a lovely woman.' He turned towards the stairs and then stopped. ‘Why are you being so nice to me?'

‘You suspicious old so-and-so,' she said. ‘No reason. Except, perhaps, because Henry had a word with me today. He happened to mention how nice it has been over the holidays not to have seen you. No offence; he just meant there haven't been any horrible murders in your vicinity. He also mentioned that there might be a little promotional opportunity at the nick, soon.' She gave a little preen. ‘I might be up for it.'

‘Sergeant Carpenter-Maxwell! Congratulations!'

‘Start practising the “I” word,' she said. ‘
If
there are no more … well … murders.'

He looked truculent. ‘I don't
do
them, you know,' he said. ‘They just happen alongside me.'

‘Well,' she said, as he turned to go. ‘Don't let them in future. Look away. Go deaf. Let someone else find the body.'

He muttered something as he disappeared up the stairs.

‘What was that?' she called.

‘Yes, dear,' he replied, peeping back round the turn in the stairs. But he had his fingers crossed when he said it because you just never know.

Peter Maxwell loved his family dearly, up to and including his cat. But there were times when only
his attic would do, the Inner Sanctum, the Holy of Holies where an unfinished diorama of the Light Brigade sat waiting for orders in the late afternoon sun. Jacquie hardly every climbed this far north in the house and Nolan could only just, now that he was a big boy, be trusted not to play with those particular toys of Daddy's. Only Metternich had unlimited access and he didn't know a Light Dragoon from his left elbow.

Coming under scrutiny that afternoon was Private James Olley of the 4th Lights. The man's horse was shot during the Charge and the man himself had lost the sight in his right eye. The Queen, God bless her, had met him at the Brompton Barracks in March 1855. Maxwell even had a list of his grandchildren somewhere, so eat your heart out, Millie Muswell. Actually, Jim Olley didn't look too chipper at the moment, as Maxwell peered at him through his magnifying lens. White as a sheet with Humbrol undercoat. And
could
Maxwell find the man's sword? It had to be on the floor somewhere and the great modeller settled down to finding it as one of those annoying preliminaries that keep getting in the way of life.

‘Another fine mess you've got me into,' Maxwell said.

Jacquie stood on the edges of the milling crowd that was the Getting To Know You group and wondered if she had ever seen such a level of hysteria reached so quickly before. It seemed to her that one minute she was standing there quietly, holding Nolan in one hand and a large bag of sandwiches, Year Seven for the use of, in the other, and the next she was up to well above her armpits in a screaming horde of children. Bearing in mind that the journey to the ferry would take less than an hour and, once on the Island, the coach would have them at the hotel in less than thirty minutes, Pansy Donaldson seemed to have overcatered. There were enough provisions to feed an army for a week.

She nudged Sylvia, who was standing nearby with a clipboard and a harassed expression. She indicated the bag. ‘Isn't this rather a lot of food?' she asked.

Sylvia smiled at her. ‘You haven't been on a school trip before, have you?'

‘Umm, no.'

‘Within ten minutes of setting off, the boys will be hungry. Then, just when we have fed them and put everything away, the girls will be hungry. The vegan – and there always
is
a vegan – will find that her sandwiches have been eaten by someone else and so all that is left is a ham baguette. She will start to cry. Then, one of the boys will be sick. I'm old enough to remember the words of the song, after all – “Getting to know you, getting to feel free and queasy”.' It wasn't a bad Deborah Kerr, all things considered. ‘Then all of the girls will feel sick … You're looking a bit pale yourself, Jacquie. You just have time to leg it back home, you know.'

Jacquie shook her head. ‘No, no, I'm fine. Anyway, Nole and I are following in the car. Tom Medlicott thought it might be an idea to have a car with us, for emergencies. I volunteered.'

Sylvia patted her shoulder. ‘You're a wise woman, Jacquie.' She chuckled and gave a final triumphant tick to her list as a car screeched up and disgorged a rather dishevelled child. ‘Last one. They're never ready for the early start.' She raised her voice. ‘Right, now, everyone calm down and make a queue next to Mr Maxwell. He will see you on to the coach and tick you off as you get on.' She lowered her voice for Jacquie's benefit. ‘I'm sure he'll start as he means to go on.' Then, louder, ‘Fill the seats from the back and no pushing.' She turned to Jacquie. ‘We'll see you at Southampton, then. Don't rush. We've left plenty of time.'

Jacquie looked at her watch and raised her
eyebrows. ‘We certainly have. We're not on the ferry until eleven.'

‘There's many a slip, believe me,' Sylvia said grimly. ‘Don't worry if you lose sight of us and if we aren't at the ferry on time, don't wait. Just get on and we'll see you at the hotel.'

‘But, surely …' Jacquie couldn't believe that the coach could miss the ferry. They had allowed so much time that they could do the journey three times. Her learning curve was going to be steep and painful in the coming week, Sylvia knew. But it was no point in letting her find out all the pitfalls at once. It was too depressing.

‘Trust me on this. You have all the details?'

‘Yes. I've got my ferry ticket and the hotel address.' She passed over the bag. ‘Don't forget the sandwiches.'

Sylvia lifted the edge of the flap. ‘I don't believe it. Egg!'

‘Max will be happy. He loves egg sandwiches.'

‘All adults like egg sandwiches. All kids hate them. Never mind.'

They both looked over at the coach as the last child got on. There were vague sounds of pushing and shoving from inside and occasionally an anoraked back was pressed against a window. Maxwell was standing on the lower step, waving, though whether in benediction or because he was going down for the last time it was impossible to tell.

‘Well,' Sylvia said, squaring her shoulders. ‘Time
to be off.' The Medlicotts and Guy, Sylvia's husband, were standing off to one side. Pansy Donaldson was pacing the perimeter, alert for slopers-off. Jacquie had met the Medlicotts for the first time at the final staff meeting the night before. Tom was tall, late thirties. She was shorter, slightly younger and rather pretty in a weaselly sort of way. Guy she had known for ages – he and Sylvia were as mismatched in age as Jacquie and Maxwell, but the marriage had been just as successful as theirs. He was a classic toy boy – handsome, fit and, if not necessarily the brightest dumpling in the stew, he loved Sylv and made her happy and so all her friends loved him too.

The Medlicotts she wasn't too sure about. For an Art teacher he had a very good opinion of himself. He was a new broom sweeping not so much clean as unnecessarily. His department would – and could – run with or without him, but he hadn't realised that. He had given them all his mobile number, his email address, his backup email address and his backup-backup email address. He had printed them all out on small cards which he had placed in their pigeonholes in the staffroom, on their desks in their form rooms, in their pockets and under the windscreen wipers of their cars. The small and elegantly designed pieces of pasteboard were now propping up wonky tables throughout the school. It would be nice to say he meant well, but Jacquie was not too sure that was the case. He wanted Maxwell's job, that was obvious – ‘Hi, Tom Medlicott, Head
of Sixth Form.' He wanted Bernard Ryan's job – ‘Hi, Tom Medlicott, Deputy Head.' He wanted James Diamond's job – ‘Hi, Tom Medlicott, Head Teacher.' But most of all, he wanted God's job – ‘Hi, Tom Medlicott, Supreme Being.'

His wife was a hard one to read, woman-policemanly people-watching skills notwithstanding. She wasn't so much aloof as disinterested. She had tapped away at her Blackberry throughout the meeting and Jacquie couldn't help but wonder why she was coming along at all. Her name was Izzy. Of course it was.

With a hiss of brakes, the coach pulled away. Nolan was in a sulk, because he had wanted to go with Daddy and the big children. He sat in his seat in the back of the car, muttering. Jacquie had decided to ignore him. It was a phase, she hoped. Although Maxwell could mutter for England, so perhaps not. Metternich had also ignored her roundly that morning. He could sense packing from a thousand yards and so had been rather curmudgeonly for days. His votive voles had been left not so much for the pleasure of giving as for the pleasure of hearing her scream as morning foot met headless rodent. Even Mrs Troubridge had given her short shrift. She was missing Millie, for some reason, and Metternich was scant recompense. Although, as usual, he would weigh another pound when they got back; Mrs Troubridge couldn't resist his doe-eyed begging and he got through the Whiskas at an alarming rate.

Jacquie fell in behind the coach, but soon overtook it going over The Dam. She didn't think that a journey punctuated by sick-stops would be the best beginning to her holiday. And this
was
her holiday. And she was going to enjoy it.

On the coach things were going well. The egg sandwiches had been broached and a few of them had been eaten. Maxwell and Sylvia were keeping their counsel; when they reappeared around about Chichester, it would be Pansy's pigeon. It never failed to amaze Maxwell that in these days of global communication, a fair proportion of the students at Leighford High had hardly left the county. Mostly, their experience was a taxi to Gatwick, en route for a family holiday in Florida or Lanzarote, depending on parental tastes and pockets. So, as they left Sussex and entered the no-man's-land that was Hampshire, they became quieter, sinking down in their seats and looking out of the windows wide-eyed with wonder.

It was an unfortunate coincidence that the coach driver seemed to be an old Sussex boy too, and they were soon hopelessly lost on an industrial estate just outside Winchester. No one knew quite how this had happened, though Maxwell silently blamed King Cnut's town planning, but Tom Medlicott came up trumps and steered the hapless driver back on to the M3 and suddenly all was well again. Even so, the eleven o'clock ferry was just a
hopeless dream by now, so Maxwell decided to go to Plan B. He stood up and turned round to speak to the horde. Teachers are trained to stand facing backwards on moving vehicles. The lesson comes just after Board-Rubber Throwing and just before Resignation Letter Construction.

‘Now, listen up, troops,' he said. Peter Maxwell rarely shouted. There was seldom the need. There was something about the timbre of his voice that went straight to the eardrum, no matter how much background noise he was battling with. ‘I don't think we are going to catch the ferry we had planned, due to …' He paused. He knew that many descriptions of the driver would fill the silence and indeed they did. ‘That's enough of that,' he admonished, while being secretly impressed by most of them. He made a mental note to particularly watch the little girl about halfway down the coach. She had the face of a Botticelli angel and the vocabulary of a docker. ‘So, if we have time when we get to Southampton, we will hopefully be able to have a look at the excavations of the city wall. It's been partly reburied now, but I'll find it. When we arrive, anyone who wants to come for a quick stroll and do that can come and see me.'

‘Will we get tested on it?'

Maxwell looked around for the source of the stupid question and found that it was, not really to his surprise, the freckly ginger kid sitting more or less under his nose. He leant forward. ‘Pardon?'

The boy removed his finger from his nostril.
‘Are we gunna get tested on it? Y'know. When we get back to school.'

A light went on in Maxwell's head. ‘Probably,' he said. ‘In fact, you might get tested on any single thing that happens this week. From the moment you got on this coach until we give you back to your parents next Friday. So I hope you've all been paying attention. Taking notes. Things of that nature.'

Frantic eye met frantic eye the length and breadth of the bus.

The ginger kid spoke up again. ‘But I en't got no paper.'

‘Oh dear,' smiled Maxwell and sat down, smiling beatifically at the M27 rolling itself up under the coach's wheels. This week could prove to be a lot of fun.

Jacquie and Nolan had got to the ferry on time. In fact, they had got to the ferry so early that they had been offered a place on an earlier one. Jacquie was undecided; if by some remote chance the coach caught the eleven o'clock, they might wonder where she was. On the other hand, Nolan was leaping around like something demented in the back of the car, chanting ‘Isle of Wight, Isle of Wight, Isle of Wight,' as though it was some mythical isle of Avalon, or possibly Atlantis. She opted for the earlier ferry and so was halfway across the Solent before the coach had emerged from the toils of the Winnall Estate.

Once on the ferry, up on deck, she relaxed. There
was a lot going on at work – promotion, office politics – and for once she hadn't shared everything with Maxwell. Henry Hall had been unequivocal. If she got inspector, she would be on notice that if Maxwell so much as passed the door of Leighford nick, let alone went in, and especially if he got involved in a murder investigation, she would be demoted quicker than the proverbial rat could go up a pipe. And he wasn't talking back to sergeant. He was talking traffic warden. She and Henry Hall went back a long way and she knew when he was serious. And this was clearly non-negotiable.

She took a deep breath of sea air, laced with the indefinable smell of trees, grass and autumn that blew over from the Island. This was their holiday. No talking or even thinking shop. It could wait until they got back home. Even Maxwell had never found a body on holiday, look though he might.

She looked down at Nolan, standing beside her at the rail. He was leaning on his folded arms and the wind was ruffling his hair. His eyes were half-closed against the sun off the sea and the salty breeze. He managed to look like all small boys since the dawn of time rolled into one;
puer minimus
Mk I, planning a week of running about and shouting during the day, sleeping like a log all night, on a diet of candy floss, chips and sand. She smiled and stroked his head. She hoped it kept nice for him, although she had a feeling that the weather wouldn't really have much of an effect. A dim memory of making a sandcastle
in driving rain came into her head, followed by regret that she and Maxwell had spent so few of Nolan's days playing with him on the beach.

The boy lifted his face and smiled at her, a grin that stretched from ear to ear. ‘It's going to be really good, isn't it, this holiday?' he asked. But it wasn't a question, it was a statement. He could also smell the damp earth, the sand, the surf, the secret places he would find, all overlaid to his sensitive child's nose with a beguiling whiff of hot dog. His daddy had told him that this was Dinosaur Island and he was already up there with the archaeopteryx. He sighed happily. ‘If only Metternich could be here,' he said. ‘He never goes on holiday.'

‘He's sort of on holiday, though, isn't he?' she said. ‘He's got the house to himself, Mrs Troubridge to feed him and keep him company in the evenings.' Mrs Troubridge, whilst denying it hotly, liked to indulge in the Maxwells' Sky subscription when feeding Metternich. She didn't seem to realise that leaving the box tuned to Diva TV or CBS Reality was a bit of a giveaway and they had never had the heart to tell her. And if a little telly kept her mind off Incidents, then that was only to the good.

Nolan was doubtful. He was sometimes looked after by Mrs Troubridge and he had never found it desperately exciting, but he conceded that perhaps it was different for a cat. ‘S'pose,' he said. He thought for a minute. ‘I s'pose Mrs Troubridge is feeling lonely now that Millie has left.'

‘Miss Muswell,' Jacquie automatically corrected him.

‘Hmmm.' Maxwell and Jacquie had a fairly laissez-faire view of parenting along the lines that Nolan was a human being, just like they were, but smaller. Metternich's view was that Nolan was a human being, just like he was, but marginally bigger. But one thing on which they all were agreed was that only aunties got called auntie, only uncles got called uncle. Other small human beings could be called by their Christian names or any other nickname of their choice – Nolan's best friend almost since birth, chose to go by the name of Plocker, for reasons lost in the mists of time – but all adults were to be addressed formally, unless otherwise requested. But Jacquie had to agree with the ‘hmmm' – Millie Muswell was definitely more a Millie than a Miss.