Maxwell’s Reunion (16 page)

Maxwell shrugged. ‘Try me.’

‘You remember I was a boarder?’

Maxwell clicked his fingers. ‘Of course you were. Upper Fourths, wasn’t it?’

‘Lower Fifths. Pater was out in Aden that year. Took Mater with him. So boarding it had to be. We’d scare seven kinds of shit out of ourselves with ghost stories.’

Maxwell nodded. ‘Le Pendu. The hanged boy.’

‘I just wanted to relive it, Max, to stand there in that hall with that bell rope reaching to the canopy and Old Harry above and feel the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.’

‘And did they?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Muir chuckled. ‘Somehow, standing in that place, the years fell away. All the rationalism and cynicism of age just left me. I had to do it, Max, but I wasn’t sorry to leave.’

‘Seven kinds of shit?’ Maxwell asked.

Muir’s laugh was punctuated by the slamming of a door floors below them. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Make that eight kinds.’

‘Nothing personal,’ Maxwell said, looking at the time. ‘I’ve got places to be.’ He was on his feet. ‘Tell me, Stenhouse, this little pre-visit to Halliards, did you tell the police about it?’

‘No,’ said Muir. ‘Should I have?’

Maxwell shrugged. ‘Not for me to say,’ he said.

Muir led him down the stairs to the lounge, where Janet was pouring herself something large from the drinks cabinet.

She beamed. ‘Max, how nice. Andrew has so few friends to play with.’

‘Janet.’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Good to see you.’

‘Absolutely.’ The woman gurgled back the ice-filled drink. ‘Has my bore of a husband offered you anything alcoholic? He’s such an oaf.’

‘No, thanks,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’m afraid I must be going.’

‘Must you?’ Janet Muir’s face was a picture of frozen apathy. ‘How sad. Andrew, what the fuck is this?’ and she held up a cricket bat, worn and old. It had a new piece of tape around the middle.

‘It’s a man thing, Janet,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

She threw it towards him and he caught it expertly, cradling the polished rubber handle in both hands for a moment, for all the world like Mel Gibson swinging into action at Falkirk. ‘Well, please don’t leave it cluttering up my hall, there’s a dear. I can do without your endless schoolboy paraphernalia.’

‘Stenhouse.’ Maxwell shook the man’s hand now that his host had leaned the bat against the wall. ‘We’ll meet again.’

‘How very Vera Lynn,’ Janet said, freshening her glass.

Maxwell stopped at the door. ‘Janet, I’ve been trying ever since the Halliards weekend to place your accent. It’s very slight, but it’s there.’

‘Edinburgh,’ she said tartly, ‘which pisses Andrew off more than a little, doesn’t it, dear? He dresses up like Plum Duff, but I …’ and the accent became noticeably stronger, ‘… am the real McCoy; the crème de la crème.’

Maxwell smiled. ‘I’ll see myself out,’ he told the loving couple. It was time he indulged in a little erotic art. He was a funny age.

10

There is a little shop in St Christopher’s Place called Under Two Flags. Maxwell knew it well, having indulged his little Inner Sanctum attic hobby there for some time. A mini Roman legion marched across the shelf in the window, just below Edward the Black Prince, whose charger munched the grass by his steel-shod hoofs. Models to die for. But not today. Today, Mad Max Maxwell was after other objects of virtue. He’d walked past the Amber Centre and thrown a few coppers to the guy selling the Big Issue, though he had a big issue of his own. The sun that morning was dazzling. It was Balaclava Day, 25 October. At home, he’d have put on the cherry-coloured overalls he’d bought in the Portobello Road all those years ago, in honour of the men of his beloved Light Brigade who had ridden so well into the jaws of death.

‘It’s the Mouth of Hell,’ a pleasant voice said behind him in the shop. He turned away from the marble carving with the gargoyle lips and flaring nostrils.

‘Veronica?’ The woman looked different. He’d first seen her in a shimmering ballgown under the lights of the Graveney’s chandeliers. He’d last seen her in a green catsuit that showed off her well-positioned curves, on the Sunday they’d all gone their separate ways, numb with the shock of George Quentin.

‘Max. This is a surprise.’

Indeed it was. On her own turf, the almost silent Veronica seemed to have a brain. ‘I was looking for Ash,’ he said.

‘Not here, I’m afraid. But, look, I’ll tell you what. I’m going home soon after eleven. I’ll take you back to the flat.’

‘Is he there?’

‘He has a lie-in on Wednesdays, poor love. You know, he works so hard.’ And she rolled her eyes heavenward.

‘I’ll call back, then,’ he said. ‘What? An hour?’

‘Fine. Leave your bag if you like.’

‘Thanks, I will.’

And Maxwell tipped his hat and stepped into the sunshine. Then he succumbed and ducked into Under Two Flags.

She drove them both through the hustle and bustle of London streets, the sun dazzling on vehicles and shopfronts. The Audi was sleek and silver and Maxwell found himself lying back in its sporty interior. Veronica oozed a certain something. She handled the gearstick as if it were a stage prop in a porn film, and it was difficult to see how her skirt could be any shorter.

‘Are you investigating?’ she asked him, her beautiful face a mask behind her shades.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Maxwell said. ‘Have the police been to see Ash?’

‘Yes, on Monday. This is really so tiresome.’

‘I don’t suppose Quent and Cret see it that way.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she purred. ‘That was callous. What must you think of me? The point is, though, Max, we all have lives to get on with.’

He nodded. ‘At the moment.’

‘What?’ Perhaps Veronica wasn’t very bright after all.

‘Two of the old gang are dead, Veronica,’ he said. ‘What if Ash is the third?’

She crunched the gears as they drove south-west, snarling round Marble Arch where the hanging tree of Tyburn once stood. In Maxwell’s imagination, George Quentin hung from the gnarled old bough, swaying in the wind and calling his name. He shook himself free of it.

‘How long have you known Ash?’ he asked her.

‘We’ve been living together for four years,’ she said. ‘I don’t flatter myself I’ve been unique in that time.’

‘Ah, so Ash … ?’

‘Sleeps around?’ She snorted, and the laugh that followed was hollow. ‘He does his best, poor lamb.’

‘I saw Stenhouse – Andrew – Muir yesterday. He showed me the little trinket he’d bought in the shop.’

Veronica smiled. ‘For a moment, I thought that’s what you’d come for. The Rape of the Sabine Women is causing quite a stir at the moment. Most of our business is over the Net, of course. It’s really thriving. Have you visited our website?’

He looked at her. ‘Madam, I wouldn’t know a website from a campsite. How’s Ash bearing up?’

‘Oh, you know Ash,’ she said. ‘Nothing ruffles him, does it? Do you want to know his theory?’

‘He has a theory?’

‘Yes,’ Veronica said, knowingly. ‘They are rather like arse-holes, aren’t they? Everybody’s got one.’

‘Perhaps Ash’s make more sense than most,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’d welcome any ideas about now.’

‘Stenhouse,’ she said.

Maxwell nodded. ‘Ah, yes. I remember Ash’s little outburst. Not very kind of him, I thought.’

‘He’s got a point, you know, Max,’ she said. ‘Muir did organize the whole thing and he had a key to the place.’

‘Isn’t that all just a tad obvious, then?’ Maxwell felt it his duty to point out.

‘The police didn’t seem to think so,’ Veronica said. ‘Oh, this fucking traffic. Come on!’ and she bounced on her horn.

‘Ash put this theory to them?’

‘Of course. They were very keen. Wanted to know all about Muir and that lush of his.’

‘Yes,’ said Maxwell, usually the most chivalrous of men. ‘Not a particularly pleasant woman. How does Ash think Stenhouse worked it?’

‘Somehow, he got Quentin to go to the school. From what we gathered, he was actually killed there. There’d be some story, some pressing reason why he should go there rather than to the hotel. According to the police, Quentin died in the early hours. That gave Muir plenty of time to nip up to Halliards – what is it, ten minutes by car? Less?’

It was plausible so far.

‘Muir met up with Quentin at some prearranged rendezvous – school gates, swimming pool, that stupid place you call the Altar or whatever – and went into the building with him. He was either carrying a club or had it stashed inside waiting, and he bashed in Quentin’s skull with it. Then he put the bell rope round his neck and … bingo.’

‘Not exactly,’ Maxwell concluded.

‘No? Why?’ Veronica suddenly swerved to the right and changed lanes without signalling. Maxwell felt his shoulder click in and out of place, but it may have been the seat-belt.

‘If it was Stenhouse, he couldn’t have acted alone. From what I saw of George Quentin, he must have weighed fifteen stone. Muir is, what, ten, eleven? And dead weights don’t help you. Stenhouse must have had an accomplice.’

‘Janet,’ Veronica said. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me at all.’

‘I got the impression Janet wouldn’t train a fire extinguisher on Stenhouse if he spontaneously combusted. Helping him to kill somebody is way beyond that. Anyway, it doesn’t explain Cret.’

‘All Ash and I know about that is what the papers said.’ She paused. ‘You didn’t do that, did you, Max? Mind you,’ she smiled briefly, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, ‘I find that sort of thing quite sexy.’

Maxwell frowned. ‘Murder?’

‘The sheer animalism of it all,’ she purred. ‘Muscle and sinew. Did you stove in Bingham’s head?’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, Veronica,’ he said. ‘Not guilty. Cret was on his way to see me, certainly, but he never showed up. Somebody else met him first.’

She swung left into an underground carpark and snatched up the handbrake. Unclicking her seat belt, she turned to face him, unzipping her catsuit so that her breasts bounced free. ‘Max,’ she almost growled, ‘before we go up to the flat, we’ve time …’

‘I’m not sure Ash would approve,’ he told her, trying to look anywhere but at her breasts.

‘Ash hasn’t been able to get it up for the last two years,’ she said. ‘He keeps trying with various nubile lovelies, but no joy. Not even Viagra does him any good. Now, I’m not talking about Ash.’ She nuzzled closer to him. ‘I’m talking about you. And I’m talking about me.’

He reached out, tentatively at first, his right hand hovering near her cleavage. Then he took the zip and whipped it upward. She gasped as her breasts disappeared whence they came and looked at him in astonishment. ‘Are you gay?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he told her. ‘I’m an old friend of Ash’s. You’re a beautiful woman, Veronica, but when you’ve hugged a man’s buttocks in the rugger scrum and dragged through some foreign field with him on cross-country runs, well, you owe him more than that. Shall we?’ And he was out of the car, grateful for the tarmac under his feet.

Veronica leaned over and glowered at him through the now-open window. ‘It’s flat six,’ she said. ‘I’ve got places to be.’ And the Audi’s tyres screamed across the carpark, Veronica vanishing in a blaze of brake lights and a puff of exhaust and the righteous indignation of a woman scorned.

‘I’ve worked it all out.’ Asheton handed Maxwell a king-size Southern Comfort. ‘Why it has to be Stenhouse.’

The pornographer’s apartment was furnished with a taste Maxwell never remembered Ash having when they were at Halliards. A gigantic nude posed provocatively over the low fireplace and Maxwell’s bum disappeared into the soft, sensuous leather of the furniture. Looking around him, Maxwell guessed it had probably set Asheton back a sum not far short of the national debt of Angola.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘He had the key to Halliards, which meant he could come and go as he pleased. And the reunion idea came from him.’

‘That’s what Veronica said.’

Asheton looked up at his old oppo. ‘Well, there you are.’

‘Tell me about Veronica.’ Maxwell rolled the exquisite cut glass between his fingers.

‘What’s to tell?’ Asheton shrugged. ‘We’ve been together now for … oh, four years.’

‘Does it seem a day too much?’

Asheton frowned. ‘What are you getting at, Max?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Maxwell told him. ‘At the Graveney, Veronica was … what can I say? Monosyllabic. She giggled in all the right places, but her contribution to discussion over dinner was, if I remember rightly, zip.’

‘So?’ Asheton stretched out his feet on the fur rug before the hearth.

‘So, just now, as she drove me over, she’s clearly a bright cookie.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Asheton nodded. ‘She is that.’

‘What’s she like at accents?’

‘Accents?’ Asheton was lost. ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Max?’

‘Oh, nothing.’ Maxwell let it go.

‘Tell me.’ Asheton got up. ‘Did she offer to suck you off? Or was it something more exotic this time?’

‘Ash …’

The pornographer smiled. ‘It’s not the first time,’ he said. ‘Veronica and I play little games. It relieves the monotony. You’re familiar with
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
?’

Maxwell was.

‘Veronica would leave Liz Taylor standing.’

‘So a few minutes ago, she was trying to “get the guest”?’

‘And give you a chance to “hump the hostess”, yes.’

‘I see.’

‘Look, Max.’ Asheton was facing away from his old friend, staring up at the huge naked girl. ‘The last couple of years haven’t been easy. I’m impotent. I know Veronica has her flings – I don’t begrudge her that. The rest of it is cat and mouse. She flirts. I flirt. At the Graveney, she was going through her dumb brunette routine, for no reason other than it amuses her. In fact, she’s Roedean and Merton, Oxford, Anthropology.’

‘Well,’ said Maxwell, ‘I take my hat off to her.’

Asheton turned to him. ‘You can take off whatever you like,’ he said.

‘But she’s wrong about Stenhouse. You both are.’

Asheton sat down again. ‘Tell me why.’

‘It’s just too obvious, Ash,’ Maxwell explained. ‘Stenhouse arranges the weekend. Stenhouse has the key. Bingo! If I remember aright, Stenhouse was always a pretty shrewd operator. Remember the Great Tuck Shop Scam of ’59?’