Maxwell’s Reunion (18 page)

She knew from Maxwell’s phone calls that he’d gone first to see Richard Alphedge, and that was on Tuesday. She had the addresses of them all, all six of the Seven who had gone to the Halliards weekend. She put the information to good use now.

‘I’m afraid poor old Richard isn’t up to interviews today,’ Cissie Alphedge told her, in the kitchen of the Lutyens house, passing the cup of coffee.

Jacquie was patience itself. ‘Mrs Alphedge, I’m not from a fan club, I am a police officer.’

‘I know, my dear, but even so … Can’t I help?’

Jacquie looked at her. It’s odd to come face to face with a face you’ve seen so often in your own living room. She was a murderess in
Morse
, Jacquie remembered, a mindless old bag lady David Jason felt sorry for in
Frost
, the vicar’s wife in
Midsomer Murders
. Cissie probably knew more about police procedure than Jacquie did. ‘Peter Maxwell,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to find him.’

‘Max?’ Cissie paused in mid-sip. ‘Why? What’s happened?’

Jacquie’s cool grey eyes faltered for the first time. ‘Nothing, I hope. He hasn’t checked in.’

‘Checked in?’

‘Been in touch. He was in a London hotel … well, bed and breakfast, really, on Tuesday night.’

‘He was here on … let me see … Tuesday? Yes, Tuesday morning.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Jacquie said. ‘Where was he going then?’

‘To the Muirs, I think. Yes, he was. He’s a good man, your Mad Max; takes things on himself.’

Jacquie smiled. ‘He has that tendency.’

‘How long have you known him?’ Cissie asked.

‘Max? Nearly six years.’

‘And he still hasn’t made a decent woman of you.’ Cissie tapped the girl’s ring finger.

Jacquie laughed. ‘I thought I was pretty decent already.’

‘Jacquie …’ Cissie didn’t know how to begin. ‘Look, we don’t know each other very well, but … oh, this sounds just awful. It … it couldn’t be Max, could it? The murders, I mean?’

Jacquie’s face said it all. She looked Cissie squarely in the face. ‘No, it couldn’t. What about Richard?’

Cissie’s handsome face folded into a smile. ‘Touché, my dear.’ She laughed. ‘And again, an emphatic “no”. Richard is a darling, but he’s not the strongest of men. This whole thing has rattled him. I’ve lost track of the medication he’s on at the moment. And even when you catch the killer, I’m not sure he’ll ever be quite the same again. Are you making any progress?’

Jacquie sighed. ‘It’s a complex case,’ she said. ‘There are three forces working on it now.’

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’ Cissie asked.

Jacquie looked at her. Perhaps the old girl wasn’t quite as clued up as she thought. ‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘Three times the input, brainpower and shoe leather, three times the risk of mistakes. That, as Max would say, is the way the cookie crumbles.’

‘Yes, I see. Are you able to tell me anything?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid, Cissie. Goes with the territory – you know.’

‘Yes, of course. You know, it’s funny, I’ve done countless telly involving cops and robbers. Murders by the score. But the real thing is different, isn’t it? Quite horrible, in fact.’

‘Nobody wins,’ Jacquie told her. ‘That’s the really depressing part. Nobody’s life gets back to normal. It’s not only your husband who won’t be the same again. What time did Max leave?’

‘Ooh, let me see. It must have been shortly after lunch. I’d been shopping and Max had a bite with us and then left soon afterwards. I’d have driven him to the station, but I’d already left Richard alone for long enough that day. He’d have had the ab-dabs if I’d slipped out again.’

Jacquie finished her coffee. Then she saw the shotgun propped by the fireplace. ‘You do have a licence for that, Cissie?’

‘Oh, it’s a replica, my dear. Richard used it in
The Eagle Has Landed
. It wouldn’t do any good, of course, if push came to shove, but it comforts him.’

Jacquie got up and walked to the hallway. ‘He’s taking it badly, then?’ she asked.

Cissie glanced up the stairs and led her to the door. Under the arch of the veranda she held her arm. ‘He cries,’ she said, ‘in the small hours. You know the time, my dear, that terrible time between three and four …’

Jacquie nodded. ‘The dead of night.’

‘Exactly. The time when the teeniest problems seem huge. He’s as scared for me as he is for himself. We’ve talked to our GP, of course. The man’s useless. Wall-to-wall Valium isn’t the answer. Catching the killer is.’

Jacquie smiled. ‘I’m not sure your GP’s the right man for that job,’ she said. ‘Let us have a go.’

‘Us the police? Or us, you and Maxwell?’ Cissie asked.

Jacquie nodded, her face solemn now. ‘Perhaps a bit of both.’

It was late afternoon by the time Jacquie Carpenter got to Haslemere. Peter Maxwell could have told her that the town was mentioned in the Domesday Book and between 1582 and 1832 sent two members to Parliament. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, had died at Adworth House beyond the town’s fringes. Jacquie knew none of this. All she knew, as she crawled through the sluggish traffic in the High Street, was that Peter Maxwell had vanished.

‘Drinkie?’ It was an offer that Janet Muir made several times a day, if not to others, then at least to herself, via those scampering little demons in her brain. She looked rather a fright in her housecoat and turban.

‘It’s a bit early for me,’ Jacquie said, taking the proffered armchair.

‘Nonsense, my dear,’ Janet slurred. ‘There’s no such thing as too early. We’ve already talked to the police, you know.’ She was creating a very large gin and tonic in the open-plan kitchen. ‘I assume you are here in a professional capacity?’

Jacquie nodded. ‘Always. I’m looking for Peter Maxwell.’

‘Ah, yes. Your better half – or I expect he sees it that way.’

‘Not exactly.’ Jacquie found it difficult to keep her cool in this woman’s presence. What she really wanted to do was to tear her eyes out. ‘I understand he was here.’

‘Yes, he was.’

‘When?’

‘Oh, my dear.’ Janet winced as the juice of the juniper hit her tonsils. ‘Now you’ve asked me. One day is very like another, really, isn’t it?’

‘It is quite important,’ Jacquie insisted.

‘What?’ Janet, slurred as she was, could pick up another woman’s angst at the drop of an olive. ‘Afraid he’s run off with someone? He does have a certain twinkle, I suppose.’ She became wistful. ‘If you like that sort of thing.’

‘Could it have been Tuesday?’ Jacquie persisted.

‘It could have been Mardi bloody Gras.’ Janet rinsed her tonsils again. ‘No doubt Andrew would know.’

‘Is he here?’

‘Fuck knows. I heard him go out earlier. We lead very separate lives, he and I. He has his articles and what he still nostalgically calls Fleet Street; I have CHOOH. If I’m not stinking by lunch-time, I feel somehow unfulfilled.’

‘So you can’t tell me when Maxwell was here or when he left?’

‘I do remember the bat.’ Janet Muir was frowning, pointing at Jacquie with a long-nailed finger jutting out from the glass.

‘The bat?’

‘Maxwell was just leaving and I fell over it. Andrew had left the bloody thing lying in the hall. If I weren’t so rational, I might be tempted to think he was trying to do me in.’

‘Are you talking about a cricket bat?’

‘Part of Andrew’s obsession with yesteryear.’ Janet leaned towards her. ‘He’s made such a dog’s bollocks of his adult life, all he’s got is memories.’

‘Could I … see the bat?’ Jacquie asked.

‘See it?’ Janet frowned. ‘What the fuck for?’

‘Humour me,’ was the policewoman’s answer.

‘I haven’t the first idea where it is. I remember telling Andrew to move it.’

‘It might be evidence,’ Jacquie said.

‘Evidence?’ Janet hiccoughed. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Mrs Muir … Janet … I shouldn’t be telling you this, but the pathologists have found fibres in the hair of both dead men – Quentin and Bingham. Those fibres are wood and they come from the willow tree.’

There was a pause while Janet Muir stood swaying. ‘So?’

‘So, cricket bats are made from willow.’

Jacquie could see realization dawn on the woman’s face. Her reaction now could go either way. It would either be loyalty or …

‘The utter bastard!’ Janet spat the words and marched past Jacquie, her heels clacking on the polished parquet floor. She wobbled as she tried to round a tight bend in the hall, then there was a crash, followed by another. ‘Shit!’ Janet Muir was wrestling, as any woman must at various times in her life, with the contents of her understairs cupboard. Jacquie heard a door slam and a staccato thud as Janet took to the stairs.

‘Up here!’ she barked at Jacquie, and the policewoman instinctively obeyed, following the furious Janet up the staircase, first to one floor, then to the next. Mrs Muir kicked open a bedroom door and stood there, looking around in contempt. Then she crossed to a louvred wardrobe and wrenched open the door. She rifled through shirts hanging there, throwing trousers and shoes across the room.

‘Mrs Muir,’ Jacquie shouted above the row, but the woman wasn’t listening to the voice of reason. She spun round, an ancient cricket bat in her hand, new tape wound around its centre.

‘Here!’ she snarled. ‘The murder weapon.’

‘It seems to have been damaged,’ Jacquie noted calmly.

‘Doesn’t it?’ hissed Janet. ‘Let’s see what’s underneath. Splintered wood? Blood? Brains?’

But Jacquie stopped her, easing the bat from her grasp. ‘We have people,’ she said softly, ‘who will do that professionally. Can I take it away with me?’

Janet’s eyes were still flashing wildly and she was gnawing her lip. Then she took a deep breath and sat down on her husband’s bed. ‘He always hated Quentin, you know.’

Jacquie sat down alongside her. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes. You see, Andrew is a competitor, one who likes to win. That’s why he hates me. He never beats me, you see, not at anything. Quentin was the sporty one, captain of jolly old games and all that crap. I’ve lost count of the nights I’ve fallen asleep listening to Andrew’s pathetic venom.’

‘So you helped him?’ Jacquie asked.

‘What?’ Janet leaned back to get the younger woman into focus. ‘Are you mad?’

‘What sort of car do you drive, Janet?’

‘Car? A Peugeot. Why?’

‘What colour is it?’

Janet rose unsteadily. ‘What the fuck is this? Twenty bloody questions?’

‘As many as I need to ask.’ Jacquie’s voice was firm.

‘Green. Dark green. They used to call it bottle, I believe, but when applied to cars, I understand they call it racing.’

‘Is he a strong man, your husband?’

‘What are you talking about now?’

‘Janet.’ Jacquie stood up facing the woman. ‘Are you seriously telling me you think your husband killed Quentin and Bingham?’

‘You told me about the bat.’

‘That’s only a potential weapon,’ Jacquie said. ‘And we don’t yet know if it’s the one. I’m talking about motive. Did Andrew say he wanted revenge, wanted to call this reunion to get it?’

‘I don’t remember,’ Janet slurred.

‘Janet. This is vital.’

‘Look.’ Janet Muir stepped away from Jacquie, breaking free of her, standing on her own with her hands in the air, trying to hear through the clamouring voices in her head. ‘My husband is a bitter, vindictive man. He had a job in Fleet Street which he blew because he wasn’t up to it. He could have had the
Mail
, but he didn’t have the bottle. Time after time, the glittering prizes went somewhere else. And what does he do now? Turns out trash for small-time magazines at a thousand quid a throw. Yes, he hated George Quentin; Quentin who always outran him, outplayed him, out-teamed him. George Quentin, who could buy Andrew twenty times over.’

‘And you helped him?’

Janet swivelled round, staring at the girl.. ‘You keep saying that. Why should I have helped him?’

‘It took two people,’ Jacquie said, ‘to hoist Quentin’s body on to that bell rope at Halliards. I’ve danced with your husband, Janet. Arnie Schwarzenegger he ain’t. I doubt he could have managed that alone.’

‘You’re right,’ Janet murmured. ‘That failure couldn’t do anything by himself. Look, do me a favour, will you? Just let me be there when you arrest him. It would make my day. What am I talking about? It would make my bloody year!’

She checked his home number for the umpteenth time as she drove north-east to join the artery of madness that is the M25. Her heart thumped as it always did when she heard his voice.

‘You’ve reached Peter Maxwell. I’m probably buried alive in essay-marking and lesson preparation. There again, I could be down the pub. Leave any message after the Blair and the cat’ll get back to you.’

Jacquie would have settled for that – Metternich’s rasping purr over the wires, to reassure her that something was normal in the world.

‘Max, it’s me. I’ve probably used up all your tape by now, judging by the bleeps, but for God’s sake, get back if you can. I’m on the mobile.’

His mobile was as dead as a doornail. ‘The Vodafone subscriber you are calling is not answering at the moment. Please try again later,’ an electronic voice told her. Why was it, in this age of instant communication, you couldn’t get hold of the one person you wanted to reach?

The rain set in as she reached the M4 interchange and turned due east, a steady rhythm hammering on the roof of her little car, the wipers humming like bees’ wings. So Richard Alphedge was falling apart with fear. That she’d seen before. And Cissie was doing her best to protect, to stay loyal. But what price loyalty in the Muir household? Janet seemed convinced that Stenhouse had done it and Jacquie had the possible murder weapon on the seat behind her to prove it. She’d waited as long as she dared at the Haslemere town house, but there was no sign of Andrew Muir and she couldn’t wait any longer. Who knew where Max was, what he was going through? And where was Muir? Would they find a neat pile of clothes on a shingle beach somewhere? Perhaps at Leighford? And would he become the next Lord Lucan, with a row of question marks where a murderer should be?

She rang the bell at the door of Flat 6 and a tall, sultry girl answered it in a long, white towelling robe.