Maxwell’s Reunion (31 page)

‘The ricochet,’ Jacquie said, and fumbled in her pocket for her phone, stabbing out 999.

‘Cissie.’ Maxwell could see that the man was dead as he crouched next to them both. ‘Cissie, you can’t help him any more.’

‘But I have to,’ she blurted. ‘Can’t you see? He can’t help himself. He never could.’ And she fell on to Maxwell’s chest, crying into his shirt.

At the far end of the corridor a door crashed back. There were shouts, torch beams flashing in all directions. ‘Armed police!’ a voice barked. ‘Put your weapon down and lie on the floor. Face down. Now.’

‘Police,’ Jacquie called back, throwing Alphedge’s gun down with a clatter. ‘DC Carpenter, Leighford CID.’

‘Christ almighty.’ Ben Thomas pushed his way through the flak-jacketed marksmen and stared at her. ‘Alphedge?’

Maxwell looked up at him.

‘I don’t get it, guv.’ DS Vernon was at his boss’s elbow. ‘That note I found …’

‘You found?’ Jacquie turned to him. ‘Where?’

‘Just up there,’ Vernon told her. ‘First landing, under the skirting board.’

Thomas was checking Alphedge for a pulse. There wasn’t one. Jacquie was looking down at him. ‘Who suggested, Sergeant,’ she asked, ‘that you look there?’

‘The DI …’ Vernon stopped in mid-sentence.

Thomas and Maxwell were kneeling together, staring into each other’s eyes. They were both surprised by what happened next. Jacquie Carpenter grabbed Thomas’s collar and yanked him upright. She spun him round to face her. ‘Are you going to DCI Tyler with this or am I?’ she asked. His face said it all.

‘Anybody seen my sergeant?’ Jacquie asked as the marksmen took Cissie away.

‘DS Rackham?’ Vernon shuffled a little by the stairwell. He looked at her. ‘I’m afraid DS Rackham died this evening, DC Carpenter. An accident in his car. I’m sorry.’

Maxwell’s hand flew out to catch Jacquie’s.

‘Somebody switch that bloody lamp off,’ he said.

Captain Soames Gambier Jenyns was placed, smoking his cigar, at the head of C Troop, 13th Light Dragoons, in the diorama on the trestle table in Maxwell’s attic. Like the case of Halliards’ hanged, he was finished.

Maxwell hung the gold-laced forage cap on its hook and padded down the stairs. When he reached the lounge, the doorbell rang, so he kept on walking. Beyond the swirled pattern of the frosted glass was a face he knew, a face he loved. He let her in, kissing her in the lit hallway.

‘How was the funeral?’ he asked her.

‘Oh, you know,’ she said, her head on one side. ‘As well as can be expected. He was all right, was Graham Rackham.’

‘Yeah.’ He hugged her. ‘Come on.’ And he led her up to the lounge.

It was warm and the lamplight was soft as the November evening settled in. Metternich the cat had vibes about this. There was something in the air, a chemistry that he, feline eunuch that he was, couldn’t quite fathom. But he felt, in his own tommish way, a bit of a gooseberry. He looked up at Jacquie, lashed her with his tail as if to say ‘Just remember who really runs this place’, and left, off to the world of the chase and the kill.

‘Cocoa?’ Maxwell asked her.

She smiled. ‘Southern Comfort.’

Maxwell frowned. ‘Wait a minute. That’s the good stuff’ And he poured for them both.

They touched glasses in the firelight. ‘Here’s to them all,’ Maxwell said. ‘To Quent, to Cret, to Ash, to Stenhouse, to the Preacher … and to Alphie. He was really the saddest of us all, wasn’t he?’

She nodded. Then she put her glass down and relieved him of his. ‘No sadness tonight,’ she said, and took his hand, leading him to the stairs.

‘Do this mean,’ he asked her, ‘what I think it do?’

‘It do!’ She smiled at him.

‘You know,’ he said, switching off the lights as he followed her up, their fingers still twined, ‘if this were a novel, what is about to follow would have to be shown, even in this permissive age, as a row of dots. Wouldn’t you say?’

She would ..............