Maxwell's Summer

  MAXWELL’S SUMMER

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Maxwell's Summer

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  MAXWELL’S SUMMER

  M. J. TROW

  Copyright © 2020 M. J. Trow and Maryanne Coleman.

  ISBN 978-1-913762-59-9

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  www.blkdogpublishing.com

  Other titles by M. J. Trow:

  Maxwell’s History of the World in 366 Lessons

  The Inspector Lestrade Series

  The Peter Maxwell Series

  The Kit Marlowe Mystery Series

  The Britannia Series

  Who Killed Kit Marlowe?: A Contract to Murder in Elizabethan England

  The Children’s Crusade

  The Wigwam Murder

  Weird War Two

  Chapter One

  A

  lthough deep down Peter Maxwell knew that the sun didn’t make a noise, or at least, nothing that could be heard as far away as the back garden of Thirty-Eight, Columbine, Leighford, Sussex, England, Europe (though not so much these days), The World, he still enjoyed the buzz of a hot summer’s afternoon. The air was humming with birdsong, bee thrum and the general sounds that a garden makes when busy growing. The high-pitched giggle of a convolvulus strangling a rose bush was just outside his hearing, but he knew it was there nevertheless, the serial killer of the garden. He pulled his straw hat more firmly over his face, secure in the knowledge that Lord Raglan had worn one just like it in the Crimea, and let himself drift further and further away. Summer, eh? What could be nicer than six weeks of ...

  There was talking. Quiet, but insistent. He knew it couldn’t be coming from over the hedge in Troubridgeville. Mrs Troubridge, whatever her faults and heaven knew they were legion, was not a loud neighbour. She scrabbled a bit sometimes in cupboards and she could be heard then, if you happened to be standing silently listening in the right place on the landing, wine glass to the wall. From time to time there was a muted scream of alarm as she found one of Metternich’s little offerings on the mat. But by and large, not much conversation. About the only people she spoke to much these days were the Maxwell trio and so, by definition, if she could be heard and wasn’t actually in view, it wasn’t her. A little like the tree in the forest, Maxwell mulled.

  He strained his ears. It had stopped. No – there it was again. As conversations went, it sounded very one sided. If the second person was replying, it was in a whisper. Maxwell knew that he was not exactly in the first flush of youth – five seconds in front of a mirror would tell him that in any case – but his hearing was as sharp as any twelve-year-old’s. A teacher without the hearing of a bat couldn’t survive for the million years he had been toiling at the chalkface. So, by definition, the other person was not replying, or not out loud at any rate. Ergo, Maxwell’s finger rose in the air, the voice he could hear belonged to Nolan; the voice he could not hear, to Metternich.

  Detective Inspector Maxwell, known to her husband, in his less formal moments, as the Mem, had worried when Nolan had exploded in a whirl of baby-softness and nappy into Metternich’s world that the great black and white behemoth, scourge of rodentia the length and breadth of Leighford, would not take to the newcomer. She kept her fears to herself regarding him lying on the baby’s face; that had to be an old wives’ tale, surely. But she did worry that he might leave home. And whilst the choice between keeping the baby and keeping the cat should be cut and dried, Maxwell and the Count had been together a long time. It would be like splitting up Laurel and Hardy, Ant and Dec, Burke and Hare; unthinkable.

  And, as always with her darkest nightmares, all had been well. As far as Metternich was concerned, there was no downside. Humans sitting still and quiet for far longer at one time than he had ever known before. The bigger one with the mad hair would hum happily to himself for hours on end; the nearest to a purr he had ever managed. The smaller one with the soft hands would budge up happily to let him lie on the sofa and shed hairs wherever he liked as long as he sniffed the littlest one from time to time and make them all laugh by dabbing, ever so gently, at his cheek with his wet nose and making him jump.

  And then an odd thing had happened in Metternich’s pea-sized yet focussed feline brain; he had fallen in love. He would never admit it, but the baby who grew to a toddler who grew to a companion was almost as important to him now as ... well, voles. And that was saying a lot. But even Nolan could not get away with the schmooze he was presently embarked upon. As Maxwell crept nearer, to where the Cat and his Boy were hunkered down in the current den behind the camellia, he knew his son was on a hiding to nothing.

  ‘So, Count,’ Nolan was saying, running a finger along the cat’s back and making the skin twitch, ‘you’d love it. Someone to take out voling. You could teach him, you know, stuff. All your secrets.’

  The boy waited, his head cocked on one side.

  ‘Don’t be like that, Count,’ he said, reversing the finger and making the fur riffle in little wavelets. ‘I think you’d like it.’

  The great cat rumbled in his throat.

  Nolan laughed and smoothed his whole hand along the animal’s back and patted the fur back into place. ‘I’ll let you think it over,’ he said, a note of conciliation in his voice. ‘But I think in the end, you’ll find a kitten would be an asset. Just think about it ...’

  Metternich closed his eyes. It was hot. The kid was still there, whittering. He was like his father like that; always rabbitting on ... his eyelids flickered. Rabbit. Now there was a topic of conversation ...

  ‘Nole.’

  The boy lay still for a moment. Poo. Dads. How much had he heard? He turned his head and smiled up at his father, a dark shape against the sun.

  ‘Yes, Dads?’

  ‘Kitten?’

  ‘Well ... Plocker’s auntie’s next-door-neighbour’s cat has had some and ...’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’re all colours. They’re ...’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’re all ready ...’

  ‘No. And that’s the third no in a row, Nole. You know the rule.’

  The boy jumped to his feet and the cat rolled over to take up the space he knew he deserved. He had been lying on a bramble for the past half hour and had been too polite to complain. ‘But, Dads ... everyone is having one.’

  Maxwell raised an eyebrow. ‘Everyone? Has anyone called the Guinness Book of Records? That must have been some litter.’

  ‘Well, not everyone, but ...’

  Maxwell lay back down on the sun lounger and pulled his hat back over his eyes. ‘No,’ he muttered. He knew the child was still st
anding there, he could feel the outrage coming off him in waves. He lifted his hat and squinted out. ‘Still there?’ he asked, mildly. ‘Not stomped off anywhere?’

  Nolan had the face of an angel and, as a rule, a temperament to match. But he was also as stubborn as Old Nick and could bear a grudge for England, when he remembered. He could wind most people around his little finger with one look from his toffee-coloured eyes but he didn’t waste all that on his father, a lost cause if ever there was one. He tried one last time. ‘Dads,’ he said, confidentially, dropping to the grass bonelessly and leaning in. He picked a blade of grass and stuck it in his mouth. He had so far never heard of Huck Finn, but he had him off to a tee and there was no such thing as too cute, with a kitten at stake. ‘Dads, Plocker says that if the kittens don’t get homes they’re going to be ...’ he sucked in a breath and exhaled the next words in a horrified whisper, ‘put down!’ He opened his eyes wide.

  Maxwell smiled and patted his son’s cheek. He smiled at him, this boy who had mended his heart, broken when his first family had died in a scream of brakes on a wet road on that day so long ago. He had marvelled at his softness, his beauty on the night he was born and he marvelled still. He blinked away a wetness in his eye. Give the kid an inch and he’d take a mile. He turned away and pulled his hat back over his eyes. ‘No,’ he said.

  Beaten, Nolan wandered off into the house and was soon engrossed in The Silver Sword. Set book for the holidays it might be, but it was a good story for all that. As the hot afternoon wore on, his head nodded and eventually he slept, spread out on the floor, cheek pillowed on the pages, his head full of hiding from the Nazis and rescued cats.

  It wasn’t much cooler that day after darkness had fallen. Maxwell had set up another chair for his wife and they were lying back under the stars, a chilled drink clinking in each hand.

  ‘So,’ Jacquie Maxwell had had a long day but a few minutes lying back in the scented dark with the pop and fizz of a gin and tonic in her hand could soon put that right. ‘You’ve had the kitten conversation, I gather.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it a conversation, as such.’ Maxwell was cagey.

  ‘Nolan says you have agreed in principle.’

  His father gave a bark of laughter. ‘If “No” means “I agree in principle” then, yes, I did. If, on the other hand, it means “No”, then, no, I didn’t.’

  It was his wife’s turn to laugh. ‘I suspected as much,’ she said. ‘He’s a cunning one, and no mistake.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Maxwell smiled, reaching over to clink glasses with her, ‘but the chip of the old block will never beat the old block himself.’

  Jacquie let a moment or two pass. She had always been good with people, she had had that on her school reports from the age of five and her annual assessments at work since forever, but Maxwell wasn’t people. He needed different handling. ‘Is there any real reason why he can't have a kitten?’ she said, keeping it light and frothy.

  ‘Yes,’ Maxwell said. He was surprised it had taken her so long to get around to it. ‘It’s called sixteen pounds if he’s an ounce of murderous black and white.’

  ‘He wouldn’t hurt it,’ Jacquie said, but she didn’t sound too sure.

  Maxwell turned his head and looked at his wife in the gloom. She wasn’t looking at him, a sure sign she was uncertain of her ground. ‘He wouldn’t hurt a kitten belonging to his dearest boy, no,’ he conceded. ‘But he would kill a small moving scrap of furry stuff on the settee in his house. He’s old, Jacquie, though we don’t want to admit it. Set in his ways. It wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘Have you told Nolan that?’ she asked, reasonably.

  ‘No, I admit I haven’t. Sometimes, he just has to accept that no means no. And it does.’

  She opened her mouth, then shut it again. Mortality hung in the air like a tangible thing and a dark, hot, moth-haunted night might not be the right time to stare him down.

  ‘So,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Any plans for the holidays? Apart from listening to the lawn grow, I mean?’

  Chapter Two

  ‘I

  s today Tuesday?’

  There was just a threat of hysteria in DI Carpenter-Maxwell’s voice that morning, a tone that usually betokened chaos for Nolan’s Primary Holiday Carer.

  ‘It ... might ... be ...’ Maxwell was not sure how long he could keep the uncertainty levels up. He worked extra hard during the school holidays to keep the actual day in his head. This was essential, otherwise it would all just blur and then the inevitable readjustment when the dread day of A level results came round and the screaming started and the crying. GCSE day followed a week later, as sure as night followed day and the shit cart followed that of the Lord Mayor. Then, of course, it was the first day of term and that would be so much worse. They were the only days that mattered, Results Thursdays, when the grisly veterans of Year 11 came to school for the great reckoning, preceded the previous week by Maxwell’s Own of Year 13, on their way to the rest of their lives and having, perhaps, to work for a living.

  Jacquie was giving her cereal bowl more than usually careful attention and didn’t respond.

  ‘And if it is ...?’

  Still nothing.

  ‘If it is, then what?’

  ‘Hmm?’ She looked up, all mock innocence. ‘Oh, yes, Tuesday.’ She tried a merry laugh but wasn’t fooling anyone.

  The silence went on and Maxwell had finally to be the one to blink first. ‘As it is indeed, Tuesday, Heart of Darkness, then what is going to happen? Or should I say, what do I have to make happen today? Tuesday.’

  Her cereal safely stowed, his wife had no other displacement activity at her disposal. ‘It isn’t that it’s Tuesday so much, although of course, it is. It’s that it is Mrs Troubridge’s best friend from the Tuesday Club’s birthday.’

  ‘Lovely for her.’ He was straight-faced and implacable. ‘Especially being a Tuesday. All her friends will be on hand to sing to her.’ He folded his arms across his chest. He did it to stop himself from wringing his wife’s beautiful neck.

  ‘No. As you may or may not know,’ Jacquie got up and gathered up the dishes, taking them over to the sink, ‘the Tuesday Club doesn’t run in the school holidays.’

  ‘Ah. So ... you want me to sing to her? Is that wise?’ he arched an eyebrow. That bloke from the Go Compare adverts he was not.

  Jacquie spun round and faced him, gripping the edge of the table to give herself courage. ‘No. You don’t need to sing. But I promised Mrs Troubridge that you and Nole would take her and Mrs Getty to Haledown House for the day.’

  Maxwell was speechless. He would jot the almost unprecedented event down in his diary later, but for now he just sat open-mouthed.

  ‘Before you say anything, it is as easy as pie. I’ve booked a taxi for half nine which will drop you, Nole and Mrs T off at the bus station. Mrs Getty lives up in town so she will meet you there and before you ask,’ she added, without even drawing breath, ‘no she is not related to those Gettys, so you are paying for her to get in.’

  ‘Is there a ...?’

  ‘Yes. It goes direct, every half an hour. It’s from stand 13B.’

  ‘Aside from forgetting, you seem to have this all sewn up,’ Maxwell pointed out, a tad acidly.

  ‘You’ll love it,’ she said, walking around behind him and kissing the top of his head. ‘Nole hasn’t been there for ages, not since he went with the school. Mrs T used to go to the grounds when she was a girl, by all accounts.’

  ‘And Mrs Getty?’

  She patted his shoulder. ‘I’m sure you’ll all have a splendid time.’ She whirled out of the room and called up the stairs. ‘Mums is going now, sweetness. Kiss?’

  Six feet, both trainer and velvet-shod came down the stairs in a torrent and Jacquie kissed Nolan and Metternich with the even-handedness of any good parent with no favourites.

  ‘Don’t forget you’re going out with Dads and Mrs T today,’ she said to Nolan, hugging him and trying to fill her lungs with
enough boy-smell to last all day. ‘Be good.’

  ‘Of course.’ He turned innocent eyes up to her. ‘I’m always good.’

  ‘I was talking to Dads,’ she said, glancing back into the kitchen. ‘I’m on a short day today, so I’ll pick you all up this afternoon. Don’t forget the phone.’

  She looked again at the man she loved, still in the pose of an injured house husband. She glanced back to Nolan. ‘This time I’m talking to you, boy,’ she said. ‘Make sure he has the phone.’

  ‘Yo!’ Nolan jumped to attention. Metternich slunk back up the stairs. If his timing was right, he would be able to sleep the day away in the still-warm bit of Nolan’s bed. High summer or not, a cat had his priorities.

  ‘You!’ Jacquie’s voice brooked no argument. ‘Count. Out!’ and she shooed him ahead of her down the stairs.

  The Maxwell men eyed each other in the kitchen.

  ‘Did you know about this day out?’ the bigger one said.

  ‘In principle.’ This new phrase was getting as many airings as Nolan could manage before it was banned.

  ‘How do you feel about it? If you don’t want to go ...’

  Nolan hutched himself up on the chair and helped himself to Coco Pops. ‘No, I don’t mind.’ He nearly said ‘I’m cool with it’, Plocker’s current favourite saying, but knew it wouldn’t end well. ‘Mrs Troubridge is looking forward to it. She told me.’

  ‘Have you met this Mrs Getty? Umm,’ Maxwell held up a finger. ‘Not sugar and Coco Pops. Remember?’ He spun a finger meaningfully by his temple. ‘Sugar rush?’

  Nolan crammed half the bowlful of cereal in in one go so the answer was a while in coming. ‘I saw her once.’ For him, that wasn’t much.

  ‘And what? Big, small, tall, short? Any distinguishing features?’

  Nolan shrugged as only small boys can, using every bone in his body at once.

  ‘Hair?’

  Nolan laughed. ‘Dads! Of course she’s got hair!’

  Bless the child! He would learn soon enough that it was by no means a given.