Maxwell’s House Page 17

  ‘I thought the papers – and Crimewatch – said it was a ligature.’

  ‘In the case of Jenny Hyde, yes,’ Hall told him, ‘with a knot here,’ he tapped his neck, ‘on the right.’

  Maxwell frowned. ‘The left, surely,’ he said and could have bitten his tongue off.

  A strange look came into Hall’s eyes, one that Maxwell certainly had never seen before, one that only ever came into his eyes when he smelled the satisfactory conclusion of a case. ‘Do you know,’ he said softly, ‘I do believe you’re right.’

  There was a knock and Halsey appeared with Hall’s tea. ‘Thank you, George. Has DI Johnson gone home yet?’

  ‘No, sir. He’s in the ward room.’

  ‘Tell him I’d like a word, would you?’ Hall got up and smiled at Maxwell. ‘Won’t keep you a minute,’ he said.

  But he did. He kept Maxwell waiting several minutes. And a little before midnight, he came back.

  ‘The Dam,’ he said, without introduction and without apology, scraping back the chair as he sat down. Automatically he switched on the tape again. ‘How well do you know the Dam?’

  ‘Tolerably,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘Look, Chief Inspector, I really think it’s time …’

  ‘You were seen there,’ Hall told him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Last night. You were seen on the Dam.’

  ‘Was I?’

  Hall sighed and leaned forward. ‘Mr Maxwell,’ he said, ‘let me just scratch the surface of the case against you. One of your pupils, Jennifer Hyde, is found murdered at a house known to you …’

  ‘And thousands of others,’ Maxwell reminded him.

  ‘As things stand you have no effective alibi for the time of her death. We only have your word that you caught the four thirty coach from Leighford to Exeter and even if you did, you would still have had time to get to the coach station from the Red House in fifteen to twenty minutes.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Another of your pupils, Timothy Grey, is found murdered in a secluded beauty spot not only known to you, but on which you have been identified at the time of the murder …’

  ‘Who?’ Maxwell wanted to know. ‘Who identified me?’

  Hall leaned back. ‘That doesn’t matter. For now. Do you deny being there?’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell said. ‘I was there last night.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was … I was looking for the boy; the one you talked about on Crimewatch, the tall blond lad seen talking to Jenny on the Dam.’

  ‘And why would you be doing that?’ Hall asked.

  ‘Because, like you, I want this wretched business cleared up,’ Maxwell told him.

  ‘Like me?’ Hall repeated. ‘I wonder if our goals are really the same?’

  ‘Believe me,’ Maxwell said, ‘they are.’

  Hall nodded, his mouth twisted with the irony of it. ‘That’s the rub,’ he said. ‘Can I believe you, Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘That’s up to you.’

  ‘Tell me about the diary.’ The Chief Inspector tried a new tack.

  ‘What diary?’

  ‘When DI Johnson came to collect you earlier this evening, a Mrs Sylvia Matthews – the school nurse, I understand – mentioned a diary. What was she talking about?’

  ‘Oh, you know women,’ Maxwell bluffed. ‘I expect Sylvia had got the wrong end …’

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ Hall reminded him, ‘there are laws against withholding evidence from the police.’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Maxwell, ‘I suppose there are. All right. Sylvia was talking about Jenny Hyde’s diary.’

  Hall frowned. ‘We didn’t know there was one.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ Maxwell said. ‘The caretaker found it in school and gave it to me.’

  ‘To you, Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘I was her Year Head,’ Maxwell said. ‘Jenny was my responsibility.’

  ‘And Tim,’ Hall threw at him. It wasn’t necessary. Maxwell felt deadly enough as it was.

  ‘And Tim,’ he repeated.

  ‘And where is this diary now?’ Hall asked him. ‘It’s at home,’ he said. ‘In my study.’

  ‘Well then.’ Hall stood up and passed Maxwell his battered tweed hat from the wall hook. ‘Let’s go and get it, shall we? And on the way, we’ll talk about how you know so much about ligatures and knots and right and left.’

  13

  In a jam though he was, Peter Maxwell was a public schoolboy. To confess the source of his knowledge about details of Jenny Hyde’s death would have been to shop Dr Astley and he couldn’t do that. So he played the lucky beginner bit, the inspired amateur. And all the way in the car, he felt that Chief Inspector Hall didn’t believe a word of it.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ The unlikely epithet had slipped from the thin, wary lips of DCI Hall. He’d rarely seen a place so thoroughly done over.

  ‘You should have seen it before I tidied up,’ Maxwell said and instinctively moved forward to pick something up.

  ‘Don’t,’ Hall warned him. ‘Just leave it. Where’s the phone?’

  ‘Well it was over there,’ Maxwell told him. ‘On the wall.’

  Hall was there first, his feet crunching on glass. He found the receiver, wrapped it in his handkerchief and pressed the buttons. The random succession of notes that always reminded Maxwell of that bit from Close Encounters of the Third Kind hit his eardrums.

  Maxwell didn’t know where to sit. Where to stand.

  ‘Saltmarsh? Hall. Get scenes of crime round here straight away. Thirty-eight, Columbine. Suspected break-in.’ And he dropped the receiver on to its cradle, somewhere between the upturned lampshade and the horizontal radiator.

  ‘Suspected?’ Maxwell gave up trying and flopped heavily down on to his sofa.

  Hall didn’t say anything. He just surveyed the wreck of the lounge.

  ‘Where was the diary?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Maxwell made for the stairs, kicking cushions and books in all directions as he went.

  Hall was on his heels.

  ‘It was up here.’ He flicked on lights as he hurtled through the bedroom. The pillows had been thrown into a corner, the mattress wrenched on to the floor. He dodged left and stared up into the blackness of the attic. Then he was clattering his way up, the soles of his shoes pounding on the pine of the treads. He floundered for the cord pull in the darkness and sat down heavily on the top stair.

  Hall pushed his head up over the edge of the trap door. It was a bare room, except for a large table in the centre and hundreds of hand-painted soldiers sitting their horses patiently in the swinging light. ‘Good God,’ the Chief Inspector muttered. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘A little hobby of mine.’ Maxwell crawled to the diorama and squinted along it at ground level. Nothing was out of place. At the head of the Light Brigade, the last of the Brudenells sat his charger, Ronald, staring imperiously at Captain Nolan whose arm was thrown back to point suicidally to the guns at the end of the wrong valley somewhere beyond Maxwell’s south-facing wall.

  ‘You kept the diary up here?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Maxwell straightened up, sensing Hall standing above and behind him. He checked his model-making desk, it was here,’ he said, switching on the powerful desk lamp. ‘Just here.’

  Hall took in the attic room now it was fully lit. He couldn’t quite stand up under the sharp angles of the beams, but that didn’t matter. He’d seen enough.

  ‘What we have here’, he said, ‘is a very interesting situation.’

  ‘Really?’ Maxwell only now thought of tugging off his hat and scarf.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen as many break-ins as I have, Mr Maxwell.’ The Chief Inspector leaned against the far wall.

  ‘This is my first,’ Maxwell told him. ‘I hope you’ll be gentle with me.’

  ‘You see,’ Hall folded his arms, not taking his eyes off the older man for a moment, ‘what usually happens is that stuff is taken – usually money, jewellery … if it’s a slightly more spec
ialized job, hi-fi, computers, antiques.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I noticed a midi system in the lounge,’ Hall said. ‘It seemed intact. And that teapot in the middle of the floor …’

  ‘What passes for the family silver,’ Maxwell nodded.

  ‘Valuable?’

  ‘I don’t know. A couple of hundred, I suppose.’

  ‘I’ve a very shrewd suspicion, Mr Maxwell, that when my lads have done their bit and you make an inventory, you’ll find only one thing is missing from this house.’

  Maxwell looked at his man, the light shining in his glasses, hiding, as always, his eyes. ‘The diary,’ he said.

  ‘The diary,’ Hall nodded. ‘And another thing.’ He crossed to the plastic soldiers waiting to ride into the Jaws of Death. ‘Except in the very professional jobs, it’s usually kids out for kicks and they usually go on the rampage. Urine in the flower pots, faeces in the bed and daubed half-way up a wall.’

  ‘Nice.’ Maxwell grimaced.

  ‘Very,’ Hall agreed. ‘This lot,’ he waved across the models, ‘wouldn’t last five minutes. With a couple of kids – or even one working on his own – you’d never find all the pieces.’

  ‘From which you conclude?’

  ‘Either you’ve been done over by the most considerate burglar since Raffles or …’ ‘Or?’

  ‘Or you did it yourself.’

  Maxwell looked at his man. ‘Oh, come on!’ he bellowed. He refrained from doing his John McEnroe. Henry Hall didn’t look the type to appreciate it. Besides, he was always conscious that his take-offs weren’t as good as Geoffrey Smith’s.

  ‘Consider,’ Hall said, smiling. ‘You are asked to accompany DI Johnson to the police station. You do so. Inadvertently a friend of yours mentions a diary. The diary belonged to a murdered girl. You knew what it was. You knew all about its contents – and how damning those contents may be. It was a bit of hard luck that Mrs Matthews landed you in it like that, but landed you were. It was only a matter of time before DI Johnson or I asked you about it. And then you’d have to produce it. Or at least, you would have done if …’

  ‘But Johnson was here,’ Maxwell spread his arms at the ridiculousness of Hall’s hypothesis. ‘Did he find the place wrecked? No, of course not.’

  ‘But the place isn’t wrecked, Mr Maxwell. We’ve just been through that. Oh, yes, everything is strewn about, I’ll grant you, but I’ll lay you odds the only damage is what I did to your picture downstairs. Send me a bill and I’ll put it right, by the way.’

  ‘What are you saying? That unbeknown to Johnson and that ape he works with, I nipped out of the interrogation room, got a taxi back here, rearranged the place to make it look as if I’d been burgled and then caught another taxi back to the nick, where said DI and his monkey found me coolly blowing on my nails? You’ll forgive me if I wonder what level of attainment is required for a Chief Inspector nowadays.’

  ‘But none of that was necessary, was it, Mr Maxwell?’ Hall had never lost his cool in his life. He wasn’t about to start now. ‘Because you had an accomplice.’

  ‘An …’ Hall should have had a camera. He may have been the first person in the world to witness Peter Maxwell utterly lost for words.

  ‘DI Johnson tells me that Mrs Matthews did not leave precisely when you did, but was still in the house as his car took you to the station.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, she could have doubled back. It all hinges on whether she closed the front door or not.’

  ‘That’s very good, Chief Inspector,’ Maxwell nodded, acknowledging a good one-liner when he heard one. But neither of them was smiling.

  ‘That’s why the place looks convincing,’ Hall said, ‘because Mrs Matthews genuinely didn’t know where the diary was. She knew it was somewhere in the house, because you’d told her about it. And she didn’t want to break anything because I understand she is a … friend … of yours.’

  ‘Correction,’ Maxwell speared the air with his finger. ‘I do know what level of attainment is required for a Chief Inspector. He has to have a bloody degree in the ancient art of Innuendo. What’s the scenario here? Are Sylvia Matthews and I some sort of latterday Bonnie and Clyde?’

  ‘I was thinking more of Hindley and Brady,’ Hall said coldly.

  There was a pause. ‘I think that’s slander, Chief Inspector,’ Maxwell pursued.

  For once, Henry Hall actually smiled. ‘Forget I said it,’ he said. ‘Now, to cases. My lads will be here in a minute. In fact,’ he checked his watch, ‘there’ll be some balls on a plate as it is. I promise you, their size elevens will be everywhere. Before that chaos ensues, why don’t you tell me what’s in the diary – wherever it is by now.’

  Maxwell sighed. It had been a bitch of a night already and would very probably get worse. ‘I’d better see where Sylvia Matthews stashed the kettle,’ he said. ‘I feel a cup of tea coming on.’

  Beyond that, his memory was curiously poor that night.

  It was raining by three o’clock. And the late September nights were turning unseasonably cold. It was difficult to say who looked the greater apparition, Peter Maxwell, dripping wet and clutching the handlebars of White Surrey, or Geoffrey Smith, shaking the sleep out of his soul and peering out into the night.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve come for your boy,’ Smith grimaced, in his finest John Wayne, hauling his dressing-gown around him. ‘Or,’ he squinted at Maxwell’s face, ‘are you after my body?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I am.’ Maxwell barged past him into the hall. ‘On account of how I don’t think I’ve got one any more. I’d kill for a large Scotch, Geoffrey.’

  ‘Er … Max.’ Smith followed his guest into the lounge. ‘I don’t want to sound boorish or anything, but it is three in the morning.’

  ‘“It’s quarter to three,’” Maxwell crooned, ‘“there’s no one in the place, except you and me …” Oh, and Hilda, presumably.’

  ‘Hilda is in bed, Maxie,’ Smith told him, ‘where I was but moments ago.’

  ‘Oh, God, Geoff, sorry.’ Maxwell dripped on to the hearthrug. ‘I hope I didn’t interrupt anything nuptial.’

  ‘Anything nuptial?’ There was real scorn in Smith’s tone. ‘I’ve been married for twenty-four years, man. Besides, Hilda’s menopausal.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right. Interesting word, menopausal. From the Greek meaning “stopped to have it sewn up”. Plato would have sympathized.’

  ‘Yes.’ Maxwell eased the wet scarf from around his neck. It felt like a trawler’s net. Or how he imagined a trawler’s net would feel if he was in the habit of wearing one around his neck. ‘Yes, I knew the Greeks would have a word for it. Well, apologize to Hilda for me.’

  ‘“What’s it all about, Maxie?’” It was Smith’s turn to croon, a near-perfect Cilla Black.

  Maxwell looked at him oddly. ‘You know I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, mon vieux, but that Michael Caine needs work. Shall I tell you about my night?’

  ‘Why not?’ Smith’s eyes rolled heavenwards and he padded in his carpet slippers to the drinks cabinet.

  ‘First, I was picked up by the fuzz.’

  ‘Literally?’ Smith raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Literally.’ Maxwell positively squelched as he landed on the settee. ‘Then Sylvia landed me in it about the diary.’

  ‘What diary’s that?’ Smith passed his friend a triple Scotch and switched the fire back on.

  ‘Jenny’s diary. Didn’t I tell you about it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, you slippery old bastard, you did. How come you knew about it and the police didn’t, again?’

  ‘Luck, I guess.’ Maxwell relished the rush of the Scotch to his tonsils. ‘Betty Martin found it – thought I might like it.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Well, I hadn’t deciphered it fully,’ Maxwell held his hands out to the electric coal glow.

  ‘I wouldn’t have put Jenny Hyde down as the cryptic sort,’ Smith said.


  ‘Perhaps not,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Anyway, as I say, Sylvia had popped round, visiting the condemned man and so on …’

  ‘She’s a brick, that woman,’ Smith commented. ‘You know she’s in love with you, don’t you?’

  ‘In …? Don’t be ludicrous, Geoffrey.’

  ‘I know,’ Smith chuckled. ‘Cantankerous old duffer like you. Defies belief, doesn’t it? But you just remember where you heard it first.’

  ‘When the law arrived,’ Maxwell dismissed him with a wave, ‘Sylv mentioned the diary.’

  ‘I take it all back,’ Smith said, ‘She obviously hates your guts. That would make sense. After all, everybody else does.’

  ‘She didn’t mean it,’ Maxwell defended her. ‘She no doubt assumed that I’d told them all about it.’

  ‘Which you hadn’t?’

  Maxwell looked like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. ‘Well, I was going to,’ he explained.

  ‘Ah, the way to hell …’ Smith shook his head.

  ‘… is paved with good intentions; yes, I know. Anyway, I had the misfortune to fall into the hands of Robocop whose twin personality is Attila the Hun.’

  ‘The third degree?’

  ‘DI Johnson wouldn’t know a degree if it bit him on the ankle, which is what I damn nearly did.’

  ‘They’ve got to be careful nowadays.’ Smith was serious, his endless hairline glowing in the firelight. ‘It’s got to be done by the book.’

  ‘So it was until he sent his Number Two out of the room and switched off the tape recorder.’

  ‘Did he now?’ Smith nodded. ‘The cheeky little sod. Didn’t you have the famous phone call? To a lawyer, I mean?’

  ‘I haven’t got a lawyer, Geoff. This is me, Maxie. Lone Crusader; remember? I haven’t even got a milkman.’

  ‘Bit off, though, Maxie.’ Smith frowned. ‘God knows what that officious bastard could have winkled out of you … Not that you’ve got anything to hide, of course.’

  ‘Thank you for that.’

  ‘Still,’ Smith peered into the amber recesses of his glass, ‘I think I’d have handed the diary over, personally.’