Maxwell’s Match Read online

  ‘I’d offer you something, but …’

  Sheffield shook his head. ‘If I’d wanted a drink I would have invited you to my rooms. No, Maxwell, it’s advice I want.’

  Maxwell sat opposite the man, aware one again why he’d never climbed those dizzy heights, the greasy pole to Headship. ‘Advice?’ he said. ‘I doubt I have any that could help your situation, Dr Sheffield. Rest assured, though, you have my heartfelt sympathy.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell, I’ve been Headmaster at Grimond’s for fifteen years. The school has been my wife, my children, my everything. Now, I’ve lost it.’

  ‘Lost it?’ Maxwell repeated.

  ‘Sir Arthur – Arthur Wilkins, my Chair of Governors – has asked for my resignation.’

  ‘Ah,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’ He glanced up at the man who in turn was watching him carefully. ‘Are you bound to accept?’

  Sheffield shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anything in the rule book to cover this. There isn’t a sub-clause in my contract headed “Murders of Members of Staff”. I’m at a loss.’

  ‘Are you asking my advice as to whether you should fight this?’

  ‘I’ve talked to Mervyn of course, my Housemasters, even Millie Taylor, my secretary.’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘Fight it,’ Sheffield told him, shrugging. ‘To a man and woman, they said “Fight it”.’

  ‘Sounds like good advice to me,’ Maxwell said.

  Sheffield looked at him. ‘With respect, Mr Maxwell, you’re an outsider. It’s no skin off your nose if you say the wrong thing. Your career isn’t dependent on any reference of mine. I’d value your honesty.’

  ‘Dr Sheffield,’ Maxwell leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. ‘You must stay and fight. Tear up whatever contract Wilkins has given you. And let me talk to your kids.’

  ‘What?’ Sheffield frowned.

  ‘Just the sixth form,’ he said, hand in the air and all too aware of the delicacy of the situation. ‘I know sixth formers.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell, Chief Inspector Hall …’

  ‘… is an army of one,’ Maxwell interrupted; ‘And Bill Pardoe’s death is already a week old.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘I have done this sort of thing before,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘But Hall must have … what do the police call it? Back up? He must have back up outside.’

  ‘Must he, Headmaster? Then where are the others? Since the SOCO teams left the lake last Thursday, there have been two police persons or site – Hall and Jacquie Carpenter. That’s it. It would be like you and Mervyn Larson trying to cover the curriculum at Grimond’s by yourselves. It can’t be done.’

  ‘But what you’re suggesting …’

  ‘Has no basis in law, will almost certainly upset your counsellors, several parents and not a few children; yes, I know. But it might just catch a murderer.’

  Sheffield was shaking his head, open-mouthed He was on his feet already. ‘Mr Maxwell, in all my years in education, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such arrogance.’

  ‘Really?’ Maxwell looked up at him and smiled ‘You don’t get out much, do you, Headmaster?’

  ‘I forbid it, Mr Maxwell,’ Sheffield snapped ‘You may observe my staff’s lessons until Saturday. Then you will leave Grimond’s.’

  ‘Dr Sheffield,’ Maxwell was on his feet too, ‘a few days ago you specifically asked me to stay. You’ve lost two members of staff already. How many more are you going to stand by and watch go under? You’re the bloody Headmaster, for God’s sake. Act like it.’

  George Sheffield saw himself out.

  ‘So, what gloss is Henry Hall putting on it?’ Maxwell was alone under the eaves again. No scratching now, just the rain bouncing on the dark windows, driven by wind from the south-east. He hadn’t got round to drawing the curtains.

  Jacquie was alone too, in her comfortable-enough room at Barcourt Lodge, her spare hand curled around a cup of very average instant coffee. ‘I think he thinks Tubbs might be our man.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed.

  ‘Talk me through it, heart.’

  ‘All right.’ She curled up on the settee. ‘Tubbs’ place looked like the Marie Celeste.’

  ‘With a lifeboat missing?’

  There was a pause. ‘You’ve lost me there.’

  ‘Never mind.’ Maxwell was a middle-aged man in a hurry and he hadn’t time to discuss Great Naval Disappearances of History. ‘Were there signs that he’d left of his own accord?’

  ‘I’d say so,’ Jacquie told him. ‘Toothpaste gone, razor, that sort of thing. The problem with something like this is that you’re always looking for something that isn’t there. There was one small suitcase in his wardrobe. Does that mean he took a larger one away with him? There were a couple of t-shirts and a jumper. Does that mean he’s plenty of other clothes and couldn’t get those into the larger suitcase? Or wherever he’s gone he doesn’t need them?’

  ‘You mean, could he be under the floorboards somewhere?”

  ‘It’s possible.’ Jacquie was thinking out loud. ‘We’ll know when DCI West’s lot have finished.’

  ‘He’s in the picture?’

  ‘Insofar as he knows Tubbs is missing. Henry Hall wanted it that way. Apparently the deal is; that we handle everything at the school end; West does the external stuff.’

  ‘Isn’t that a little bizarre?’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Jacquie kicked off her slippers and ambled across to the kettle for a refill ‘All right, in any murder enquiry, there has to be a division of labour. But we’re so unequally divided it’s laughable.’

  ‘I tried to do something about that earlier.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I tried to talk Sheffield into letting me interview the kids.’

  ‘And?’ Jacquie was all ears.

  ‘He went a funny colour and told me, in the parlance of our American cousins, to butt out.’

  ‘No surprises there, then. Pomposity is that man’s middle name.’

  ‘Stick with Tubbsy,’ Maxwell urged her. ‘What do you know?’

  Jacquie settled back on the settee again. ‘Single man. Still in regular touch with Mummy and Daddy. Teaches Geography. I get the impression he’s not very well liked.’

  ‘He’s a pisshead and a gossip,’ Maxwell told her. ‘Does that make him a murderer?’

  ‘He had the means,’ Jacquie was thinking aloud. ‘For both Pardoe and Robinson.’

  ‘Did he?’ Maxwell lay back on the pillow, staring at the discoloured artex of the ceiling, working it out as she spoke.

  ‘He lives alone,’ she said, ‘so he could come and go as he pleases. He drives a clapped out MG …’

  ‘Ah, so the private sector doesn’t pay, after all,’ Maxwell couldn’t resist.

  She ignored him. ‘My estimation is that he could do home to school, especially at night, in about forty minutes.’

  ‘But Grimond’s gates are locked at ten-thirty.’

  ‘Right. So he either arrived before that or … no, he couldn’t have. Unless he had a key to the padlock, he must have parked outside. That would be safer. Remember the paparazzi the other night? I parked around the corner and you got into the building without being seen. It can’t be difficult.’

  ‘Granted,’ Maxwell said. ‘Then what?’

  ‘On the Monday night, he goes up to Bill Pardoe’s room …’

  ‘… on the floor below mine.’

  ‘Takes him up to the roof …’

  ‘… like you do.’

  ‘All right,’ she snapped just a little. It was late and she was tired. Tired of working on a case that was winding her up in its eternal circles. ‘I’ll be first to confess, I haven’t a clue how all that was done. Assuming Pardoe didn’t actually shin up there of his own volition intending to end it all, somebody must have lured him up there.’

  ‘Cat stuck on the roof.’

  ‘Maxwel
l!’ Jacquie shrieked, reverberating through the man’s eardrum, then, calmer. ‘I’m doing my best.’

  ‘Sorry, darling,’ he laughed. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Tubbs gets Pardoe up there somehow, pushes him off. Then he sneaks back out of the building and drives home.’

  ‘And the scratching I heard was him or Pardoe; or both making his/their way up the stairs.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So who was the girl?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I have to confess, Woman Policeman Carpenter, that I have been withholding information from the constabulary.’

  There was a pause. Then, ‘Max, you shit.! Jacquie was sitting upright.

  ‘I love you too,’ he beamed. ‘On the night in question, I saw two people – a girl and a man in a gown.’ I

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the quad, not far from the chapel.’

  ‘What time was this?’ She was whirling round the room like a dervish, looking for her note pad.

  ‘God, I don’t know.’

  ‘Max, you’re an expert witness, for Christ’ sake. You’ve done this before. Think!’

  ‘Right.’ Maxwell was sitting up now. ‘Since you’ve asked me so nicely, it must have been about one, one-thirty.’

  ‘Before Pardoe died, according to forensics.’ Jacquie was thinking aloud. ‘Could you make out faces?’

  ‘No,’ he was shaking his head, having asked himself the same question a thousand times in the past week. ‘The girl could have been Cassandra James, Janet Boyce, any one of a couple of dozen others I’ve seen around the place. It could even have been Maggie Shaunessy or Gaynor Ames in a dark wig – and I haven’t started on the secretariat yet. Sorry.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She spoke softly, not angry any more, not scolding. ‘What about the man?’

  ‘Same problem,’ Maxwell said. ‘Remember I hadn’t been here long. I didn’t really know anybody. And it was dark. And it was in deep shadow. I remember thinking how odd that whoever it was should be wearing a gown at that time of night. Almost as if … no.’

  ‘What?’ Jacquie was prepared to grab any straw at this stage in the game, mixing metaphors madly as she went.

  ‘Well, it sounds ludicrous, but it was as though the whole thing was an act, a sort of tableau vivant for my benefit. Yet, how could it be? How could they have known I would be awake and looking out of my window?’

  He was doing that now, having crossed the room in a couple of strides and was looking down at the same scene. No moon tonight, just the rain bouncing off the guttering and the wind shaking the heads of the cedars far beyond the chapel. ‘But if that is the case, if it was a show put on for me, or anybody watching, then we can expect any kind of theatricality.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The gown was a con,’ he said, working his way through it. ‘The long dark hair was a wig. Christ, I can’t even be sure if it was a girl. We’ve just done Macbeth at Leighford High. The murderers who took out the Macduff family were pretty scary, rippling biceps, impressive cod-pieces and plenty of attitude. But they happened to be Sasha Austen and Penny Sutherland, two fourteen-year-old girls who usually play flute in the school orchestra. What you see ain’t necessarily what you get. What about Tubbsy and Robinson?’

  ‘Same thing,’ Jacquie said. ‘Except that somehow he had to get Robinson back on site at night as well. Pardoe was already here because he lived in; Robinson didn’t.’

  ‘So wouldn’t it have been easier to kill him at home?’ Maxwell reasoned. ‘Stove in his head in his lounge or his kitchen; wait ’til he’s gone for pee and hope he hasn’t locked the door?’

  ‘But this whole thing has to do with Grimond’s, doesn’t it?’ She was asking herself as much as him. ‘Pardoe died because of the school; so did Robinson.’

  ‘Tubbsy told me Robinson was playing fast and loose with girlie or girlies unspecified.’

  Another silence. ‘You really are a mine of information tonight, Max,’ Jacquie said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He was reaching for his kettle now, trying to do that thing that the Mobile Generation do of tucking the phone in the crook of his neck. ‘Like you, I assumed you’d be talking to Tubbs this morning.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jacquie grunted. ‘We’ve assumed that several times already.’

  ‘Let’s make a further assumption,’ Maxwell suggested. ‘That he’s our man.’

  ‘Right,’ Jacquie said, but it was obvious she wasn’t convinced.

  Maxwell went through the motions of making his coffee. ‘Tubbs had the opportunity,’ he said. ‘Assuming he lured Pardoe and Robinson to their deaths. What about means?’

  ‘Pardoe was easy,’ Jacquie told him. ‘All you need is a stout pair of hands with a bit of welly behind them. I can’t remember clapping eyes on the man. Stocky, was he?’

  ‘The same,’ Maxwell said. ‘Blubber rather than muscle, but gravity would have helped at that height. Robinson?’

  ‘Heavy object, probably wooden, possibly oar, although we know there’s not one missing from the boat house. Again, attack from behind.’

  ‘And was it the water that killed him?’

  ‘That’s right. So chummy would only have had to hit him once.’

  ‘Having got him to the water’s edge in the first place,’ Maxwell was running with her, ‘by whatever subterfuge. Then he drops the oar into the lake, suitably weighted.’

  ‘Weighted?’

  ‘My dear, when you’ve wedged your bum into as many boats on the Cam as I have, you’ll know every property of an oar. Believe me, they float, usually faster than you do and always in the wrong direction.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘So,’ Maxwell was recapping. ‘Shit!’ He burned his top lip in his coffee.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘Hot,’ he told her. ‘Let’s recap.’ He was talking through the pain. ‘Tubbsy has the opportunity and he has the means. The sixty-four-thousand dollar question, darling mine, is motive. In that unholy trinity of murder, why should Tubbs want these two men dead?’

  ‘Jealousy?’ Jacquie tried him out.

  ‘Professional?’ Maxwell parried. ‘Sexual?’

  ‘Sexual,’ Jacquie opted. ‘You said Tubbs was stirring it about Robinson’s proclivities. Which may, of course, be why Robinson faked his references. Bit of a perv.’

  Maxwell nodded. ‘Yes, Tubbs was hinting, certainly.’

  ‘What if that pissed him off? What if he, Tubbs, was after the same bit of skirt Robinson was?’

  ‘That’s possible.’ Maxwell was sprawling on bed again, resting his coffee cup on the bedside table. ‘But what about Pardoe? All the evidence suggests he swung the other way.’

  ‘Could Tubbs have swung both ways?’ Jacquie was wondering.

  ‘The Julius Streicher of Grimond’s?’ Maxwell knew his Nazis. ‘Possible. But that would mean that Tubbs fancied the very people, of both sexes, that Robinson and Pardoe had targeted.’

  ‘Unlikely?’

  Maxwell laughed. ‘This is the private sector Jacquie. The world turned upside down. Never never Land. Anything is possible. Let’s go Scenario Two.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That Tubbsy is an innocent bystander, would he run?’

  ‘Because he was scared.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Maybe,’ and it wasn’t a word that Peter Maxwell ever used lightly, ‘he thought he was next on the list. Pardoe, Robinson, Tubbs. An unlikely trio.’

  ‘Is there a pattern?’ Jacquie asked him, never quite sure where the Great Man’s brain was taking either of them.

  ‘Pardoe was the longest-serving teacher at Grimond’s; Robinson the newest.’ Maxwell was pondering it all. ‘Where was Tubbs? In the middle?’

  ‘You think there’s some sort of … what? Geometric pattern to this?’

  ‘Murder by mathematics?’ Maxwell reflected. ‘No, it’s preposterous. Several of my colleagues murder maths on a daily basis, but killing by numbers? A mere academic exerc
ise? I can’t see it.’ He heard her yawning. ‘What’s happening tomorrow?’

  ‘We’ll finish the sixth form at Tennyson House,’ she told him. ‘Then we’re moving over to Austen.’

  ‘Start with Cassandra James,’ Maxwell advised as he had once before. ‘She’s a deep one. Tubbsy fancied her.’

  ‘So, I gather, does half the school,’ Jacquie said. ‘Not to mention the little offer she made you.’

  ‘What an improper suggestion, Woman Policeman.’ Maxwell was aghast.

  ‘What’ve you got tomorrow?’ Jacquie knew well enough when to change the subject.

  ‘God, I don’t know. Wednesday? There’s an inter-house debate tomorrow night. But tomorrow morning, I think I’m going to find out a little more about our Mr Tubbs. You will let me know if he turns up, won’t you, poppet?’

  It was good drying weather the next morning. The rain of the night had given way to cotton wool clouds scudding against a sky of spring blue. Gaynor Ames looked like an advert for Daz, straight out of the ’50s, standing by her washing line, pegging out clothes in a loose, floppy jumper and pedal-pushers.

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ she greeted him.

  ‘That’s still Max,’ he said. ‘I can see you’re busy, Gaynor, but can I have a word?’

  ‘Of course. I can walk and talk at the same time,’ she smiled. ‘I might even make you a cup of coffee. Inside or out?’

  ‘The sun’s kind,’ Maxwell squinted up at it. ‘Outside would be good. No kids today?’

  Briefly, Gaynor Ames’ smile vanished. ‘They’re at my mother’s. She only lives in Haslemere. It an awful wrench, Max, but … well, I just didn’t feel happy with them around, what with all that going on.’

  ‘What is going on, Gaynor?’

  She’d popped through the patio doors into h kitchen and began digging out biscuits to accompany the coffee. ‘I hoped you might tell me,’ she said. ‘I understand Jeremy Tubbs has gone missing. Richard says the children are full of it.

  ‘When we met last,’ Maxwell sat down at the patio table, his back to the wall in every sense the phrase, looking out of the garden gate an across the fields where the girls of Austen were bashing hell out of each other with their hockey sticks, ‘you said Bill Pardoe had enemies. Was Jeremy Tubbs one of them?’