Maxwell’s Curse Page 5

  ‘Tell me about Myrtle Cottage,’ he said in the green glow from Jacquie’s dashboard lights.

  He didn’t see her knuckles whiten on the steering wheel, nor the muscles in her jaw flex. ‘Where?’ she asked, and felt his eyes burning into her as he lolled sideways, his head on her shoulder. Peter Maxwell had invented body language – the fawning adulation of a lap-dog and the inquisitional skills of the Gestapo all rolled into one. ‘Oh, all right, but first …’

  ‘I know.’ He straightened up again and raised both hands. ‘Not a word to Bessie and I’ve never seen you before in my life, have I, darling?’

  ‘That’s not what I was going to say – although, yes, it’ll do for starters.’ She swung the wheel and purred onto the flyover, the tail lights of cars magic in their road-spray radiance. ‘What I was going to say was – how did you know about Myrtle Cottage?’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Maxwell wriggled lower in his seat to ease the numbness in his left buttock. What had possessed Jacquie to buy a Ka? ‘Therein lies the essential schizophrenia of today’s police force, my dear. On the one hand, there’s you, the dutiful detective constable who clams up. On the other, there’s your boss, the DCI, with as clear a case of verbal diarrhoea as I ever saw.’

  ‘Hall talked to you?’ There was a distinct wobble in Jacquie’s road positioning and from nowhere a horn blasted the night.

  ‘Indeed,’ Maxwell still had his two fingers in the air. It was the knee-jerk reaction of the lifelong cyclist.

  ‘When? Where?’

  ‘Last Tuesday. At school. You know, you’re getting more like Mrs B. every day.’

  ‘Thanks. What did he say?’

  ‘Told me the dead woman’s name and where she lived.’

  ‘Christ.’ Jacquie looked at him for as long as staying alive on the flyover would allow. ‘Why?’

  ‘Am I your DCI’s keeper?’ Maxwell asked her. ‘Maybe he felt lonely, needed a chat; perhaps he’s a one-man pilot scheme for Jack Straw’s Freedom of Information Act; I don’t know.’

  ‘This is weird, Max.’ She was shaking her head and frowning.

  ‘No more weird than someone leaving a frozen body on my doorstep. But now the cat’s out of the bag, so to speak, Myrtle Cottage?’

  ‘The old girl lived there,’ Jacquie shrugged. ‘SOCO have been all over it. Nothing that would indicate how she died or who killed her.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Jacquie laughed, joining the queue to the A27. ‘We may have something going here, Max, you and I – I hope we have …’ and she looked across at him waiting for confirmation, while he stared stoically ahead. ‘Bastard,’ and she thwacked him – lovingly – around the ear. ‘Even so, I can’t go into any of that – you know I can’t. What if I came snooping around Leighford High?’

  ‘You’d find an open book,’ he said. ‘Several hundred of them, in fact. We have no secrets. Legs Diamond, the Headmaster, is an ineffectual nerd; his deputies Bernard Ryan and Roger Rabbitt are slightly worse. David Boston, Head of Drama …’

  ‘I think you’re deliberately missing the point, Max,’ she interrupted him.

  ‘You’re right,’ he beamed, ‘but that’s what points are for.’

  ‘Here we are,’ she tucked the Ka in behind a Range Rover so that it looked like the dot of an exclamation mark. ‘Willoughby’s.’

  ‘His name isn’t really Willoughby, is it?’ he asked as he disentangled himself from his seat belt.

  ‘You are not to be rude,’ she warned him, eyes flashing with laughter. And he was still doing his terribly hurt impression as they reached the front door.

  By half past ten, Maxwell had lost the will to live. Whoever Willoughby was, he had either never heard of Southern Comfort or the crafty bugger had locked the good stuff safely away. Maxwell had chatted over the row of the ’90s music and found himself belting out the one blast from the past he recognized – ‘The Mighty Quinn’ – with the rest of them.

  ‘Tell me,’ a thirtysomething brunette had suddenly appeared on the arm of his settee, thighs on a level with his nose, ‘why Willoughby hasn’t already introduced us?’

  Maxwell took in the slightly bleary makeup, the lack of bra and the fuck-me shoes and drew his own conclusions. ‘I’ve just been lucky, I guess. Not that I’ve met Willoughby yet.’

  The woman’s eyes widened and her lips formed a silent o. Then she tapped his modelling arm playfully. ‘And you’re such a bitch. I like that in a man,’ and she squeezed herself between Maxwell and the settee arm, a feat that surprised them both.

  ‘I’m Prissy,’ she held out a limp hand that was festooned with gold.

  ‘Surely not?’ he frowned and took it. ‘Maxwell.’

  ‘I know. Isn’t it awful? Ciggie?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Mummy had this thing for Cilla Black – well, they were different days, that’s the only excuse I can think of – so when I came along, Priscilla it was. Everyone called me Cilla of course until I was fourteen. Then I rebelled. Lost my virginity at the same time.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Prissy slurred. ‘It’s one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. Are you with anybody?’

  ‘With in the Biblical sense?’

  Prissy looked a little confused. ‘You naughty man,’ she trilled, lighting up. ‘Not one of your vices, then?’ She waved the fag in his face.

  ‘No.’ He coughed for effect. ‘Actually, I came with Jacquie Carpenter.’

  ‘Oh, Jacquie.’ Prissy blew smoke down her horsy nostrils. ‘Lovely girl. Shame she’s filth. Oh, you aren’t, are you?’

  ‘No, no. Good Lord, no. Scum.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’m scum. A teacher.’

  ‘Oh.’ That piece of information usually produced results like that. ‘Look, your glass is empty. Can I top you up?’

  Before Maxwell could reply he’d have to be getting along, she’d found a bottle from somewhere and refilled his glass. ‘What is it you teach?’ Prissy asked.

  ‘Oh, the usual,’ he smiled. ‘Children.’

  There was a pause before she giggled. ‘You silly man. What age group?’

  ‘The terrible teens,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh, frightful.’ She gulped at her glass. ‘Still, I bet there’s quite a bit of teenaged totty has the hots for you, though, eh? We did in my day. Course, that was a boarding school.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you had a groundsman hung like Bow Bells?’ Maxwell sighed. St Trinians he could do without.

  Prissy closed her eyes. ‘Well, if it’s stories you like, Maxwell …’

  ‘Maxwell?’ The owner of that name had never been so glad to hear a male voice in his life. ‘Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘Er … yes.’ A crop haired young man had plonked himself down on the other side from Prissy. ‘Well, this is extraordinary. I’m Ken.’

  ‘Ken?’ Maxwell looked blank.

  ‘Ken Templeton – from Beauregard’s. I was talking to you last night. The phone call.’

  ‘Really?’ Maxwell shifted as much as he could. ‘It seems longer ago.’

  ‘This is an amazing coincidence.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Prissy leaned across, her smile a mask of tightness. ‘Look, Ken, why don’t you go and find that silly little wife of yours and give us all a break?’

  Ken leaned across Maxwell. ‘I don’t think this is the time or place, Prissy, dear … Mr Maxwell, have you reconsidered Beauregard’s?’

  ‘Well, I …’ Maxwell felt Prissy fingers sliding up his thigh. ‘As a matter of fact, I have. Shall we?’ And he hauled Ken upright and bowed curtly to Prissy as they left.

  The two of them climbed over assorted bodies in the hall. ‘Do you think Willoughby would mind if I used his phone?’ Maxwell asked Ken.

  ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t. Now, about Beauregard’s …’

  ‘Ken, look,’ Maxwell slowed his man down. ‘I can see that under that shirt beats a heart of gold and pecs of stee
l. But look at me, my trackless waists.’

  ‘Nonsense, Mr Maxwell, just a bit of toning, that’s all. I hear you’re a keen cyclist.’

  ‘I get from A to B,’ Maxwell shouted over the cacophony from the lounge, ‘but I must get a taxi tonight.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ a voice he recognized was at his left ear, car keys jingling in the dim light. ‘I couldn’t let you.’ Prissy rested her arm against the doorframe, the contours of her body moulded into her party dress.

  ‘I hope you don’t think you’re driving anywhere.’ Someone snatched the keys from her hand. Prissy spun round to face him.

  ‘Give me those keys, you bastard, or you know what’s going to happen, don’t you?’

  The plump-looking man with the crimson face faltered for a moment. Then, aware that everyone was looking at him, he managed a grin. ‘Well,’ he winked at her, ‘just ‘cos it’s you, Priss.’ She arched an eyebrow and snatched the keys back before twisting her stiletto into his foot as she turned. He winced and leaned back against the wall.

  ‘Max, good Lord, hello.’

  ‘Kr … Crispin,’ Maxwell turned at the slap on his back. ‘Tonight’s just full of surprises.’

  ‘Well, it is. I didn’t know you knew Willoughby.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Well, for God’s sake, you’ve just been talking to him. Willoughby Crown, this is Peter Maxwell.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ Crown shook his guest’s hand.

  ‘I’m sorry but I have to be going,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’m afraid my lift had to leave early.’

  ‘Jacquie C.,’ Prissy said. ‘It was all very exciting. Her bleeper thing went off. Some sort of emergency.’

  ‘I was trying to get Mr Maxwell to join the club, Crispin.’ Ken was one hell of a persistent salesman.

  ‘Yes,’ Foulkes smiled, ‘Yes, that is a good idea.’

  ‘You’re a member?’ Maxwell asked him.

  ‘Oh, just a bit of weights. Nothing heavy. Prissy fences, don’t you, darling?’

  The woman suddenly threw her right leg forward and her straight arm pinned Peter Maxwell to the wall.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Willoughby wandered away.

  ‘What a riposte!’ Foulkes winked at Maxwell. ‘No, you really should get along to Beauregard’s. It’s a bit of fun. Besides,’ he became as sotto as the thumping CD would allow, ‘I wanted to talk to you about something.’

  ‘Oh,’ Maxwell extricated himself from Prissy. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Calendars,’ said Foulkes and he swirled away to join the dancers in the other room.

  ‘Shall we?’ Prissy was still dangling the keys.

  Maxwell looked around for agony and loss, but all his allies had deserted him. Ken had been whisked away to the kitchen to have his drink refilled, Willoughby had retired hurt. He turned back to Priscilla, queen of the desert.

  It may have been the longest ride of Maxwell’s life, like the one the bit players always took in the back of the Mob’s cars in B movies. But Maxwell wasn’t in the back, he was in the front of Prissy’s Shogun and it wasn’t his imagination that her party frock rode up higher with every gear change. If he’d lived any further away than the other side of Leighford, it would have become a rather attractive hat.

  ‘What did you make of Crispin?’ she asked him as they roared along the flyover.

  ‘Nice bloke,’ Maxwell said when the G-force of her driving let him.

  ‘For a social worker, you mean? God, yes. Namby-pamby bloody job.’

  ‘What do you do, Prissy? For a living, I mean?’

  ‘As little as possible. Daddy was a merchant banker with a decidedly dicky ticker. I was an only child. A perfect combination, really. I’m one of those people the Lefties can’t stand – a woman of independent means. Tell me, Maxwell, can I ask you a personal question?’

  ‘You can ask,’ Maxwell smiled.

  ‘You and Jacquie. Are you an item?’

  ‘Now,’ Maxwell leaned across to her, an easier task in the Shogun than it had been in the Ka. ‘Why would you want to know that?’

  She hit the accelerator hard and the Shogun lurched to the right, hurtling past a BMW on the one side and the crash barrier on the other. ‘I like you,’ she said, staring straight ahead. ‘I like men in general, but you’re … I don’t know, different.’

  ‘Must be the cut of my G-string,’ he winked at her.

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ she purred.

  ‘First left beyond the lights,’ he told her.

  ‘Will you join Beauregard’s?’ she asked him.

  Maxwell shrugged. ‘I might,’ he said.

  ‘Well, that would be good.’

  They reached 38 Columbine a little after twelve. It was Sunday morning and the lamps still glowed their eerie orange. A large, rangy black and white cat prowling the privet, took one look at the woman in the Shogun’s driving seat and beat a hasty retreat. That wasn’t the one Maxwell had gone with. The car, the smell, it was all different. This one, even through the closed window, reminded him of himself – a hunter, a creature of the night. What was the old bastard doing, playing with fire like that? He’d tackle him about it later.

  ‘You’re stone cold sober, aren’t you?’ Maxwell had slipped off his seat belt.

  She turned to him, the engine still idling. ‘Of course. What did you expect? A lush?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘Maxwell,’ she was looking hard at him. ‘I’ve been watching you tonight.’

  ‘Oh?’ He felt like a prize bull in a show ring. He was old enough to remember when farmers had such things.

  ‘You’re a listener, aren’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Goes with the territory,’ he said. ‘But I should warn you I’m no good with anybody over eighteen.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve formed a very good impression of me,’ she said and sounded like a little girl again. The fatale seemed to have vanished from her femme. He took in the cleavage, pale in the dashboard’s glow, the powerful thighs below the stretched dress.

  ‘I don’t form impressions,’ he said.

  ‘Maxwell. You know I’ve heard of you. Before tonight, I mean.’

  ‘From Jacquie?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Not from Jacquie. You’re a knight errant too, aren’t you?’

  ‘Depends on the damsel,’ he said, feeling for the door handle.

  Her hand snaked out to his chest, her fingers sliding over his shirt. ‘This damsel is in distress, Maxwell,’ she said, her face taut, her front gone.

  ‘What kind of distress?’

  She looked away suddenly, biting her lip in the half light. ‘You solve murders,’ she said.

  Maxwell blinked. ‘Do I?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ she snapped at him. ‘You’re like a bloody psychiatrist.’ Then softer, ‘There’s … there’s something … sinister happening at the club,’ she said. ‘At Beauregard’s.’

  He waited. There wasn’t going to be any more. Not there. Not then.

  ‘Would you like to come in?’ he asked, half-dreading the answer. She hit the ignition and crashed the Shogun into gear. ‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’d better get back.’

  ‘To the party?’

  ‘Yes,’ she tried to smile, ‘to the party. I live there, Maxwell.’

  ‘You … I see. So Willoughby …’

  ‘… is my husband, yes,’ she said quietly, ‘but that’s just a cross I have to bear. No one’s afraid of Willoughby, Maxwell.’ She flashed her indicator, revving the engine. ‘Except Willoughby, of course.’

  And he waved as he dropped down from the Shogun and watched her drive into the night.

  5

  Metternich raised his lion’s head and scented the wind. Bacon sarnies. Heaven. That meant it must be Sunday morning already. What was the betting He Who Must Be Ignored would ruin the appeal of any scraps he might leave by plastering them all with that noxious brown stuff.

  ‘Running low on
the old HP, Count,’ Maxwell called through from the kitchen, as though it were somehow the cat’s fault. He had to get back to Myrtle Cottage, that less-than-chocolate-box place in the folds of the Weald, his only link with the woman who had ended up on his doorstep. He needed the daylight and he needed time. He looked at the pile of A-level essays on his coffee table, taunting him, haunting him.

  ‘Later, everybody,’ he muttered, finishing his coffee. ‘Today belongs to the late Elizabeth Pride.’

  When he’d gone, the black bomber, the great white hope, slunk off the pouffé and checked out Maxwell’s plate. Yup! Just as he thought – that brown stuff was all over the sliver of bacon the old bastard had abandoned. Metternich sneezed in disgust and wandered away.

  Maxwell left White Surrey in the shed. He couldn’t call on Jacquie; she was too sensitive about the whole business.

  Neither could he bother Sylvia again – it hardly seemed fair. So he swallowed his pride and caught a bus. That way he saw a lot of the West Sussex countryside at an incredibly leisurely pace and overheard conversations that normally only Alan Bennett is privileged to hear.

  ‘I had an accident this morning, Beryl.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘I used my spray deodorant, you know … down there. Only it was polish.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  Maxwell didn’t dare look around in case the old girl in question slid the length of the aisle.

  Chanctonbury stood silent in the hoar frost. Shortly before dawn the cold had come and the brass monkeys scampered and chattered over the uplands, still silver in the mid-morning. He felt his feet crunch on the grass as he left the road and he saw the rooks wheeling and bickering as they skirted the tall trees on the Ring. He paused on the ridge, as the iron men of the Iron Age had before him and looked at the broad sunlit sweep of the valley below. He saw the winter-hard furrows of the ploughlands and the knots of sheep huddling along the hedgerows for shelter. A single tractor rattled its way across the hill, a solitary black and white dog padding in its wake.

  Myrtle Cottage looked larger in the sunlight, nestling against a bank of dead brambles that coated the hillside like the barbed wire tangles in the trenches of Christmas 1914, silver and deadly. Maxwell strode down, glad of his scarf and gloves, his breath snaking out and wreathing behind him as the wind took it.