Maxwell's Revenge

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell conceded, ‘it appears one person is. Some of us would pass for normal on a dark night.’

  She closed her eyes and lay back on the pillows. ‘Possibly, Max, very possibly. But if you’ll excuse me, I’ll say goodnight and very possibly goodbye.’ She turned her head and flashed her amazing blue eyes one more time at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I think we could have been friends.’

  He patted her hand. ‘I think we could have been,’ he agreed. ‘Goodnight. Sleep tight.’

  ‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite,’ she added, reaching up and switching off her light.

  He stood looking down at her for a few moments, a pale orange in the street light’s glow from the window, and then moved on. Fiona Smollett was lying, not unexpectedly, flat on her back with the bedclothes immaculately tucked around her. Although not out of character, this was not all of her doing. The NHS had given her a present; not of emergency nightclothes or a free toothbrush, but of a particularly nasty dose of clostridium difficile, introduced with the needle delivering her poison antidote. Her bed was enlivened, but not by much, by a series of signs warning off the potential unwary. Maxwell hadn’t much reason to touch Miss Smollett and he was quietly delighted to heed what they said and moved on across the ward to where Mrs Bevell lay, guarded ferociously by Mr Bevell, whom no nurse had been brave enough to see off.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Bevell,’ Maxwell ventured. ‘How is your wife?’

  ‘Who are you?’ barked Bevell, flicking open his notepad and putting aside the bowl of fruit he had been nursing jealously on his lap.

  Maxwell swallowed his natural antipathy to the horrible little man and his natural inclination to put one on him and said in his most pleasant Acting-Headmasterly voice, ‘We’ve met, Mr Bevell. Peter Maxwell, Acting Headmaster of Leighford High School.’ He leant forward helpfully. ‘I believe I may be on your list.’ Using his skills honed to perfection in years of waiting in front of the desk of Legs Diamond, he read the listings upside down. ‘Yes, there I am.’ He pointed towards the bottom of the page. ‘Just below Virgin Rail and just above the Home Office.’ He glanced up. ‘Home Office?’ he queried.

  Bevell looked at him with scorn. ‘Generic term,’ he said, ‘to cover all of the police misdemeanours.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Maxwell straightened up and stepped back a pace. No point in adding trespass into personal space to his list of crimes.

  ‘Anyway,’ Bevell said with a nasty edge to his voice. ‘How may I help you?’ As if ‘help’ was in the man’s vocabulary.

  ‘I’m just here to see how your wife is getting on. And the other victims of Thursday’s events, of course, in my current capacity.’

  ‘I couldn’t help noticing you were speaking to that lad over there,’ Bevell observed, ‘the one whose mother is behind the curtains. I hope they are suing for personal distress, poking your nose in at a time like this. I am coming to the conclusion that you are morbidly curious.’

  ‘No, no,’ Maxwell said, backing away. ‘Peter Maxwell, as I said. But I’ll leave you now to get on with your … jotting. Bye now. Enjoy your fruit.’ And he turned and hurried away as fast as dignity would allow, past the nurses’ station where Louise was adjusting her nicotine patch and on to the bedside of James Diamond, erstwhile Headteacher of Leighford High School.

  He looked somehow smaller even than when he was upright and trying to run the school, as he lay there under his hospital-issue covers. Maxwell had never seen the man without a tie before and it was something of a shock. Declining standards, dumbing down – it all lay there on the hospital bed. He was drip-free, but very pale and wan. The sedge had clearly withered from his lake. He turned his head and focused his eyes on his visitor. ‘Hello, Max,’ he said, with a ghost of a smile. ‘How nice of you to come and visit.’ Then his expression changed to a look of mild panic. ‘Everything’s all right, isn’t it? At the school?’

  Yet again, Maxwell found himself patting someone’s hand. If he had ever had the leisure time to list potential hand pattees, Diamond’s name would have been among the substitutes at best, and yet here they were, patter and pattee. ‘Don’t worry, Headmaster,’ he said. ‘Everything is absolutely running like clockwork.’

  ‘Really?’ Diamond looked a little crushed.

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell hastened to comfort the man, taking a calculated guess that he hadn’t watched John Cleese in Clockwise. ‘Not like when you are there, of course, Headmaster. But it is all running smoothly.’ He looked down into the stressed face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re just going to have to trust me on this one. Have I ever let you down?’

  Diamond looked as though he was going to cry. Surely, there wasn’t time before lights out to even begin to list all of the times that Maxwell had been suspended, absent, beaten up and all the rest. Just because his exam results were the best in the school bar the Japanese department – teacher, one; pupil cohort, one, in the shape of James Kagamoshi – it didn’t mean Diamond trusted him further than he could throw him. And, in his current weakened state that wasn’t very far, although he liked to tell himself that, with health and strength on his side, he could give it a go. He closed his eyes. This was all too much.

  ‘Goodnight, Max,’ he whispered. ‘Thank you for dropping by.’

  Dismissed, Maxwell shrugged his shoulders and went in search of Bernard Ryan. He found him in a side room, with more admonitory notices, this time on the door and small window that let visitors get a glimpse of the man within. He turned to a nurse that was hurrying past. She was not, amazingly, a Leighford Highena, but someone of the northern persuasion by her accent – perhaps Petersfield.

  ‘Can I visit Mr Ryan?’ he asked, in his hospital hush voice.

  She looked him up and down with distaste. ‘Are you family?’

  ‘Er, no. A colleague.’

  ‘Not a doctor, then?’

  ‘No, a teacher.’

  ‘So, not a nurse.’

  ‘No, I’m—’

  ‘Ancillary staff?’

  ‘No. I—’

  ‘Can you read?’

  ‘Yes, I’m a—’

  ‘I’ll make it easy for you, shall I, then?’ she said, shifting the gum to the other cheek. ‘No. You can’t visit Mr Ryan. If, as you claim, you can read you would be able to tell that.’ And she stalked away, to bring comfort and succour to some poor damned soul.

  Maxwell looked around for a trusty Highena, and finally Louise, the Senior Nurse, came round a corner, holding a bedpan at arm’s length.

  ‘Louise … I … oh, my word,’ he said, backing away. ‘Can we talk in a minute when you’ve …?’ He waved at the pan.

  ‘In the office,’ she said, trying not to breathe, and scurried away, using the special nurse walk that was not really a run, but almost.

  He went round behind the nurses’ station, trying not to look at the patient charts displayed across it, and let himself into Louise’s tiny glass-sided office. After a few moments, she came in and shut the door.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said with a smile. ‘That’s the trouble with having poison cases. Not only is it a bit …’ she screwed up her nose, ‘… smellier than usual, we also have to keep it, for analysis. We’re running out of shelves. Anyway, Mr Maxwell, how can I help you?’ She foraged in a drawer and brought out an opened packet of ginger nuts. She loosened one with her thumb and proffered it to Maxwell. ‘Biscuit?’

  He drew breath to accept and then suddenly changed his mind. Where had that thumb been? He shook his head and smiled. ‘No, thanks, Louise. I was just wondering how Mr Ryan is.’

  She turned down the corners of her mouth and shook her head. ‘Not too well, Mr Maxwell, actually. I don’t know how the poison he was given worked, but everyone seems to have had different amounts or, at least, different reactions to it. Miss Mackenzie, for example, needn’t be here still, but she seems a little vulnerable and the police are also afraid to let her out. I assume in case the poisoner has another go. I can’t beli
eve she did it, can you? You know, giving herself a minor dose to cover her tracks.’

  Maxwell smiled in semi-agreement. He was impressed. Louise was obviously watching a lot of CSI. He, for his part, couldn’t help remembering the beautiful Madeleine Smith, poisoner of Glasgow– just a little before Louise’s time. About one hundred and fifty years before; even Maxwell had been only a boy.

  ‘Then, of course, Mrs Bevell was given another dose and there was hell to pay over that one, I can tell you. Plus, of course, Mr Bevell is threatening to sue.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Maxwell.

  ‘I’d love it to be him, Mr Maxwell, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I certainly would, Louise, but I’ve found it doesn’t work like that. Professional bastards like him usually walk away scot-free. Or, in his case, a few thousand richer. Anyway, do go on. I seem to remember you had a gift for precis in the Sixth Form.’

  ‘No, Mr Maxwell,’ she smiled. ‘You said that my essays were always too short by about fifty per cent.’

  ‘Same thing. Go on.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Bevell. She seems to be getting on all right, despite her second dose. But you have probably noticed her robust constitution.’

  This time, Maxwell threw hospital whispering to the winds and laughed out loud. The nurse grinned back. ‘I certainly have, Louise. In fact, who could miss it?’

  ‘Then, there’s Mr Diamond. He’s getting on all right, I suppose, given his age and condition.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I’m afraid he’s not very fit, Mr Maxwell. He …’ and here she stopped speaking at all and simply mimed the raising of a glass.

  Maxwell was truly amazed. ‘Does he?’ This would be one for the next school newsletter.

  ‘The liver functions were unmistakeable. Ooh, Mr Maxwell, this is in confidence, isn’t it, only, I’m not supposed to discuss patients?’

  ‘Of course it is, Louise. Of course it is. Schtum is my middle name. And what about Mr Ryan?’

  ‘Mr Ryan is probably in renal failure.’

  ‘Serious,’ Maxwell observed.

  ‘Well, fatal sometimes. But he’ll probably die of the liver failure. Or something else, because he is in shutdown, basically. He might rally, but we’re not expecting it. Meanwhile, he is compromised immunologically and so we are keeping people out.’

  ‘And that’s because of some hospital bug, is it?’ Maxwell was doubly glad he hadn’t taken the biscuit.

  ‘No, no that’s the poison. Yet another reaction to it, you see.’ She looked at Maxwell with her head on one side. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it, Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘What is?’ What, in all of this, could she possibly pin down as particularly odd, he wondered?

  ‘I don’t get much experience of poisons in general nursing, of course. I suppose the geriatric nurses see more of that, wrong prescribing and so on.’

  Maxwell decided to let that one go as a case of sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. That, and Harold Shipman.

  ‘But it has made us all think, having so many connected cases. The poisoner just isn’t very good at it. The dose wasn’t the same in all of the portions. That’s odd. You’d think that he’d have put it in the prawn cocktail sauce, for example, but we think he must have added it later and, well, you know, just put more on one than the other. And then, he really meant to hurt people, because aconite is a very serious poison to start dishing out. You’re not planning to give someone a gippy tummy when you play with that one.’

  ‘Yes, Louise, but why is that odd?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, you’d have just thought he would be better at it, wouldn’t you? Go to all that trouble to get the poison, get to where you could doctor the food and then be so … I don’t know, Mr Maxwell, what’s the word I want? Sloppy, I suppose.’

  Maxwell looked at her with new eyes. ‘My goodness, Louise, you’re right. He did all the difficult stuff and then messed up the simple bit, the dishing it out. And …’ he shook a finger at her to keep her quiet while he gathered his thoughts, ‘and he’s been trying different things since then. Different poisons, but still administered in food that anyone might eat.’

  She looked over his shoulder. ‘Oops,’ she said. ‘Consultant on the ward, Mr Maxwell. I’ve got to go. I hope I’ll see you again soon.’

  But not in a professional capacity, thought Maxwell, wiggling his fingers at her in farewell. He followed her out of the office, hoping to catch sight of someone of the stature of James Robertson Justice as Sir Lancelot Spratt. Instead it was just a kid in a white coat surrounded by other kids in white coats. Eventually he found his way up to the orthopaedic ward, where Helen Maitland was making life hell for anything in a uniform. He stuck his head round the door and could hear her in full flight.

  He fixed a carefree grin on his face and made his way to where she was trussed up like a chicken on traction.

  ‘Helen! Dear heart! How the devil are you?’ He bent to give her a kiss.

  ‘Have you come to ask stupid questions, Max, or have you come to help me scratch my leg?’ she said, twisting this way and that to try and reach her ankle.

  ‘You scratch my ankle, I’ll scratch yours,’ he said genially, ‘and by the way, we historians call them, in all modesty, nether limbs.’ He extracted a biro from an inside pocket. ‘Now,’ he said, brandishing it, ‘where do you want me to start?’

  ‘Max, have I ever told you you are a simply wonderful man?’

  ‘Not lately, but you can start now if you want,’ he said. ‘Now, tell me if this tickles.’ He poked the biro gently underneath her plaster and wiggled it about. She writhed in pleasure. ‘Better?’

  ‘Perfect,’ she breathed. ‘Just perfect. How long can you stay?’

  He glanced round to the end of the ward; the clock above the doors told him the horrible truth. ‘Well, Helen,’ he said. ‘The bad news is that I can only give you another ten minutes, I’m afraid. I promised Jacquie I would be back in the car park in an hour and she worries if I’m late, for some strange reason.’

  Helen laughed and lobbed a grape at him. ‘I’m not surprised, Max. If you were mine, I’d keep you on a stout rope, tethered like a goat in the yard, to some immoveable object. Every time you wander off, you get into some sort of trouble.’

  ‘Madam,’ he said, drawing himself up, ‘I object. After all, I am doubly your boss at the moment. As Acting Head I can fire you.’

  ‘I simply don’t know how you have the nerve,’ she said, ignoring his remark completely. ‘After all you’ve put that poor woman through over the years. Still, she must like it or I suppose she wouldn’t have agreed to marry you. But, don’t worry. The evening drinks trolley has just arrived, so I shall be getting outside my nightly Horlicks in a minute anyway.’ She leant forward. ‘Oh, bugger it. I hate it when it’s him.’

  ‘Who?’ Maxwell screwed round to see better and inadvertently gave her a small stab wound with his pen.

  ‘Ouch! Max, watch what you’re doing with that.’

  He looked round at her. ‘Sorry,’ he said, absently.

  ‘Max? What is it?’

  ‘Sorry, Helen, old chap. It’s just that I recognised the trolley dolly. The wispy hair, the unkempt beard. I hadn’t seen him for a while. Not since Dierdre’s funeral, in fact. And just recently he seems to be everywhere.’

  Helen clicked her fingers. ‘Of course!’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to place him. Dierdre’s uncle, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Oliver Lessing, as I live and breathe. First at school, now here. He’s always pushing a trolley; the man’s obsessed. I’ll go out the other end of the ward, Helen, if that’s all right with you. He’s not my favourite person and he hates my guts.’

  ‘Why?’ Helen genuinely wanted to know. She loved Max dearly and, while he could be bloody annoying, she couldn’t think how anyone could actually hate him.

  ‘History, I expect.’ He caught her puzzled look. ‘No, no, I don’t mean History, as in what I teach. I mean history, as in what happened i
n our past. He remembers the time when Dierdre and I really didn’t get along and holds it against me. That and a few other things.’

  ‘Did you ever actually get along with Dierdre?’ Helen felt she had to ask. ‘I don’t really remember that.’

  ‘Well, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we stopped not getting along.’

  ‘What other things?’ Helen reminded him. ‘Re Uncle Ollie?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘Water under the bridge. Look, darling, I must fly. I’m late anyway.’ He dashed to the business end of the bed and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. ‘Abyssinia. Don’t take any sweeties from any nasty men.’ He paused and looked thoughtfully at Oliver Lessing, struggling to move the enormous heavy trolley with his puny little legs, which scrabbled against the Flotexed floor before he finally got it moving. ‘In fact, don’t have your Horlicks tonight. Don’t ask me why, I’d just rather you didn’t.’

  She followed his glance and chuckled. ‘Max, don’t get carried away. He’s a Hospital Volunteer, not Major Armstrong.’

  ‘Bless you for knowing the name of a random poisoner, Helen. Now indulge me by settling for your bottled water.’

  She looked into his eyes. She’d been his deputy in the Sixth Form now for more years than either of them cared to remember. He had never let her down before. She gave in. ‘Oh, all right. But if I have nightmares, I shall know who to blame.’

  ‘Nick Ross,’ he called as he vanished into MRSA land.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jacquie reached her mother’s car, and as she saw the ripped metal in the car park’s lights her heart gave a little jolt as she was reminded of the task still ahead: telling her about the accident. All the memories from childhood came up and piled one on top of the other in her head. She could hear the martyred sigh, the breathy and insincere thankfulness that she, Jacquie, was unharmed and that anyway, what was a car but a chunk of metal? Then would come the head shakes, the disbelief that anyone, let alone her own daughter, could be so thoughtless as to let this happen to a poor lone widow-woman’s pride and joy. The dark cloud in Jacquie’s head grew large and ominous, a thunderhead with no reprieve but to burst.