Maxwell's Revenge

by M. J. Trow

  He ushered them into the kitchen and through into what was essentially a glass-sided lean-to. They looked around with faint distaste at the green-streaked glass and lifted their feet surreptitiously to check that they hadn’t stepped in anything. The initial delicious smell had become rather less pleasant the further into the house they went. Davies was behind them, a plate of dinner in his hands. He gestured to the table.

  ‘I’ve only laid for one, so if I can sit there, guv? You and Jacquie sit anywhere you like.’ He sat down and pulled the salt, in a red plastic drum, towards him. ‘After all, you usually do just as you like, don’t you?’

  Hall and Jacquie sat reluctantly. Hall had had no game plan on this one, he was running on anger and adrenalin. This was one of their own, and he had tried to kill Margaret. A small part of his brain tried to weigh up which of these sins was the worst. It was a close call. ‘Let’s keep this pleasant, Bob, shall we?’ he suggested.

  Davies took a huge bite of his dinner. ‘Why?’ His tone was reasonable, and it was hard to see him as a mass poisoner. For the first time, Jacquie wondered whether her guv’nor had made a mistake.

  ‘There isn’t a good outcome, is there, Bob? You’ve killed two people, and …’

  Davies waved a gravy-smeared knife at Hall. ‘Hold up, now,’ he said. ‘I haven’t killed two people. Just the barman and he was an accident.’

  ‘And Mel Forman.’

  ‘Who the fuck is Mel Forman when he’s at home?’

  ‘She,’ said Jacquie. ‘The teacher at Leighford High.’

  Davies put down his knife and fork and guffawed. ‘Idiots,’ he said. ‘I didn’t do that one. I got the idea from that one. No,’ and he resumed attacking his food, ‘somebody else did that one. A nutter, I suppose. Had the right idea, though, targeting Leighford High. Probably after that wanker you live with, Jacquie.’ His tone was still reasonable, he was just stating facts. He held out a forkful of greens towards her. ‘Go on, try some. Spinach. Lovely. Put hairs on your chest.’ She shook her head. ‘No? You don’t know what you’re missing.’ He ate it in one bite.

  ‘Bob,’ said Hall, trying to get the conversation back on track. ‘You’re a policeman …’

  ‘Was. Was a policeman.’

  ‘You know the odds of two poisoners in one town are astronomic.’

  ‘But there aren’t two poisoners, are there?’ he said. ‘There’s one poisoner and there’s me. I just copied him. You must have already worked that out.’ He looked from one to the other, smiling. ‘Fuck me, you two. You won’t solve anything without me. I can’t believe you’ve been looking for just one person. You must be nuts.’

  Hall and Jacquie looked at each other. All of the things that hadn’t added up had been because they were doing the wrong sum. They had tied themselves in knots trying to make links between unlinked crimes. Into their minds came a simultaneous thought: that while they were here, watching Davies filling his face, another poisoner was out there, at large and able to get at his original victims, able to have another go.

  Davies burped resonantly. ‘Oops,’ he said, and patted his chest. ‘Wind in the willows. Where were we? Oh, yes. I am your random poisoner. I’ve done, ooh, I forget how many shops. And not just shops either. I’ve done pubs, cafes, restaurants. The casual job in the Vine was ridiculously easy to get and very useful, as you already know.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Shame I missed Angus, though. I really thought he’d be up for two or three pints before you got there. I was planning putting something in his stash if the beer failed, but that went a bit tits up, of course. Never mind, it’s all one now.’ He reached out and helped himself to some more mint sauce from a pot on the table.

  ‘Putting aside Leighford High for a moment,’ Hall said, ‘did you try to poison Jacquie’s son yesterday afternoon?’

  Davies looked aggrieved. ‘I most certainly did not. Poor little bugger, he’s got enough to contend with, with those two for parents, without me slipping something in his juice. I heard about that, though. When I dropped in to the nick.’ He bent a solicitous gaze on Jacquie. ‘All right now, is he, young Nolan?’

  ‘Yes, he is, thanks,’ said Jacquie, tightly.

  ‘Tell you what, though,’ Davies went on, ‘while young Nolan is the subject of the conversation. Two things, really. One is, don’t use birthdays as your PIN. I’ve been listening to your messages for months. The other thing is … well, I hardly like to say.’

  ‘What?’ Jacquie snapped, half rising from her chair.

  ‘Where is he?’

  She sat down again. ‘Stop trying to scare me, Davies, you shit,’ she said. ‘He’s with his father and grandmother.’

  ‘His grandmother. Looks like you if you were made up to look like a boot. Short legs. Fat arse.’

  It seemed disloyal, but it was accurate enough. Jacquie nodded. Hall dipped his head. Now was not the time to crack his first smile.

  ‘When I saw them running down Silversmith Row I didn’t see him. Perhaps they left him with someone, eh?’

  Jacquie grabbed Hall’s arm and shook it. ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I told you it was odd my car was still there.’

  ‘Calm down, Jacquie,’ Hall said. ‘I’m sure there is a perfectly rational explanation.’

  ‘Bugger that,’ she said and dashed off towards the front door, yelling down her radio as she went. ‘All units, Silversmith Row. Stat. Repeat, all units. Silversmith Row.’

  ‘Alpha Charlie Two,’ came the steady response. ‘Unit November Echo already at Silversmith Row. Query send other units, over.’

  ‘Why are they there?’ she snapped. To hell with all this Alpha Charlie rubbish.

  ‘Casualty. Elderly man. Poison. Paramedics in attendance.’

  Elderly? Did Maxwell class as elderly? ‘Any other casualties?’

  ‘Negative Alpha Charlie Two. Two civilians called it in. A Mr Maxwell …’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Query that, Alph—’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ she snapped. ‘Just give me the facts.’

  The radio operator dropped into gossip mode. ‘It’s your bloke, Jacquie, and a woman.’

  ‘My mum.’

  ‘Makes sense. They chased this geezer to his house and he tried to poison them with …’ there were distant mutterings, ‘smoke, it says here. Anyway, they managed to get him out of the premises and called us and ambulance control. The old bloke is OK, they’re bringing him in. So, it looks as if we’ve got our poisoner.’

  Jacquie looked over her shoulder. She could see Hall, but not Davies. She could hear his drone as he told Hall all about it. Then, suddenly, she saw Hall half rise from his chair and reach across the table. Before she could work out what was happening there was a crash of breaking crockery and a noise that went down her spine like ice water. It was a cross between a scream and a groan and it was cut off suddenly. The silence was deafening.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ asked the radio operator. ‘Alpha Charlie Two, are you all right?’

  She put the radio back up to her ear. ‘Send paramedics to 29 Hydrangea Crescent,’ she said. ‘Over and out.’ She turned to go through into the kitchen and then into the dirty little lean-to, but before she had taken two steps, Hall came out to meet her.

  ‘Don’t go in,’ he said. ‘It isn’t very nice.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Jacquie asked, her eyes wide.

  ‘He took all the poisons he had left, all mixed up in his dinner. He had had them for years, pinched from an evidence box when he was working in Birmingham. God knows why he kept them. As well as that, his “spinach” was hydrangea leaves, for good measure. His “mint sauce” was thorn apple. He really meant it, Jacquie. He would have done it, anyway. It’s just our good luck that we got here while he could still tell us a few missing details.’

  ‘Like, why?’

  ‘Because he hated us.’

  Jacquie went white. She had never had herself down as a person who other people hated. Hall put his arm round her shoulder and pul
led her close. She folded into his shoulder and was still there, crying softly, when the driver put his head cautiously round the door. Hall waved him away.

  ‘Nothing to see here,’ he said, quietly. ‘Nothing to see.’ And he rested his cheek on the top of Jacquie’s head. If she felt the single tear that dampened her hair, she said nothing, and never would.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Monday morning was on its way, but Chez Maxwell & Carpenter, Crimes Solved While You Wait, Patent Pending, Website Under Construction, Sunday was still the topic of conversation. The afternoon had been exciting on so many levels. Jacquie had explained to her mother that her car had been trashed by an angry mob and knew from the sparkle in her eye that she would dine out on it for weeks.

  ‘So, when did you first suspect Lessing?’ Jacquie asked. She and Maxwell were curled up on the sofa, her mother had taken over Maxwell’s chair and, wonder of wonders, Metternich was on her lap. Maxwell gave him the occasional glance which the cat rightly interpreted as saying ‘Quisling’. Nolan, safely returned by an agog Miranda, was in bed.

  ‘Well,’ her mother piped up, although it was Maxwell’s mouth that had opened first. ‘When Nolan recognised him, really. Wasn’t it?’ she appealed to Maxwell, but not much.

  ‘I had been suspicious of him for a while,’ Maxwell said. ‘I met him at school on the first day of term. He said he was delivering as a volunteer, so I later wondered if he had also delivered the cocktails. But the one Freda had had been all right. A deliberate ploy, as we now realise, and quite clever, really.’

  ‘Plus, of course,’ Betty piped up, ‘the attempt on … you know, the great fat one you told me about …’

  ‘Mrs Bevell,’ said Jacquie, for no reason other than to stop her mouth healing up.

  ‘So I thought then that it might be her husband, some insane litigation/insurance job. And, heaven knows, we’d all like it to be. The Leighford High incident might be a bit tricky to explain, but not impossible. Then,’ he went on, ‘the other poisonings began and I really didn’t see Bevell having the local knowledge, although they are only from Littlehampton, so he could have sussed the ground.’

  ‘But wasn’t he at the hospital almost all the time?’ Jacquie asked.

  ‘That was the snag,’ said Maxwell. ‘The staff all hated him doing it, but I saw an article on the news tonight about him. Apparently, while guarding his wife, he fell asleep and, in doing so, a banana slipped off his lap. Someone trod on it and broke his arm. He’s suing Bevell for loss of earnings. I really can’t explain that one. I know I put the peel in the bin.’ He smiled at the women, as innocent as the day.

  ‘Oh, damn,’ Jacquie laughed. ‘That will be a drop in the ocean compared to what he has fleeced other people for.’

  ‘You’d think so,’ Maxwell said. ‘Unfortunately for the Bevells, the man who slipped was a consultant surgeon visiting a patient. We’re talking big, big money.’ He sighed happily. ‘I love a happy ending, don’t you?’

  ‘He couldn’t stay there at night, though,’ Ninja pointed out, bringing them back to the sleuthing. She had never met Mr and Mrs Sue Bevell and didn’t get the joke. ‘He would have had time then.’

  ‘True. But he wasn’t free to give Nolan the lolly,’ Jacquie said.

  ‘I meant to tell you about that,’ Maxwell said, ruffling her hair. ‘The lolly wasn’t poisoned.’

  ‘What?’ She sat up sharply, fetching Maxwell a nice one under the chin.

  ‘You may me bye my tug,’ he said, clutching his mouth.

  ‘Never mind,’ Betty continued. ‘The silly old fool gave him an aniseed lolly. No wonder he cried. No child likes those.’

  Jacquie laughed. ‘So, he was just being finicky?’

  ‘Well, yes. But, in a way, that solved the case. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have chased him and we wouldn’t have got him under guard at Leighford General as we speak.’

  ‘True. Go on.’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell came back into the conversation, but speaking carefully around his swollen tongue. ‘That’s it, really. We followed him home and he lit a fire of oleander.’

  ‘The smoke of which is poisonous,’ said Betty.

  ‘And he tried to get us to inhale it.’

  ‘But we’re not that stupid.’

  ‘So he stood in it himself.’

  ‘And Max rescued him. It was terribly exciting, Jacquie. He came out through the smoke like Kurt Russell in Backdraft. I was so proud!’

  So, there we are, thought Maxwell. It’s easy to get on with your mother-in-law. Just dive through poisonous smoke to rescue a murderer and everything will be peachy.

  ‘But, wasn’t that horribly dangerous?’ Jacquie asked, playing to the gallery.

  ‘Jacquie,’ her mother said, ‘he was just wonderful. He soaked his scarf in the bottled water we were carrying and wrapped it round his mouth. So resourceful.’

  Maxwell nodded modestly. ‘I went to a good school. They taught us to be very resourceful,’ he said.

  Jacquie looked into his eyes. ‘And tired,’ she said.

  ‘That, too.’

  ‘And you’ve got to be a Headmaster in the morning.’

  ‘So that wasn’t a dream, then?’ he asked, innocently.

  ‘No.’ She kissed him on the nose. ‘I’ll put the cocoa on. Mum?’

  ‘May I have Horlicks?’

  ‘You can have what you like,’ her daughter said, squeezing her shoulder as she walked past.

  ‘Horlicks?’ Maxwell asked.

  She winked at him. ‘It goes better with the brandy,’ she said, getting up and going over to the cupboard. ‘Anything for yourself?’

  ‘I’ll have a small Southern Comfort, since you ask,’ he said. ‘I find it goes with anything.’

  She handed him the glass. ‘Cheers, Max.’

  ‘Cheers, Ninj, and many of them.’

  Acting Headmaster Peter Maxwell stood in the doorway of Leighford High School on Monday morning, Acting master of all he surveyed. The only slight snag in all this was that there wasn’t a child to be seen and only very few staff, ostentatiously carrying packed lunches.

  ‘They caught him, you know,’ he remarked to Thingee One, who was loitering in the foyer, hoping to be given the day off.

  ‘Yes, but, Mr Maxwell, your w … your … the police sergeant said on the telly yesterday – she did look lovely, by the way, I really like the way she does her hair – she said that they don’t know how many shops and other places the Leighford Ripper had struck.’

  ‘Ripper? Ripper, Thingee? Why do you call him the Ripper? He was a poisoner.’

  ‘It’s what the Leighford Advertiser are calling him on their web page, Mr Maxwell.’

  ‘Ripper it is, then,’ Maxwell sighed. ‘But I still don’t see why every single child has opted to stay at home today.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell!’ Thingee was surprised at him. ‘He might have poisoned the water or anything. You can’t be too careful.’

  He looked down at her, all big eyes and willing manner. She seemed to want something else. ‘Did you want something else, Thingee, old thing?’

  ‘Umm, not really, Mr Maxwell,’ she said, turning away in disappointment.

  ‘In that case, you might as well have the day off.’ He smiled at her. ‘Off you bugger, now, there’s a good admin person.’ He smiled to himself and rubbed his hands together. ‘I’ll let the workmen in.’ Wearing an expression that could only be described as beatifically evil, he paced his school and waited for the real fun to begin.

  Eventually there came, as all things do to those who wait, peace and normality to Leighford High, its staff, students and, beyond the gates, the town. Every last piece of perishable food had been landfilled. Every bottle of milk, of orange juice, of wine had gone its diluted way far out to sea. Every lettuce, every tea bag, every egg had composted itself into a brown and indistinguishable mush. Davies had gone to his horrible end with a secret and that was how much poison he had spread through the town, and the final decision by
police and council had been that you couldn’t be too careful. The town’s food supply had been like an unexploded bomb and it had been treated as such, the systematic clearing of the shelves of shop and house alike being carried out with military precision. Taking into account that statistics show that thirty per cent of all food bought is likely to be wasted, there was therefore a one in three chance that the packet of jelly babies with a small needle hole in it, stashed at the back of the drawer in Maxwell’s temporary office, might never be eaten. Only time would tell.

  Meanwhile, everything slowly maintained its equilibrium. Leighford High flourished and blossomed under Maxwell’s somewhat loose rein. Paperwork happened, but not always in the right order. Uniforms were or were not worn as the fit took the individual child (although Maxwell had toyed briefly with introducing stable dress, walking-out dress and levee dress, just to add to parental expense), but nobody died. Absences fell to an all-time low. Helen Maitland, learning to love her plaster, took over as temporary Assistant Headteacher for Girls’ Welfare. Bernard Ryan, with a show of enthusiasm foreign to him, defied science by regaining control of his organs and James Diamond started his convalescence. Life at Leighford High was good. The workmen had been and gone. Late summer became early autumn and half-term arrived.

  Maxwell was sitting quietly in his office on the first day of the holiday when the door opened and a small cough announced the presence of a visitor. He looked up and there, outlined against the light, was Legs Diamond, back to claim his school. Maxwell leapt to his feet.

  ‘Headmaster! How lovely to see you. Sit down, do.’ He ushered him round to the chair side of the desk. ‘Are you back? I mean, for good? That’s excellent.’