Maxwell’s House

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘I’m serious, Max,’ Smith said. ‘When a wife dies, the husband’s suspected. And vice versa. But when a kid dies …’

  ‘The father,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Yes, I should think Mr Hyde’s been through the mill a tad recently. But what about the kid’s teachers?’

  Maxwell looked at him. ‘I had no idea you were that paranoid in the English Department.’

  ‘Paranoia, dear boy,’ Smith edged his way across the floor, ‘is in the eye of the beholder. Stay away from the filth, Maxie. Or they’ll have you. Anyway,’ he called back from the dark of the landing, ‘we can bypass the buggers.’

  ‘Oh?’ Maxwell crossed the floor too. ‘How?’

  ‘Does the name Jim Astley mean anything to you?’

  ‘Not a lot. Why?’

  ‘We were at university together.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ sneered Maxwell. ‘Reading. Bad luck.’

  ‘Of course, he was on a longer course than me.’

  ‘Joined-up writing?’

  ‘Medicine. He’s the local police surgeon, here in Leighford.’

  There was a silence as Smith reached the bottom of the stairs. He counted to three before he heard it, deep, growling.

  ‘You absolute bastard!’

  ‘“Don’t you just love being in control?”’ Smith chuckled.

  It had been a long time since the Red House had heard laughter. But as they left it, neither of them cared to look back.

  ‘Give you a lift, Max?’ Smith fumbled for his keys.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Maxwell said, ‘I promised the History Department I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Wouldn’t what?’

  ‘Squander my young life by placing it so utterly recklessly in your incompetent hands.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Smith’s Bette Davis was a gem, ‘on yer bike!’

  Two men, the report said. At the Red House. Spotted by Car Polka Bravo Nina at one thirteen. One drove away in a Capri with a bit of wellie under the bonnet. The other got on to a bike. Polka Bravo Nina hadn’t been able to get close enough to identify either man, but suspect on bike wore hat and long college-type scarf.

  The file lay buried in somebody’s in-tray in the Tottingleigh incident room.

  Whoever it was, that somebody was not Detective Inspector Johnson.

  6

  Jim Astley couldn’t have told you, if you’d asked, how he’d got into the morbid anatomy business. There was a time, he vaguely remembered, when he saw himself as a Lister or a Barnard and his mother used to make jokes about her son, the brain surgeon. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost all that and the how and the why of people’s deaths came to mean more to him. Not that many others could see it. Walking hand in hand with tragedy was not something most people did out of choice. Unless they were pathologists; or policemen; or firemen. Or two teachers, longish in the tooth, standing in the low, beamed kitchen of Astley’s home.

  ‘You’ve done all right for yourself, then, Jim.’ Smith nodded, accepting the tea with alacrity. A Siberian wind had killed the Indian summer and leaves were eddying in tight little circles across the patio.

  ‘It’s a living,’ Astley said.

  ‘I always warned you I’d drop in one of these days.’ Smith beamed, hoping it didn’t all sound too artificial.

  ‘Yes,’ Astley smiled. ‘A bit like rabies, really. I never thought it’d actually happen to me. Sugar, Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘Max,’ the Head of Sixth Form said. ‘Call me Max. Everybody does.’ He accepted Astley’s bowl.

  ‘Really?’ the police surgeon said. His children had gone to private school. He’d never heard of Maxwell at all.

  ‘How’s Majorie?’ Smith lolled back on the Windsor chair, his right arm dangling almost to the block floor.

  Astley looked at his watch. ‘Filling the bottle bank with her empties. Look, Geoffrey, I don’t want to seem inhospitable. But …’

  ‘But,’ Smith looked like a little boy who’d been caught scrumping apples, ‘apart from one Scotch last Christmas and a casual “What ho” in the High Street, you and I haven’t exchanged half a dozen words in thirty years; yes, I know.’

  ‘You always did have a way with words,’ Astley smiled. ‘I hope I haven’t been overly offensive, but what the buggery do you two want?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Cause of death,’ Maxwell saw his opening. ‘Jenny Hyde’s, that is …’

  Only Astley’s clock answered, and all it said was ‘tick, tock’.

  The police surgeon looked at them both. Then he ran both his hands down his goatee and waded into Maxwell. ‘I presume’, he said, ‘that you have ethics in your profession?’

  ‘We do.’ Maxwell’s eyes burned back into Astley’s.

  ‘And that if I wanted to see a confidential file on some child, you’d tell me where to stick it.’

  ‘We don’t have confidential files,’ Maxwell pointed out. ‘This is John Major’s England, Dr Astley. The People’s Charter. The classless society. You may have heard of the Freedom of Information Act. We are obliged to do something about it.’

  ‘So sensitive information is available to everybody, is it?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You implied it.’

  ‘Boys, boys,’ Smith threw up his hands, ‘I think you’ll find we’re on the same side.’

  ‘Are we?’ Astley asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘I wonder.’

  The clock again made answer and Astley’s red setter whined in its dreaming sleep and turned over in its basket.

  ‘Look,’ Maxwell was more conciliatory now, ‘Dr Astley, you face this all the time in your line. Sudden, violent death. We don’t. We’re on the edge of something here. Something, when you come right down to it, so appalling it doesn’t bear thinking about. But we are part of it. Nobody asked us if we wanted to be. It just happened that way. We’re part of it, but we’re outside it. It’s like … like watching something from a train. You see it happening, but you can’t get to it. It’s a moment; then it’s gone. Jenny Hyde was one of my girls. I just … well, I just feel responsible, that’s all.’

  Astley looked at them both, the steady, grey eyes of Peter Maxwell, the sallow, balding features of Geoffrey Smith. Then he sighed and leaned back. ‘The conversation that is about to take place never happened. Is that clear? I’m putting my job on the line for you two and I’m damned if I know why. If this ever gets out …’

  ‘It won’t,’ Maxwell was quick to assure him.

  Astley nodded. Every instinct he had made him doubt what he was about to do, but he did it anyway. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything.’ Maxwell leaned forward, both elbows on the table.

  The doctor began the litany. ‘I was called at seven thirty. I’d been fishing all day but the buggers stopped biting during the afternoon. I confess I’d dropped off. Ever carried one of these?’ He tapped the mobile phone lying on the table.

  The teachers shook their heads.

  ‘Worst bloody invention known to man. It must have been … ooh, nearly twenty minutes before I got to the scene of the crime.’

  ‘The Red House?’ Maxwell checked.

  ‘I believe some people call it that. A less than noble pile behind the Shingle, on the way to Leighford Cross.’

  ‘Front bedroom?’ Maxwell said.

  Astley was taken aback for a moment. ‘How did you know that?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Maxwell told him. ‘I’m guessing.’

  ‘There was a stain on the floor,’ Smith explained. ‘Looked as if a mattress or something had been there.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Astley said. ‘There was.’ Something inside him was screaming at him to stop. Not to say any more. But somehow, it was too late for all that. ‘How did you know about it?’

  ‘We’ve been there,’ Smith told him. ‘Sleuthing.’

  ‘She was strangled?’ Maxwell was having to make all the relevant running.

  ‘Yes. Wit
h a ligature. Probably a pair of tights.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Astley moved his chair a little away from the table so that it scraped on the floor. The dog gave a little whimper and went back to sleep. That she’d been strangled? Because there were all the classic signs. ‘Her lips and ears were blue, there was a little froth around her mouth, although most of that had been washed away by the rain. The room where she died is open to the sky at that point. Her nails had changed colour. In cases like this the actual cause of death is asphyxia due to constriction of the neck.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Smith whispered.

  ‘And how do you know it was tights?’ Maxwell batted aside the revulsion he knew Smith felt too. Somehow he sensed there wasn’t time. He needed to know more; to know all.

  ‘The knot marks,’ Astley explained. ‘Usual groove around the neck and the mottling above it – petechiae, as we say. The bruising was more severe to the left of the thyroid cartilage – the Adam’s apple to you boys.’

  ‘But the tights weren’t left there?’

  ‘No. Whoever the murderer was, he untied the ligature and took it with him.’

  ‘So they could have been Jenny’s tights?’ Smith proffered.

  Astley shrugged. ‘They could have been,’ he said.

  ‘Did she put up a fight?’

  ‘Difficult to say. You can certainly forget the nonsense about debris under the fingernails and that all the police have to do is find a guy with scratches on his cheek.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘Oh, it can,’ Astley told him, ‘but not in this case.’

  ‘So what do you conclude?’

  The doctor stirred his tea with a lazy, thoughtful motion. ‘This is all off the record, of course,’ he murmured.

  ‘Absolutely.’ Maxwell crossed his heart and put his finger to his temple, Boy Scout style.

  ‘Well, the post-mortem was interesting.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Normally in strangulation, even strangulation with a ligature, I’d expect the hyoid to be snapped. Especially in a young person.’

  ‘And it wasn’t?’

  ‘No. Plenty of damage to the thyroid and the cricoid, but that you would expect.’

  Maxwell looked at Smith. ‘Which means?’

  ‘Which means that, if there were obvious signs of it, I’d say Jenny put up a terrific struggle.’

  ‘But you just said …’

  ‘That there weren’t obvious signs, quite.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So the other possibility is that her attacker wasn’t very strong.’

  ‘Do the police have anybody in the frame?’ Smith asked.

  Astley shrugged. ‘You’d have to ask Henry Hall that one,’ he said, ‘and I don’t somehow think you’d get much of an answer.’

  ‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘Yes and no.’ Jim Astley could be as cryptic as the next man when the mood took him.

  ‘By which you mean?’ Maxwell prompted him again.

  The doctor got up and crossed to find his pipe, ‘When I got there, she was lying on her back. If I remember rightly, her arms were above her head, almost as though they’d been held there, out of the way.’ He shut his eyes to recall it specifically. ‘Fists clenched. Her blouse and bra had been torn open. It was a front-fastening job, so there was no excessive strength needed there and there was no need to fumble behind her. She had one leg – her left, I think – bent out to the side. Her skirt was pulled up around her waist, but – and this is where it gets interesting …’ He began to cram the dark brown mixture into his pipe bowl, savouring the moment, savouring his expertise. ‘Her knickers were still there.’

  ‘So?’ Temporarily at least, Maxwell was lost.

  ‘No obvious signs of sexual interference. The post-mortem confirmed it. No semen traces anywhere. Vagina. Anus. Ears. All clear.’

  ‘So …’ Maxwell hadn’t caught him up yet.

  ‘So,’ Astley’s face blurred for a moment behind the smoke and he puffed on the stem, ‘a number of possibilities. We could be looking for a pervert. Strangulation is very common in cases of rape.’

  ‘But you said …’

  ‘There was no rape. Right. So perhaps our friend was interrupted.’

  ‘By this tramp … what was his name?’

  ‘Guthrie,’ Smith remembered, ‘Dan Guthrie.’

  ‘Right.’ Maxwell clicked his fingers. ‘Or?’

  ‘Or,’ Astley took the reins again, ‘when it came to it, he wasn’t able to perform. That’s quite common too. Of course, if he ejaculated with his trousers on, we’d have nothing to work on.’

  ‘Ah, genetic fingerprinting,’ Smith beamed.

  ‘Exactly.’ Astley joined the pair at the table again. ‘But for that to work, you need a specimen – blood, semen, sweat, something. We had nothing.’

  ‘Wasn’t it wet?’ Maxwell seemed to remember. ‘On that Friday?’

  ‘By the time they found her, yes. But I estimated the time of death at between three and five.’

  ‘Broad daylight?’

  ‘Yes,’ Astley nodded. ‘It was fine until six or seven. You’re thinking about footprints?’

  It was Maxwell’s turn to nod.

  ‘I don’t know what the scenes of crime lads got,’ Astley said. ‘I think they picked up a few partial prints on door frames and so on. But you’ve got to remember how many people must have used that place over the years. Kids. Winos. Courting couples. Short of fingerprinting the entire town …’

  ‘That’s been done, hasn’t it?’ Smith asked.

  ‘Once or twice, yes,’ Astley told him, ‘but it’s an unusual step and you can’t force people. Anyway, who’s to say our man lives in Leighford?’

  ‘You’re sure it’s a man?’ Maxwell asked.

  Astley looked at him. ‘Ninety-five per cent,’ he said. ‘Statistically, women don’t kill at close quarters. Not by strangulation. They poison. They shoot. Lizzie Borden chopped. But they don’t strangle.’

  ‘I thought Lizzie Borden got off,’ Smith said.

  ‘Yes,’ Maxwell smiled, ‘like you and I get off buses, but she did it all the same. Seen the photographs? She was a chunky little lady. Biceps like wardrobes.’

  ‘Look,’ Astley brought them back to modern crimes, ‘let me say this again. This conversation never took place. You know as much as I do now about the death of little Jenny Hyde. Though, frankly, if the law isn’t getting anywhere, I don’t really see …’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell stood up and extended a hand, ‘thank you, doctor, for your candour.’

  ‘We must do this again sometime.’ Smith shook his hand too.

  ‘Yes,’ Astley growled, ‘in another lifetime, preferably.’ He saw them to the door. ‘My advice’, he said, ‘would be to leave well alone.’

  ‘We can’t do that,’ Maxwell said. ‘There are too many unanswered questions.’

  ‘Yes, there are,’ Astley nodded, chewing his pipe, ‘but you might not like the answers very much.’

  On the way to Smith’s car, Maxwell opened the gate. ‘I’m surprised,’ he said.

  ‘What about?’ Smith asked.

  ‘That the good doctor confided so readily. In fact, I’m surprised he confided at all.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Smith chuckled. T knew he couldn’t resist showing off. He always was an arrogant bastard. Couldn’t pass up the chance to blind us with science. You know, he actually volunteered to take part in University Challenge?’

  ‘No.’ Maxwell held his fingers upright in the sign of the cross. ‘Did you win? Your team?’

  ‘Christ, no. We were against Gonville and Caius. You’re bikeless, Maxie,’ Smith observed. ‘I’ll run you home.’

  ‘Fine,’ beamed Maxwell. ‘As long as we stick to running.’

  ‘I did drive you here,’ Smith reminded him.

  ‘Did you?’ Maxwell asked. ‘I was shitting myself at the time and signally failed to notice.
’

  ‘Get in!’ Smith pushed his Old Contemptible into the car.

  And the tyres screamed into the night.

  In Scotland they call them janitors. In some parts of London, school keepers. To most of us, they are caretakers. But whatever they call them, they are the backbone of a school. The governors don’t run it; the Headmaster doesn’t; not even the school secretary. The caretaker does. Cross him and you’re buggered. There’ll come a day when your classroom’s freezing, when you can’t unlock your office door, when you’re desperate for someone to put the chairs out for an evening meeting. That day, you’ll thank your God for the caretaker.

  At Leighford High that man’s name was Martin. Those he reckoned called him Bob, after the canine tablets. The kids called him, out of earshot, Doc, after the boots. Only Maxwell called him Betty after ‘all my eye of a yarn and’, but then, Maxwell was a law unto himself anyway. Bob Martin wore a blue boiler suit most of the time and when he made his rounds late at night, walked with a vicious-looking mongrel on a short leash. It didn’t exactly deter burglars. They still hit the school on average three times a year looking for the petty cash from the tuck shop or any piece of computer hardware that wasn’t nailed down. He looked as if he’d never owned any hair and he blinked slowly while chewing a seemingly endless piece of gum.

  He only ever bothered people when he wanted to complain. And he was bothering Peter Maxwell at nine o’clock the next morning.

  ‘Hello, Betty.’ Maxwell was facing the third day of the new term. It had been a long week.

  ‘I was turfin’ out them old lockers,’ Martin said, never one to stand on ceremony, ‘and I found this.’

  Maxwell squinted at the man framed by his office door. ‘What is it?’ he had to ask.

  ‘Well,’ Martin coughed with the volume and precision of a thirty-a-day man, ‘in my day we called ’em nodders or French letters. They seem to ’ave invented a new name for ’em now – condoms.’

  Gingerly, Maxwell took the packet, eternally grateful that it didn’t seem to have been opened. ‘Ah, so it’s that Condom Moment?’ Betty Martin wasn’t smiling. ‘And this was in a locker?’