Maxwell’s House

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Well, I’ll be buggered.’

  ‘Very possibly,’ Maxwell took the diminutive figure from his colleague, ‘but not by me, however nicely you ask. My moral turpitude isn’t as gross as all that.’

  ‘Is this all of them?’ Moss asked him.

  ‘God, no. My researches have turned up 678 men who rode the Charge. So far I’ve got 308. Number 309,’ he crossed to a side table, full of plastic bits, paints and a fixed magnifying glass, and picked up an unfinished bugler, ‘is trumpeter John Brown of the 17th Lancers. He was field trumpeter to William Morris who led the regiment. Survived the Charge and lived on till 1905, by which time he was honorary Lieutenant-Colonel.’

  Moss shook his head. ‘This must take for ever,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you know how it is,’ Maxwell said. ‘Single man and so on. How is Denise by the way?’

  He saw the younger man’s face darken as he picked up – and put down again – the figure, of Jack Vahey.

  ‘He was the butcher of the 17th,’ Maxwell explained, puzzled by Moss’s look. ‘The reason he’s wearing his butcher’s apron is that he was late for the line-up that morning. He just buckled on his sword, grabbed a horse of the Scots Greys and rode the Charge in his shirt-sleeves.’

  ‘What’s all this?’ Moss asked, pointing to the figure’s chest.

  ‘Blood.’ Maxwell thought it was obvious. ‘He’d been chopping meat minutes before. I said,’ he repeated, ‘how is Denise?’

  ‘Fine.’ Moss was already on the stairs. ‘She’s fine, Max. Now, I really must be going.’ And within a minute, he had, glancing back once at the suspended Head of Sixth Form, framed by his own doorway. A dog barked across the estate as Moss’s light blue metro coughed away into the night.

  The next morning, Maxwell looked on things as positively as he could. He skipped breakfast, fed Metternich before he had his arm off and saddled White Surrey for the field. Contrary to all expectation, he didn’t start to slaver, a la Pavlov, when his clock chimed nine. But perhaps that was because he couldn’t hear the Leighford bell. He had seen a few Leighford kids, though, creeping out of the estate – his country estate as he called it, legitimately as it was backed by fields – and crawling, unwill-ingly, to school.

  He pedalled to the High Street, bought a paper, mooched in Second Read, his favourite antiquarian bookshop, considered again the leather-bound Boswell and again thought it too pricey, and had a coffee. He had his back to the wall – an increasingly common position for Peter Maxwell these days – and could watch the world go by outside the window. The coffee was an all-time low, but the iced bun was very edible for all it was probably hardening his arteries to a tungsten-like consistency. Then he saw her – Mrs Grey, the mother of Tim, wandering past the window with a distant expression. On an impulse, he left his table, gesturing at the surprised floozie that he wasn’t really doing a runner without paying, and caught up with Mrs Grey, outside Woollies.

  ‘Mrs Grey?’ He tipped his hat.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Peter Maxwell, Leighford High.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She smiled uneasily at him. ‘Yes, of course, Mr Maxwell.’

  ‘Look,’ he took her elbow, ‘could we have a chat? I was just having a cup of coffee. Perhaps you’d like to join me?’

  ‘Well, I …’

  But Peter Maxwell’s grip was firm and Peter Maxwell’s step was sure. He, public school boy that he was, held out her chair for her and she was his. The floozie, no doubt delighted to see him back, hovered at the Great Man’s elbow.

  ‘Er … Mrs Grey?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I’ll just have a cup of tea, please.’

  ‘They do a particularly pleasing line in iced buns,’ he assured her.

  ‘No,’ she smiled awkwardly. ‘Just tea, thanks.’

  The floozie wrote it down. ‘Is this goin’ on the one bill?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Maxwell told her and waited until she was out of earshot. ‘Mrs Grey, I’m glad I bumped into you. I wanted to have a word about Tim.’

  ‘Tim?’ He saw the woman’s colour drain until she was the same shade as the tablecloth. ‘What’s happened? Is he all right?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he reassured her and placed his hat on the table. ‘It’s just the business with poor Jenny Hyde.’

  ‘I know,’ Mrs Grey said. ‘It’s terrible, isn’t it? I feel so sorry for her parents. Not that we’ve ever had anything to do with them.’

  ‘I talked to Tim yesterday,’ he told her.

  ‘Did you? He never tells us anything, Mr Maxwell. He never has. He’s ashamed of us, y’see.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Maxwell frowned. ‘I’m sure he’s not.’

  The floozie brought the tea.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Mrs Grey poured for herself. ‘Yes, I’ve realized it for some time now. Will – that’s his father – Will works at Leonards. He’s a finisher. He’s always worked in a factory, has Will. Me, I’m just a housewife.’

  ‘Now, then.’ Maxwell put on his schoolmaster voice. ‘I won’t have you saying that,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Mrs Grey was one of those working-class women who had never shone at anything. She was forty-four years old and she was still afraid of teachers. It was surprising how many people were.

  ‘I’m a housewife too, you know,’ Maxwell confided in her.

  ‘You?’ She didn’t believe him.

  ‘Needs must when the Devil drives,’ he told her. ‘We crusty old bachelors have to do it all. See that?’ He pointed to his shirt.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All my own work.’

  Mrs Grey was astounded. ‘You made it?’

  ‘No,’ he explained. ‘I ironed it.’

  ‘Ooh, yes.’ She peered closer. ‘That’s good, that is. My Will never does a hand’s turn. He did of course when we was first married, but they go off, don’t they?’

  ‘They’. That was a good start. Maxwell had only been talking to this lady for five minutes and already she’d welcomed him to her bosom as an honorary woman. The old Maxwell charm had done it again. There was no doubt about it, if Ian McShane didn’t make another Lovejoy, he knew who the studios would ask.

  ‘Did Jenny come to your house?’ he asked her.

  ‘Once or twice,’ she remembered. ‘Always had a bit of a smell under her nose, if you ask me.’

  Maxwell was picking up the vibes. ‘You didn’t like her?’

  ‘Well …’ Mrs Grey shifted in her seat, ‘I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. My boy … well, he’s changed.’

  ‘Changed?’ Maxwell leaned towards her, gently so as not to frighten her off. ‘How, changed?’

  ‘Well …’ She was making little ruts in the tablecloth with her spoon. ‘Tim started going out with her … when would it have been? Last May time, I think. ’Course his father started taking the … you know, making fun of him. But he got all stuck up after that. Sort of la-de-da. It was her what put this university idea into his head.’

  ‘You don’t want him to go to university, Mrs Grey?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You hear such things, don’t you? Such stories. All these drugs and things. I remember once, me and my Will went to Oxford for the day and there was these students there, you know, by the river. And one of them came up to the others and said,’ her voice dropped to a whisper, ‘“Where have you bastards been?” Just like that.’

  Maxwell clicked his tongue and shook his head. It was almost impossible not to condescend to Mrs Grey. He could understand the problem Jenny Hyde must have had.

  ‘Well, I ask you.’ She was nattering on. ‘Will and I don’t want our boy mixing with people what talk like that.’

  ‘There is more to university, though,’ the honorary housewife told her.

  ‘Oh, I know,’ she said, ‘but there’s no guarantee of jobs, is there? No, I think his father would like him to get a job at Leonards, you know. They seem to have survived the recession all right.’

  ‘Tell me, Mrs Grey,
’ Maxwell re-stirred his coffee, ‘was there another change in Tim?’

  ‘Another one?’ The woman looked confused. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Recently, say … oh, about a week before Jenny was murdered. Did he seem … well, different?’

  She struggled to remember. ‘He was in a bad mood,’ she said, ‘that last week of school. Slamming about the place. Look at him funny and he’d bite your head off.’

  That wasn’t the Tim Grey Peter Maxwell knew. He’d long entertained the idea that ‘Tim’ was short for timid. But he also knew from his long years of experience that most kids were mildly schizophrenic. By day, particularly boring members of the Silent Majority; by night, Offspring from Hell.

  ‘We put it down to his exams,’ Mrs Grey explained.

  ‘Exams?’ Maxwell prodded.

  ‘’Cos he’d done bad in his exams.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Well, I shouldn’t worry about that.’

  There was no need to worry the Greys about it. Not now. Not after all this time. The fact was that Tim Grey had done well – surprisingly well – in the end-of-terms exams. And Maxwell noted ruefully that yet another end-of-term report had not got home.

  ‘Good Lord,’ Maxwell checked his Rotary, ‘is that the time? Mrs Grey, would you excuse me? I have an appointment.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She downed the last of her tea. ‘Is that why you aren’t at school, then?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He winced and held his cheek. ‘I’ve had a bitch of a toothache for the past few days. By the way, does the name Maz mean anything to you?’

  She frowned. ‘Maz?’ she repeated. ‘No, I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘Not a friend of Tim’s?’ He jogged her memory.

  ‘No. No, I’ve never heard that name. I’m sure I’d remember it. Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ Maxwell beamed and slung his hat on his head, fumbling for change to pay the floozie. ‘Nothing at all. It’s been very nice, having this chat. ’Bye.’

  ‘Cheerio.’ She smiled at him and padded out to resume her vague sortie through Woollies.

  So; Peter Maxwell checked his watch again. The Nag would be open by now. Quite a novelty to drink during the day, in September, in the middle of a week. He’d have a quick one just for the hell of it. He had to talk to Tim Grey again. All right, so he didn’t talk much at home. But he lied there. Why? Why should he tell his parents that he’d done badly in his exams when he hadn’t? Why didn’t he show them his report? And more importantly, what made him change about a week before Jenny Hyde was found dead? It would be about the time she’d gone missing. Would that explain it? Was that all it was? Did he know where she’d gone? What had happened to her? And who was the Maz he’d mentioned? The Maz his mother didn’t know, had never heard of. Still, it was going to be a bitch, Maxwell realized as he wandered into the pub and ordered his pint, to get hold of Tim Grey now. In the confines of his office, it was easy. Consult the lad’s timetable, find the room, oik him out, grill him. Now, he’d either have to lurk outside school, with all the delicious ammunition that would give John Graham and the vigilantes at County Hall, or he’d have to visit the Greys. Either way, he’d be at a disadvantage. How could he get hold of Tim Grey now?

  Four policemen got hold of Tim Grey. They lifted him on to a stretcher from the place under the bushes where he’d been lying. He was wrapped in a black plastic bag like so much rubbish and there was a livid purple mark where someone had choked the life out of him. How could he get hold of Tim Grey now?

  11

  Jim Astley’s wife had gone to dry out again. Jim Astley himself was back in the mortuary, in his dark green apron and cap, probing and prodding what had once been Timothy William Grey.

  Chief Inspector Henry Hall had left his dwindling team back at the incident room and was propping up the wall behind Astley’s back.

  ‘What have we got, then, Jim?’ he asked.

  Astley grunted, apparently wrestling with something gristly. ‘As far as I can tell,’ he said, ‘it seems to be a carbon copy of the Jenny Hyde business. Minus the potential sexual interference, of course.’ Hall forced himself to go closer. He never relished moments like this, the remains of a human being being picked over by a vulture in green. But he knew it had to be. It was the only way to get results. And he had precious few of those at the moment.

  It had got so he hated going into work of a morning. The smell of the incident room was enough. He’d nod curtly to his staff, down now to six men and two women, and disappear inside his inner sanctum, emerging only for the weekly pep talk. It had got less convincing each time and he knew it. He knew too that they knew it. The noise was less, the hubbub over. Eight people just didn’t fill the space of thirty and one of the eight was only part-time. One by one, the leads ran out, the options closed. Avenue after avenue proved to be yet another cul-de-sac. And now everybody avoided everybody’s gaze. ‘Scaling down’, it was called in the force. You couldn’t keep X officers together on one case for long. There wasn’t the manpower and there wasn’t the cash. First he’d lost five to a spate of burglaries, then an armed robbery took three of his best lads. By the beginning of September his little force was decimated and the successful arrest of a rapist the week before had only diminished it still further because of the mountain of paperwork. It proved to have nothing to do with Jennifer Antonia Hyde. They pulled the plug on that one too.

  And now? God knew certainly. And Dr James Astley knew a bit. As for Chief Inspector Henry Hall, he felt he didn’t know diddly any more.

  ‘Strangulation,’ Astley was saying, pulling the mask away so that Hall could hear his pearls of wisdom, ‘by ligature. Look here, to the left of the cartilage, a distinct knot.’ He was right. A large blue area discoloured the dead boy’s neck up to his jawline. Hall looked down at the face. Tim Grey was the colour of old parchment, his lips peeled back from his teeth, his eyes sunken in. The dark hair, never tidy in life, lay like a black thatch above the pale forehead.

  ‘But this time,’ Astley held up the boy’s right hand, ‘he went down fighting.’ Grey’s knuckles were cut and scraped. ‘It’s my guess he hit a tooth,’ he said. ‘There’s a particularly jagged cut in the index finger … just … here.’

  Hall peered closer, nodding.

  ‘Did he die where he was found?’

  ‘That’s a fair bet,’ Astley said. ‘His clothes were covered in grass and burrs, not to mention cobwebs. Of course, I’ll have to wait for the soil specimens.’

  ‘When?’ Hall was a middle-aged man in a hurry.

  Astley screwed up his face. ‘Friday?’ was the best he could do.

  Hall nodded. ‘Now for the sixty-four thousand one, Jim,’ he said. ‘Am I looking for the same man?’

  Astley straightened up, feeling his back click. ‘Come on, now, Henry,’ he said. ‘The impossible I can do at once. Miracles take a little longer.’

  ‘Your best shot, then,’ Hall shrugged.

  ‘Deep down,’ Astley said, looking at the corpse, ‘and off the record,’ looking at Hall, ‘I smell copy cat.’

  ‘But we didn’t give details to the press,’ Hall reminded him. ‘Nothing about the ligature, with the knot to the left.’

  ‘No.’ Astley shifted his weight from foot to foot. His own indiscretion hit him in the pit of the stomach and he felt uncomfortable. ‘No, that’s true. But I hear that teacher’s been snooping around.’

  ‘What teacher?’ Hall frowned.

  ‘From Leighford High. Whatsisface? Maxwell? Maxforth? Something.’

  ‘Peter Maxwell,’ Hall nodded. ‘Where’s he been snooping?’

  ‘Here, there and everywhere, from what I hear. Does the family know?’

  ‘The Greys? No,’ Hall said, sighing, ‘I was on my way over there now. Friday then, Jim,’ he said, grabbing his raincoat and making for the door. ‘Soil samples. Oh, by the way, I’d kill for a time of death.’

  ‘Eightish,’ he said. ‘Perhaps nearer nine.’
>
  ‘This morning?’

  ‘No, no,’ Astley corrected his man. ‘Last night. All you’ve got to do is find out who was on the Dam last night and you’ve got him.’

  Hall’s smile was cold, empty. ‘Thanks, Jim,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  DI Dave Johnson had gone to Leonards to winkle out William Grey from the Finishing Shop. DC Jacquie Carpenter sat with Mrs Grey, patting her hands as she cradled the photograph of her only son, the one they were telling her was dead. She couldn’t understand. Would never understand. Not as long as she lived. She just sat with tears trickling silently down her cheeks and when Will and the other policeman arrived, she just looked at him and went into the kitchen to make them all a cup of tea.

  The detectives left the couple alone for a while, mentally noting anything in the little terraced house that might be of significance later. Then the couple came out, Will Grey putting on his donkey jacket again. He’d go with the policeman to the place. No need for his wife to come. He was the boy’s father. He’d identify him.

  ‘Mrs Grey?’ Jacquie Carpenter had said softly. ‘Can I see Tim’s room?’ She was dying for a ciggie and dying to be anywhere but where she was. It didn’t seem long ago that she’d been saying the same thing to Mrs Hyde and feeling the same way she felt now; bloody awful.

  The dead boy’s room was bleaker than the dead girl’s. He had no telly, no video games, precious few books. A disused pair of football boots hung in a wardrobe, with his school clothes and a pack of playing cards. A battered hi-fi system filled a corner and a handful of tapes lay scattered on the bed.

  ‘I thought he’d gone to school,’ Mrs Grey was saying. ‘I don’t work, y’see. Not at the moment. But I had to go out on an errand. Mavis – that’s the girl next door – her eldest has just started school; y’know, in the Infants. And Mavis has got two more, both under three, so I offered to take the other one to school. I thought he’d gone.’