Maxwell’s Match

by M. J. Trow

  ‘You’re surprised?’

  Helmseley’s eves flickered behind the bottle-bottomed lenses. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not really. Would you care for another brandy, Maxwell?’

  The Head of Sixth would, in that he’d barely had a first one, and he held out his balloon. Helmseley struggled over to the drinks cabinet and poured for them both. ‘You know,’ said the Head of Classics, ‘I lived on this stuff at Oxford. Brandy and Mars Bars. No wonder I lost control of my waist years ago. Here’s to happier times,’ and they clinked glasses.

  ‘You were telling me about Bill Pardoe,’ Maxwell settled back on the Chesterfield.

  ‘Was I?’ Helmseley frowned. ‘Oh, yes. Well, I’ve known Bill Pardoe for the best part of sixteen years, man and boy. He wasn’t happy lately.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Little things, you notice. He took to late night walks when the school had gone to bed, down by the lake mostly. Developed an obsession about mail.’

  ‘Mail?’

  ‘Yes.’ Helmseley was still trying to puzzle it out. ‘We get the conventional two deliveries a day here at Grimond’s. He’d be there when he could, waiting for the postman, as if he were perpetually expecting some vital missive.’

  ‘Did it ever come?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘God knows!’ Helmseley shrugged. ‘Bill was never exactly the demonstrative type. In the life of a boarding school you get to know the House staff pretty well, really. David Gallow now, is an open book; cricket-mad with a nodding awareness of his subject. Tony Graham; keen as mustard and a nice chap to boot. Old Tubbsy … well, enough said, really. You know the names of their first pet hamsters and their invisible childhood friends, which rugger team they support and so on. But Bill … well, he was a charming man and a bloody good Housemaster, but he’d only let you know what he wanted you to know. I think he might have been married once.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, not in the time I knew him, obviously. I’ve never been tempted to tie the knot myself, but I remember one time he was looking at a photograph, thing in a frame. It was a woman and child if I remember rightly.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, this was in his study at Tennyson. I’d gone to sort out a time-tabling glitch with him and there he was, just standing there, staring at it. He pushed it into a drawer as I arrived, saying it was an old photo of his mother and him as a boy.’

  ‘And it wasn’t?’

  ‘Fashions were wrong. The boy in the photo was flaxen. Bill’s hair was still brown then. Unless he’d become a slave in the intervening years to Grecian 2000 and his mother was the Nostradamus of the catwalk, it didn’t make sense.’

  ‘Would that explain his waiting for the post?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Some contact with his family?’

  Helmseley shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘In the last couple of weeks particularly, Bill became … well, withdrawn, distant. I wish now I’d talked to him. You know, sat him down and talked him out of it. It’s funny, I’d never have said Bill was the suicidal type. He always seemed so strong, somehow. Capable. I’m not sure Tony’s got it.’

  ‘What?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘Whatever it takes,’ Helmseley said. ‘That indefinable something that makes a good Housemaster. He’s a good listener though, I suppose, but all the same, a little too intense. You’re a Head of Sixth, aren’t you? It must be the same for you.’

  Maxwell quaffed the last of his brandy. ‘I’m not sure, Michael, that anything at Leighford is the same as here.’

  ‘It’s late, Max.’ Tony Graham was already in a towelling bath robe and slippers, in the rooms down the stairs and along the corridor from Maxwell’s landing.

  ‘It is,’ Maxwell checked his watch. The witching hour. ‘I’ll call back.’

  ‘No, no,’ the acting Housemaster opened the door more fully. ‘Don’t be silly. Come in. I’m trying to make sense of all this.’ He waved around the interior of Bill Pardoe’s study. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m feeling bloody guilty about being here.’

  ‘Guilty?’

  Graham closed the door behind his visitor. ‘Like standing in a dead man’s shoes. What the hell happened?’

  Maxwell shook his head. There were papers everywhere, piles of books and student files. ‘Damned if I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve just come from Michael Helmseley.’

  ‘Christ, then you’ll need a drink.’

  Maxwell laughed. It seemed almost sacrilegious in Bill Pardoe’s Sanctum. ‘That infamous, is he? I did get two brandies.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. You barely got one.’ Graham clinked glasses as he rummaged in Pardoe’s cabinet. ‘That won’t have touched the sides. Doesn’t have much of a giving nature, our revered Head of Classics. Sylvia Matthews tells me you’re a Southern Comfort man. ‘And he pulled out a bottle of the same.

  ‘Manna!’ Maxwell beamed. ‘I didn’t know Bill Pardoe but I’m warming to him already. Have you been able to talk to anybody yet?’

  ‘Dr Sheffield had a word. Funny, suddenly it’s “call me George”. I remember it was the same when I made House Prefect all those years ago.’ He whistled through his teeth.

  ‘You’re Head of Tennyson now?’

  ‘Acting,’ Graham told him. ‘I won’t take it, of course. Dead men’s shoes. Not a good omen. The chaps are pretty cut up.’

  ‘Jenkins especially.’

  ‘Jenkins?’ Graham passed Maxwell his glass.

  ‘Lower Fourths or thereabouts. Jug-handle ears. Always twentieth man in the Cross Country team.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Graham placed him. ‘Jenkins. Look at this place.’ He slid a pile of files off a chair for Maxwell to sit down. ‘It was turned upside down when I got here. Looked as though it had been ransacked.’

  ‘That’ll be the boys in blue.’

  ‘The police?’

  ‘It’s routine. When a man dies, they go through his desks, his laundry basket, every orifice the poor bastard’s got. And they’re not very particular about putting anything back afterwards, cither. My light o’ love is a detective.’

  ‘Ah, that’ll be Jacquie,’ Graham smiled, sitting opposite his man and sipping his drink.

  ‘I knew it was a mistake sending you to Sylvia’s. Is there anything you don’t know about me?’

  Graham laughed. ‘You know that woman used to be in love with you, don’t you?’

  ‘Sylv?’ Maxwell’s eyes widened. ‘You’re having me on.’

  ‘Just an observation,’ Graham shrugged.

  ‘You’ll be telling me next Dierdre Lessing, our beloved Senior Mistress, has the hots for me.’

  ‘Ah,’ Graham’s face fell. ‘No, I can’t bullshit you there, Max. Bit of a dragon, isn’t she?’

  ‘The original Drakul, dear boy. When the boilers pack up, we get her to breathe on them. Invaluable, really.’

  ‘Something else I don’t know about you,’ Graham said.

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’ Maxwell quaffed the amber nectar.

  ‘Why you’re still here.’

  ‘It seems Dr Sheffield has need of me.’

  ‘Oh yes. I was there, remember. From his point of view you’re a hero on a white horse and the Seventh Cavalry all rolled into one. But what do you get out of it? You didn’t know Bill Pardoe.’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘That’s true. But a little boy called Jenkins did.’

  Graham blinked. ‘Jenkins asked you to stay?’

  ‘Not in so many words,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Now. Let’s see if we can’t brainstorm a little, late as it is. What can you tell me about Bill Pardoe?’

  She felt goosebumps crawl over her shoulders and arms. All the same, she’d come this far. She’d go through with it now. She let her long hair cascade over her naked back, peeling the lacy bra down so that her large breasts jutted out pert under the fitful moon, sneaking furtive glances at her behind its cloud cover.

  She held the velvet heart in both hands, kneeling on the cold, soft earth. She whispered her name over and over, the name of lo
ve. Then she stood up, shaking now with the cold of night and the emotion of the moment. She slid the tracksuit bottom and her panties down her solid thighs and kicked them off. Now she was skyclad, kneeling again with the little trowel flashing in her hand. She muttered the words she’d learned, the words of love, the forbidden words, driving the steel again and again into the dank moss, making the sacred hole.

  She took the heart again, the one she’d made secretly in needlework with their initials embroidered with silver beads. And she buried it there, her hair enveloping the hole as she whispered into it, like King Midas of old. A few deft strokes and the soil was back and the hole gone and the heart covered.

  She closed to the spot, her lips moving imperceptibly above the moss. ‘Cassandra. Cassandra.’

  6

  The school was still at chapel when DCI Hall arrived in his polished Volvo. There was a woman with him, DS Carpenter. They left the car under the limes, Hall carrying a briefcase, Jacquie a tape recorder.

  Sheffield was waiting for them in his study. ‘I’ve put you in here.’ He led them into a side office. ‘You shouldn’t be disturbed and as you see, there’s a door of your own, as it were. Tell me, Chief Inspector, do you intend to do anything about the gentlemen of the Press? They’re besieging my gate.’

  ‘I know,’ Hall nodded. ‘I just drove through them. Unfortunately, they’re not breaking the law by being there.’

  ‘I won’t have them pestering my people.’

  ‘There’s no clear law against that, either.’

  ‘Privacy, surely?’ Sheffield insisted.

  ‘It’ll be a cold day in Hell when you can make that one stick. I’ll get someone from the local force to talk to them; at least they might get somewhere with your local rag.’

  ‘Er … I’m sorry, you mean you’re not Hampshire CID?’ Sheffield was confused.

  ‘No, sir.’ Hall set up his briefcase on the desk in front of him. ‘Neither is DS Carpenter. Jacquie, this is Dr Sheffield, Headmaster.’

  She held out a hand. He took it absentmindedly.

  ‘Sir Arthur is on his way over. He’ll want to talk to you.’

  ‘Sir Arthur?’ Hall supervised as Jacquie set up the tape recorder, leads and wires, coiling the microphone flex on the side table.

  ‘Sir Arthur Wilkins, our Chair of Governors, got in touch with him in Bermuda. He’s flown back.’

  ‘Essential, is he?’ Hall asked. ‘Your Chair of Governors?’

  ‘Vital,’ Sheffield assured him. ‘Especially now Grimond’s seems to be open house to half Fleet Street or wherever they keep these people nowadays.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to your teaching staff first, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Well, they all have full timetables, Chie Inspector,’ Sheffield said.

  ‘Not as full as mine, sir.’ A more human police man would have smiled at that point. Jacqui noticed that not a flicker crossed Hall’s lips.

  ‘I’ll send Mervyn Larson, my Deputy,’ Sheffield reached for his gown. ‘I’ve set up a rota of prefects to act as runners. Will that do?’

  ‘I’m sure it will,’ Hall nodded.

  ‘And coffee. You’d like some refreshments?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll get Parker, our steward, to set up a machine for you. I expect interviewing is thirsty work.’ The Headmaster hauled on the gown, looked at the officers for a moment, then went about his business.

  ‘That’s a worried man,’ Jacquie observed.

  ‘Of course,’ Hall nodded. ‘He’s got something to hide.’

  ‘What?’ Jacquie was testing the equipment.

  ‘That,’ Hall was arranging his papers, ‘remains to be seen.’

  ‘Morning, Max. I may call you Max?’ David Gallow was emerging from chapel before day and battle broke.

  ‘Please,’ Maxwell said. He’d been impressed by the kids this morning. After the solemn words of yesterday, there was a briskness about the chapel service, the chaplain more muscular in his Christianity. John Selwyn, the Captain of Tennyson, read the lesson in his impeccable Home Counties, an anonymous Music A-level type (you could tell them the wide world o’er) played a bit of Bach beautifully and everyone was reminded, via the hymn, that Christ was their cornerstone.

  ‘We’ve got a debate next lesson,’ Gallow said. ‘The Lower Sixth arguing the toss over Charles I’s responsibility for the Civil War. Care to sit in on that?’

  ‘Very much. On the way over, though, you can tell me about the CCF.’

  ‘The Corps?’ Gallow shrugged. ‘Nothing much to tell.’

  ‘You’re a T.A captain, I understand?’

  ‘Slow down, Wentworth!’ the Head of History barked at a hapless child hurtling down the chapel steps. ‘P.E.,’ he tutted. ‘He doesn’t dash to his History with the same relish, I’ve noticed. Who told you about my rank?’

  ‘Er … Maggie Shaunessy, I think. Does it matter?’

  ‘No,’ Gallow said. ‘Not at all.’

  He led Maxwell up a flight of shallow steps into a low-ceilinged room with maps of Europe all over the walls, and posters extolling students to read History at Stirling, Aberystwyth and Belfast. Ethnomania and the Celtic Fringe had even reached Grimond’s, Maxwell noted.

  ‘They’ll be a few minutes yet. House assemblies on Wednesdays.’

  ‘You’re not attached to a House?’

  ‘Dickens, nominally, but the Corps duties get me out of most of that. What did you want t know about them?’

  ‘Do they ever carry out night exercises?’

  Gallow frowned, pausing as he stacked exercise books on his desk. ‘We have,’ he said slowly ‘There was a big joint operation with Churcher and Bedales last year. I’m not sure it’s worth all the organizational trauma, though. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘It’s funny, really, I may, in fact, have been dreaming, but I could have sworn I saw a group of them night before last.’

  ‘Where?’ Gallow wanted to know.

  ‘In the quad,’ Maxwell was looking at it now, staring out of the History Department’s window ‘And the odd thing was, they were carrying a coffin.’

  Gallow was suddenly at his side. ‘A coffin Max, are you serious?’

  Maxwell turned to him. ‘You mean, did I seriously dream it or seriously see it?’ He smiled ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Where would they get a coffin, for God’s sake?’ Gallow asked him. ‘It’s not exactly an everyday object at a school, is it?’

  ‘I thought, perhaps, the woodwork shop?’

  The door opened and a jumble of assorted sixth formers, male and female, tumbled in, mumbling inconsequentially about this and that.

  ‘Shut up!’ Gallow screamed at them, slamming a textbook on his desk. ‘For God’s sake!’

  To Maxwell, it seemed a little overkill. Nobody, after all, was jumping off a table or gobbing out of a window.

  ‘Psst!’ Maxwell spun to the sound. He couldn’t believe it. Tucked in behind the lowest branches of a large cedar tree was a face he knew. He checked that the coast was clear.

  ‘Jacquie!’ and they kissed, while he selected which cliché to choose. ‘What are you doing here?’ It had to be, really.

  ‘Working with Hall.’

  ‘You’re seconded too?’ he joined her the lake side of the ancient, gnarled trunk, away from the buildings.

  ‘Got the call late yesterday.’

  ‘Why?’

  There’d been a time when Jacquie Carpenter had told Peter Maxwell nothing about a case she was working on. That was when she didn’t know him. Ever since then, he’d wheedled things out of her. He’d flutter his long eyelashes and do his little-boy-lost look and she was his, butter in his mouth, putty in his hands, whatever metaphor came to mind. She’d hated herself, of course, because she’d been unprofessional in a job she loved and because she knew he’d use the information on whatever amateur game he was playing. If only Peter Maxwell had joined the police all those years ago after Cambridge �
� the combination of his brain and her computerized street cred would have been irresistible. As it was, he’d gone into teaching, casting his pearls before swine and he’d become Mad Max.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She knew the look. The arched eyebrow. Followed by the big, doe eyes and the downturned corners of the mouth. ‘No,’ she all but stamped her foot. ‘I really don’t know.’

  Maxwell leaned back against the bark. ‘Don’t think he’s after your body, do you?’

  She ignored him. ‘He’s after somebody’s.’

  ‘He’s interviewing?’

  Jacquie nodded. ‘Working his way through the staff. He’s got through Larson so far – Deputy Head?’

  ‘I know him,’ Maxwell said. ‘Strong silent type?’

  ‘Now, Max …’ her hand was already in the air.

  ‘I know,’ Maxwell interrupted her; they’d played this game before. ‘You can’t divulge etcetera, etcetera. What did he tell you?’

  A distant clanging of a bell saved Jacquie professionalism.

  ‘Lesson Two,’ Maxwell said, turning to where extraordinarily, uniformed children were on their way with amazing rapidity to classrooms. Ho utterly unlike life in his own dear school. ‘They still call them periods here; quaint, isn’t it? Who’s he seeing next?’

  ‘Graham.’

  ‘On the grounds that Pardoe was his boss?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What’s he up to, Jacquie?’ Maxwell was frowning, puzzling it out.

  ‘What?’ There were times when she couldn’t keep up with this man.

  ‘Who’s interviewing?’

  ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘Me and Hall.’

  ‘Hall and I,’ he couldn’t help correcting her – it went with the territory. ‘Nobody from the local force?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And the tone in that “no” means … ?’

  ‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘It is a little unusual. I’ll fish.’

  ‘Good girl.’ He reached across and kissed her forehead. ‘You’ll make someone a good wife, Woman Policeman Carpenter.’

  ‘Thank you, kind sir,’ and she curtseyed. Maxwell didn’t know she knew how to do that. As he turned away from the tree, she caught his arm. ‘What are you doing?’