by M. J. Trow
Meal times had become gloomy things at Grimond’s. Everybody talked in low, subdued tones about little but Bill Pardoe and Tim Robinson. Maxwell, versed as he was in the Victorian obsession with death, expected to see the curtains drawn in the dining room and the grim black stallions pacing the gravel at the door; the white-faced mutes crying their glycerine tears and sable ostrich plumes gusting in the wind.
‘Mr Tubbs not on the boarding staff?’ Maxwell put the question to Tony Graham at his left elbow as both of them made fairly easy work of Mrs Oakes’s apple crumble.
‘Tubbsy? Lord no,’ Graham told him. ‘Hasn’t the stomach for it, between you and me.’
‘Needs stomach, does it, Housemastering?’
Graham slid the empty plate away from him, turning in his chair to face Maxwell on High Table. ‘It may not be the right climate to say so at the moment, but consider your colleagues, Max. How many of ’em would you trust, say, with your own child?’
Maxwell’s own child lay with her mother under the flowers in a cold cemetery to the north. No one would ever teach her, not now. ‘My own child?’ He could still see her dark, bright eyes and feel her trusting fingers tangling in his hair.
‘That’s the benchmark,’ Graham nodded. ‘Look around you here. Gallow, a miserable bastard with a smell under his nose; Helmseley, so dyed-in-the-wool it’s pathetic; Maggie Shaunnessy, well, talk about a reincarnation of Jean Brodie … oh, there are some decent types. Richard Ames is a good buddy, even Mervyn Larson has his moments …’
‘The good doctor?’ Maxwell raised his brows in the direction of Sheffield sitting a couple of chairs away behind Graham and lost in earnest conversation with his deputies.
The Head of Tennyson laughed. ‘Sorry,’ said. ‘That’s probably enough character assassination for one day, isn’t it? Unprofessional. I’m sorry. We’re all a bit on edge.’
‘Ah, we all do it,’ Maxwell sipped his water, wishing it was something stronger. ‘I’ve got a wax model of Legs Diamond at home I habitually riddle with pins every Sunday night. Does do him any harm of course, but I feel a damn sight better for it. Who’s your money on, Tony?’ Maxwell had closed to his man.
‘What?’
‘Tim Robinson. Who bent an oar over his head?’
Graham looked appalled. ‘For Christ’s sake, Max. You’re not serious.’
‘Oh, but I am, Tony. You’re rubbishing your colleagues for some slight, real or imagined over your years at Grimond’s chalk face. But what if you really had cause? What if one of them is a murderer? Mervyn Larson? David Gallow? Michael Helmseley? George Sheffield? Richard …’
‘No,’ Graham was suddenly on his feet, throwing his napkin onto the table. ‘Preposterous.’ All eyes on High Table turned at his exit.
Mad Max went home that afternoon. He hadn’t planned to; it was a spur of the moment thing. Was it the lure of the bills that would be waiting for him in their buff anonymity in the hallway, kindly stacked by courtesy of Mrs B., who did for him every Wednesday? Hard to say.
Parker, Grimond’s steward and Johannes Factotum, had called the taxi for him and he waited in the man’s lodge office a little after lunch.
‘Rum business, eh, Mr Parker?’
The steward, it had to be said, was a charmless nerk as a result of a lifetime of being looked down on by his betters and, latterly, his youngers. Nobody ever called him ‘Mr’, still less ‘Eric’. So it came as rather a shock from this bloke from a school on the wrong side of the educational tracks.
‘It is, sir.’
‘How long have you been at Grimond’s?’
‘Since the old Headmaster’s time, sir. Mrs Parker and I come here in ’78. Different place it was, then.’ It was indeed. Maxwell remembered it well: the Amoco Cadiz broke its back off Brittany, spilling thousands of tons of crude into the sea; Jomo Kenyatta, the Mau-Mau terrorist, shuffled off his mortal coil mourned as a great and wise leader; somebody pinched Charlie Chaplin’s body out of his grave.
‘No girls,’ Maxwell watched a gaggle of them squealing their way out onto the netball pitch, incomprehensible letters bright on their backs.
‘Right,’ Parker snorted. ‘And none of these kids still wet behind the ears.’
‘Teachers, you mean?’ Maxwell checked. ‘Tell me about it. Mr Pardoe must have been a bit rough for you.’
‘I’ve been serving Tennyson House for a quarter of a century now. I couldn’t believe it when they told me.’
‘Not the suicidal type?’
‘Nah,’ Parker shook his head, rummaging through a pile of papers.
‘What drove him to it, d’you think?’ Maxwell had piled his hat and scarf on Parker’s counter and was leaning on it, arms folded like a genial gargoyle atop Notre Dame.
He watched the steward’s eyes flicker left and right. ‘I couldn’t say,’ he grunted.
‘You handle all the school mail here, do you?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Mrs Parker and I do, yes sir.’
‘What, it’s delivered here and you distribute it?’
‘That’s right. Each House has its own pigeon holes as well as the Senior Common Room. Sheffield’s secretary takes care of his post.’
‘Did Bill Pardoe get much mail?’ Maxwell caught Parker’s look. ‘I mean, I know I do. Junk, mostly. Addressed to the Head of Sociology, Psychology, Law – except that we don’t teach those things where I come from. Nobody knows what they are.’
‘He got a lot of blank stuff,’ Parker was scowling. ‘Anonymous, like.’
‘Anonymous?’
‘Well, when I say anonymous, it was addressed to him, like, but always in the same envelope, plain white.’
‘I don’t suppose one of them arrived after … accident?’
‘Accident?’ Parker snorted. ‘You don’t have pussyfoot around with me, Mr Maxwell. The man killed himself. It’s that simple.’
‘Mr Parker,’ Maxwell refolded his arms on the steward’s counter, ‘I don’t think there’s anything simple about it at all. And you just told me you thought he wasn’t the suicidal type. The envelope?’
Parker hesitated, then he ducked out of sight, to a wooden locker near the floor, beyond a single-bar electric fire. When he stood up, he was holding a white envelope in his hand; it was bulging and it was addressed to Bill Pardoe.
‘Why didn’t you give this to the police?’ Maxwell asked.
‘They didn’t ask for it,’ Parker shrugged. ‘Leaves a bad taste in the mouth, does this. Washing Grimond’s dirty laundry in public. That ought not to be happening. I’m not making it any more public than it has to be.’
Maxwell nodded. He couldn’t think of anybody that loyal to his native Leighford High School. Such things just weren’t fashionable any more, not in the state sector. School was a place to be endured, not loved. ‘Mr Parker,’ he said gently, ‘could I take this?’
‘What for?’ Parker asked.
Maxwell took a deep breath and launched himself. ‘I didn’t know Bill Pardoe,’ he said, ‘but I’ve been involved with sudden death now for more years than I care to remember.’ He shrugged. ‘Just follows me, I suppose. I don’t know why.’
‘So … you’re saying … ?’
‘I’m saying that I don’t think Bill Pardoe killed himself, any more than you do. I think somebody here did it. Somebody at Grimond’s pushed him off the roof.’
‘No,’ Parker was growling, shaking his head. ‘No, that can’t be.’
‘Let me prove it, then,’ Maxwell said. ‘I think the reason that Bill Pardoe died, or part of it, lies in this envelope. When did it arrive?’
‘The day after they found him,’ Parker said. ‘Wednesday.’
‘Time?’
‘Bout nine, quarter-past, maybe.’
Maxwell checked the postmark. Petersfield. The date and time were all but illegible.
‘Mr Maxwell,’ Parker looked into the man’s eyes as the taxi hooted outside the lodge. ‘Can you sort this? Put Grimond’s back on its feet again?’
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Maxwell slid the envelope out of the man’s hands. ‘I’ll give it my very best shot,’ he smiled.
The sun had the nerve to come out as Maxwell’s cab purred into Leighford. All day, it had been dull and dingy and cold and now, as dusk began to creep from the East, a red-gold glow bathed the flyover and the trees that ringed the common land called the Dam. On the way through Sunday Sussex, the driver had bored the Head of Sixth Form rigid with his views on the Euro, Hear’Say and the Weakest Link. It was a numb Peter Maxwell who stumbled out at 38 Columbine and remortgaged the place to pay the fare.
There were the bills, piled high by the hall phone as he knew they would be. Mrs B’s less-than-elegant note lay beside them. He read it aloud. ‘I done the kitchen and the bathroom. The bloke called about the guttering. That bloody cat brought something in. I couldn’t make it out by the giblets. Have you had him done, by the way? See you later, Mrs B.’
He consigned the missive to the bin. ‘Thanks, Mrs B. Did he? Well, it’s in his nature. Yes, I had him done years ago. See you.’ He checked his answerphone.
‘Max, Deirdre Lessing. You do know there’s an Options evening next Monday? I can’t find the paperwork for the Sixth Form. Get back.’
Maxwell held up his fingers in the form of a cross. ‘Get back yourself, winged harpy of the night. And behind me, to boot. And talk to Helen Maitland, there’s a dear. She is after all, my Number Two and a bloody efficient one. Not that you’d acknowledge that. She’s only a floor away from that cavern strewn with human bones you call your office – surely to God it can’t be that difficult!’
‘Uncle Max, it’s Tiffany …’
‘Tiff.’ Maxwell chortled. ‘My agony niece. How are you, darling?’ He often talked to tape recorders.
‘Just thought I’d tell you I’ve got an offer from Cambridge. Jesus. Sorry, I’m supposed to have phoned you in January. Oops. Don’t tell Mum I didn’t. Love you.’
‘Jesus!’ Maxwell shouted, ripping open envelopes with a well-practiced thumb. ‘Well done! Nice to see a fine family tradition going on. Do some work while you’re there, there’s a good girl.’
‘Max, pick up. It’s Jacquie.’ He was halfway up the stairs by this time and caught himself a nasty one doubling back to get to it. ‘Jacquie?’
‘Max, you’re home.’
‘Correct, oh wise one.’ It was good to hear her voice.
‘I couldn’t reach you on your mobile.’ It was good to hear his too.
‘And you thought I’d forgotten how to switch it on again. Come on, admit it.’
‘Something like that.’ Her voice sounded very far away.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t let you know,’ he said. ‘I need time to think.’
‘Are you going back to Leighford?’
‘Lord, no. I’ll be back at Grimond’s tomorrow! We need to talk.’
‘You’re right. Look, Max,’ her voice fluctuated, faded, broke up. ‘Henry’s up to something. I think he’s falsifying evidence.’
‘What? I can’t hear you. Henry’s what?’
But she’d gone in a crackle of static punctuated with bursts of silence. He dialled her numbers stabbing out the numbers he’d learned by heart. Nothing. Dead air. ‘Damn!’ He threw the rest of the bills into the bin and took the stairs again.
On the settee as he flicked on the wall lights a great black and white beast yawned and stretched, fangs bright in the half-light. Maxwell drew the curtains on the embers of the sun dying in the fields towards Tottingleigh and he saw the street lights twinkle into life out on the Shingle. He’d only been away a few days but already he missed the sea. He who had been born in the Midlands about as far as it was possible to be from the sea. Now it was in his blood, salty and untameable.
He tore open the white envelope he’d carried in his briefcase all the way back from Grimond’s and sat down heavily in his armchair. From time to time on the interminable journey, he’d glanced at the leather, fighting down the urge to open it and see just what had been sent to Bill Pardoe the day after his death.
‘Evening, Count.’ He wasn’t looking at the animal, but he was sure he heard the briefest of purrs before the head cocked sideways and the nightly ritual of bum-licking began. ‘You know, you’d make a wonderful member of the Senior Management Team – they can all do that; although to be fair it’s usually Legs Diamond’s they’re working on, not their own. Good God.’
He’d never seen what lay in his lap before. It was a Swedish import, a full colour porn mag which left nothing to the imagination. Every model was male. Every model was naked and erect. None could have been more than seventeen. Too late he realised his fingerprints were all over the thing. Too late he wondered who else’s were there.
‘So,’ the house lights on the Shingle had gone out now as one by one sleepy Leighford closed its eyes to brace itself for another week. Maxwell sat in his modelling chair in the dim lights of the attic, his gold-laced pill box cap on his head, his lamp lighting the accoutrements of Trumpeter Perkins, 11th Prince Albert’s Own Hussars. Maxwell was carefully painting the plastic man’s cherry-coloured overalls, checking that the crimson mix was just right. ‘What we have, Count, is two deaths. One school. Four days. Pretty cranky arithmetic, don’t you think?’
The Count, of course, couldn’t count. And there wasn’t that much evidence that he could think. There was a rhythmic richness to His Master’s Voice, though, and die rather than admit it, he had missed the old duffer over the past week. That foul old sow who removed his favourite smells each week was now coming in daily, scaring him witless with that thing she plugged into the wall and roared over the carpets with. Many was the tasty giblet she’d sucked up with that and just when he’d saved them for later.
‘What do we have?’ Maxwell rested his brush, on the top of the paint pot and leaned back, hands behind his head and forage cap peak over his eyes. ‘One William Pardoe, revered Housemaster of the old school, not a million miles, I suggest, from your beloved master in terms of the cut of his jib. But was he loved? Feared? Hated? You know what kids are, Count.’
Metternich lashed his tail, just the once.
‘Private sector, public sector. Eton, Dotheboys Hall, Leighford, they’re all the same. It’s not considered cool to be keen or interested or smart if you’re under nineteen. The junior schools have all that – smelly little buggers with their hands in the air, all shouting “Me, sir, me Miss. Me, me, me.” Standing by you as you listen to them read and sticking their tummies out. At university, they’re keen again. Oh, it’s laced with smack and nights down the boozer, but they’ll do their work on water when it comes to Finals and Seminar-time. And in the middle? What’ve we got? In between are the teenage years,’ he paraphrased the old Val Doonican song that only he could still remember, ‘you’ll remember all of your life. They’re still sticking their tummies out, or at least the girls are, but that’s just to show off their navel jewellery. And that, Count, is why they love you, or hate you, or fear you. Because they’re teenagers. And you don’t always know which.’ He yawned and rubbed his eyes. ‘I haven’t talked to the kids yet. And that’s what I’ve got to do.’
He sipped the Southern Comfort in the dim light. Across the room, the black tapering lances of the 17th prickled against the sky as the horsemen of the Light Brigade waited to ride into legend.
‘If you wanted to end it all, Count, would you leap off a tall building? With your four feet and nine lives, of course, you’d be okay, wouldn’t you? Bill Pardoe didn’t have your advantages, unfortunately. But what was wrong with a bottle of pills? A one-way drive in the car? A razor to the wrists? Why didn’t he walk, like Virginia Woolf, into the water with his pockets weighed with stones? Why was it all so bloody public?’
He took another swig, larger than the first.
‘And then there’s Mr Robinson, the poor marker, the indifferent fencer. Mr Nobody. Captain Nemo. No past,’ he balanced the paintbrush on his index finger and watched it tip one way, then the other. ‘N
o future. Now here, Count, we have a different kettle of fish, can of worms, whatever culinary metaphor you care to conjure up. Mr Robinson didn’t kill himself and there’s no point pretending he did. Somebody stove in his head and dumped him in the boating lake. Let’s assume for a moment that the same person was responsible for both deaths – that Bill Pardoe was pushed and by the same hand that caved in Tim Robinson’s skull. Why so crafty the first time and so cack the second? Murderer losing his edge? Panicky? Frightened? Both bodies visible, no attempt to hide them. Two very public deaths.’
He emptied the glass of its amber liquid.
‘Bill Pardoe received pretty strong porn through the mail. Mail that was posted in Petersfield. What’ve we got, Count, a thriving porn industry in downtown Petersfield? Beggars belief, doesn’t it? Tim Robinson lived in downtown Petersfield. Is that the link? Something going on between the two?’ He shook his head, going round in circles as he was. ‘But why post this stuff when they saw each other every day? What would be the point? And where is it all now? I saw at least one similar mag on Bill Pardoe’s desk. But the law went over his room like locusts and they didn’t find any more. And then,’ he found himself reaching for the Southern Comfort again, ‘there’s that tape. The blackmail tape or whatever that was. Who left that outside my door? And why me? Was it just a souvenir of Grimond’s? Did somebody get the wrong room?’
He ran his finger round the rim of the glass, sticky now with the residue of the amber nectar and looked up at Metternich, the cat. ‘You know, Count, and I don’t say this lightly, sometimes I think you’re no bloody use at all. No offence.’
11
‘A free afternoon?’ Maxwell was incredulous. You didn’t get those in the state system.
‘Ah,’ Jeremy Tubbs was already three sheets in the wind and it wasn’t even half-past-one. ‘There’s no such thing,’ he burbled, ‘as a free afternoon. I’m on prep duty tonight.’
‘Hmm,’ Maxwell nodded, finishing off his Cheddar ploughman’s. ‘What a bummer.’
Jeremy Tubbs taught Geography, always, as a subject, the poor relation among the Humanities. There was something rather pathetic about him, an air of idiocy, as though he’d always been the butt of everybody’s jokes and was only now becoming aware of the fact. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-five but had the ample girth of a fifty-year-old and his hair was already deserting him. But he’d finished his ploughmans and the glass of water and the wine gum were already making him tipsy.