by M. J. Trow
Peter Maxwell knew he was taking his life in his hands doing this. Tubbs had driven him out to the Swallow’s Nest, the old coaching inn along the Portsmouth Road, refurbished courtesy of the Harvester chain and would have to drive him back. How would three G ‘n’ T’s register on the coloured straws of Mr Plod, waiting in the laybys of the back-doubles to pull over such as he?
‘This chap Robinson,’ Maxwell swirled the Southern Comfort around the glass. ‘What do you make of it all?’
Tubbs scowled at him. Perhaps Maxwell had been misinformed. Perhaps Gaynor Ames had got it wrong. Just how much of Maxwell’s pitiful salary would it take to loosen this man’s tongue?
‘Well,’ the Geographer leaned forward in their corner of the snug and Maxwell was about to find out. ‘There was talk, of course …’
‘Really?’ Maxwell leaned back by the ingle-nook, for all the world as if he’d rather be talking about Byzantine foreign policy.
‘Our Mr Robinson was rather a one for the ladies.’
‘Really?’
‘Does this sort of thing go on in your sort of school?’ Tubbs wanted to know.
‘This sort of thing?’ Maxwell was all innocence in his fishing trip, an ingénue with a mind like a razor.
Tubbs nudged his elbow as if about to launch into an old Monty Python sketch. ‘Wanderings in the dorm. Oh, but you don’t have dorms, do you? Even so, there must be temptation. I mean, the sixth form sirens are only a few years younger than our new recruits.’
‘Robinson was older, surely.’
‘Well, yes, but it doesn’t necessarily follow. Here we are, brains the size of the great outdoors, and shapers of young minds … They’re bound to have crushes, aren’t they? I remember one girl …’
‘You were telling me about Tim Robinson,’ Maxwell had no wish to wander down memory lane with this one.
‘Was I? Oh, yes.’ Tubbs grimaced as a jolt of gin hit his tonsils. ‘Well, it all started with that tart Cassandra James, you know, of Austen House.’
‘Yes, we’ve met,’ Maxwell said.
‘Trollope House, more like. Well, I must admit she’s a cracking bit of crackling, isn’t she? I mean, all professionalism aside and ignoring the loco parentis business for a moment, I could imagine getting my leg over her.’ He closed to the Head Sixth Form. ‘They say she goes like a train.’
‘Who says?’
‘They,’ Tubbs shrugged. ‘Everybody.’
‘So, Robinson was getting his end away, was he?’
‘Allegedly,’ Tubbs smirked.
‘What about Bill Pardoe?’
‘Pardoe?’ Tubbs blurted, causing heads in the snug to turn in his direction. ‘Good God, no. If anything, Bill swung the other way.’
‘Boys, you mean?’
‘You know what they say, Max,’ Tubbs sniggered. ‘Choirmasters, Housemasters. Not so long ago, it went with the territory; virtually de rigeur. In the fifties, allegedly, it was on people’s CVs.’
‘Allegedly,’ Maxwell smiled.
‘No, I never heard of Bill showing the remote interest in the fair sex.’
‘There wasn’t a Mrs Pardoe, was there?’
‘Not that I knew,’ Tubbs leaned back and shook his head. ‘But I’ve only been at Grimond’s for seven years. My God, what an apprenticeship.’
Maxwell was secretly impressed. A Geographer who knew the traditional length of an apprenticeship was a rare phenomenon indeed. ‘So, what’s your evidence for Robinson and Cassandra then,’ he asked.
‘The boat-house.’ Tubbs rattled the ice in his glass. ‘Grimond’s equivalent of Lovers’ Lane. Think about it, Maxwell. Robinson’s a Games master, access to the boat-house keys. Probably took one of those PE mat things they use in the gym to lie down on. The Arbiters won’t like …’ and his voice trailed away.
‘The what?’
‘Look,’ Tubbs was checking his watch, comparing it with the clock over the fireplace. ‘I really ought to be getting back.’
‘I thought you had a free afternoon,’ Maxwell reminded him.
‘No, I’ve just remembered; I’ve a meeting, with that appalling Shaunessy woman at three. Some wretched girl can’t cope with A level Geography. I ask you …’
It did seem unlikely, Maxwell had to agree, but somewhere, somehow, he’d touched something of a raw nerve with Tubbsy and now wasn’t the moment to pursue it.
They ambled out to the great outdoors, Maxwell hoping the fresh air would have something resembling a sobering effect on his driver. Briefly, their feet crunched on the gravel and they bundled into Tubbsy’s battered MG and roared the country lanes, via various verges, to the Grimond’s gates.
‘Mr Tubbs!’ a local journalist called out as the car jolted to a halt by them. ‘Any comments for the Echo?’
‘Yes,’ Tubbs had wound his window down. ‘Why don’t you people get a proper job?’ And his foot hit the floor as the crowd of paparazzi jeered and hooted.
‘Somebody got out of bed the wrong side this morning,’ somebody said.
‘Who was that pissed man?’ another asked, paraphrasing the question eternally put to the Lone Ranger all those years ago.
‘Jeremy Tubbs; fat bastard teaches Geography.’
‘Who was that with him?’
‘Somebody Maxwell,’ the Echo man confided ‘Larson told us he was seconded from somewhere else. Not actually on the team.’
‘Worth a few lines, though.’
‘Nah. Rumour has it he works in a comprehensive. It’s the weirdoes who teach at Grimond we’re after.’
DCI Hall looked over the rims of his specs. It was Monday afternoon and the end of the day seemed years away.
‘I thought you’d be shorter,’ he was saying to Peter Maxwell. ‘In fact, let’s not beat about the bush, I thought you’d be Jeremy Tubbs. We’ve been expecting him since the day before yesterday.’
‘Mr Tubbs is a little indisposed.’ Maxwell slid the chair out from under Hall’s desk. ‘He may or may not have a meeting with Miss Shaunessy about now, but I happen to know he’s sleeping it off in the San. The Matron here is, apparently, dab hand with black coffee. You’ve been avoiding me, Henry.’
‘Jacquie,’ Hall threw his pen down on the desk. ‘Could you leave us?’
‘Sir?’ The girl hadn’t expected this. Not Maxwell’s gate-crashing nor Hall’s reaction to it.
‘Now, please.’ Hall didn’t care for the woman’s hesitation.
She stood up, Maxwell smiling at her as she went. ‘I won’t be far away,’ she said. And both of them thought she was talking to them. Maxwell slid a large white envelope across Hall’s desk, littered as it was in Sheffield’s anteroom, with depositions without number.
‘What’s this?’ the DCI asked.
‘Evidence,’ Maxwell said, ‘which may have a bearing on Bill Pardoe’s death.’
Hall flicked through the book’s pages with his biro tip, his face expressionless as always. He looked up at Peter Maxwell. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘Parker, the steward. It was unopened in Pardoe’s post. Arrived the day after he died.’
‘And you opened it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Maxwell.’ Hall leaned towards him, putting the pen away and clasping his fingers. ‘I’ve lost count of the times you have taken it upon yourself to trample over police investigations. In the past, I’ve always thought twice about bringing charges against you. Now, I’m inclined to change my mind. This is not my patch and I don’t have any hint of leeway.’
‘You must do as you think fit, Chief Inspector,’ Maxwell said. ‘And if that means playing things by the book, then so be it. But you and Jacquie are woefully short-staffed here.’
Hall sat upright, frowning. ‘Are you offering your services?’ he asked. ‘Only, I’m not sure that the rights of citizens’ arrest extends to carrying out interrogations of witnesses and suspects.’
‘Do you have any?’ Maxwell leaned back, fencing with the man as he had so often before. ‘Sus
pects, I mean?’
‘I’m looking at one right now,’ Hall told him.
‘Come on, Henry,’ Maxwell laughed. ‘Short staffed you may be, but stupid you ain’t.’
Hall looked at his man. ‘You’re carrying out investigation of your own, aren’t you?’ he asked.
Maxwell shrugged. ‘I’m asking questions, yes. Can’t help myself, I suppose.’
‘Getting any answers?’
‘Some,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘You?’
Hall sighed.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’ll do you a deal. Let’s swap. Remember Strangers on a Train? Dear old Robert Walker trying to swap murders with innocent, stupid Farley Granger. Criss Cross. I’ll give you one piece of information in exchange for one of yours. We can get round to swapping murders later.’
‘Which one of us is the innocent stupid one and which of us is mad?’ Hall asked. ‘And anyway, I don’t do deals.’
‘Yes, you do,’ Maxwell growled. ‘That’s why West’s back in the saddle at Selborne and you still here, on your own. What’s all that about if not some sort of deal with the Chief Superintendent?’
‘How the …’ Hall had gone a deathly white, then his colour flooded back. ‘Oh, I know.’
‘No.’ Maxwell shook his head, reading man’s mind. ‘This has nothing to do with Jacquie. I’ve got a little portable telly in my attic room, Chief Inspector. I watch the news. Your Incident Room is at Selborne. Last Tuesday you were interviewed by Meridian; yesterday it was West. That interview, by the way, I watched on my own telly, at home. When did you go home last?’
Henry Hall looked at Maxwell. The bastard had an infuriating way of being right. And perceptive. And prescient. He was an irritating shit. But in the past, he had caught killers.
‘Bill Pardoe was married,’ he said calmly. ‘The photograph of the boy in his study is his son.’
‘Who told you that?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Never mind,’ Hall said.
‘And what do you conclude from that?’ Maxwell was fishing for England.
‘Nothing, particularly. It doesn’t preclude his homosexuality. All this,’ he tapped the mag on his desk, ‘could be a later manifestation. It could be the reason why Mr Pardoe was no longer married.’
‘Have you found the wife? The son?’
‘Uh-uh.’ Hall waved a finger. ‘One piece of information only. That was the deal. Your turn.’
Maxwell smiled. He didn’t think for a moment that Hall would fall for that one, but it was worth a try. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tim Robinson was having a fling with Cassandra James, Captain of Austen House.’
Hall frowned. ‘Where did you hear that?’
Maxwell tapped the side of his nose, lapsing into his Magwich. ‘I got me sources,’ he rasped, ‘and I ain’t no grass, Mr ’All, sir.’
‘No,’ Hall sighed. ‘And your information’s not worth much, either.’
‘You don’t buy the Robinson-James liaison?’
‘Not for a moment,’ Hall said. ‘I’d hoped for more from you, Mr Maxwell. I expect if I act on every bit of tittle-tattle I’d heard about Leighford, I could close the place down. You’re chasing shadows.’
‘Cassandra?’ Maxwell popped his head around the study door, high in the eaves of Northanger. The dark-haired girl rose languidly from the seat next to the old fireplace and swayed across room. ‘Could I have a word?’
‘It’s prep period,’ she told him, indicating pile of history books she’d just left.
Maxwell cocked his head to one side to read spine of one of them. ‘Ah, Kershaw,’ he smiled. ‘Okay, let’s talk Hitler, shall we?’
‘Are you an historian?’ she asked archly.
‘History teacher,’ he said. ‘Is that close enough?’
She led him up a narrow flight of stairs that skirted Ms Shaunessy’s domain, past the rowing trophies on the wall. The April sunset was still glowing beyond the cedars that ringed the lake where Tim Robinson died. The pair went into corridor where Maxwell had never been before and through a door marked Prefects’ Study. This was a slightly girlie version of Tennyson, where Maxwell had watched The Witchfinder, but it had less of the odour of liniment and one or two fewer jock straps. She sat down on a settee and waited for him to join her.
‘So,’ she said. ‘What do you think of Ian Kershaw?’
‘First rate,’ Maxwell said. ‘But I’m an Alan Bullock man myself. Besides, I’m here to talk about Tim Robinson.’
‘Mr Robinson? Oh.’
What, Maxwell wondered, was buried in that single ‘oh’? He looked into the girl’s eyes and could certainly understand where Tubbsy was coming from. ‘What did you think of him?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ she asked, curling up on the settee and slipping her feet under her bum.
‘Intellectual curiosity,’ Maxwell told her. ‘Murders don’t happen every day.’
‘Nearly every day at Grimond’s,’ she said, wide- eyed. ‘At least recently.’
‘He taught you fencing,’ Maxwell tried to steer her back to the point.
‘After a fashion,’ she yawned, stretching so that her breasts jutted out under her blouse and her navel jewellery came into view.
‘You mean he wasn’t very good?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, he wasn’t. Not a patch on Richard Ames, for instance.’
‘So …’ Maxwell was feeling his way carefully. ‘It’s Mr Robinson, but Richard Ames?’
‘What are you inferring?’ she frowned.
Maxwell had met girls like Cassandra James before. They were poison, enjoying playing games with teachers, male teachers in particular, flaunting their new-found sexuality, sure of the irresistibility of their charms.
‘Nothing.’ Maxwell had played the game before. ‘Should I be?’
‘I’ve known Richard since I was fourteen,’ she said, ‘when we amalgamated with Grimond’s. Robinson’s only been here this term.’
‘Did he, Robinson, that is, just in casual chat, perhaps, tell you anything about himself? Friends? Family?’
She shrugged. ‘No. Strong silent type was Mr Robinson. I got the impression he didn’t like us much.’
‘Us?’
‘Grimond’s. Private schools. I don’t know. He didn’t seem the type.’
‘Type?’ Maxwell could play the ingénue to perfection.
‘You know, a private schoolmaster. He seemed rather … well, I know it’s terribly un-PC to say it, but rather working class.’
‘Like me, you mean?’ Maxwell smiled.
‘You’re not working class, Mr Maxwell.’ She smiled too, dimples flicking at the corners of her mouth. She ran a finger along the lapel of his jacket. ‘I’d say you went to a school very much like this one.’
‘Would you?’
Cassandra nodded. ‘No girls, of course. Not done, then, was it?’
Maxwell laughed. ‘In the Dark Ages? No, it wasn’t. Tell me, Cassandra, Mr Robinson; did any of the girls have a crush on him?’
‘A crush?’ Cassandra snorted. ‘Oh, God, what a ’thirties word. Do you mean was he fucking any of them?’
‘Well,’ Maxwell said, ‘I wasn’t going to be so direct, but thank you for saving time.’ Nothing like cutting straight to the chase in a murder enquiry.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, twisting her face in an effort to think. ‘Pru Vallender’s a possibility. Shy, quiet type. They’re always the ones who’ve been doing it for years.’
‘Not you, then?’ Maxwell ventured.
The girl’s eyes smouldered and her fingers splayed out on his chest. ‘No,’ she said archly. ‘He wasn’t my type.’
‘John Selwyn more your man?’ he asked innocently.
Cassandra looked deep into the man’s eyes. ‘John’s very sweet,’ she purred, ‘but he’s only a boy. I go for the older man.’ She let her hand slide down to Maxwell’s waistband, leaning across so that her mouth was inches from his and her sweet breath warmed his face. ‘Would you like to
fuck me, Mr Maxwell?’
He took her hand firmly but gently and placed it back on Ian Kershaw’s book, where it could probably do less damage. ‘I wouldn’t like the lawsuit and the police investigation that would follow if I did, Cassandra,’ he said. ‘But thank you for the offer.’
She recoiled quickly, then her right hand snaked out and she slapped him stingingly across the face. No sooner had his vision cleared from that than the door burst open and Janet Boyce stood there, all jeans and outsize jumper. ‘Cassie, I … oh.’
‘It’s all right, Janet,’ the taller girl snarled, jerking upright. ‘Mr Maxwell was just leaving.’
Maxwell rose to his feet, smiled at them both and said, ‘We’ll talk again, Cassandra … somewhere a bit more public next time.’
‘You know, I had an offer I couldn’t refuse today.’ Maxwell stretched out on Jacquie’s bed at Barcourt Lodge.
‘Don’t tell me Dr Sheffield’s offered you a job?’ She was pouring another glass of wine for them both.
‘No. Cassandra James offered to sleep with me.’
Jacquie looked across at him. ‘Did she now? And what did you say?’
‘I said I’d think about it,’ Maxwell beamed and winced as the cushion hit his head from the far side of the room. ‘The point is, Woman Policeman, why the change of heart?’
‘Max, you don’t mean she was serious?’
He looked at her outraged. ‘It isn’t so farfetched, surely? You do it.’
‘I,’ she curled up archly in the armchair opposite him, ‘am the older woman. You could be her grandfather.’
‘Thanks,’ he leapt off the bed and strangled her with his glass-free hand, before squatting on the floor next to her, ‘But you’re missing the point dear heart. Miss James has been all ice since the moment we met. Difficult. Stand-offish. Until this evening.’
‘What does that mean?’