by M. J. Trow
‘I don’t know. Tubbsy told me she and Robinson were having a fling. I was acting on information received.’
‘And were they?’
Maxwell chuckled. ‘I said Cassandra offered to sleep with me, not tell me the truth. I have absolutely no idea. She said she preferred older men.’
‘I wonder if Ms Shaunessy knows about her,’ Jacquie murmured.
‘I wonder if Tim Robinson did.’
‘You think there’s something in Tubbs’ idea, then?’
Maxwell nodded. ‘Yes, I do. But I’m not sure it’s quite as straight forward as all that. Have you talked to him?’
‘No. He keeps ducking out, like the bloody Scarlet Pimpernel. He’s on for tomorrow now. Ten-thirty. That makes him the last of the teaching staff. We begin the sixth form just before lunch.’
‘Start with Cassandra. I’ll be interested to know what you make of her.’
‘Max, in all seriousness, you took a chance being alone with her. We have rules about interviews.’
‘So do we, dear heart.’ He raised his glass to her. ‘But the day I follow them, Hell will freeze over. If a kid comes to me upset, I hug them. What could be more natural than that?’
‘Nothing, unless she’s a twisted little minx who wants to get inside your trousers and trot off to the News of the World with the glad tidings. I seem to remember when we met you were suspended for something similar – set up by a vindictive pupil.’
‘Indeed,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘An occupational hazard, I’m afraid. And they’ve lightened up the rules since then. Little Cassandra is having a fling with John Selwyn, Captain of Tennyson.’
‘Head Boy. Head Girl. How sweet. She told you this?’
He shook his head. ‘I saw them. Or rather, heard them.’
‘What?’ Jacquie sat up. ‘Where was this?’
‘The boat-house.’
‘The …’
He held up his hand. ‘All right. I know, I should have told you.’
‘When was this, Max?’
‘The night before they found Tim Robinson.’
‘Jesus, Max.’ She was on her feet, pacing the room. ‘You should have told me.’
‘Yes, I just said that,’ he reminded her. ‘I didn’t because I wasn’t sure. In fact, I’m still not absolutely a hundred percent. It was after you’d dropped me at Grimond’s, do you remember? I was passing the boat-house and I heard a couple at it. I recognized Cassandra’s voice at once. The man’s? Well, I thought it was Selwyn’s, but now …
‘You think it could have been Robinson?’
He nodded. ‘It’s possible.’
‘So what are you saying? Cassandra’s two timing Selwyn with the PE teacher. The lad finds out, loses it and caves in his head? Come on, Max.’ Jacquie wasn’t buying it.
‘Most male-female murders are domestic, aren’t they?’ Maxwell pursued it. ‘The eternal triangle, straight line, rhombus, whatever bloody trigonometrical figure you care to choose.’
‘It’s possible,’ she admitted. ‘But what about, Pardoe?’
‘Don’t know.’ Maxwell sipped the wine again. ‘But then, until today, I didn’t know he was married, either.’
She stopped pacing, turning from the window to look at him. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Your Lord and Master.’
‘The DCI? God.’
‘One and the same. Look, what did you mean on the phone last night? It sounded like Henry was falsifying evidence.’
Jacquie was nodding, her eyes frightened, her face pale.
Maxwell sat up. ‘That’s not the Henry Hall I know.’
‘Nor I.’ She shook her head.
‘What’s the score, Jacquie?’ He put down his glass and got up, walking across to her, taking her in his arms.
‘Robinson,’ she said, looking up at him. She broke away, pacing the room again. ‘Look, I went out on a limb for Hall last night, Max. I went to the Incident Room at Selborne, talked to West.’
‘And?’
‘They’re working on Robinson’s bike, tracing its manufacturer. He’s sending officers round to the Blundells …’
‘Good luck to them,’ Maxwell chuckled.
‘No, Max, you’re missing the point. Hall was disinterested. He could have done this already, should have done. The bike was standing here, in the sheds at Grimond’s. He didn’t go near it.’
‘That’s not exactly falsifying evidence, darling.’ He crossed to her again, stroking her hair, looking into those worried grey eyes. ‘Missing the odd angle, perhaps, but …’
‘Why did we go to Robinson’s, Max?’ she asked him. ‘Hall and I, I mean?’
‘Looking for evidence,’ he shrugged. ‘Anything that might explain his death.’
‘Or removing evidence.’ Jacquie held his hand ‘Oh, Max, I’m frightened.’
‘Whoa, now.’ He held her head as she hugged his chest, smoothing the tied-back hair. ‘I don’t understand.’ It wasn’t a confession many people heard from Mad Max.
She lifted her head, looking into his face. ‘We were there far less than twenty minutes.’
‘Yes, you told me.’
‘Hall went straight upstairs when we arrived.’
‘So?’
‘So, I don’t know what he did up there. What if he took something away?’
‘What?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Christ, I don’t know. A letter, photographs, diary, drugs, somebody’s underwear, something which would tell us who killed Robinson and Hall’s just sitting on it.’
He looked at her, in the half light of her hotel room, courtesy of the West Sussex Constabulary. Then he held her shoulders firmly. ‘If Henry’s sitting on something,’ he said, ‘we’ve got to get him off his arse.’
He wandered along the rubbish-strewn street Drunken couples lurched past him, making for an Indian or a KFC. He kept his collar turned up, his face in the shadows. The kid he was following stumbled into an alleyway. It was dark here, where the cats prowled by the dustbins. Monday was market day. There were pickings.
‘Hello, son.’
The boy turned, slipping on potato peelings, slimy under his trainers. ‘Who are you?’
‘Dave. You all right?’
‘Yeah.’
He felt the man’s hand steady his arm. ‘You’ve had a few.’
‘Just a few,’ the boy chuckled.
‘What do they call you?’
‘Brian.’
‘Okay, Brian.’ Dave put an arm around the lad’s shoulder. ‘Let’s get you home, shall we? Where do you live?’
‘I’m all right,’ Brian slurred.
‘Course you are,’ Dave grinned in the darkness, training his electronic remote on the dark car parked in the shadows. ‘All the better for a little car ride, though, eh? Trust your uncle Dave, huh? Come on.’
‘Cassie?’ The voice was a hoarse whisper in the darkness.
‘What?’
‘You wouldn’t let a man touch you, would you?’
Cassandra’s face was lit by the moonlight through the half-open curtain as she sat up, chin on her knees. ‘No way,’ she said.
‘Good.’ The plumper girl turned to face her, nuzzling her nose into the soft warm heaven of her friend’s side, kissing the petal skin tenderly.
‘I don’t like that Mr Maxwell, though.’
‘Maxwell?’ She broke off the kisses. ‘He hasn’t done anything to you?’
‘No, no,’ Cassandra said, glancing down at the plain, earnest face looking up at hers. ‘No, it’s just that, he might. I don’t like the way he looks at me. You’ll take care of me, though, won’t you, Janet darling?’
Janet threw her arms around the girl, squeezing hard. ‘Of course I will, my dearest, my dearest.’
Under the moon, she slipped off the dark bath robe with its Grimond’s crest, feeling the sharp breeze of night prickle her skin. She raised h knife to the stars, clasping the hilt with both hands, then threw herself onto her knees, driving the tip again and again into th
e damp of the soil moaning the words of hate.
‘Die, Maxwell,’ she rasped. ‘Die.’
She didn’t see the shiver in the shadows.
12
‘I’m sorry about the other day, Max.’ Tony Graham was nibbling his toast. ‘It was stupid of me, flouncing out like that.’
The sun of Tuesday was streaming in through the stained glass of Grimond’s dining room, the dust particles whirling in the spring morning. A small bunch of freesias lay in yellow and purple at the place usually occupied by Bill Pardoe on High Table.
‘No, no,’ Maxwell was helping himself to a second cup of coffee. ‘I was out of line. Nobody wants to think of their colleagues as homicidal maniacs, love to hate them though we do.’ He winked at his man.
‘You know the counselling starts today?’ the Housemaster asked.
‘Counselling?’
Graham chuckled. ‘Yes, that apparently was the response of our revered Chair of Governors, although I understand it was suitably laced with expletives that would make a sailor blush – which is, of course, what rumour has it he used to be.’
‘Doesn’t approve of our caring, sharing twenty-first century then?’
Graham quaffed his orange juice. ‘Fucking – and I quote – namby-pamby bollocks.’
‘Is he still intending to close the school?’
Graham’s eyes raked the room. There was no set pattern to Grimond’s breakfasts and it was not compulsory. John Selwyn was there with House prefects from Tennyson and a scattering of younger boys. Only one or two girls from Austen had made an appearance and Maggie Shaunessy, was selecting her Jacobs cream crackers from Mrs Oakes in the far corner. ‘Rumour has it that Sir Arthur and George Sheffield had the mother of all rows last night. Damn near came to blows, apparently.’
‘Really?’ Maxwell couldn’t quite see Georg Sheffield as something in the Red Corner, coming out fighting. ‘Who won?’
‘Suffice it to say Dr Sheffield still has his job and the shrinks are moving in at nine. My own house first. And the school’s doors are still open. Wilkins will have made him pay however – you can be certain of that.’
‘Who are the counsellors?’ Maxwell asked.
Graham shrugged. ‘Local social services, suppose. I must admit, I’m not convinced. Oh, the boys are cut up, of course. That’s inevitable. But Bill … well, I’m afraid he was losing it a little.’
‘He was?’
‘May I join you?’ Maggie Shaunessy had arrived.
Both men were public school; both men scraped back their chairs and stood up.
‘Anyone seen Jeremy Tubbs?’ she asked.
‘Not since lunchtime yesterday.’ Maxwell poured some coffee for her.
‘Thank you, just black. What time was that?’
‘He dropped me in the quad about two-fifteen, two-thirty. Told me he had a meeting with you.’
‘Yes, he did.’ She buttered her crackers with an elegance born of Benenden and Oxford. ‘Or rather, he didn’t.’
‘No show?’ Graham asked.
‘Ah, I can probably explain that,’ Maxwell said. ‘When we parted, Mr Tubbs was a little … shall we say, merry?’
‘Ah,’ Maggie said. ‘No surprises there, then. One of his famous liquid lunches. Janet will have to wait.’
‘Janet?’ Maxwell repeated.
‘Janet Boyce, one of my charges. A sweet child, but a martyr to a sense of inadequacy. Last year it was a crush on Jane Devereux, Head of Art and Design. This year she’s falling flat in Geography. I wanted to run the situation past Jeremy. Legend has it he teaches her. Do you have this problem …?’
‘At Dropout High?’ he winked at her. ‘Oh, yes, although we probably have fewer schoolgirl crushes than you do.’
‘It’s the hothouse environment.’ Maggie took her coffee cup in both hands. ‘It was worse when we all were at St Hilda’s.’
‘Now, presumably, you have the added complication of boys.’
Maggie glanced across at Graham. ‘All men are beasts, Max,’ she smiled. ‘It’s just a question of which are the worst, the men of Dickens, Kipling or Tennyson.’
‘I can assure you, Madam,’ Graham beamed, ‘the men of Tennyson are above reproach.’ He leaned across Maxwell. ‘Strictly entre nous, Maggie dearest, my money’s on Kipling.’
‘Why Kipling?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Tubbsy’s House,’ Graham laughed.
‘I didn’t know he was a Housemaster.’
‘Oh, he isn’t, in the sense that he doesn’t live in. But it’s a Grimond’s tradition that everybody except the Games staff are attached to a House. Tubbsy is Kipling.’
‘’Nuff said,’ Maggie trilled.
‘Miss Shaunessy.’ All three of them looked to see a solemn-looking Janet Boyce standing there, full English steaming on the plate in her hand. ‘Have you spoken to Mr Tubbs yet?’
‘No, Janet, but rest assured, I will later. Do you have him today?’
‘This afternoon,’ the girl said.
‘I’ll talk to him this morning,’ Maggie nodded. ‘I promise.’
‘Thank you, Miss Shaunessy,’ and the girl wandered away.
‘Sad one, that,’ Maxwell commented.
Maggie watched her go. ‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘Yes, I’m afraid she is.’
‘This is ludicrous.’ DCI Henry Hall whirled away from his desk. ‘This is the third time he’s stood us up.’
Jacquie was on her mobile. ‘Hello, Miss Taylor?’
She heard the starchy tones of the school secretary at the other end. Jacquie could almost hear her pearl lariat clashing on her brillo pad cardigan. ‘We’ve been waiting for Mr Tubbs for nearly half an hour now. Have you any idea where he is?’
‘As I told you,’ the harassed woman said, ‘According to the timetable he was teaching until ten-fifteen. He usually takes break in the Senior Common Room. His free periods he spends in the Geography department. I have rung through there three times now. No one’s seen him.’
‘Since when?’
Miss Taylor had had a week and a half. They’d taken that silly slip of a thing off the switchboard after Bill Pardoe’s death. What with the media pestering hourly, parents ringing up demanding George Sheffield’s head and the Chair of Governors insisting on more or less the same, Millie Taylor had nearly given in her notice.
‘Since I don’t know when,’ she hissed. ‘He was not in his room Period One.’
‘He wasn’t?’
‘Mr Larson had to cover for him.’
‘So let me get this straight.’ Jacquie was circling the ante-interview room. ‘No one has seen Mr Tubbs today at all?’ And she held the phone away from her ear rather than have it shattered by Miss Taylor’s confirmation.
‘Jacquie?’ Hall could read the face of his favourite DS after all these years.
‘No Tubbs,’ she said, pocketing the phone.
‘The last member of staff who stood us up …’
‘… we fished him out of the lake.’ Jacquie finished the DCI’s sentence for him, remembering the moment all too well.
‘Right. Get his home number from the front desk. I’m going to the Geography Department. Talking to us is not an optional extra.’
‘Jenkins?’ Maxwell was leaning against a lime tree, the sun dappling through its buds onto the tarmac below. He looked for all the world like the sudden black appearance of Bill Sykes in the sunlit crescent when Mark Lester was buying a wonderful morning.
The blond lad stopped short, trudging between lessons as he was with his mates.
‘Can I have a word?’
All three of them stopped.
‘I’ve got lessons, sir.’
‘Oh?’ Maxwell took his hands out of his pockets. ‘What lesson in particular?’
‘History.’
‘Really?’ Maxwell beamed. ‘You boys run along. Mr Gallow, is it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the other two chorused.
‘Tell him I’m keeping young Jenkins a minute – apologize for me.’
They hesitated, then trudged on.
‘I won’t keep you long,’ Maxwell said. ‘What are you doing in History?’
‘The agrarian revolution, sir.’
‘Ah, where would we be without dear old Jethro Tull, uh? Designer of the seed drill by day, wacky Luton-based rock band by night. What’s your first name, Jenkins?’
‘Joseph, sir.’
‘Joe?’
Jenkins nodded.
‘I’ve been wanting to chat for a while, Joe,’ Maxwell sat himself down on the wooden seat named in honour of some long-forgotten Old Boy and patted the planks beside him. ‘Ever since you left that tape outside my room.’
Jenkins’ bum was already off the seat, almost before it had touched it.
‘It’s all right, Joe,’ Maxwell held the boy’s arm and sat him down again. ‘It’ll be our secret.’
Jenkins was staring at the ground, fumbling with his briefcase handle, unable to look Maxwell in the face.
‘Two questions,’ the Head of Sixth Form said. ‘First, where did you get it? Second, why did you leave it for me?’
For what seemed an eternity, the boy sat there, frozen. Then he looked up at Maxwell, his face a pale mask of fear. ‘I found it, sir,’ he managed between gasps.
‘Where?’ Maxwell leaned back, talking softly, looking at Joe Jenkins with those smiley eyes as if the pair were talking about the weather.
‘In the skip, sir, at the back of Tennyson.’
‘Tell me, Joe, is that something you do often, rummage about in the rubbish?’
‘No, sir,’ Jenkins rumbled as low as he could for a lad whose voice has yet to break. ‘I saw Mr Pardoe put it there, sir. He was upset.’
Still Maxwell didn’t move. ‘When was this, Joe?’ he asked. ‘It might be important.’
‘I don’t know.’ The boy was staring at the ground again. ‘A couple of days before … you know.’
‘You played it, obviously?’
Jenkins nodded, feeling the salt tears trickle into his mouth and wanting the ground to swallow him up.
‘What did you think it meant?’
Jenkins was shaking his head. ‘I don’t know. Not really.’ Then he was on his feet. ‘Sir, I’ve got to go.’
‘Why me?’ Maxwell was on his feet too, his second question still unanswered. ‘Joe, why did you leave it for me to find?’