by M. J. Trow
He was already out on the M275 and purring north when the patrol car swung off to the left on the brave bend that led to Portchester, Henry Plantagenet’s castle black against the purple of the night sky. He pushed his foot to the floor and drove for home.
‘I’m up before the beak this morning,’ Peter Maxwell was tucking into his scrambled egg.
‘DCI Hall?’ Tony Graham asked.
‘Worse. His new henchwoman, Gauleiter McGovern.’
‘Tut, tut,’ Michael Helmseley scolded him over his full English. ‘What a chauvinist remark.’
‘I had the delightful DS Carpenter,’ Graham smiled. ‘Oh, not in the pejorative sense, of course.’
It was Saturday and Grimond’s seemed more relaxed than it had for days. Spring was springing in the grounds outside, the daffodils nearly over and the buds bursting on the limes. Before too long, it would be the cricket season and David Gallow would come into his own again, leather on willow on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
‘Oh, by the way,’ Graham was helping himself to more coffee, ‘I passed Richard Ames on the way up to hall this morning. How do you feel about playing Second Row, he asked me to ask you?’
‘Did he now?’ Maxwell swallowed hard. ‘Where will you be, Tony?’
‘Fly half, as usual.’
Maxwell nodded. ‘Who’s hooker?’
And both men glanced up at Cassandra James who was sidling past, as if on cue. They both a their heads and looked away, slightly ashamed of themselves.
‘Anybody hear the bell last night?’ Max asked, happy to change the subject.
‘Bell?’ Helmseley repeated.
‘Hmm,’ Maxwell munched. ‘The school bell. About one, half-past.’
‘What, in the early hours, you mean?’
‘Yes. Or perhaps you saw the burial detail?”
‘Max,’ Graham frowned. ‘I’ve heard of the odd hallucination after a game of rugger – concussion, that sort of thing. But never before. Perhaps you’d better have a little lie down.’
‘Yes,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Perhaps I should.’
‘Please state your name for the record.’ The tape was whirring.
‘Peter Maxwell.’
‘Address?’ Denise McGovern was asking.
‘Thirty-eight, Columbine Avenue, Leighford, West Sussex.’
‘Interview in the presence of DCI Henry and DS Denise McGovern, Saturday, 4 April.’
The tape was still whirring. ‘Why are you here at Grimond’s, Mr Maxwell?’ It was Hall posing the question now.
‘An exchange of sorts,’ the Head of Sixth Form told him. ‘This school and mine.’
‘And you’ve been here since … ?’
‘Two weeks tomorrow.’
‘Did you know the deceased, William Pardoe?’
‘I spoke to him, yes. I’d only been here for a day and a half when they found his body.’
‘Did you form any opinion of him?’ It would not have been allowed in a court of law, but police interviews, Maxwell knew, had different parameters.
‘He seemed a decent sort,’ Maxwell shrugged.
‘Apart from the porn addiction, you mean?’ Denise McGovern chipped in for the first time.
‘I didn’t know about that,’ Maxwell reminded her. ‘Still don’t.’
‘Still don’t?’ Denise frowned. ‘You were not aware that Pardoe regularly received pornographic material in the post?’
‘I regularly receive offers from Saga Holidays,’ Maxwell said, leaning back in his chair. ‘That doesn’t mean I actually go on them.’
‘Did you know Tim Robinson?’ Hall moved the matter on. He knew that Mad Max could fence with this woman all day.
‘No,’ Maxwell looked levelly at him, each knowing what the other knew. ‘No, I didn’t know Tim Robinson at all.’
‘You didn’t talk to him?’ Denise followed up.
‘Briefly,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘During a practice fencing bout in the gym.’
‘How did he strike you?’ Denise took a leaf from her new boss’s book.
‘Not much of a fencer,’ Maxwell confessed.
‘Sorry?’
‘He mixed up his foil strokes and his sabre cuts.’
‘Hush my puppies.’ Denise was shaking her head.
‘You asked,’ Maxwell shrugged.
‘Thank you, Mr Maxwell,’ Hall said. ‘Interview terminated at nine-thirty-eight.’ And he switched off the tape.
There was a pause. ‘Is that it?’ Denise was only just reaching for her ciggies, preparing for quite a session.
‘For now,’ Hall turned to her for the first time.
‘Mr Maxwell,’ Denise shot forward in her chair, her cigarette hand poised over the ash-tray, ignoring the DCI’s decision, ignoring the switched off machine. ‘When do you plan to leave Grimond’s?’
‘Tonight,’ he told her. ‘Pretty soon after the match.’
‘Do you not find it odd,’ she leaned back, ‘that two deaths should have occurred in the very twelve days you’ve been here?’
‘Extraordinary,’ Maxwell agreed. ‘I’ve always thought somebody should do some serious research into synchronicity, serendipity, call it what you will. Although there’s probably a Chair of it in some South-Western American University.’
‘Thank you, Mr Maxwell.’ Hall slid back his chair and stood up. ‘That’s all. Enjoy your game this afternoon.’
‘Thank you, Mr Hall.’ Maxwell bowed low while he still could and winked at Denise, before exiting left, out into the echoing main corridor of old Jedediah Grimond’s house.
‘That bastard’s insufferable,’ the DS growled, flicking ash all over George Sheffield’s carpet, too furious to watch him go.
‘Isn’t he, though?’ Hall was changing tapes ‘But take a tip from me, Denise. Don’t go head to head with men like Peter Maxwell. He’ll have you every time.’
No one at Grimond’s had seen Peter Maxwell’s knees before. Nor anyone at Leighford. It had been quite a time since Peter Maxwell had. When other foolhardy colleagues had had their legs waxed for charity some years ago, Maxwell had stumped up a small fortune not to roll his trousers up. They were nevertheless on display at a little before two o’clock by the sun on the First Fifteen pitch. Quite a crowd had gathered, stomping and whistling along the touch lines and on the makeshift terraces on the slopes that led up to the hallowed turf of the First Eleven Square and Jedediah Grimond’s great house beyond.
Maxwell saw George Sheffield at his French windows, looking at the field of battle below him. The Headmaster would normally have been present at this annual event, presenting a cup at the end. But George Sheffield, it had to be said, was not the man he used to be. He felt alone, vulnerable, the precursors of full-blown paranoia. Scarves flashed everywhere on the field and the impromptu cheerleaders of Junior Austen were urging on the objects of their pubescent desires in the First Fifteen back line. Why was it, Maxwell wondered again, as he had as a boy, that girls never fancied the pack? Was it their knuckles dragging on the ground, the shaking of the earth when they moved, or the rather unflattering scrum caps half of them wore these days?
A rather surreal episode had transpired in the changing rooms when referee Richard Ames had tried to force Maxwell to wear a gum shield. They didn’t have them in Maxwell’s day, when me. shorts reached their knees and Billy Webb-Ellis didn’t know the rules. ‘Thank you, no, Richard. I’ll stick to my jock-strap.’ And before he felt turf springing beneath his studs, that’s exactly what Maxwell was doing.
John Selwyn, scrum half and First Fifteen Captain, won the toss and David Gallow marshalled his team. It was the closest the staff at Grimond’s would ever come to a group hug. They huddled in a tight circle.
‘Counting on you, Jeff,’ Gallow nodded solemnly to one of the Science staff. ‘Remember, it’s only thirty minutes each way. And watch the offside rule. Ready, Tony?’
‘As I’ll ever be,’ Graham said.
‘How’s your boot, Eric?’
Eric glanced
down. ‘I’ll let you know,’ he grinned.
Across the turf, the First Fifteen were doing same. Selwyn, Ape, Splinter, other hearties Maxwell had met in the days that had gone, were psyching themselves up for the fray.
‘Are you ready, staff?’ Richard Ames had his whistle in his left hand, his right hand in the air.
The Fifteen’s full back had his ball in his hand and the crowd set up a roar as his boot collided with it and it sailed high over upward-looking staff heads. There was a thud as it was taken cleanly by Number Twelve and the whole line moved forward. John Selwyn was quicker however and his pack charged the staff. Maxwell had forgotten the pace of all this. He was the wrong side of fifty, hell, the wrong side of fifteen large, fit young men, all of them hurtling for him. His lungs felt like lead and already he couldn’t feel his feet.
He saw David Gallow flash across him, sliding the ball into his hands. Maxwell grabbed it instinctively, dummying to one side and swerving round their Number Eight. Number Two caught him full in the ribs and he twisted free before thudding into Grimond’s mud.
‘Get off it, staff!’ he heard Ames roar and tried to roll clear, but the weight of bodies held him down. The whistle blasted. ‘Scrum down,’ Ames shouted. ‘Fifteen ball.’ And as the ref passed the dazed Head of Sixth, Maxwell heard him mutter, ‘You’ve got to get off it, Max.’
‘That’s another new rule since 1823,’ the Second Row wheezed, his vision reeling.
An arm hooked around his waist and Ronald from Geography had him fast. Bugger, Maxwell groaned internally as his head clamped between the buttocks of the Hooker and the Tight Head Prop. He could see the chewed Grimond’s turf looking up at him, soon to be strewn, no doubt, with blood and teeth. He heard the wheezing of the less-than-fit pack all around him and felt his ears crush against somebody’s loins. Much more of this and he’d be sporting cauliflowers.
‘Engage,’ Ames roared and the packs collided, with a shock of muscle and sinew, shoulder thudding into ham and teeth grinding. ‘Shit a brick!’ somebody hissed and Maxwell felt his back jack-knife. The ball was loose, rolling like Richard Crookback’s crown under the scudding boots on the field. Their Hooker had it, the pack swaying forward to carry the staff back and long before the front row collapsed, the ball was in Selwyn’s capable hands and the back line were flying.
Maxwell rolled away from the wreck of the scrum as the attack hurtled downfield. There were shouts from the Fifteen.
‘Here, Ape. On your left.’
‘Miss him out, John.’
‘Splinter. Go. Go. Splinter. Go.’
But Splinter had hit the brick wall that was the Head of Physics and he went down as the Fifteen mauled over him and the ball was free again.
Boots and hands were everywhere, bodies sprawling in the mêlée.
‘Keep away, Fifteen,’ Ames roared. ‘Don’t go in over the top.’
To Maxwell, the whole thing was over the top. The Fifteen did this sort of thing before breakfast and at least twice a week and they did it with legs and lungs that were new and egos that, while bruised, could bounce back.
‘Close in there. Max,’ Gallow was bellowing ‘Shut them down.’
It was the last thing Peter Maxwell heard for while as he tackled John Selwyn. An articulated vehicle had careered across the pitch and slammed into his head, which exploded with cacophony of echoing thuds, slowly dying away. Then the world was black and slimy and silent.
Something was twirling above his head, like those fans in the films noirs of the ’50s where Akim Tamiroff or Peter Lorre sat sweating in downtown Tunisia, or was it Mexico? Maxwell tried to focus, feeling the cold iron frame under his left hand. He was in an off-white room and a geisha was bending over him, green tea in one hand and his decapitated head in the other.
‘Mr Maxwell, how are you feeling?’
‘That depends,’ Maxwell hoped he said – he couldn’t be sure.
‘You’ve had a nasty knock.’
‘Christ, Max, you gave us a turn.’ That was a voice Maxwell recognized. A second face swum into his vision. It was Richard Ames, still in his black reffing kit, whistle dangling around his neck.
‘Don’t tell me I didn’t roll away quickly enough again,’ Maxwell moaned.
‘You didn’t roll at all,’ Ames told him. ‘That’s what was so bloody worrying. Poleaxed. It was an illegal move, of course. I should have stopped the match there and then. Rest assured the Fifteen had the wigging of their young lives.’
‘I thought so,’ Maxwell tried to nod. ‘All of them hit me, right?’
Ames laughed. ‘I’m sure it felt that way. No, actually, it was only three of them, but that was enough. Selwyn, Splinter and Ape. They’re grounded.’
‘That is just too apposite. Hit by an ape and something,’ he winced, ‘feels distinctly splintered.’
‘There’s no excuse for that kind of tackle. They could have killed you. We’ve had enough sudden deaths at Grimond’s to last us all a lifetime.’
‘Would you like some tea, Mr Maxwell?’
‘Have we met?’ Maxwell was still trying to focus on the two geishas in white.
‘I am Suki Lee, the school matron.’
‘Delighted,’ Maxwell risked a smile. ‘Is that Oolong Lapsang?’
‘Brooke Bond,’ the Matron said. ‘Sorry.’
She and Ames helped the man sit up and waited until his head stopped spinning. Even so, the Ames and Lee twins were still blurring at the end of a long, dark tunnel. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t much use out there. What was the final score?’
‘Thirty-four, eighteen to the First Fifteen. And don’t feel badly about it. Tony Graham’s game was off and Eric Bolsover fluffed virtually every line out.’
‘Did you have any subs to replace me?’
‘Max, you’re irreplaceable.’ The Graham Twins had arrived, leaning over him, fussing. ‘Jesus, that’s a bruise and a half.’
‘You’ve arranged for the official apology from your House, Tony?’ Ames said.
‘I’m sure there was no malice in it, Richard,’ Graham said. ‘I’m just glad to see Max is okay And I’ll see you afterwards about your less-than flattering comments on my game, by the way.’
‘No malice, my arse. I wouldn’t blame Max if he sued.’ Ames scowled at the Housemaster, ‘I don’t think you can laugh this one off, Tony.’
‘No, no,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘It’s nothing to Chillianwallah.’ But the historical allusion was lost on the Sports Master and the linguist. ‘No worse than fighting my way through the lunch queue at dear old Leighford High. Talking of which, that’s where I must be the day after tomorrow … er … it is still Saturday?’ he tried to focus out of the San’s windows. It was getting dark.
‘Max, I’m not sure you should travel,’ Ames was saying, looking into his eyes. ‘Suki, what do you think?’
Matron held up one finger. ‘Follow this,’ she said to the English patient. It hurt like hell, but Maxwell rolled his eyes left and right, in what he hoped was vaguely the right direction.
‘You’ve had a nasty blow to your head, Mr Maxwell,’ she said. ‘And I suspect you’ve got concussion. You were out for nearly ten minutes.’
‘It seemed longer.’
‘That was the first time,’ she plumped up his pillows. ‘You ought to go to X-ray.’
‘I will.’ Maxwell kicked one leg free of the covers in an attempt to find the floor. ‘Just as soon as I go home. Tony, I couldn’t ask you to help me to my room, could I? I’ve got some packing to do.’
Nobody was happy for Peter Maxwell to go, least of all Peter Maxwell; although George Sheffield took his leave only peremptorily and of Maggie Shaunessy there was no sign. As the taxi took off along the driveway towards the gates of Grimond’s, he knew he was leaving two men dead behind him and his own blood on the turf of the First Fifteen pitch. In the end, he was leaving the place with a whimper rather than the bang he’d promised himself.
The knot of paparazzi had dwindled to a mere three,
the rump of the Fourth Estate huddled around a makeshift brazier in the still chill of the spring night, like diehard strikers whose comrade have all gone back to work. One of them peered in through the taxi window, but didn’t recognize him for the grim reaper who had nipped s adroitly over the wall the day before yesterday. Clearly, he hadn’t seen Matron’s bandage under Maxwell’s hat or he’d have leapt for his laptop with the headline ‘Third Teacher Murdered Grimond’s.’
Mercifully, the driver wasn’t a talker and Maxwell was fast asleep long before the car was swinging around the one-way system that skirted Petersfield. And he certainly didn’t see the dark car cruising the back doubles around the bus station where the lads sat laughing with their lagers.
Not until Columbine did he jolt awake and the cab driver helped him in with his suitcase, locked the door, stumbling over the mail that had hit the mat that morning, ignoring Mrs B’s neat stack of the rest. His answerphone was flashing green to his right, but it flashed in vain and he somehow climbed the stairs. One floor level was his limit however and he dumped his hat and coat on his way to the settee, easing himself down and wrapping himself in his armchair throw.
Metternich padded silently down the open plan stairs from Maxwell’s inner sanctum, the War Office where his beloved Light Brigade pawed the plastic ground, eager for the Balaclava fray. He raised his exquisite feline head, whiskers and eyebrows twitching, scenting the wind. Just as he thought, nodding at the heap on the settee; pissed again.
An odd thing happened to Peter Maxwell on Sunday. He didn’t wake up at all.
Monday. The great adventure was over. Maxwell knew that once he was back at Leighford High, his time at Grimond’s would seem a dream, like the shooting of JR in Dallas all those years ago. Or was it Bobby? Either the knock he’d taken had wiped his memory cells completely or Dallas was longer ago than Maxwell cared to admit.