Maxwell’s Reunion

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Yes?’ a disembodied voice punctuated the steady hiss and drip of the night.

  ‘Police.’ Jacquie held up her warrant card to the lens of the security camera.

  ‘Do you know what time it is?’ The voice was female. American.

  Jacquie tried the Pinkerton approach. ‘We never sleep.’ It was worthy of Maxwell himself.

  There was a whirr and a click and the front door swung wide. Jacquie didn’t like dark places. She’d seen too many corpses lying in them for that. But the feeling was older; something in her childhood she couldn’t quite remember, like the moon through curtains and the shining lights of Christmas; indefinable, unfathomable, lurking with a menace of its own. Her eyes acclimatized to take in a sweeping staircase ahead of her and the polished parquet of a large hall with lights, scarlet and gold, twisting slowly in the floor’s centre, like moving stained glass.

  ‘It’s late.’ The female voice came from a black apparition in a scarlet kaftan, floating down the spiral sweep of the staircase.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jacquie said.

  ‘You gotta name, child?’ The black woman was huge, with sparkling eyes and an Afro haircut that had gone out before Jacquie was born.

  ‘DC Carpenter, Leighford CID.’

  ‘Leighford? Hell, honey, where’s that?’

  ‘Sussex,’ Jacquie told her. ‘The South Coast.’

  ‘Well, sugar,’ the black woman placed an arm around her damp shoulders, ‘I’d love to talk geography with you all night, but it is one in the mornin’.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jacquie said. ‘I need to talk to John Wensley.’

  ‘Reverend John? Why, honey, he’s sleeping now.’

  Jacquie looked at her hostess. The woman sounded like Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, and looked like something out of Green Pastures. ‘Then you’ll just have to wake him up,’ she said.

  ‘You gotta warrant?’ The arm had fallen away and there was an altogether harder tone to the voice.

  ‘I don’t need one to talk to somebody,’ Jacquie explained. ‘You gotta work permit?’

  ‘It’s all right, Angel.’

  Both women turned. John Wensley came out of the shadows as the Devil might step from Hell. There was no roar of fire, no flash of sulphur, just a tall, lean man with long hair and a long, grey robe. On the other hand, depending on your point of view, he could have been Jesus.

  ‘Jacquie?’ Wensley took her hand. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Max,’ she told him. ‘I’m looking for Max.’

  ‘Angel, bring us … Jacquie, what would you like? Coffee? Tea? We’ve no liquor here, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Coffee, please.’

  ‘Angel?’

  The black lady spun on her heel, muttering.

  ‘Seventh child of a seventh child,’ Wensley said by way of explanation. ‘She’s a bit difficult sometimes. Your clothes are wet. Take them off in here. I’ll get you a robe.’

  ‘No thanks.’ Jacquie’s refusal was perhaps a little too prompt, but she was still seething from Veronica’s attempts to seduce her. And anyway, if she put on one of John Wensley’s robes wouldn’t she be one of his, a Child of God?

  ‘We are all children of God,’ the Preacher intoned. Jacquie’s pulse quickened. Was he reading her mind? Then, as Wensley led her into a small anteroom, she realized it was some sort of mantra. There was an altar at one end and a single row of chairs – hard, wooden, upright. A solitary flame burned from a sconce on the wall.

  ‘You’re looking for Max?’ He was sitting beside her, peering earnestly into her eyes.

  ‘That’s right. Have you seen him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Wensley nodded. ‘Yes, I have. He was asking questions too.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Er … Wednesday, I think. Two days ago. But, as it’s already Saturday morning, three.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Evening. We hadn’t long had supper. I … oh, Angel.’

  The large black woman had arrived carrying a tray with two mugs. ‘DC Carpenter is looking for Mr Maxwell, Angel. You remember – you let him in, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, Reverend John. That was Gilda. She told me ’bout him, though. Old friend of yours, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Wensley said. ‘Jacquie, I don’t understand this. Where is Max?’

  ‘If I knew that,’ Jacquie took the coffee mug, ‘I wouldn’t be here. No one’s seen him since Wednesday, Mr Wensley. Not since he came here, in fact.’

  ‘Thank you, Angel.’ Wensley smiled at the woman. ‘That’ll be fine. You get some sleep now. Rough day tomorrow.’

  ‘Yessuh. Good night, Reverend John,’ and she was gone.

  Wensley smiled. ‘She worries about me.’

  ‘When did you see Max last?’ Jacquie was persistent. ‘And where, exactly?’

  ‘Come with me.’ He took her across the dimly lit hall into another anteroom. This one had no altar and was lined with books. It had the air of an interview room. ‘Right here,’ he said. ‘This is where I left him.’

  ‘You left him?’

  ‘I had things to do. I am a guest here, Jacquie, but I have my duties. Think of the Lodge as a sort of youth hostel, if you will.’

  ‘So you don’t know that he actually left?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I heard the door go. It’s electronic. Buzzes upstairs when it opens and when it closes. I heard it buzz as it closed.’

  Jacquie got her bearings from the anteroom, looking across the hall to the front door and the mirror alongside it. ‘So he was outside.’

  ‘Jacquie.’ Wensley blocked her view. He looked smaller without the broad-brimmed hat and the duster coat. ‘You think Max is dead, don’t you?’

  She looked at him, shaking inside and wanting to cry. Nobody had said that yet. Nobody but her. And she had said it only once, in the tiniest of voices, inside her head. ‘He could be the third victim.’ Her real voice was stronger than she’d hoped. ‘After Quentin and Bingham.’

  ‘God.’ The Preacher sat down.

  ‘That leaves Alphedge, Asheton and you in the frame,’

  ‘That’s what Max said,’ Wensley told her.

  ‘What?’ She sat down with him, her coffee discarded, her hand hovering near the can of mace in her bag.

  ‘He said the police had me in the frame.’

  ‘Why?’ Jacquie was feeling her way with care. Everything about the Preacher unnerved her. His steel-hard stare, his strained voice; above all his unreadable face.

  ‘Because I went to Halliards on the night Quent was killed.’

  Jacquie nodded. ‘I know. With Veronica.’

  ‘Veronica?’ The Preacher blinked at her.

  ‘You went into the chapel,’ Jacquie said. ‘Had sex with her there. On the altar.’

  Wensley was on his feet. ‘Get out!’ he said.

  Jacquie got up too. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘You ask that?’ She saw that the ridge in Wensley’s jaw was pulsing. ‘Of me? Here? In this house? Get out!’ And he pushed her roughly so that her head cracked against the door frame.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ she warned him, trying to stay calm, trying not to retaliate.

  ‘For your own sake,’ Wensley growled, ‘don’t stay here any longer, Jacquie. There are things you don’t understand. Don’t know. It wouldn’t be wise to stay longer.’

  Jacquie agreed with the sentiment. She stumbled backwards until she found herself in the hall, then turned and ran.

  She wasn’t exactly equipped for a night raid. She had a torch, but a torch in the Lodge’s grounds was asking for trouble. And her heels would bite into the soft soil near the walls. Above all, she had no clue as to the place’s layout and no jurisdiction whatsoever. It wasn’t even her patch.

  She turned her collar up and tucked the mace into her pocket. The rhododendrons loomed large and monstrous in the early hours’ dark, but they gave her shelter and she was grateful for that. She knew that the front door was alarmed, with survei
llance cameras and sensitive lights, but what about the rest of it? She felt her shoes squelch on the springy grass and wiped the water dripping from her eyebrows.

  It was like those corny old B-features that Max loved – the creaking old house and the driving rain. All that was missing was the thunder lode and thunder light she remembered from Chesterton’s poem at school. Pathetic fallacy, Max called it; when old Mrs Danvers stood at the burning window of Manderley or Richard Johnson’s ghost-hunting team came unglued in The Haunting. But this wasn’t celluloid. It was real. And she was scared.

  The back of the Lodge had a row of windows that reached to the ground. Here, a gravel patio led to steps, where the ground fell away to landscaped gardens and a circular pond whose fountain had been switched off for the winter. Jacquie edged her way in as close as she dared, but the gravel would betray her and the flagstone path that led to the back door was certain to be alarmed. Her only hope was the single-storey wing that stretched ahead of her, the stables of the old house.

  Now she was in the Lodge’s shadow, the building rearing up above her at this lower level of ground. Then she saw it; a window half hidden by wisteria giving on to the path. She edged closer, checking to left and right. Then she was on the ledge and putting her weight against the panes. Nothing. It was locked, probably bolted on the inside. She angled the mace can, covering her face with her jacket against flying debris, and smashed the glass.

  She knelt there in silence, her heart pounding. There was no alarm. Now that the glass had stopped falling, there was no sound at all. She picked out the remaining shards and found the catch. Then she wriggled forward on her hands and knees and was in. It took a while for the room to reveal its secrets. It was a half-cellar-cum-storage room, with packing cartons and piles of Bibles with lurid dust wrappers. She checked the corners and found the door. Beyond it, a faint glow lit stone steps snaking upward. These, she knew, were the old servants’ quarters, where tweenies long dead would scuttle with buckets and brooms and tubs of hot water.

  There were doors to both sides and she tried them all. Broom cupboard one. Broom cupboard two. A toilet. All the usual offices. The fourth door wouldn’t budge. Locked. She used her shoulder. Nothing. She put her ear to it. ‘Max.’ Her whisper sounded like a yell. ‘Max, are you there?’ Nothing. She turned and made for the light.

  There was no door at the top of the stairs, just another glow from the candles and the stained glass that created the reflected image in the centre of the hall floor. Two rooms off here she knew – the chapel where she’d drunk coffee with the Preacher and the little library where the Preacher had talked to Max. A third door faced her, and it was this one she tried. She couldn’t see any surveillance cameras in the corners, nor in any of the usual vantage points. Anyway, by the time they came to check the loop in the morning, she’d be long gone.

  The door opened into an office, wide and spacious, with two computers, banks of filing cabinets and a clutter of phones. Now, and only now, would she risk her torch. The pencil beam darted here and there, flickering over papers, letters and memos without end. There was a visitors’ book, but it had not been maintained. The last entry was nearly four months ago. Besides, no one denied that Peter Maxwell had been here; it was just that no one, apparently, had actually seen him leave.

  She mechanically checked the filing cabinets, flicking through a battery of names. Angel Kesteven was there and Gilda Schultz, but the name that caught her eye was John Wensley. She was in the act of fishing out the manila when she heard footsteps. She grabbed the file, killing the torch beam as she did so, and ducked behind the cabinet. The light hurt her eyes when it flicked on, and a dark-haired, handsome man stood there, silk shirt open and a belt glinting with studs around his waist. The Preacher followed, no longer in the grey kaftan but booted and hatted, dressed for the road.

  The young man was rummaging about, looking for something.

  ‘What are you after, Paulo?’ Jacquie heard Wensley ask.

  ‘My keys.’ The voice was different, foreign. Jacquie couldn’t quite place it.

  There was a jingle. Perhaps the Preacher was holding them in his hand; perhaps Paulo had found them. ‘Come on,’ she heard Wensley say. ‘There’s a long way to go yet.’ And the light went out and the door closed.

  It was already light by the time Jacquie reached Leighford. The sea was a great silver slab, cold and shifting in the early dawn. Not that Jacquie saw it. Her mind was racing with the events of the night and the contents of the file, along with the potential significance of the cricket bat in the back of her car. She clawed at the handbrake, killed the ignition and a moment later was leaning on the doorbell.

  ‘Jacquie?’ A large, attractive woman opened the door, housecoat thrown on in a hurry, no slippers on her feet. ‘Jacquie, may I say you look like shit?’

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Hall.’ The detective brushed past her. ‘Is your husband in?’

  ‘In,’ Henry Hall was standing in his dressing gown, looking more than a little bemused, ‘and until two minutes ago in bed. Jacquie, you look like shit.’

  Jacquie Carpenter hadn’t hear the DCI use the ‘sh’ word very often. It wasn’t really part of his vocabulary. But then she’d rarely seen him without his glasses and never in his pyjamas.

  ‘I think you should read this, sir.’ She held the file out to him.

  ‘Suppose you paraphrase for me.’ It was a little early for Henry Hall. He led her into the living room. Jacquie had never been here before, either. She’d always met the guv’nor on communal turf; the nick, an incident room or among the blood of some murder scene. ‘Be a love and put some coffee on, would you?’ Hall said over his shoulder.

  ‘Of course, o Master.’ But she was calling from the kitchen, with the coffee-maker already in her hand.

  Jacquie sat on the settee as Hall opened the large curtains. The brightness of the sky hurt his eyes for a moment, then he turned to face her. ‘You know I didn’t buy the leave story, don’t you?’ he said.

  She came to the point. ‘It’s Maxwell, sir. He’s missing.’

  Hall moved to a chair, sliding aside a pile of newspapers and his kids’ homework. ‘Men like Maxwell don’t go missing, Jacquie, they go ape.’

  ‘I’m serious, sir.’

  He knew that. The girl in front of him was tense, pale and worn out. She looked as if she hadn’t slept. ‘What’s the file all about?’ he asked.

  Jacquie paused, gnawing her lip. Max always told her off for that, said it made her look like Richard III. She usually swiped him around the head with something, and she’d have given anything to have been able to do that this morning. ‘Maxwell was carrying out his own enquiries, sir.’ She’d taken a deep breath before saying this, only too aware of the DCI’s likely reaction. But there wasn’t one. He didn’t shout, snarl, throw his hands in the air or sob. He just looked at her.

  ‘He went to see all his old mates from the Halliards reunion,’ she went on. ‘First Alphedge, then Muir, then Asheton, then Wensley.’

  ‘And?’ Hall had found his glasses on the coffee table and he put them on. Once more they hid his eyes from the world; exactly the way he liked it.

  ‘I’ve no proof that he left any of them, other than their word, of course. I began to think … well, all sorts of things. What if it’s a conspiracy and they’re all in on it?’

  Hall nodded. ‘It’s been known.’

  ‘Then I got to the Lodge, the place where Wensley is staying until he leaves the country. I think that’s what he’s going to do now.’

  ‘Doing a runner?’

  Jacquie nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I got this from the office at the Lodge. It’s Wensley’s file. He’s got form.’

  Hall shrugged. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said. ‘Warwickshire CID came up with that. While he was still at that hotel in Birmingham. Various charges against the Church of God’s Children …’

  ‘No,’ Jacquie cut in, ‘you don’t understand, guv. This has nothing
to do with that – or perhaps everything. Wensley did time for murder.’

  Hall sat upright. ‘Murder?’

  ‘He killed his own family – mother and father.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Hall snatched the file, riffled through it, then grabbed the phone, pushing buttons as if his life depended on it. ‘Ian? Henry Hall. Look, I want a national alert out, now. A John Wensley, possibly travelling in a priest’s get-up. All ports, airports, everywhere. South and east, west. I don’t know. He’ll probably head for the States, but we can’t bet on it. Get in touch with DS Rackham at Leighford. If he’s not there, get his home number and wake him up. He’s got a detailed description from Warwickshire CID. Then get me Interpol. I need to talk to somebody in Spain, just in case.’

  Margaret Hall came in with the coffee, sensing the electricity in the air. ‘Three-piece today, Henry?’ She sighed. ‘I’ll take the boys to Mother.’

  Hall was waving the file in the air. ‘This is good work, Jacquie,’ he was saying. ‘A breakthrough at last. I’m getting dressed. Margaret, get this girl a bacon sarnie or something.’

  He crashed through the large door in front of him and the red- kaftanned woman screamed and leaped back from her desk. The apparition before her was wild eyed, swaying like a wounded bear with dark brown blood in rivulets the length of his face.

  ‘Call the police,’ he snarled.

  ‘W … what happened to you?’ The woman was shouting hysterically, cowering in a corner between desk and filing cabinet.

  ‘Gilda!’ a voice thundered, and she froze in mid-shriek. ‘Gilda.’ It was calmer now. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. Jesus, Max. What happened to you?’ It was John Wensley, standing in the doorway.

  Maxwell turned faster than he should have, the room swimming in his vision. He snatched up the phone, the only weapon that came to hand. ‘No bat this time, Preacher?’ He was edging the man back, out through the door, ripping the phone line from the wall, cradling the plastic in his hand.

  ‘Max?’ Wensley was retreating, shaking his head, his hands in the air. ‘I don’t understand. What’s happened to you?’

  ‘Let me make a shrewd guess,’ Maxwell hissed, unsteady, sick and shaking. ‘When I left you last night, you decided to make me number three on your mad bloody list. Quentin you bashed and hanged. Bingham you just bashed. What’s the matter, John, lost your touch, old man?’ He raised the phone, about to smash it against Wensley’s skull when the Preacher suddenly folded like some outsize marionette. His knees hit the parquet of the hall and his head flopped against Maxwell’s groin. He was sobbing uncontrollably. For a moment, Maxwell swayed there, unsure what to do. Then he dropped the phone and fell to his knees, cradling the crying man’s head in his hands. He was the Head of Sixth Form again, everybody’s daddy, taking away the woes of the world in his strong arms.