Maxwell’s Match (24 page)

‘I can’t see Sheffield surviving,’ Graham was shaking his head.

‘Deputy Headship for you, then?’

Graham chuckled. ‘I’m only just getting used to running my House,’ he said. ‘How many dead men’s shoes can any one person fill? By the way, after the debate, come along to the Fox and Grapes, will you? It’s traditional. Losing House buys the drinks.’

There were whoops and cheers from the girls as Cassandra’s second weighed in with a particularly unanswerable bon mot. Maxwell turned to Graham. ‘Looks like you could cop a packet.’

The Fox and Grapes was within spitting distance of Grimond’s. ‘Only a yard of ale away’ as Bill Pardoe used to say. It was a typical old coaching inn that had had the heart ripped out of it to become a fast-food outlet. The beams were a little on the plastic side and the beer somewhat characterless, but it was better than meths strained through a sock. The dead Housemaster was never very keen on his charges nipping to this or any other hostelry. Grimond’s sixth form were immaculately behaved of course and the landlord had a tendency to blindness in one eye where the law of the land was concerned. He couldn’t tell the time either, so it was well after eleven when the Fox and Grapes hand-bell was rung for last orders.

‘Max, what’ll it be?’ Tony Graham was buying among the quietly inebriated hum of the night. ‘One for the dorm, eh?’

‘All right, Tony, thanks. I’ll break the habit of a lifetime and have a small Southern Comfort.’

And the new Housemaster was gone into the hurly-burly of the bar.

‘You know,’ Maxwell turned on his monk’s bench near the empty fireplace to John Selwyn, ‘you were very good tonight. In the debate. You should have won.’

‘Let’s just say it was Cassandra’s turn,’ he raised the remains of his pint to her.

The Captain of Austen looked years older out of her school uniform, sitting with similar sirens around a far table. She winked and raised her Malibu and Coke to him.

‘Oh, now don’t tell me the whole thing was fixed,’ Maxwell was appalled.

‘Oh, no,’ Cassandra was still all ice after her encounter with Maxwell the other night. ‘John lost fair and square.’ She beamed broadly at him. ‘He usually does.’

‘Bitch,’ Selwyn grinned.

‘How’s the House coping without Mr Pardoe, John?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Oh, you know,’ Selwyn said, a little grimly. ‘The show must go on. He’d have wanted it that way.’

‘Mr Graham settling in?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Selwyn finished his pint. ‘He’s a natural. In fact, I’m not sure we’d have quite got through all this without him.’

‘Hear, hear!’ boomed Ape from the next seat along.

‘You’re off to Cambridge, I understand?’

‘Oxford. Merton,’ Selwyn said.

‘To read?’

‘As little as possible,’ Selwyn joked.

‘And you, Cassandra?’ Maxwell called across to her. ‘Oxford?’

‘Cambridge,’ she told him. ‘I shall be reading around the subject.’

She and Selwyn convulsed in laughter. It was the way she pronounced the word that caused it. Janet Boyce at her elbow stood up, her face a mask, and she flounced out into the night. A couple of other girls saw it and sidled out after her. After all, there was a maniac on the loose at Grimond’s and Miss Shaunessy had given them all explicit instructions. No one was to go home alone.

‘Tell me, John, do the prefects at Grimond’s wear gowns?’

‘Gowns?’ Selwyn stopped laughing. ‘No. Not in my time here, anyway. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, no reason. You know how it is when you’re plunged into a strange institution; it’s all new. It was just something I saw the other night, that’s all. I don’t suppose you know, either of you, what’s become of Mr Tubbs?’

‘Your very good health, Max,’ and Tony Graham was back with the drinks.

It was David Gallow who ran Maxwell back to Grimond’s that night. The others piled into Graham’s Range Rover and the school mini-bus, the unmarked one without the school coat of arms specially kept for such outings. Miss Shaunessy had not joined them, a stress migraine overtaking her just at the moment of her girlies’ triumph.

‘You know, Mr Maxwell, it’s not really on.’

‘What? Under-age drinking? No, I suspect not, but if the sons of the Prime Minister and the Prince of Wales can do it, we teetotallers are swimming against the tide rather, aren’t we?’ and he winked in the dashboard glow of the car’s interior.

‘I’m not talking about that,’ Gallow snarled his way through the gears. ‘I’m referring to the way you pump my students.’

‘Your students?’ Maxwell looked at the man’s face, illuminated by the glow of his fascia-panel lights. ‘I had no idea you took it so personally.’

‘I think these children have been through enough in the last ten days.’

‘It’s only going to get worse,’ Maxwell told him. ‘They’ve asked me to play rugger against them on Saturday.’

‘Who has?’ It was Gallow’s turn to look at Maxwell.

‘John Selwyn and the hearties of Tennyson.’

‘Oh, the Arbiters. Well, there you go.’

Maxwell froze. ‘The what?’

‘It’s the annual staff versus First Fifteen. Aren’t you – forgive me for saying so – a little long in the tooth for that sort of thing? A man of your age – it might kill you.’

‘Who are the Arbiters?’ Maxwell wasn’t listening.

‘What? Well, Selwyn and co. of course. It’s an old Tennyson House tradition, going back to the school’s early years. The Arbiters were the first House prefects at a time when there was only the one House – Tennyson. They ran the place, acting as a sort of drum-head court martial for unruly fags. They decided guilt or innocence – hence Arbiters. And punishments. Why the interest?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ Maxwell said. ‘It was just something Jeremy Tubbs said the day before he disappeared. We were talking about the boat-house in actual fact and he mentioned the Arbiters.’

‘Right. Well, my point is that Grimond’s is convulsed enough as it is, Mr Maxwell. We’ve got social services and policemen all over the place.’

‘Two staff dead and one missing,’ Maxwell interrupted. ‘Don’t you think it’s time someone asked some questions?’

‘Not you,’ Gallow bellowed, in a viewpoint that oddly echoed his Headmaster’s. ‘Oh, shit!’ a he snatched at the hand brake as he saw the host of paparazzi, decidedly smaller that it had been but still loitering at the school gates, the lights their cigarettes like tall glow-worms in the darkness. ‘I can’t believe these people are still here,’ he said.

Maxwell unclicked the seat-belt. ‘My place for a nightcap?’ he smiled, wondering how hospitable a cup of hot water would seem. He really must see Parker about some top-up coffee.

‘Thanks,’ said Gallow flatly. ‘I have places be,’ and he revved away along the lane.

‘Who are you?’ a cold and dispirited newspaperman hailed Maxwell as he plodded towards them, his shoes clattering on the tarmac.

‘The Grim Reaper,’ Maxwell said, raising hooked finger and beckoning towards him. ‘Y’ have a good night, y’hear?’ and he was gone, over the wall as their trainers squeaked on the tarmac and cameras popped uselessly to the rhythm of barked expletives, capturing the brickwork on celluloid.

He sat in the car, his face lit by the fascia dials. He was talking into the cassette mike again. ‘This one’s aged about fifteen. But he’s not alone. Seems to live along William Street. Can’t make out the number. He was drinking at the pub earlier. Under-age of course. May be able to use that. Going on into Petersfield now.’ And he switched off the machine and roared away into the night.

‘What are we going to do about this Maxwell person?’ Janet Boyce was dragging on the spliff, screwing her eyes up with the effort, fighting the smoke.

‘Do?’ Cassandra was still sipping her red wine.

‘From last night. When he made that filthy suggestion.’

‘Masturbatory fantasies,’ Cassandra slurred. ‘Middle-aged men have them. Gaynor Ames told me he doesn’t have a wife. Probably gets his kicks with little girls.’

Janet frowned. She was easily confused anyway, but the contents of her roll-up were getting to her. ‘But you’re not a little girl, Cassie.’

‘No, dear,’ Cassandra sighed. ‘But it’s all one. And don’t call me Cassie.’

‘Sorry.’ The large girl twisted in the armchair. ‘Look, I was silly for storming out like that, from the pub, I mean. What with “reading” and all, I thought you and John were laughing at me.’

‘I know, dear.’ Cassandra looked at the lamplight reflected in the carmine of her glass. ‘You told me. We’ve been all through that. No, no, as far as Maxwell’s concerned, John’s got something in mind, apparently. They’ve asked the old pervert to play in the staff Fifteen match this Saturday. They’ll give him a good hiding then.’

‘Cassandra?’

‘Hmm?’ the Captain of Austen was sprawling on the bed in the upper storey of the girls’ dorm. Lights out was hours ago and all was silent except for the gentle snoring from Maggie Shaunessy’s rooms two floors below.

‘What do you think happened to Mr Pardoe?’

‘Pardoe? It’s obvious, darling. He killed himself.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Janet,’ Cassandra drained her glass. ‘Don’t you keep your ear to the ground at all? Bill Pardoe was a pederast. Makes that Maxwell bloke look like Mr Normal. He was caught with any number of boys in Tennyson.’

‘Who?’

‘Jesus!’ Cassandra took a huge swig from h bottle. ‘I don’t know. Wait a minute.’ She rolls over onto her stomach, still holding the wine and trying to focus on the fat girl slumped in armchair opposite. ‘Yes, I do. That little shit Jenkins in the Lower Fourths for instance. Pardoe used to get the little freak to strip off in front of him while he … well, I don’t need to paint you a picture, do I?’

Janet shuddered. ‘No, you don’t,’ and she inhaled deeply. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘Common knowledge,’ Cassandra said. ‘All Arbiters know about it. John wanted to tell to Graham, but thought better of it. Can you imagine the stink it would have caused? In end, I suppose, Pardoe did the right thing. It’s all genetics, of course. People like that can’t help it. If they’d caught him, they’d have cut his bollocks off and put him on a sex offenders’ register for life. Personally,’ she reached across for Janet’s happy-ciggie, ‘I think he got off lightly.’

‘Mr Maxwell?’

‘Mr Parker?’

It was a little after seven-thirty and Peter Maxwell was on his way to breakfast. Dawn was still a purplish pink as it rolled the night away and the wind whipped chill around Grimond’s cloisters. The school steward looked unusually perplexed this morning.

‘Can I have a word, sir?’

Maxwell went with the man into his office. Had the steward read Maxwell’s mind last night vis-a-vis the coffee? And was he now delivering the goods? Mrs Parker, looking more ferrety than Maxwell remembered her, hovered there for a moment and at a nod from her husband, scuttled away.

‘You’ve had a phone call, sir. As you know, there’s no way of putting you through in your room in Tennyson, so I took the message.’

‘Who was it from?’

‘He wouldn’t say, sir.’

‘Wouldn’t say?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘Well, what did he say?’

‘He said … well, it’s on the answerphone. I was already on duty, but the machine recorded anyway. I was tied up with me post and sorting out the boilers. We’ve got problems again.’

It was the universal mantra of school caretakers.

‘Can I hear it?’

‘Er … yes, sure.’ And Parker pressed the button.

‘I’ve got a message for Maxwell,’ the voice crackled, far away, frightened. ‘Tell him it’s got out of hand. I never meant for any of this to happen. And tell him … tell him to get out. For his own good and for God’s sake, get out.’ Then the line went dead.

Maxwell looked at Parker. ‘Mr Parker, do you know who that is?’

The steward stared at him with an odd look in his eyes. ‘Well, I’d say it’s from a mobile phone, sir,’ he said. ‘And the reception isn’t too good, but I think it’s Mr Tubbs.’

‘Jeremy Tubbs?’ Jacquie paused in mid-toast. Maxwell had met her as he crossed the quad from Parker’s inner sanctum. She looked cold and drawn and she hadn’t eaten. He marched into the Dining Hall, smiled at George Sheffield, who scowled at him, nodded at David Gallow who did the same, winked at Tony Graham who winked back and smuggled out two breakfasts under his scarf flaps. He always knew those Jesus colours would come in handy one day.

They sat together side by side on Maxwell’s bed under the eaves, munching Mrs Oakes’ toast and slurping coffee. He handed the tape to her. ‘Listen for yourself. You and Henry have a tape recorder for interviews, don’t you? Play it and see.’

‘Answerphones are a different size, Max. But there is one in Sheffield’s outer office.’ She handled it gingerly.

‘Parker’s prints will be all over it. Mine too. Mrs Parker’s quite possibly. The call seemed quite kosher.’

‘When was it made?’

‘About six-thirty this morning. The irony was that Parker was in and out of the office, but he’d forgotten to switch the answerphone off and by the time he’d got to it, Tubbs had rung off.’

‘What were his words again?’

‘“It’s got out of hand”,’ Maxwell remembered. “‘I never meant for this, or any of this to happen.” Then he said I should get out, for my own good and for God’s sake. Quite a colourful turn of phrase for a geographer. Probably part-pinched from dear old Robert Falcon Scott, but there you are.’

‘Parker thinks this was from a mobile?’

‘Right.’ Maxwell winced at the lukewarmness of his coffee and switched on the kettle for more. He was down to single grains. ‘So there’s no way of tracing it.’

‘No.’

‘There’s something else, though, about the message, I mean.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It sounded familiar.’

‘Well, of course, it’s Jeremy Tubbs.’

‘No, no, I don’t mean that. Run it alongside that tape young Jenkins left outside my room.’

‘Young … Max?’ Jacquie shouted. ‘I don’t believe this.’

‘Hush, hush, sweet Charlotte,’ he smiled. ‘I’m not sure female voices are allowed in Tennyson.’

‘You didn’t tell me about young Jenkins,’ she growled, looking fiercely at him.

‘Sorry, darling,’ he grimaced. ‘I really meant to.’

‘Jesus! How did you find out?’