Maxwell's Mask (2 page)

Count Metternich straightened, totally unimpressed by Maxwell's immaculate take-off of Danny Kaye, and checked his nose was still there with the tip of his tongue. He slid down from the pouffe he had made his own, all fleas and claw marks, and swayed gracefully towards the trap door. He paused to munch something that had wriggled out of his forearm fur and lashed his tail twice in Maxwell's direction.

‘You're right,' Maxwell sighed. ‘I have been
putting off Thirteen Bee's attempts to explain
Volksgemeinschaft
for too long. Time to beard the beasts in their lair.'

He padded down the attic stairs behind the cat, avoiding the creaking one four from the bottom. In the dim light, he saw his Jacquie curled up under the covers and he caught Metternich in mid-air as the black and white bastard was about to leap onto the duvet beside her, just for jolly.

‘He's OK, Max,' she murmured, half asleep. ‘Let him stay.'

‘Sorry, heart of hearts,' Maxwell said. ‘House rules. I don't rip voles apart with my teeth or play football with pygmy shrews' intestines – the Count doesn't sleep on the bed. Savvy?' He breathed a whisper into the cat's twitchy ear. Briefly, Metternich considered twisting out of the Great Man's grip and demolishing his face with a timely claw-swipe. Then the better side of his nature took over and he broke wind with deafening silence in his master's hand. It had much the same effect and Maxwell dropped him like a hot cat. The Count bounced off the carpet and took the stairs three at a time. Mercifully for all of them, the Great Outdoors was calling.

‘I didn't mean to wake you up, darling,' Maxwell said.

‘What time is it?' Jacquie was half sitting up, trying to focus on the clock, and trying to release her nightie before it strangled her.

‘Half-ten,' he told her. ‘Now, back to sleep, young lady. I won't be long.'

‘Marking?' she slurred turning to face him. Whatever Sylvia Matthews thought, Maxwell did actually do some from time to time.

‘The teacher's curse,' he nodded. ‘Hate it or hate it, it goes with the territory.' He patted her shoulder and made for the stairs.

‘Max,' Jacquie was sitting up now, or at least on her elbows. ‘Are you sure you're all right about this?'

‘Oh, I've been marking for a long time now, Jacks. I think I'll manage.'

‘I'm not talking about that,' she said. ‘As well you know. I'm talking about this. Us. Me moving in with you.'

He crossed back to the bed and sat in the curve made by her knees. ‘We tossed a coin,' he reminded her.

She reached out in the semi-darkness to find his cheek. ‘I don't think that was a very adult way to settle things.'

He chuckled. ‘It was your place or mine,' he said. ‘We can't bring up a baby in two houses three miles apart. Night-time feeds would be a bitch.'

‘I know,' she said, ‘But…well, you're such a…'

‘Bastard?' He was being helpful.

‘I was going to say bachelor, but yes, that too.'

But Peter Maxwell had not always been a bachelor. In the darkest recesses of his wallet lay the battered photographic evidence to prove it. A
beautiful woman. A lovely child. His first family. In a car on a wet road. A long, long time ago. The wrong time. The wrong place. Dead On Arrival. He looked at the girl in his bed. His new family, complete with bump. Another little girl to replace his Debbie? Perhaps. They'd both turned away during the necessary scans. Leighford General's Maternity Unit knew the sex of Maxwell's and Jacquie's unborn child, but the doting parents didn't have a clue. It was how they wanted it.

‘No,' he said, stroking her hair. ‘I've been a bachelor for long enough.' And he kissed her. ‘Now, go to sleep, Woman Policeman Carpenter. Abyssinia.'

Woman Policeman Carpenter. She still loved it when he called her that. And as she listened to his footfalls padding down the stairs, she heard again the laughter and the ragging at the party they'd thrown at the nick as she took her maternity leave of them.

‘Come back and see us, Jacquie,' the guv'nor had said. And she thought, just for a moment, she'd seen him smile. But it was probably just the champagne or a trick of the light.

‘The lengths some people will go to to avoid night-shift!'

‘Who's going to make the fucking tea now?'

And she heard herself chuckling as sleep crept over her, and their faces faded into dreams.

If he'd been perfectly honest, Gordon Goodacre would have admitted that he'd never really liked the Arquebus. It had been derelict for years, part of a row of abandoned warehouses that ribboned the twisting path of the Leigh, searching, as rivers will, for the sea. Arts Council grants and Regeneration money had turned it into a theatre and the great and good of West Sussex had patronised various productions and the place began its new life as a centre of dramatic excellence.

Gordon wasn't a thesp. Matilda, she was the one. Her Eleanor of Aquitaine in
The Lion in Winter
had been legendary; people said they'd never seen anything like her Yentl – but that went without saying. Gordon was a personnel manager by day. But by night, to keep Matilda quiet, he worked on sets at the Arquebus.

‘What can Gordon do?' someone on the committee had asked Matilda. And Matilda, usually so voluble, had been stuck for an answer. ‘He can paint,' she had said, in a sudden burst of desperation. And so here he was, that Thursday night, painting. Or at least, he was about to. Leighford High School were taking their
Little Shop of Horrors
on tour and the first whistle-stop was the Arquebus. But the Arquebus had just mounted
Waiting for Godot
and every flat in the place needed a lick of paint. Yes, it was nearly eleven. Yes, Gordon had been there since seven. Yes, it was bucketing down outside. But he still had…

There it was again. That noise. What was it? Gordon Goodacre tried to rationalise it. In the
half-light
of this once-derelict building he didn't like. Not the rain, certainly. That was coming down hard enough, but it was recognisable, rhythmic, pounding the reeded skylights overhead. This was…well, if Gordon was asked to pinpoint it…it sounded like something heavy being dragged. Then a sigh. Not quite human. Not quite real.

‘Is anybody there?' Gordon straightened from the black paint pots at his feet.

There was silence now. Then the dragging sound again. And the sigh. Not once. But twice. And a sound of falling. He couldn't think of a better way to describe it. As though something was hurtling through the air to end with a snap. A creak, like a foot on a stair. Or the tension of a rope.

‘Look, who's there? What do you think you're playing at?'

Gordon had let himself in. He had locked the doors behind him. The keys were in his overalls pocket now. If this was that stupid bastard Ashley… He walked to centre stage, where the light formed a pool of liquid blue. He glared out into the silent, empty seats of the auditorium. The house lights were full on. Only the area under the balcony was in shadow and there was nobody there.

Gordon turned, first this way, then that. It was over there. Towards the Green Room. But somehow higher. As if there was a walkway. 
But there wasn't a walkway, not anymore.

‘Look,' his voice boomed out in the stillness. ‘I've had enough of this.'

They say you don't hear the bomb that blows you to pieces. You don't see the bullet that bores through your chest. The one with your name on it is not the one you can read. So it was with Gordon Goodacre. And the ladder he didn't notice. Until it was too late.

‘Deena Hamilton, Max.'

Was this how it was? Maxwell wondered. When the Last Trump came and that Great Headmaster in the sky called you to account? Was it just a series of déjà vu's and endless reminders of Kids You Love To Hate? Any minute now, he'd be hearing of Wayne ‘The Farter' Bryson, who could clear classrooms; Wonky Wadham, on whom nature had played a cruel trick; James ‘Hell Boy' Gardner – all of them locked in an eternal detention in the Classroom That Time Forgot.

But he shook himself free of it. It was Friday morning – albeit the 13th – and a far from great headmaster sat across the desk from him. James ‘Legs' Diamond had a degree, it was rumoured, in Biology, but after that all serious links with education were broken irrevocably and he had become senior management, worrying about initiatives, league tables, specialist status, that hellish group the Learning Skills Council and all the
other gobbledegook that had knocked Peter Maxwell's legs from under him over the last four hundred years. All he really wanted to do was to teach some History and nobody would let him.

‘Lovely girl, Headmaster,' Diamond's Head of Sixth Form smiled.

For a moment, a look of panic and incomprehension swept over Diamond's face. His problem – one of many, it had to be said – was that he never knew when Maxwell was joking.

‘She was here yesterday, at Leighford.'

‘So I believe,' Maxwell nodded, fully able at his age to put the concepts of ‘here' and ‘Leighford' together. ‘I was, of course, mortified that she didn't pop in to see me.'

‘You?' Diamond blinked.

There were times – many, many times – when Peter Maxwell had such withering scorn for Legs Diamond that he couldn't be bothered to answer him. He'd left assemblies, staff meetings, working lunches, all for fear that he might lose his cool and put one on his headmaster. It was a terrible, but all too excusable crime, principicide.

‘I was her Year Head for two years, Headmaster – though I grant you, there were times when it seemed longer. I like to think I did my bit in getting her into Oxford.'

‘Oh, indeed.'

‘We haven't had too many, have we?' Maxwell saw an irresistible chink in his headmaster's
less-than-
proof
armour. ‘Oxbridge successes, I mean? Let's see, the last one, before Deena, was Clive Moon. PPP, if memory serves.'

‘It's not the be-all and end-all, you know.' Diamond smiled awkwardly, never, in these sparring sessions with Peter Maxwell, knowing where the next attack was coming from. Truth be told, he'd forgotten what PPP stood for and he wanted to move on.

‘Indeed not,' Maxwell asserted. ‘Clive went to Merton, Oxford, when he should have gone to Jesus, Cambridge.'

‘No, I meant…there are other universities.'

‘Are there, Headmaster? Do tell.' He glanced at his watch. ‘Four minutes till the balloon goes up, Headmaster. Nine Eff Two. I must needs set up my PowerPoint presentation on factory reform.'

‘PowerPoint, Max?' Diamond sat back in amazement. ‘Er…good. Good. I'm impressed.' Like everyone else at Leighford, James Diamond assumed that Peter Maxwell had stumbled out of Jurassic Park.

‘Of course you are,' Maxwell beamed. ‘So…er… Deena?'

‘Oh, yes.' Diamond pulled himself together in the corner of the bland office where school successes in Young Enterprise and Engineering Challenge shone proudly on the wall. ‘She came to help out, with the show, I mean.'

‘The show,' Maxwell repeated, as if the word was new to him.

‘
Little Shop of Horrors
,' Diamond reminded him. ‘We're putting it on at the Arquebus in October.'

‘Excellent,' Maxwell nodded. ‘Thanks for the word. I shall book my ticket.'

‘Well, actually, Max, it's a little more complicated than that.'

‘Oh?'

Diamond had seen that eyebrow rise before and he didn't like it. It was like a cobra spreading its hood, a tiger stalking in the tall grass. ‘Well, as you know, we were unable to appoint an Expressive Arts Supremo, so Angela Carmichael was having to cope on her own – well, with a little help from the Music Department, of course.'

‘Of course.' Peter Maxwell knew exactly how little that help was. The Head of Music, Geraint Horsenell, was a good chum and a realist. But he was not a man you'd want beside you – or indeed anywhere near you – in a shipwreck.

‘Well, unfortunately, Angela's having complications, with the pregnancy, I mean. She's off for the foreseeable future.'

‘Oh.' This time, Maxwell's concern was genuine. Angela Carmichael was a nice woman. And his Jacquie was pregnant too…

‘So Deena's arrival was a godsend.'

Maxwell frowned. Not for the first time, the
machinations of what Diamond laughingly called a mind left him perplexed, confused. The Demon Headmaster was sometimes not of this earth. ‘It was?'

‘Well, she's got a degree in Dramatic Arts, Max – from, you hinted at it yourself, one of the best universities in the country. She's at a loose end
and
she worked on the production up at Oxford.'

‘But she's not a teacher, Headmaster.'

‘No.' Diamond squirmed in his plastic,
County-bought
swivel. He toyed momentarily with trying to climb inside his laptop for safety. ‘That's right. And that's where you come in.'

‘Where I come in? What, sort of…enter stage fright?'

The muscles along Diamond's jaw flexed and rippled. This man was so infuriating, so bloody obtuse. But there had been times, and not so very long ago, when he literally owed Maxwell his career. There was no going back now. He was staring into the Abyss. ‘I can employ Deena, but only on a part-time, untrained-teacher salary. She'll need someone…experienced. An old hand, so to speak.'

‘Out of the question,' Maxwell said and was on his feet. ‘Nine Eff Two, Headmaster. That PowerPoint won't wait.'

‘Max,' Diamond was standing too, edging round his desk, trying to head Maxwell off at the pass. ‘Max, I know this is an imposition, but unless you can work it, we'll have to cancel.'

Maxwell paused in the doorway. ‘If you're attempting to blackmail me, Headmaster…'

‘No, for God's sake, Max. You've done this before.'

‘Not for years.'

‘You were a legendary Cyrano, I understand, before my time?'

The Head of Sixth Form nodded. Everything was before Diamond's time, really. ‘Passing competent,' he said, ‘even if I say so myself. Depardieu was on the blower asking for a few hints as his own modest effort went into production.'

‘And didn't you do Macbeth?'

‘Scottish fight arranger only,' Maxwell corrected him. ‘And all that was a long time ago, Headmaster – when the Scottish play was still current affairs.'

‘All right,' Diamond relented, with a heartfelt sigh. ‘It'll have to be Dierdre. Have a good morning, Max.' And he slunk back behind his desk.

‘What?' The Great Man had turned, like the hellhound he was, in the head's doorway.

‘I said “Have a good…”'

‘Before that.'

‘Oh, well, if you don't feel you can do it, it'll have to be Dierdre Lessing.'

Maxwell had crossed Diamond's office in three strides, his knuckles on the man's desk, taking the weight of his arms. ‘You know,' he growled, his face inches from his headteacher's, ‘you're getting pretty good at this. I'll have to watch my step.'

Slowly, Diamond's face melted into a smile. He'd have to mark this on his calendar. Friday the 13th – the Day He Put One Over On Peter Maxwell. ‘Thanks, Max,' he said. ‘I knew I could count on you.'

The bell shattered the moment and Maxwell regained his composure. ‘No cover lessons for the duration of the rehearsal time. A late start every Thursday. And a personal chauffeur called Les.'

But wheeling-and-dealing humour and pinching lines from telly ads was lost on James Diamond. Maxwell saw himself out. ‘Bugger,' he said just before he closed the door. ‘No time to set up PowerPoint now. It'll just have to be talk and chalk for Nine Eff. God, I just hate being so
old-fashioned
. Heigh-ho!'

‘I just can't believe the bastard did it,' Maxwell was saying, snug in the confines of 38 Columbine. ‘I'm getting slow.'

‘But Dierdre would have been a disaster.'

‘Exactly. But you've got to hand it to Legs. He knew exactly which buttons to press. He's been going to realpolitik classes again.'

‘I thought you gave those.'

‘Ah, Woman Policeman,' he smiled, stroking her arm. ‘You know how to lift a man when he's down. I only give biennial masterclasses. Low life like Legs aren't invited. Some bastard must have published my stuff on the Internet, whatever that is.'

She freshened his drink as the glow brightened behind the plastic coal of his electric fire. ‘How is Dierdre this term?'

‘Same as she is every term,' he hissed as the amber nectar of his Southern Comfort hit his tonsils. ‘Like the
Marie Celeste
in full sail. Responsible for every evil in the world from Hoodies to Global Colding. She ate a peripatetic music teacher last week.'

She snuggled closer to him, curled up as they were on his settee. ‘You didn't tell me you'd played Cyrano de Bergerac.'

‘Oh, yes.' He let his head loll back and closed his eyes. ‘Beat the long-nosed bastard in straight sets. Mind you, they were different days. We all seemed to have so much more time then. Putting in
twenty-eight
hours a day wasn't only possible, it was fun. Old Bill Vintner was head at Leighford. And it was a…' he checked to see the coast was clear and that they were alone, ‘grammar school.' He whispered it; the education that dared not speak its name. ‘Lovely old boy, was Bill.' The fireglow and the Southern Comfort and the warm woman were beginning to get to Peter Maxwell. He was in memory mode. ‘Claimed to have ridden up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt.'

Jacquie Carpenter loved Peter Maxwell with every fibre of her being, but there were times when she didn't have the faintest idea what he was talking about. This was one of them.
‘But he didn't?' she asked tentatively.

He looked at her. What a love. So much to learn. So little time. Bit like Year Ten, really. ‘No,' he said, kindly. ‘But I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn it was Senlac Hill with William the Conqueror.'

She was on safe ground now and slapped his drinking hand, just for good measure. William she'd heard of. Senlac Hill, Mad Max had had her wandering all over, not six months before. ‘So, when do you start?' she asked.

‘Well, Monday, I suppose. I must admit, it'll be intriguing to tread the boards again. But, I ask you,
Little Shop of Horrors
– what's that about?'

‘Well,' she put down her coffee mug and adjusted the protuberance in front of her. ‘There was this flower shop in downtown…'

‘Oh, ha!' he snorted. ‘I mean, why couldn't it have been Ibsen, or Chekhov, or, Heaven forfend, the Bard?'

‘Because nobody'd go,' she told him. ‘At least this way you'll get an audience. If somebody's little Johnny was playing Uncle Vanya, not even little Johnny's mum would turn up. As it is, no doubt you've got a thousand girlies anxious to strut their stuff – all their mums will be there. So will the dads, having an illicit shufty at their daughters' friends fol-de-rols…'

‘Disgusting,' snarled Maxwell.

‘And the geeks will be there to see how you do Audrey.'

‘Audrey?'

‘The man-eating plant. God, Max, I thought you were kidding about not knowing what the show is about.'

‘I am, dear girl, I am. You seem very clued up about it.'

‘Did it in Year Eleven, didn't I? And before you ask, yes, that was a long time ago.'

‘Well, the Arquebus doesn't know what's going to hit it.'

‘The Arquebus?'

‘The theatre. Along Quay Street.'

‘Yes, I know. Why there?'

‘Well, it's Angela Carmichael's idea, apparently. Theatre in the Community or something crappy. We don't use the Hall and invite the locals to come to us. No, that's far too boring and obvious. We go to them. Sort of mountain and Mohammed.'

‘There was an accident there last night.'

‘At the Arquebus?'

‘Hm. Fatal, actually.'

‘Really?' He sat up a little, and looked her in the grey, sparkling eyes. ‘Have you been listening in to Police Wireless again?' he asked, the eyebrow of disapproval threatening his hairline.

‘Jane Blaisedell called round this morning. You know, just to see how I was.'

‘How are you?' He looked down at her, attentive, solicitous, taking the mick.

‘Piss off and listen,' she insisted. It was one of
Jacquie's stranger stage directions, but Maxwell let it pass. ‘Somebody was killed, working on the set.'

‘Anybody we know?'

‘Gordon Goodacre. Didn't ring any bells with me.'

‘God, yes.' Maxwell was frowning.

‘Did you know him?'

He moved a little way away from her and held up his fingers in the sign of the cross. ‘Put those lighted matches down, Woman Policeman. I know nothing.'

‘Seriously.'

‘Seriously, no. But I have had the pleasure of
Mrs
Goodacre – and not, mercifully, in the biblical sense. She'll love this.'

‘Max!' she squeaked. ‘That's not very nice.'

‘Sorry, no,' he checked himself. ‘No, it's tragic. But Matilda Goodacre is the original Drama Queen. I remember her wailing in the High Street when we ratified the Maastricht Treaty. Fine sentiments, of course; just a little over the top. What happened?'

‘Oh, carelessness, I suppose,' Jacquie shrugged. ‘Jane said Goodacre had been working late on the scenery and a ladder had slipped. Fractured his skull.' Jacquie looked up at him suddenly, struck by a thought. ‘
You'll
be careful out there, won't you, Mr Maxwell?'