Maxwell’s Curse by M. J. Trow Read Free Book Online

food?’
    ‘Why not?’ Hall shrugged. ‘It’s full of nutrition if you believe the manufacturers’ hype.’
    ‘And it’s got flavours – mackerel, chicken, turkey.’ Jacquie was suddenly aware that both men were staring at her.
    ‘Cat lover, are you, Jacquie?’ Stone asked. It was an innocent question.
    ‘No,’ she said, and omitted the cliché ‘but I know a man who is.’
    ‘Did Jim Astley stick his neck out and say what type of mushroom?’
    Stone shifted in his seat. ‘That’s why I was late getting here,’ he said. ‘I had the whole lecture, the full monty. Apparently – and I quote – there are nearly two thousand larger fungi in the UK, of which two hundred are edible and ten are poisonous. Astley’s problem is that he doesn’t know – nobody does – the time lag between the old girl taking the stuff and the first symptoms. If they were late onset, say upwards of eighteen hours, he’d go for Amanita phalloides – Death-Cap.’
    ‘Looks and peels like a common mushroom,’ Jacquie said.
    ‘Thanks for the woman’s touch,’ Hall murmured. ‘Relevance?’
    ‘The old girl could have eaten them by accident, sir.’
    ‘That’s as maybe,’ Hall was leaning back, his hands behind his head, ‘but she didn’t then stab herself in the back of the neck, climb into a package of binliners and deposit herself on Peter Maxwell’s doorstep, having carefully rung his doorbell first.’
    There was no real answer to that and Jacquie didn’t give one.
    ‘No one thought to take any food samples, I suppose, from Myrtle Cottage?’ Hall checked. ‘The cat food? Whatever was on those plates in the sink?’
    ‘Er … I was just going to get on it, guv,’ Stone grinned.
    ‘The first time, Martin,’ Hall said softly. ‘When you know me better, you’ll learn I like things like that done the first time.’
    ‘Yes, sir. Sorry. But there’s no real harm done, is there? I mean, nobody will have been snooping? We didn’t give the old girl’s address.’
    It was Hall’s turn to shift in his chair. ‘No,’ he said, ‘indeed we didn’t. Jacquie, how’s the Incident Room getting on with next of kin?’
    ‘It’s early days, sir,’ she told him.
    ‘That’s right,’ an unflappable bastard was Henry Hall, ‘but we both know, Jacquie, about cold trails. It’s been four days.’
    ‘There was a husband – er … She checked her notes. ‘Edward. Died in ’79.’
    ‘Did he live at Myrtle Cottage?’
    ‘We don’t have any other address at the moment,’ she said. ‘Uniform have talked to the locals at Wetherton where the old girl occasionally did her shopping.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘Nobody really liked her. One or two felt a bit sorry, but she wasn’t easy. Help her across the road and she’d bite your head off – you know the sort of thing.’
    Hall did.
    ‘Had something of a reputation, though.’
    ‘Reputation?’ Stone asked. ‘As what?’
    ‘Oh, you know,’ Jacquie chuckled. ‘As a witch.’
    The truly great thing about Friday is that it marks the end of the working week. Peter Maxwell wrapped his scarf around his neck, snapped his cycle clips into position and pedalled hell-for-leather over the darkening fields heading for the flyover and home.
    ‘Those things’ll kill you!’ he roared as he rattled around Smokers’ Corner at the far end of the Sports Hall. Three consumptives sprang apart, dawdling as they had been on their way home in order to light up. ‘That’s in the long term. In the short term all three of you are in detention next Thursday. Have a nice day!’ and he’d gone, whistling down the wind.
    Now, Peter Maxwell had a vice. Well, actually, he had several. But that evening, he sat in the lamplit attic at 38 Columbine and indulged in his favourite. Before him on his desk lay a white plastic man beside a white plastic horse, 54mm high and correct in every detail. This was the three hundred and eighty-ninth figure to join the great diorama he was creating in the