Maxwell's Inspection by M.J. Trow Read Free Book Online Page A

little piece that it was, had an 18 category. He saw her write something down. He’d face the music later, reading the banner headlines in what passed for his mind ‘Pervert Teacher Depraves Young’. What a load of warlocks.
    On the screen, a bunch of murderous seventeenth century villagers were dragging a hapless crone up a bleak windswept hillside while the priest, whose hysteria had caused all this, intoned mumbo-jumbo behind the lynch mob. The camera wobbled and jostled with the crowd as they hanged the woman from the make-shift gibbet and her body slumped, to dangle in the wind, the hempen rope creaking in its housings. The camera swept away and the orchestra crashed into life. Sitting his horse, cloaked in black, sat Mad Vince himself, Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General.
    â€˜I’ve seen this,’ Dave said, although actually he was thinking of Plunkett and Maclean. 
    A bell shattered the moment and Ten Aitch Two descended into uproar.
    â€˜All right,’ Maxwell switched off the set. ‘Leave your stuff, everybody. Jimbo. Leave that.’
    â€˜It’s my football.’
    â€˜You’re on form today, Jim,’ Maxwell told him. ‘But even so, it stays here. You go.’
    â€˜What if it’s burned to death?’ Jimbo asked against the repetitious clanging of the bell.
    â€˜That’s what God invented insurance for. Straight out, everybody,’ Maxwell called. ‘Double doors at the end. You know the drill.’ And he supervised them as they went, closing windows with one hand. At the door, he met Sally Meninger.
    â€˜Is this planned?’ she asked.
    Maxwell shrugged. ‘The Fire Master is Bernard Ryan,’ he told her. ‘Our revered Deputy. I can’t believe even he would be imbecilic enough to plan one of these, this week of all weeks. Unprofessional of me to say so, of course.’ But he had a feeling ‘unprofessional’ was Sally Meninger’s middle name.
    â€˜Where do we go?’
    He closed the door behind her. ‘Follow me,’ he said, and quickly abandoning the old joke, came out with the feed line anyway. ‘Walk this way.’
    And he led her into the sunlight.

Chapter Three
    The bell was still ringing as the hordes assembled on the tennis courts, just far enough away so that flames wouldn’t engulf them. All in all, they didn’t look unlike Maxwell’s Light Brigade, drawn up in his attic – except the uniforms, of course, and the swords – oh, and the horses. The Head of Sixth Form had taken his place ahead of his Year Twelve cohorts, mixing his military metaphors though he was, the Legatus Legionis standing with his arms folded while chaos sorted itself into a kind of order in front of him.
    His own Year were neat enough, in approximate lines behind their respective Form Tutors, answering to the call of their names ringing out on that bright Tuesday morning . Year Seven as always were hysterical with the excitement of it all. Where’s the fire, sir? Where are the fire engines? Is anybody burned yet, stuck in one of the bogs? Who started it? What’s going to happen to him? It was always the same. Some wag, probably in Year Ten, would have smashed the glass somewhere, probably in the Art Rooms. Motive? Bravado. It was a rite of passage, really. Year Eleven had gone, their GCSEs over, into that glad goodnight that was forever composed of shelf-filling at Asda or Tesco. The main school had no head, no focus for delinquency. That was where Year Ten came in. And of course, this week of all weeks was a heaven-sent opportunity .
    Maxwell could pinpoint it with reasonable accuracy. It could be Jason ‘The Torch’ Piggott of Ten Why Three,egged on by Squirt Tollfree from Sally Greenhow’s Remedials. Sanjit Singh, Mr Diamond’s nark, would already be standing in the corridor of power, all too anxious to blurt what he knew. You could bet your life on it.
    â€˜All clear,