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

Maxwell.’
    But Peter Maxwell didn’t get on his bike. Not quite then. Because, having checked the mail for little tiny bills and realising yet again that he wasn’t earning enough, he wheeled Surrey to the verge of Columbine and who should be inspecting her Michaelmas daisies there but the redoubtable neighbour whom Peter Maxwell loved as himself – well, nearly.
    â€˜Mrs Troubridge.’ He raised his battered hat.
    â€˜Good morning, Mr Maxwell.’ The old girl waved her Speedy Weedy at him. ‘Isn’t this glorious after all that rain?’
    Indeed it was. If wheezy young John Keats had wanted a better morning to fire off his mellow fruitfulness line, he couldn’t have found one. The last wasps of the summer that had died droned in the privet, looking for one last kill before autumn claimed them; miserable, psychotic bastards. Across the grass that rolled away from Columbine to the Flyover and the sea, a thousand spiders had woven their gossamer carpet and it shimmered like so much silver in the pale morning sun.
    â€˜Heavenly,’ he said, propping himself against Surrey’s crossbar. ‘I believe I met a friend of yours last night,’ he fished.
    â€˜Really?’ Most of Mrs Troubridge’s friends wereno longer of this world, it had to be said.
    â€˜Martita Winchcombe.’
    Mrs Troubridge’s face fell. ‘Oh. Her.’
    Maxwell was good at body language. The fact that his neighbour had just hacked off a late rose with her hook-billed pruner was perhaps a slightly less challenging message than usual.
    â€˜Not a friend, then?’
    â€˜Martita Winchcombe and I have not spoken since the January of 1946. I’d rather not go into details, Mr Maxwell; let’s just say it involved Mr Troubridge and a loose Venetian blind. I don’t think I need say more.’
    â€˜Er…indeed not, Mrs Troubridge. That pretty well sums it up, I feel sure. It’s just that…well, in the light of what you’ve told me, I suspect that my next question will be a little redundant.’
    â€˜Question?’
    â€˜Well, would you say,’ Maxwell was choosing his words carefully, ‘that Miss Winchcombe’s judgement is sound?’
    â€˜Redundant because we haven’t spoken in sixty years? Yes, I can see your point. However,’ the old girl folded her pruner with a finality that was awful, ‘Martita Winchcombe was mad as a tree when she was twenty. What she must be like now, I can’t begin to imagine. Mr Maxwell, did she tell you she was a friend of mine?’
    â€˜Not in as many words, no. I just assumed, you and she being of an age…’
    â€˜How dare you!’ Mrs Troubridge bridled. ‘Martita Winchcombe is three years my senior. Surely that must be obvious, even…’ she pulled herself up to her full five feet one, ‘to a man.’
    â€˜Of course,’ Maxwell frowned. ‘It was very bad light in the Arquebus.’
    â€˜Oh, she’s still there, is she? Interfering busybody. Oh,’ she lightened. ‘Do forgive me, Mr Maxwell. You’ve pressed the wrong button, I fear, this morning.’
    â€˜My mistake, Mrs Troubridge.’ He doffed his hat again. ‘Well, I must away and make the lives of a lot of children really wretched.’
    â€˜Jolly good!’ she smiled beatifically, a boon as she was to denture manufacturers.
    And he swung into the saddle of Surrey and was gone, pedalling like a thing possessed, his wild scarf flung behind him.
    Â 
    The day named after the great god Tiw had not gone well. An over-reacting Bernard Ryan, Deputy Headteacher without portfolio, or aptitude or talent, had called the police to a Year Nine cat fight. It was all claws and handbags and in the good old days a single cuff round the ear would have settled it. Maxwell had been at a Curriculum Managers’ meeting all morning and by half-ten had lost the will to live; and he still had