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

skylight. ‘You have the column, Mr Sulu.’ He slipped inexorably into his William Shatner.
    ‘Missing,’ he said, back in Maxwell mode again and picked up the white plastic soldier before placing him astride his white plastic charger. ‘Presumed killed?’ He didn’t like the sound of that. The presumption frightened him. ‘Do you know who this is, Count?’
    The cat twitched an ear. No doubt the boring old fart would tell him in the fullness of time.
    ‘Well, when I’ve painted him up and stuck him all down, he’ll be Captain John Augustus Oldham, 13th Light Dragoons.’ He glanced across to Oldham’s plastic comrades, kitted out for their unfaded glory on that October day in 1854. ‘He drew the short straw did Oldham, Count. Lieutenant-Colonel Doherty was laid up with cholera at the time, so was Major Gore. Holden was the senior captain, but he was with the Depot troop back home, so that left Oldham in charge at the Charge.’ His eyes narrowed on the brave features, the strong jaw, the curling moustaches. ‘He was last seen, sword in one hand, pistol in the other, bleeding from his wounds.’ Maxwell sat back again. ‘The point is, Count, they never found his body.’
    He sighed and swivelled to the cat, ‘Is that how it’ll be for Ronnie, do you think? That they’ll never find his body?’
    Metternich raised his black and white head for a moment, but it was only to find a more comfortable spot for his chin, and he returned to his snoring on the wicker basket he’d made his home in Maxwell’s loft.
    ‘One of these days,’ tutted Maxwell impatiently, ‘you’ll give me a straight yes or no to a question. All right.’ He pulled off the gold-laced forage cap, the Crimean one he wore when painting his Light Brigade, to give him empathy with the chaps, and reached for his glass of Southern Comfort. ‘What do we know in the strange-but-true disappearance of Alice Goode and Ronnie Parsons? One, they both disappeared on the same day and ostensibly from the same place – the Museum of the Moving Image. Two, there was nothing to denote a problem in the demeanour of either. Three – and I hope you’re taking notes, Count, ’cos I’ll be asking questions later – said disappearances are either linked or they’re one helluva coincidence. Four – no apparent ransom note … or was there? Damn, I should have asked Woman Policeman Carpenter about that. Not that she’d tell me a great deal. She was being particularly tight-lipped this morning, I thought. Five … buggeration, there isn’t a five, Count. I actually know sweet F.A. about this business. Better stick to teaching, eh?’ He glanced furtively at the beast with four paws, who lashed his tail, just the once, from side to side.
    ‘I know,’ Maxwell said, ‘and of course, you’re right. It was my trip – you’ve been colluding with Woman Policeman Carpenter, haven’t you? It was my trip, so I can’t just stick to teaching. Somewhere,’ and he kicked himself free of the chair, ‘is Deirdre Lessing’s address in my Directory of the Damned.’
    If you’d asked Peter Maxwell – and occasionally, when they were feeling brave or had several hours to spare, people did – what he disliked about Deirdre Lessing, he’d have said ‘Everything’. And it galled him, that Saturday morning, as he pedalled across the Common on White Surrey, that he had to go, cap in hand, to the Morgana le Fay of Leighford High. He hadn’t rung her in advance, because she’d know he’d half-inched her ex-directory number from the school office. It was only a short step from knowing her phone number to making disgusting, obscene calls and she was perfectly willing to concede that Peter Maxwell was clever enough to ring 141 before his perverted little fingers pattered out her digits. So he wouldn’t give her the edge. He’d catch her like the law might, before breakfast, with her curlers in and her teeth in a jar by the bed.
    He was all the more disappointed