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

then when she opened the door to him in a rather fetching pink and blue jogging suit, with a sweat band where her hair line usually was.
    ‘What a fetching glow band,’ Maxwell beamed, patting White Surrey on the bell. ‘Ex-kamikaze, Senior Mistress?’
    Her face said it all. ‘I presume this visit has a point, Max?’ she bridled.
    ‘Of course,’ he assured her, ‘I don’t waste valuable tyre rubber on trivia. It’s about Alice Goode.’
    She looked up and down the road. Thank God there was no one about yet to see the freak that stood before her front door, in scarf and cycle clips, like some sort of deranged Doctor Who. ‘You’d better come in.’
    He did. Her hall wallpaper was indescribable, as he knew it would be, and he was sure the certificates on the stairs were tokens of gratitude from the SS and signed by Himmler himself.
    ‘Coffee?’
    ‘Dash’d civil,’ Maxwell beamed, his Hush Puppies padding across the Flotex of her kitchen.
    ‘You’ll have to excuse the mess. It
is
the weekend.’
    It was, but Maxwell couldn’t see any. He felt a little guilty really. He hadn’t seen all of his lounge carpet since 1986.
    ‘Black?’ She poured for them both.
    ‘White, please. Two sugars.’
    She looked at him and tutted. Green wasn’t just a colour for Deirdre Lessing; it was a way of life. She offered him an excruciatingly high stool in the crisp, state-of-the-art kitchen and poured herself a grapefruit juice that Maxwell just knew she’d squeezed between her breasts.
    ‘Lovely place, Deirdre,’ he heard himself lying.
    ‘Thank you.’ She took the compliment at face value. In fact, it was the value of the place that intrigued Maxwell. Even Senior Mistresses received a pittance in John Major’s England. This was an executive home, way out of Deirdre’s league. Then he remembered the divorce. Deirdre had clearly taken Mr Lessing to Bolloms and back with a vengeance. If she never worked again – and Maxwell was by no means sure she ever had in the true sense of the word – it wouldn’t really matter to Deirdre Lessing. To Peter Maxwell and Leighford High, however, it would be pure joy.
    ‘How long have we known each other, Max?’ she asked him, holding her coffee with both hands, as though the shock of the answer might be too much.
    ‘Eight years, man and woman,’ he told her.
    ‘And in all that time, this is the first time you’ve crossed my portals.’
    ‘Pressure of work,’ Maxwell beamed.
    ‘So it must be something important.’
    So, mused Maxwell; pretty astute. Deirdre wasn’t just a pretty pair of padded shoulders, then. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘Alice Goode.’
    ‘Ah, yes.’ She put down her cup with the air of someone who knows something – like the superior bastard across the desk from you in an interview. ‘Jim said you’d be asking questions.’
    ‘Jim? Oh, you mean Legs?’
    ‘Why do you call him that?’ she said, exasperated as always by Peter Maxwell within the first few minutes of any conversation.
    ‘Legs Diamond,’ Maxwell explained.
    Nothing.
    ‘He was a gangster. Twenties. Prohibition. You know – Eliot Ness, Al Capone. Ray Danton played him in the film.’
    ‘I thought that was Robert de Niro.’
    ‘No, no.’ Maxwell could just about follow the woman’s insanity. ‘That was
The Untouchables
. De Niro played Capone in
The Untouchables
. Ray Danton played Legs Diamond in
The Rise and Fall of the Same
.’ Maxwell could tell that Deirdre was none the wiser.
    ‘But you were saying that Diamond prophesied I’d be here.’
    ‘Well, he didn’t exactly say you’d come round to my house.’ It was clear that the trauma of the event had left its mark on Deirdre. ‘But he certainly implied you wouldn’t be able to let it lie.’
    ‘He was right there. Tell me about Alice.’
    ‘I don’t know what I can say’ The Senior Mistress sipped her chilled juice. It probably froze further, Maxwell thought, on contact with her digestive tract. ‘As you know,