Free Maxwell’s Curse by M. J. Trow

Winchester and, what is worse, placed on microfiche.’
    Maxwell tutted. That annoyed him too.
    ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Darblay went on, rubbing a cadaverous finger around the rim of his glass, ‘but it’s only done for the convenience of the Americans. You’d be amazed how many of them we get in the summer, trying to find their roots.’
    ‘Hairdressers’ nightmare,’ Maxwell nodded solemnly. ‘You didn’t visit her, I suppose?’
    ‘Mrs Pride? No, I’m afraid not. Oh, I did make one house call, so to speak. A long time ago, when I first got the parish. Sticks in my mind, though.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Don’t you people tape record interviews?’ Darblay asked, ‘Or at least take notes?’
    ‘No need,’ Maxwell tapped his temple. ‘Photographic memory.’
    ‘How fascinating!’ Darblay put his glass down and leaned forward. ‘I have a theory …’
    ‘Er … Mrs Pride?’ Maxwell wanted the man back on track.
    ‘Oh, yes. Yes. Well, I went up to her house, the one near the Ring. No one answered for what seemed ages. I was just about to go when she appeared. It was odd, really. A sizzling hot day – August 1, I remember – and I didn’t hear a thing. Not a rustle of clothes, not the padding of feet. She was just … there. At my elbow. I confess, Mr Maxwell, I was startled. I was even more startled when we got talking.’
    ‘Oh, why?’
    ‘Well, I introduced myself and said I hoped we’d see her at church. Do you know what she did? She spat.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘As God is my witness. Spat, then and there, quite volubly, on the garden path. Then she asked me if I knew what day it was – that’s how I remember it so well. I said “Yes. It’s August 1 st .” “Lammas,” she said. “It’s Lammastide.”’
    ‘Lammas,’ Maxwell repeated.
    ‘Loaf Mass,’ Darblay explained. ‘Symbolic of the beginning of the harvest. I said to Mrs Pride “Are you a farming family, then?” She just laughed.’
    ‘And that was it?’
    ‘Yes, Mr Maxwell, it was. I never went back. Not to Myrtle Cottage. I’m not ashamed to admit old Mrs Pride frightened me. There was something … unreal about her. It’s impossible to describe. Oh, I’ve met people who are anti-clerical before and since. Humanists, atheists, don’t-give-a-damners – they go with the territory; and my back, like my church, is broad. But there was something different about Elizabeth Pride – and I’m not being melodramatic when I say … she was pure evil.’
    ‘“Pure Evil”, Count,’ Maxwell sipped his Southern Comfort, his bum on his sofa, his feet on the coffee table. ‘You had to be there, really, corny as it sounds.’
    The cat was unimpressed. It was the concept of church mice that interested him most in Maxwell’s story.
    ‘There we were, tucked up in his study, only a little smaller than the Bodleian, toasting our toes – in his case lissom, clerical, printless; and we were talking about a poor old soul as if she was Beelzebub. But the thing of it is, Count, this calendar.’ He shook it at the animal, for all the good that did, ‘Elizabeth Pride … listen to me when I’m talking to you – I’ll be asking questions later … Elizabeth Pride made a big thing about Lammas tide, August 1 st . And here, it’s one of the few dates she’s circled on her calendar, the one I lifted from the cottage.’ He read from the tattered paper, ‘Fly over moor and fly over mead, Fly over living and fly over dead, Fly ye east or fly ye west, fly to her that loves me best. Not exactly Manic Street Preachers, is it?’
    Metternich yawned. What was the old duffer on about? He was always the same when he sloshed that amber stuff down his throat. Why didn’t he stick to pond water and the odd slurp of gold top?
    ‘You’d have liked the Reverend Darblay,’ Maxwell assured his companion of an inch. ‘Like something out of Trollope, he was – and I mean that in the nicest possible way …’ Then the A-level essays caught his eye, sitting,