Free Maxwell’s Curse by M. J. Trow Page A

like the sword of Damocles, dangling over the edge of his coffee table. ‘Oh, all right!’ he shouted at them.
    Metternich saw his moment and slunk away. Once the old bastard picked up papers that was it – an hour or two of effing and blinding, all in the cause of scholarship, all for the sake of an A-level grade. And he heard him humming as he reached the cat flap, ‘One man went to mow, went to mow a module …’ The rest was silence and the nightly slaughter on Columbine Avenue.
    Beauregard’s was a little out of town, on the curve of East Hill beyond the station. Maxwell recognized it at once as the Leighford Institute, a solid block of Victoriana with a mock marble facade – built in the days of self-help as a library for the working man. That nice old picker-up of prostitutes, Mr Gladstone, was at Number Ten and beer was tuppence ha’penny a pint.
    It had changed somewhat now and a rather spotty youth peered at Maxwell from the Perspex anonymity of an entrance booth just inside the front door.
    ‘You a member?’ the youth asked with all the charm of a pit bull.
    ‘No,’ Maxwell told him. ‘I’m just sampling the place.’
    ‘That’ll be six pound fifty.’
    ‘No, no,’ Maxwell smiled at the lad. ‘Sampling the club, not buying the premises.’
    Either the spotty lad had heard them all before or he was a stranger to levity. ‘Six pound fifty, please,’ he said.
    Ah, the magic word. Maxwell was a sucker for Old World niceties and he coughed up. ‘What do I do?’ he asked.
    ‘Turn left through there,’ the lad pointed to the end of the corridor. ‘You’ll see what’s available on the wall. You’re not going swimming, are you?’
    ‘Er … I don’t think so. Why?’
    ‘No, it’s just that I gotta ask about verrucas and that; whether you got any.’
    ‘Well, I did have one an old aunt left me. Took it to the Antiques Roadshow a while back. But I put the damn thing down a while ago and can I find it?’ he winked at the lad. ‘You have a nice evening, now.’
    Maxwell perused the hearty things on offer on the huge notice-board at the bottom of the stairs. From beyond the double doors he heard the tell-tale squeal of trainers on polished floors and the erratic high-pitched thud of squash balls on walls. The odd ‘Fuck!’ reminded him of the appalling agony as that malevolent bit of rubber hit his own flesh for the first time years before, when the Cantab sports clubs beckoned. He turned left, past lockers without number where flab fighters hung their day clothes before doing battle with their chocolate addiction.
    ‘Well, well,’ he heard the voice before he saw the silhouette ahead of him, a towel round its neck. ‘Tripped over any good bodies lately?’
    ‘Dr Astley. It’s been a while.’
    ‘It has.’ The police surgeon sauntered into the light, considerably more crimson than when Maxwell had seen him last. ‘I didn’t know you were a member.’
    ‘I’m not,’ Maxwell told him. ‘Just heard about the place and was idly curious. You?’
    ‘Oh, a spot of squash. My club’s having a bit of a face lift at the moment, so I thought I’d give this place a whirl. Rather inferior, I think you’ll find.’ His deferential whisper rang down the corridor.
    ‘Is there a bar here?’ Maxwell asked.
    ‘I should bloody well hope so,’ Astley chuckled.
    ‘Well, lifting a tincture is about all my right arm can take this evening. Time for a drink?’
    ‘Mr Maxwell,’ Astley’s eyes narrowed behind his specs, ‘the last time we met, you thoroughly spoiled a little private evening I was having with a few friends.’
    ‘Did I?’ Maxwell was all innocence. ‘I’m most dreadfully sorry. Let me make amends by getting the first round.’
    ‘You were quizzing me then about a murder, I seem to remember.’
    ‘Was I?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘How extraordinary.’
    ‘What is?’
    ‘How history repeats itself. This way?’
    Peter Maxwell knew Jim Astley of old. The pair had never liked