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

each other, but that was the way of it. Armed with Disraeli’s famous dictum about royalty and flattery and a trowel, Maxwell went to work with all the gung-ho of Alan Titchmarsh.
    ‘But what I can’t understand,’ he leaned forward, frowning, twisting his lips, the lost student at the knee of the master, ‘is why the old girl was frozen.’
    ‘She’d been kept in a deep-freeze, old boy,’ Astley was lolling back in Beauregard’s bar, the brandy swilling around the base of his glass. This was his second. Sleuthing was costing Peter Maxwell a fortune.
    ‘Froze to death, eh?’ Maxwell nodded, eyes widening.
    ‘I didn’t say that,’ Astley hedged. Should Maxwell buy the man a third or was his vanity enough to tip him over the edge?
    ‘No,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘No, you’ve lost me now.’
    Astley sighed. The man before him was after all only a teacher. What was it Bernard Shaw had said? Those who can become doctors, those who can’t, teach? Something like that. ‘She was poisoned, Mr Maxwell,’ he said. ‘Death-Cap, if I’m any judge.’
    Men like Jim Astley were judge and jury. Thank God British justice didn’t depend entirely on them. ‘Mushrooms?’ Maxwell blinked.
    ‘The knife was a red herring.’ Astley was leaning forward now, warming to his theme.
    ‘Knife?’
    ‘Yes … look, Maxwell, I mean,’ he was suddenly glancing around him, watching walls, ‘you do realize how utterly confidential all this is? I mean, you can’t use this information, you know.’
    ‘Of course not,’ Maxwell shrugged and folded his arms. ‘No, it’s just for my peace of mind, that’s all. After all, it’s not every night you find a body on your garden path. Tell me about the knife.’
    ‘Nothing much to tell,’ Astley shrugged. ‘It was double- edged, driven between her vertebrae. A downward thrust.’
    ‘Poison and a knife? What are we looking for, a schizophrenic?’
    ‘We aren’t looking for anything,’ Astley told him. He downed his brandy and snatched up the hold-all. ‘Unless of course you’re using the royal “we”, Mr Maxwell. Thanks for the drink.’
    ‘No problem,’ Maxwell stood up. ‘Perhaps we could have the odd game of squash, some time.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ Astley said. ‘I’m not sure we’re in the same class.’
    ‘Oh, I am,’ Maxwell winked.
    He finished his Southern Comfort as the good doctor swept away in a cloud of undiluted superiority. In the corner two tallboys were having a conversation about weight training, each of them in a lurid track suit with white silhouetted figures down the seams. The barman was drying glasses and puffing on a distinctly non-PC fag. Otherwise the place was deserted. Maxwell picked up his coat and made for the door. The corridor was dimly lit and echoed to his footfalls. He turned a corner and strode for the stairs.
    Perhaps he wasn’t looking where he was going. Perhaps he was too lost in thought over the forensic facts that Astley had thrown at him. Perhaps he really believed his head was harder than Beauregard’s brickwork.
    Perhaps Nostradamus had been right and the blackness that swept over him was indeed the Millennium night – the end of the world.

6
    ‘How are you feeling?’
    The voice was muffled at first, like somebody mumbling down a tube of rolled up carpet. The face too was a blur, a badly focused camera, a shadow of a shadow. It had long hair, he was sure of that, and smelt of a warm tent in the summers of his childhood.
    ‘Ow!’ Ever the master of wit and repartee was Peter Maxwell.
    ‘Steady,’ the voice was clearer now. ‘You’ve had a nasty bump on the head. Don’t get up too quickly.’
    He found himself sitting upright, his temples feeling as if they’d been squeezed through a mangle. There was a screen in front of him and a table with bloody cotton wool. A rather luscious girl was bending over him with a roll of bandage in her hand.
    ‘I’m not sure we’ll need this,’ she was saying.
    Maxwell