Free Maxwell's Grave by M.J. Trow

stuff will kill you, don’t you?’
    Toogood grinned sheepishly.
    ‘Oh, let me do that. For goodness sake. Men!’ and she ripped open his sachet before hurling its contents into his coffee.
    ‘Professor Fraser,’ he said, just about able to stir it for himself, ‘was concerned that Dr Radley had secrets.’
    ‘Secrets?’ she frowned in the middle of another swig. ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘I hoped you might know. How well did you know Radley?’
    ‘We were colleagues,’ she said. ‘Well, technically, he was my boss, but that wasn’t his style.’
    ‘You worked together?’
    ‘Only in the sense that we were in the same department. Tam actually appointed me.’
    ‘He seems to have appointed a lot of people.’
    ‘That’s what being an éminence grise is all about,’ she laughed, mopping her cleavage with the towel. ‘Tam knows everybody and everything. Oh, he’s a little out of touch now, I suppose. It’ll happen to us all.’
    ‘Was Radley secretive?’
    ‘Not that I know of,’ she shrugged. ‘Always struck me as being very pleasant. Up front, in fact.’
    ‘So, you didn’t know him all that well?’
    ‘Recently? No.’
    Toogood paused slightly in mid-stir. His years in the business had taught him to catch the odd nuances, the eyelash flutter, the change of tone. ‘Recently?’ He took her up on it. ‘You mean, there was a time when you knew each other better?’
    She put her bottle down. ‘What are you implying, Sergeant?’ she asked, an edge in her voice he hadn’t heard before.
    ‘Oh, nothing,’ Toogood hedged. ‘I just wondered how close you two were.’
    ‘I told you.’ She stood up, hanging the towel around her neck again. ‘We were colleagues. Nothing more.’
    Toogood scraped back his chair. ‘When did you see him last?’
    ‘Monday,’ she said quickly. ‘He had a lecture in the morning . I had some reports to write in the department. We had coffee.’
    ‘Did you go to the Valedictory bash?’
    She looked at him in an old-fashioned way. ‘That endless round of bitchiness? I did not.’
    ‘And on the Monday, he didn’t seem in any way…odd? Different?’
    ‘No,’ she shrugged. ‘Should he?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘I’m just trying to put together a picture of the man’s last days. It’s not easy.’
    She turned to go. Then she turned back. ‘Do you work out?’ she asked him.
    ‘Er, no, not really. Oh, a few minutes in the gym, when I can find the time. Why?’
    ‘Oh, no reason,’ she smiled, flicking him with the end of her towel. ‘Only I wouldn’t mind getting you on the mat sometime.’
    Now there was an offer Martin Toogood may have to refuse.
     
    Everybody knew the Quinton. Not because everybody had stayed there, but because it was typical of a certain brand of hotel you’d find anywhere in the country. The building was Victorian because Leighford was essentially a Victorian seaside town. The prints on the walls were sub-Constable, when they were not early Jorrocks, as though the sight of the English aristocracy thundering in pursuit of the uneatable was what every holiday-maker aspired to during their annual fortnight by the sea.
    The view wasn’t brilliant either. It had been, before they built the new Leighs Shopping Centre and the high rise of New Look and Waterstones and HMV that had cut the Quinton off from the sea. But it was the sort of place that visiting archaeologists stayed while digging in the area and it was here that Peter Maxwell found himself, in a corner of the bar, swapping pints and sob stories with DouglasRussell.
    ‘It’s good of you to come to see me,’ the archaeologist said. He sat hunched on the monks’ bench, looking far shorter than his six feet three.
    ‘I have to confess,’ said Maxwell, wiping froth from his upper lip, ‘to a certain ulterior motive.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Had you worked with Dr Radley long?’
    ‘Never met him before last month. No, that’s not quite true. Our paths had crossed