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

his eyes were clear and patient.
    ‘I told him,’ Lydia said, pointing to Stony Warren beside McBride with a quick jerk of her finger.
    ‘I know,’ the Inspector said, ‘but you’d be surprised how, if you repeat something, some little fact emerges; something you hadn’t mentioned before. It probably won’t help, but it might be something vital.’
    ‘All right.’ She drew herself up as though facing a walk to the gallows and closed her eyes. Only the cigarette twitched in her endlessly fidgeting fingers. McBride looked at Warren. The tape was running.
    ‘We were on a problem-solving exercise. We had to erect a shelter, a sort of survival hut thing, on the beach, from any bits and pieces we could find. It was to test the ingenuity of the group, I think. Anyway, it came on to rain and Alan and I –’
    ‘Alan?’ McBride interrupted, for the benefit of the tape.
    ‘Alan Harper-Bennet. We decided to run back to the centre. It seemed the obvious place. Gregory Trant was there too, although some distance behind.’
    ‘What made you take the side door?’ Warren spoke for the first time.
    ‘Er …’ His interruption threw Lydia for a moment, but she quickly regained her composure. ‘I don’t know. The rain, I suppose. It was bucketing down. It was the first door I saw.’
    ‘It’s down some steps, isn’t it?’ McBride asked.
    ‘That’s right. I half expected it to be locked.’
    ‘But it wasn’t?’
    ‘No. No. I opened it.’ Lydia’s concentration showed now in her face. If she were walking in her mind those deadly paces to the gallows, it was now she saw the noose for the first time. She blinked several times, her throat tightening. The WPC beside her saw the handkerchief tighten in the woman’s fist. ‘The door ahead of me was open.’ Lydia could see it clearly, her head cocked to one side, a quizzical expression on her face. ‘I remember … I remember there was water in my eyes. Rain. It stung. There was a pile of paper, still wrapped in ream boxes. And beyond them was … beyond them …’
    She felt the touch of a hand on hers. It was Stony Warren’s; and no one was more surprised than he that it was.
    ‘I … don’t really remember the rest. I do remember being taken past … it … along the corridor. Presumably Alan was leading me away. I think I screamed …’
    ‘… the bloody place down,’ Alan Harper-Bennet concurred. Miles Warren slouched in his chair, his own cigarette quietly burning in the ashtray in front of him. The blinds were down. The lights were on. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock in the morning and already it felt like midnight. Harper-Bennet was a solid, square-faced rugger player with sandy hair. He reminded Maxwell of the young Bill Travers before he had grown a beard, gone grey and got funny about lions. He didn’t remind Chief Inspector Warren of anybody, except of course a potential killer. The man certainly had the brawn. Shoulders like sideboards in fact. Games and Sociology loomed large on Harper-Bennet’s CV, probably in that order.
    ‘Tell me,’ MacBride said, ‘do you work out, Mr Bennet?’
    ‘I do,’ the teacher said, ‘and that’s Harper-Bennet, by the way.’
    McBride wrote something down and just sat there.
    ‘Why did you tell Miss Farr not to go that way?’ Warren asked. He hadn’t moved from his almost recumbent position, his eyes half closed in the artificial light.
    ‘What?’ Harper-Bennet shifted those massive shoulders.
    ‘When you and Miss Farr were running for shelter, when it started to rain, she was making for the side door, the one to the ground floor, and you said …’ For effect, Warren shuffled Lydia Farr’s notes. He didn’t really have to. He knew exactly what she’d said. ‘You said, “Not down there.” Why did you say that? Mr Bennet?’
    ‘Because it wasn’t the way in. Not the main entrance, I mean. And the name is still Harper-Bennet, by the way.’
    ‘But she ignored you?’
    ‘Yes,’ the games master