Maxwell's Revenge (17 page)

‘And then, finally, is the possibility that some warped sod gave it to him because they knew who he was.’

Maxwell compressed his lips and nodded. ‘I agree, Watson, that there is always that possibility.’ They sat in silence for a moment, holding hands. Then, Maxwell said, ‘Have you phoned Henry?’

‘He’s on his way home.’

‘Look, let’s have something to eat and then, when Nole is in bed and your mother is thumbing through
What Bride Already
?
or whatever her current reading matter is, we’ll ring him and see what he thinks.’ He lifted her chin with a finger and made her look into his eyes. ‘Is that a good idea or is that a good idea?’

She smiled wanly.

‘Well, madam. An answer if you please, or I’ll take me horsewhip to you, you strumpet.’ It was, all in all, an excellent Nigel Davenport playing George III circa 1979 and it was unfortunate that Ninja came in at that moment, but Maxwell’s timing was so rarely out that he allowed himself that one little mistake. He turned at her intake of breath. ‘Has he finished his dippies?’ Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

She pulled herself together. Her poor baby;
why had she never said anything? ‘Yes. He’s having a nice yoghurt.’

‘Nice yoghurt?’ Maxwell was perplexed. ‘Surely, they haven’t invented those, have they? About time. Well, I’ll take over now, Ninj. Have a sit down and chat to Jacquie. Aren’t there wedding plans to discuss?’ He beetled out of the room, knowing he would pay later, but it was worth it just to hear Jacquie’s little whimper as her mother pulled out the tablecloth swatches from her bag.

‘Hello, Nole,’ she heard him say, ‘yoghurt face mask, that’s the ticket. What say we go and have a bath?’

Betty Carpenter didn’t see much of her grandchild and her head turned at the sound of that. ‘Oh, Jacquie. That sounds so sweet. Can I bath him tonight?’

‘Be my guest,’ said Jacquie. ‘But take a big sponge. When Max says “we” he does mean it quite literally.’

Her mother blushed and Jacquie could have kicked herself. Maxwell could take it and it would perhaps have taken buttonholes off the conversational menu, if only for a while.

Nolan was tucked up in bed, sweetly smelling and chatting over the day’s events with his teddy and Metternich. Although her mother had protested loudly over the cat’s presence in Nolan’s bedroom, Jacquie had been firm. Metternich was not allowed in there as a matter of course, only when he and Nolan had stuff to discuss and, if ever there was a cat who wouldn’t sleep on a child’s face, then that cat was the Count. Far too uncomfortable. The nose, for one thing, would be bound to stick in somewhere and the dribble would mat his coat. So, the cat stayed.

Maxwell, meanwhile, no less sweetly smelling, was ensconced in his favourite chair and half watching the news. He liked this time of day and even the addition of Jacquie’s mother couldn’t spoil it. The architect had played a blinder on 38 Columbine. The evening sun slanted in through the windows of the first-floor sitting room and
gilded the walls and ceiling with mellow light and warmth. At this point of the year, where summer slid slowly into autumn, and the sun was lower in the sky, it fell on Maxwell’s chair and he knew how birds must feel, taking a sunbath. He let his inner lizard out to bask on his favourite rock. The hum of conversation from the kitchen, the faint witterings of Nolan through the monitor, all wove together and he was on the verge of sleep.

Then, suddenly and with no preamble, he was upright and kneeling in front of the television. ‘Quick, Jacquie, quick. Come here,’ he called. ‘Quickleeeeee.’

‘Good heavens, Max,’ she began, crashing through the door. ‘Whatever is … oh, my God. It’s Henry.’

And Henry it was, the DCI talking to camera outside a building that looked horribly like Leighford General. Maxwell had been woken by the sound of his voice.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ he was saying in his bland way. ‘I’m afraid I cannot comment at the moment, except to say that everyone should keep calm. There is no need to panic. There have been a few isolated instances of gastric symptoms which we are currently treating as suspicious, but we have no positive proof that there is a poisoner at loose in Leighford.’

‘Ooh, Henry Hall,’ breathed Maxwell. ‘I hope your fingers are well and  truly crossed.’

‘What has happened?’ Jacquie said. ‘How come the media are on to it? Why is he outside the hospital?’

‘To be on the safe side, however,’ Hall was saying, as if this was the most sensible remark in the world and by no means likely to cause panic and mayhem, ‘if anyone is concerned, it is advisable that for the moment, only food bought more than four days ago, or tinned items, should be used.’

This statement met with a barrage of questions from the cluster of pressmen and women around the DCI.

‘One at a time, please,’ Hall said. ‘In fact, I would prefer to just answer one more question before I go back inside. Yes.’ He pointed. ‘You. One question.’

‘DCI Hall,’ the cubbest of reporters said. ‘What alerted you to the fact that there might be a pattern of poisoning in Leighford?’

Hall looked at him for what seemed, in television terms, an eternity. Dead air. Finally, he swallowed and said, ‘Well, there had been previous incidents of which we were suspicious, including an incident with a child this afternoon which we were in the early stages of investigating. But,’ and here Henry Hall did a scary thing and took off his glasses, polishing them on a spotless handkerchief, ‘when I got home this evening, I found my wife in a state of collapse. Beside her was the remains of cake which she had bought
the day before. So,’ he said, in that same, bland voice, ‘if you could, as I said earlier, let me go back inside to be with my wife, I would be very grateful. Thank you.’ The blank lenses, polished to perfection, shone once in the lights of the cameras and he turned and disappeared through the doors of the hospital.

Maxwell sat back on his heels, exhaling for what felt like the first time in hours. Jacquie looked as if she was a small roadside-dwelling mammal caught in the headlights of an oncoming pantechnicon.

‘Max,’ she said finally, ‘what can we do?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It has to be Henry’s call, precious. If he needs us, he’ll let us know. I expect his boys are still home, aren’t they, or at least not back at college yet? Come here,’ he held out an arm and she subsided into it. ‘He’ll call, don’t you worry.’

‘But poor Margaret,’ she said. ‘I wonder how bad she is?’

‘I can’t make it out,’ Maxwell said. ‘Why did she collapse, not throw up or …?’

‘Die? I don’t know. Chummy must be using different things.’ She hated herself for using Max’s Fifties terminology, but somehow it went with the territory. ‘Max,’ she said, pulling away and looking up into his face. ‘How many different poisons could you name?’

‘Sweetheart,’ he said, with a smile. ‘Look
more carefully. To whom are you speaking? Is it a member of the public? No. Is it even a police person, completely immersed in traffic law and ethnic amelioration but little else? Nope, wrong again. ’Tis I, Peter Maxwell, doyen of crime and particularly murder, horrible for preference. I know poisons from the Middle Ages. I know thallium, I know strychnine, I know how to give your arse a nick. Ask someone else.’

‘All right,’ she said, hutching herself back into her favourite sofa corner. ‘Then answer me this. How do you go about
getting
poison?’

‘Well,’ he tossed an insouciant head, ‘clearly, the great white way, the internet.’

‘Aha,’ she said. ‘Gotcha. Because you, Peter Maxwell, couldn’t do that if you tried all day.’

‘Well, ha and I raise you that gotcha. I can, so there.’

‘I think that the internet as a source of dodgy things is very overrated. I agree that you could get Viagra and its ilk until the cows come home. There are sites with recipes for bombs and all sorts of things. But, as an amateur, and I think we agree that is what our man is, you can’t just put “arsenic” in a web search and come up with a shopping site where all you have to do is choose your poison, as the saying apparently goes, add it to your cart and check out securely using Paypal.’

‘Well,’ he had to agree and was also mightily
glad she hadn’t called his bluff, ‘you may be right. But if you have even a small knowledge of chemistry, I’m sure you can conjure up all sorts of dodgy stuff. I have never knowingly accepted so much as a Jammie Dodger from our very own Head of Science, for example. Take cyanide … no, I’m sure I can phrase that much better … in the case of cyanide, it is very simply made. It is also used routinely in pathology labs in various tests. Technicians have died of it, in the past. And aconite, the first one used. Do you remember …?’

‘The wolfsbane, yes I do. But surely, even with the plant growing in the garden, it doesn’t just become poison by picking it?’

‘Oh yes,’ said another voice. Ninja was standing in the doorway, drying her hands on a tea towel. She perched on the edge of a chair. ‘Some plants that we routinely have in the garden are deadly poisonous. Oh, my goodness, have you got rid of that wolfsbane at the back of the border?’ She looked poised for flight as if she would go and hack it down at once.

‘Yes, Mum, we got rid of it before Nole could even walk. The roots went down to Australia.’

‘Well, yes,’ she said, settling in to her subject. ‘It is related to horseradish and the roots are very long, I know.’ She chuckled. ‘Daddy and I had to do exactly the same in our garden when you were small. There was nearly a disaster, though. He
had been digging and digging and then hacked at the root with a sort of billhook thing. He got the sap all over his hands and then stopped for lunch and ate a sandwich. We weren’t so safety conscious in those days.’

‘Those days?’ Jacquie said, affronted. ‘How old am I, Mum?’

Maxwell pointed at her. ‘Welcome to the age of “In Those Days”,’ he said. ‘It’s all downhill from here, believe me.’

‘No,’ Ninja said, flapping her tea towel at him. ‘We weren’t, though, Max, were we?’

Jacquie threw him a glance and a kiss. It was a generation thing.

‘Anyway, Daddy ate his sandwich and licked the mayonnaise off his fingers.’

‘Gosh,’ Jacquie said, ‘had mayonnaise been invented then?’

‘Shush,’ her mother said. ‘This is important, isn’t it? I just heard on the radio in the kitchen about poor Mrs Hall. She’s quite poorly, I think. Anyway, where was I?’

Maxwell, honed on the granite face of Mrs B, was ready with the answer. ‘Many … no, sorry, some plants that we routinely have in the garden are deadly poisonous.’

Ninja looked at Jacquie. ‘How does he do that?’

‘I have no idea,’ she replied. ‘Useful, though, isn’t it?’

‘Well,’ the woman said, drawing herself up a little, ‘I hope his brain doesn’t fill up or anything. Then where would we be?’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Maxwell. ‘I give it a good scrub out every night. Don’t I, thing? Don’t I, thing?’

Ignoring him, she began again. ‘Some plants that we routinely have in the garden are deadly poisonous. Wolfsbane, as we said, is very
very
poisonous, with no need to do anything to it at all. The roots of Kaffir lily are very poisonous too, but you’d have to do something with those, to concentrate the nasty stuff, I can’t remember what it’s called.’ She mused for a moment. ‘Anyway, it’s very nasty and causes collapse, sickness, you get very drooly, if you know what I mean and,’ she pursed her lips, ‘you know.’ She nudged a distant elbow at Jacquie and nodded.

‘You get the shits,’ Jacquie explained.

‘There’s no need for that kind of language, Jacqueline, but yes, Max, she’s right.’

‘Thank you for the translation,’ he said. ‘We’ll take it as read next time. If there is a next time?’ He looked questioningly at Ninja. ‘Are there more?’

‘Loads,’ she said with relish. ‘I can’t remember them all and, of course, some of the poisonous ones are really quite rare, so you just don’t find them outside a botanical garden. But, hold on, here’s one I remember. Hydrangea.’

‘We’ve got those as well,’ Jacquie said. ‘And Mrs Troubridge’s garden is awash with them.’

‘Well,’ said her mother, ‘it’s the leaves and buds with those, I think, but if you ate enough you would sink into a coma. Let’s see … oh, yes, there’s the Swiss cheese plant. Do you remember Jacquie, when you lived with … oh, you know, nice boy, what was his name? Anyway,’ she hurried on with a glance at her daughter’s face, ‘he had a huge one, do you remember?’

Jacquie just raised an admonishing finger to Maxwell without even meeting his eye. He subsided without speaking.

‘It sat on the dining table, if memory serves. Well, that contains calcium oxalate, that I
do
know. It causes loss of voice. Then you get to the really nasty ones.’

‘Ninja, I must interrupt here,’ Maxwell said. ‘How the hell do you
know
all this?’

She smiled at Jacquie, the smile all daughters know. It is used in the application of A-Level guilt, but can be taken on to degree level in extreme cases. Jacquie’s mother had nothing less than a doctorate. ‘I spend a lot of time on my own, Max,’ she leant forward with a martyred smile. ‘I am a member of the Women’s Institute, the Townswomen’s Guild, the Soroptimists, the Stitch and Bitch Club and, of course, the Royal Horticultural Society. And before you ask, it was the WI that had the lecture
on poisonous plants. I
always
make notes.’

Maxwell threw her a look that contained at least some admiration. She was not his favourite woman, never would be, but there were certain points at which they very nearly met.

‘Max?’ She closed her eyes and held out her hand to him.

He chuckled. ‘Then you get to the really nasty ones,’ he said.

She smiled at Jacquie. ‘So clever,’ she murmured. ‘Anyway, to get on, because I’m sure Henry will be phoning soon.’

‘Hope so,’ muttered Jacquie.

‘Then you get to the really nasty ones. I can’t remember many of those but the two I
can
remember are really quite horrid. There’s the Jerusalem cherry – do you remember, Jacquie, Granny Carpenter used to give me one each Christmas and it was dead by New Year? Anyway, Max, I’m not sure whether you’re familiar with it, but it is a member of the deadly nightshade family and the fruit is very poisonous, causes abdominal pain, vomiting and all the rest. I can’t remember what the poison is called.’

‘Solanocapsine,’ Maxwell offered. He’d been to a good school.

‘No, dear, stop making it up,’ she admonished. ‘Then there’s oleander, which is such a pretty plant and that one really scared us, I can tell you. Every single piece of it is poisonous and can
kill you. Even, and this is the bit I think is very sneaky of it, even the smoke if you put it on a bonfire.’

There was a silence as her list of horticultural horror stopped.

‘So,’ Jacquie said at last, ‘basically, darling heart, you are right and I am wrong. You can get poison very easily on the net. Just type in Thompson & Morgan or Suttons Seeds and you’re away.’

‘It certainly looks that way,’ Maxwell said, standing up. ‘Ninja, dear, can you do us a favour? Can you babysit Nole this evening?’

Jacquie’s eyes widened and she also stood up. ‘Don’t you think …?’

‘I don’t expect there’ll be random walking parties in here, do you, my little cabbage?’ He turned to his mother-in-law-to-be. ‘Would you like Mrs Troubridge in here for company? I’m sure you’ll get on like houses on fire.’

‘Max, how thoughtful. I would love that. And thank you both so much for letting me mind Nolan after … well, you know. But might Mrs Troubridge not be busy already? It is Saturday night.’

A whole range of late-night activities flashed through Maxwell’s brain: pole dancing at Big Willie’s; sniffing lighter fluid on the Flyover with half of Leighford High; standing on the corner of Knocking Shop Lane earning her last five bob.

Jacquie shook her head as if she was reading his mind. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find her waiting for our call, Mum. I’ll just go and see, shall I?’ She went to the top of the stairs and crouched down slightly so that she could see through the frosted glass of the front door, one floor below. Sure enough, she could see the faint outline of Mrs Troubridge’s elbow, pruning, pruning, always pruning the hedge between their houses.