Maxwell's Mask by M.J. Trow Page A

shelf,’ she directed him, squeezing herself into the kitchen chair. ‘No, back. That’s it. Behind the muesli. Jane was more forthcoming.’
    â€˜Ah,’ he sat down opposite her. ‘I hoped she would be. Didn’t want to disturb you last night when I got in so late, but it’s high time some bean-spilling went on. Say on, oracle mine.’
    â€˜Max,’ Jacquie looked at him. ‘Miss Winchcombe was an old lady. Unsteady on her pins. Jane said there were a helluva lot of empties in her rubbish. She’d probably gone one over the eight, lost her footing at the top of the stairs and wallop. Broken neck.’
    â€˜That was the cause of death?’
    â€˜Well, we won’t know for sure, of course, until Jim Astley’s done his stuff, but it seems likely. Jane’s seen it all before.’
    â€˜And has she seen a corpse wrap itself in blankets?’
    â€˜How do you mean?’
    â€˜I mean, we have to rely in this situation on the less than spectacular witness skills of one George Lemon, who could thick for England, and one Anthony ‘Bed’ Wetta, known associate of every gang since Robin Hood and his Merry Men. George must have fallen over the old girl to come face to face with her as he seems to have done. I doubt whether a casual glance at a bundle of cloth would have quite so unhinged him as the sight apparently did. So George probably rearranged the blankets, at least by accident. God knows what Anthony’s involvement was and, ashamed though I am to confess it, I may have been instrumental in a little fabric dislodgement myself.’
    â€˜Old people frequently wrap themselves in blankets,’ Jacquie said, sipping her coffee. ‘Was it cold in the house?’
    â€˜Like a tomb,’ Maxwell nodded.
    â€˜Well, there you are. Huge great place like Dundee, living on a pension. She can’t afford to heat it, so she wraps herself in an extra layer one night. Gets a bit tanked up and a loose stair carpet and gravity do the rest.’
    Maxwell looked into his love’s cool, grey eyes. Was anybody out there listening to him? ‘The old girl was wrapped , Jacquie. Having fallen downstairs. Someone had carefully arranged the body – it doesn’t just happen that way. And then there’s Gordon Goodacre,’ he said. ‘Friend of the Arquebus, hit by a flying ladder on stage. Martita Winchcombe, Treasurer of the Arquebus, leaps, blanket-shrouded, to her death at the bottom of her stairs. Let me introduce you to a phrase that may not be in police procedural vocabulary – bloody enormous coincidence.’
    Â 
    Even routine departures have to be investigated. That’s what SOCO are for. Scenes of Crime Officers. Men and women. Old ones, new ones, some as big as your head. Giles Finch-Friezely sounded like he’d stumbled out of a PG Wodehouse novel, a Drone lost in the corridors of time. In fact he’d gone to a bog-standard comprehensive not unlike the one in which Peter Maxwell was squandering the last remaining years of his sanity and he’d got the scars to prove how awful it was in that situation to be saddled with a name like his.He’d toyed with doing the deed poll thing but, as he was built like a brick shithouse, had gone for the quicker option and battered seven bells out of anybody who so much as sniggered.
    That Thursday morning, while Peter Maxwell was pedalling White Surrey over the Flyover on his way to another dazzling day of intellectual cut and thrust, Finch-Friezely was crouching on the stairs of Martita Winchcombe’s house at Dundee, on the curve of Martingale Crescent.
    â€˜Bugger me,’ he muttered to himself, peering at the wallpaper and then at the banisters on the other side. ‘Blu-Tack.’

CHAPTER SIX
    â€˜Mrs Shiva.’
    A long silence. Then…
    â€˜Mrs Shiva?’
    â€˜Oh, for God’s sake!’ A dark brown voice shattered the moment. Deena was not