Maxwell's Point by M.J. Trow

Author:M.J. Trow [M.J. Trow]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749016760
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2014-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

He checked his son sleeping at the end of another long day. What milestones the lad had passed, what firsts, was impossible to say. As had become the pattern by now, Nolan spent the weekdays with Pam and either Jacquie or Maxwell would fetch him on their way home. Everybody at Leighford High knew which one it was because the contraption would be buckled behind Surrey’s saddle and Norman Westbury would pat it admiringly – ‘a little thing, but mine own’.

All was well. Maxwell checked his watch. It would be an hour before Jacquie was back from her particular chalkface. Time for a little M and R – modelling and relaxation. Lieutenant Landriani hadn’t really progressed in the last few days. He still only had one arm and the cigar in his mouth, though to scale, was an unlikely white. His horse had no reins and no crupper. How the man was supposed to guide him one and a half miles down the Valley of Death was anyone’s guess.

‘It shook them up, Count,’ Maxwell was in his modelling cap, light on, magnifying glass at the ready, pyrogravure heating quietly to his left. ‘Funny how these kids are such hard men until something like this happens, isn’t it? I saw Danny first. I didn’t think he’d crack so easily, but he did. Scott was a piece of cake, as predicted. Poor little bugger was in tears when I’d finished.’

Metternich was unimpressed. He’d seen it all over the years. His victims cried too – mice with wives and kids, shrews with so much to live for. You couldn’t let it get to you. They all had to go. He was a tom, for God’s sake. There were standards. Oh, all right, the ones he’d felt sorry for, he’d let go under a building somewhere, but there was a strict quota of these. And only on Thursdays. Otherwise, animals might talk.

‘They’d been larking about on the coastal path on their bikes. And, yes, it was them who’d trashed Mr Harris’s flower beds and one of them – Danny said it was Scott; Scott said it was Danny – saw something shining in the grass. At the Point, that is, not the Gardens. They went to investigate. This would have been, ooh, half six, seven, I suppose. Yes, I know – the time when they should have been doing their homework. Danny – or was it Scott – picked it up. Only it was stuck, so whoever it was pulled harder. And a hand came up with it. Chewed, Danny said, like it had been eaten. You and I, of course, denizen of the night, know it as rodent infestation. Now, now, no slavering. But it was Danny who went back for the thing, so I can only assume it was Scott who dropped it.’

He rummaged in his pocket and placed the object under the light and the magnifying glass. ‘What do you think that is, Count?’

The cat glanced at it, shining in the brightness.

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