Maxwell’s House Read Free

it. With the wrong treatment, you can kill it.’
    ‘Somebody killed Jennifer Hyde,’ Hall said quietly. ‘We’d like your help to discover who.’
    ‘Yes.’ Diamond cleared his throat, embarrassed that his rhetoric had been flattened by the one irrefutable reality that was going to dog the summer. ‘Yes, of course.’ He rummaged in the out-tray on his desk and produced a shabby orange folder. ‘This is her file. My secretary dug it out for me from Mr Maxwell’s filing cabinet.’
    ‘Maxwell?’ Hall raised an eyebrow.
    ‘Peter Maxwell, our Head of Sixth. Or, more properly, Years 12 and 13 now, I suppose.’
    ‘May I?’ Hall leaned forward and took the thing. Inside was a thin sheaf of papers. Flimsy carbonized report forms that told the Hyde parents that Jennifer was a highly able girl, but that the recent exam results had been disappointing. Yellowing pages that gave her next of kin, her GP, her tetanus injection and her date of birth. Another, in the dead girl’s own hand writing, with its curious flower designs on the dots of the ‘i’s spoke of her hobbies at the age of eleven. She adored her pony she played netball and tennis. She had grade three piano and a cup for elocution. When she grew up she wanted to be an air hostess. Hall’s eyes rested on the update of that. In her GCSE year, the writing was finer, the spelling improved. There was no mention of the pony or the netball, although she was a member of the tennis club. She had persevered, with what resentment was unknown, with the piano and had reached grade five. But the mile-high club had been replaced by academe; she wanted to be a marine biologist.
    ‘UCAS?’ Johnson was reading over his boss’s shoulder, just one of his irritating habits.
    ‘Er … the new university entrance syndicate,’ Diamond explained. ‘It’s officially opening in September. An amalgamation of UCCA and PCAS.’
    The Inspector looked blank. They had initials run riot in the police force, but nothing like this.
    ‘Jennifer was applying to university?’ Hall checked.
    ‘I believe so. You’d have to ask Maxwell.’
    ‘Not much here.’ Hall closed the file. His own on the dead girl was already four times as thick.
    ‘No,’ Diamond agreed. ‘No, perhaps not. It’s difficult, you see. With nearly eleven hundred pupils, it’s difficult for my staff to compile a vast amount. Anyway, we don’t usually need it… I mean … well …’
    ‘What sort of a girl was she, Mr Diamond?’ Hall asked, his fingers pressed to his expressionless lips.
    ‘Oh, bright,’ he said quickly, confidently, ‘very bright. Yes, she’d have been good red brick. Not Oxbridge, I don’t think, although I understand she intended to try for it; but red brick, certainly.’
    ‘Popular?’
    ‘Very. Very. I was about to make her a prefect next year. Perhaps even Head Girl, if it weren’t for Heather Robotham.’
    ‘Heather …’ Johnson was writing things down in a little black book.
    ‘Robotham,’ Diamond repeated. ‘Father’s a doctor. Practice down on the front.’ The policemen nodded.
    ‘Jenny was a good girl, though. Able. Co-operative. She was something-or-other in Godspell last year.’
    ‘Boys?’ Hall let his fingers drop.
    Diamond frowned at him. ‘I’ve really no idea,’ he smiled. ‘You’d …’
    ‘… have to ask Maxwell,’ Johnson chimed in. ‘Yes, well, where do we find him?’
    ‘Margaret will let you have his address, although …’
    ‘Yes?’Hall said.
    ‘Well, I don’t think he’s here. I mean, he’s gone away.’
    ‘For how long?’
    ‘Quite a while, I believe. But don’t worry, he’ll be back by 19th August.’
    ‘How do you know that?’ Johnson asked.
    Diamond leaned back in his chair, patting his waistcoat complacently. ‘A level results,’ he beamed. ‘Peter Maxwell hasn’t missed those in twenty years. Ah,’ he reacted to the knock on the door. ‘Come in.’
    The mousy woman came in carrying a tray and assorted mugs, one of