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FOR ABOUT TEN SECONDS, Rafferty's words shocked everyone into silence, but then a noisy clamour broke out. Charles Shore's authoritative bellow easily drowned the rest as he demanded, 'What the hell are you saying, man? Why should the boy kill Barbara? It doesn't make any kind of sense.'
'Oh, but it does,' Rafferty contradicted, raising his voice above the continuing hubbub. 'If makes the only kind of sense there is.' In the sudden resumption of silence after he had spoken, he was able to add softly, 'Doesn't it, Maxie?'
Maxie stared at him, with eyes that held more than a touch of his grandfather's hauteur, but none of the old man's strength of character. His mouth fell open as if he was about to defend himself, but his uncle told him to keep quiet.
Shore didn't believe Rafferty's assertion, that much was obvious. His gaze was alight with the inner fire that every boardroom battle probably produced. He seemed to have forgotten how much the dead woman had meant to him, and he immediately began to issue orders with all his natural pugnacity. 'Henry, get onto Hadcliffe.' He consulted his watch. ‘Tell him I want him here urgently.'
Rawley Hadcliffe, Rafferty guessed he meant; one of the smartest criminal defence briefs in London. And – with good reason – the most expensive. He gave one despairing glance at Llewellyn, but the Welshman was staring at him, a dazed expression on his face, too shocked by Rafferty's accusation to share his anxiety.
Of course, Rafferty reminded himself uncomfortably, as far as Llewellyn was aware, they had come to accuse Maxie's father of the murder. And so they would have done, Rafferty conceded grimly, until about thirty seconds ago, when his growing doubts, the smell of the glue, and the vision it conjured up as it flowed out of the tube, had made everything jell in his mind. And now, if the boy kept quiet till Hadcliffe got here, as Charles Shore had sensibly advised, his case would probably be destroyed. Hadcliffe knew every legal trick in the book; he would take a matter of minutes to discover that Rafferty's proof was all circumstantial evidence and seat of pants guesswork.
But Rafferty was sure he was right. He knew it, was as certain of it as he was of his own name. It explained so much, including the marigold clutched in the dead woman's hand, and the other, rare meadow flowers scattered all around her. One glance at Maxie was enough to convince him his assumption was correct. The boy's defiance was beginning to crumble; the fear of retribution was there in his eyes. Hadn't he virtually told Rafferty that day, after he had poured out his grief to his grandfather's portrait that, far from changing his life for the better as he had expected, his murder of his stepmother hadn't made any difference to his life at all?
Rafferty was surprised to see that Henry hadn't moved to obey Charles's orders. Instead, he continued to stare from his son to Rafferty, until finally his bemused gaze settled on the inspector.
'You think Maxie murdered Barbara?' he asked faintly. 'But...but, why? I could understand it if you were accusing him of murdering his real mother. God knows, her drunken outbursts have humiliated him in front of his friends almost as frequently as they have me. But he had no grudge against Barbara. He loved her, for God's sake. We all know he loved her.'
Rafferty nodded. 'I don't doubt it.' He glanced uneasily at the boy's ghastly pallor and suggested his father get him a chair. But Henry didn't seem to have heard him. He ignored him as he had ignored Charles, and it was Llewellyn who fetched the chair and pressed Maxie into it. Rafferty turned his attention back to the boy. 'That's what first made you think of killing her, wasn't it, Maxie?'
'Don't call me that.' The boy's voice was intense, his body jerky and nervous, like a horse ready to bolt. 'I told you, my name's Maximillian.'
'Very well—Maximillian. Isn't it true that it was your love for your step-mother that first made you think of killing her?' Rafferty repeated. The boy didn't answer, but his rapidly blinking eyelids provided answer enough.
'I don't understand,' said Henry. He ran his hand over his thinning brown hair distractedly. 'What is he talking about?' he asked his son. He shook off Llewellyn's restraining hand and pulled the boy out of the chair. 'You loved her as much as I did. I know that. Why should he think you killed her? Why?'
Llewellyn managed to loosen Henry's grip on his son and Maxie collapsed back in his seat, but still he remained silent.
Rafferty provided the answer. 'His grandfather's theories suggested it to him.' Briefly, he interrupted his explanation to give his sergeant a few orders. 'Llewellyn, get on the phone. We'll need a search warrant. And get Hanks and WPC Green out here. I think a woman's touch is called for.'
'A search warrant?' Charles protested. 'What the hell do you need a search warrant for?'
While Llewellyn got busy on the phone, Rafferty turned to Shore. 'I think if we search your nephew's room, we'll find your father's collection of theories.' He didn't tell him that Maxie had probably taken them from his mother's flat. 'It's my guess that your father hit upon the central idea behind his theory on success years ago, and his library backs up his ideas to the hilt, as young Maxie realised. His own autobiography, his youthful experiences and your own, Mr Shore, all say the same thing. If you want to be successful, first you must suffer a little. The suffering provides the necessary fuel, as it were.'
He walked around the room, allowing his fingers to run along the spines of the books. 'If you look at the books in this library, they're all about successful or famous people, people who suffered a particular tragedy when young. Adolf Hitler lost his father when he was fifteen, Abraham Lincoln lost his mother at nine, Henry Ford lost his mother at thirteen, Lloyd-George lost his father before he was two, Tolstoy, Twain, Bertrand Russell, you name them, they all suffered parental loss at a young age. This whole library is a testament to your father's favourite theory: that to suffer parental loss when young increases your chances of becoming successful.'
'But that's preposterous,' Shore protested. 'There must be any number of successful people who didn't suffer any such loss.'
'Oh, undoubtedly.' And any number of unsuccessful people who had, Rafferty added to himself. 'But, is it so preposterous? Especially to an impressionable teenager? Especially to one who not only felt he had unfairly lost his inheritance, but who had to suffer the humiliation of being a poor relation into the bargain; a poor relation that everyone seemed to despise. Think about it. Your father himself lost both his parents at fifteen, so did you, and, as I understand it, you're even more successful than your father was. Maxie's fifteen too, in case you've forgotten. I think he probably felt that, for this family at least, fifteen was a significant age. That's why—'
'I know how old he is, ' Shore retorted sharply. 'And I still don't believe a word of it. He hasn't the brains, for one thing.'
'He didn't need brains—his grandfather supplied those in his writings.' Rafferty could see that, in spite of his arguments, Shore's vehemence was weakening. As his glance settled on his nephew, it held a curiously cold light and Rafferty quickly took advantage of it. It might be the only chance he got. 'But perhaps I'd better give you some more evidence? I'm pretty sure it convinced Maxie, maybe it'll do the same for you?'
Rafferty took a few paces forward, till he was in the centre of the room. He looked silently round at the sea of faces and went on. 'It was my sergeant here who made me realise how strangely the law of averages worked in favour of such a theory. Of course, I made no connection at the time,' he admitted, with an apologetic glance at Llewellyn. 'He told me, right here in this room, just how many British Prime Ministers had suffered a similar loss. What was it, Dafyd? Up to the Second World War, about 63% of our Prime Ministers had lost one or both parents while still children or young teenagers. I seem to remember your telling me you'd read an article about it.' Pity he hadn't listened at the time, he thought. Another lesson for the future.
Slowly Llewellyn nodded. 'That's right, sir. It mentioned a book published several years ago, called "Parental Loss and Achievement". I believe I saw a copy on the shelves here. It suggested that bereaved children overcame their feelings of rage at being abandoned – as they saw it – by directing that anger in a purposeful way. It was a—now how did they put it? It was "a springboard of immense compensatory energy".'
'Exactly,' agreed Rafferty. 'Robert Maxwell had it, Lord Weinstock, Anita Roddick, Sir Phil Harris, and so on. And you'll find books about all these people on your shelves,’ he told Shore. ‘Who bought them?' Although Maximillian Shore Senior had undoubtedly bought the older books, he couldn't have bought the later ones, as he had died years before they were published.
His previous bellowing voice strangely subdued, Shore told him, 'Maxie. Maxie bought them.'
'That's right,' Henry whispered. 'And I gave him the money. He told me he thought learning of their early struggles would encourage him to persevere with his school-work. Now, you're saying that his real reason for wanting them was to increase his proof of his grandfather's success theory.' Shock had drained his face of colour as he turned and stared at his son. 'So he could bring himself to kill Barbara.'
It seemed he had succeeded in convincing Henry, at least. But instead of triumph, all it brought Rafferty was a feeling of sadness.
'But these people suffered a natural loss of their parents,' Charles Shore protested, his desire to wait for Hadcliffe evidently forgotten. 'They didn't murder them. Why should Maxie think that by killing Barbara he could also become successful?'
'I'm afraid you'll have to ask your nephew that, but it's my guess that he craved success so desperately, he was willing to take the chance.' Because he had no proof, he didn't add that he now believed Maxie had attempted another murder—that of his friend Tom Shepherd, and that Barbara had suspected it. His friend had pushed him out of the tree at Easter, deliberately, Maxie believed. He had a grudge against him; maybe he even wanted to test himself, to see if he was capable of murder, before he tried the important one, the one that would, as he believed, guarantee his successful future.
Rafferty could imagine that a strongly-moral woman like Barbara would have confronted Maxie over his wicked behaviour; she hadn't hesitated to take the powerful Charles Shore on. Suddenly, something else occurred to him. Barbara had been pregnant, Henry had said that no-one else in the family knew, but he couldn't be sure of that. According to Mrs Griffiths, Maxie had been at home the day Barbara had received the results of the test. What if he had overheard her ring Henry to tell him the news? What would Maxie's reaction have been? Would he have felt pushed out, rejected, angry at the thought of a new baby?
Mindful of his promise to Henry, Rafferty said nothing about this latest conjecture, but he was convinced that Barbara's pregnancy, the uncertainty of what she intended to do about his murderous behaviour towards his friend, plus the humiliation of the failure of that violence would, together, provide the extra push he would need to put his grandfather's theories into practise. Even if Barbara had decided to keep his wickedness quiet, she would have surely persuaded Henry to send Maxie away to school to learn some discipline—hadn't Henry said she had suggested such a course on the morning before she had died? Maxie would have hated that. The teasing he endured from his cousins, would be as nothing compared to the cruelty he would suffer, as a boarder, from the other boys. In many ways, he was a natural victim, and he knew it.
Of course, Maxie had never been a bright youngster. It was possible that he had completely missed the whole point of his grandfather's theory; that it was the grief, the sense of bereavement that was the essential factor. Though it was possible the boy had reasoned that his grief would be no less real for being self-administered. Of course, the fractured skull he had suffered when he had fallen from the tree could have caused unsuspected damage to his brain. It was well known that head injuries could cause problems months, even years later.
'You know,' he went on. 'I didn't connect Maxie with Barbara's death until Charles's son, Edward, helped me to see how he could have killed her. After that, the why just fell into place.'
Charles Shore stared at him. 'Edward—Edward helped you? How?'
'I'm sure it was quite unintentional,' Rafferty observed dryly. 'But when he used that glue in here just now, it not only reminded me of the river as it came out of the tube, but it also came back to me where else I'd smelt such an odour before. It was in your shed. The small outhouse by the Tiffey.'
He turned to Maxie, who sat with unfocused, staring eyes. 'I thought then it was just from an old Airfix Spitfire that was abandoned there, but you used it to stick the broken paddle of the canoe, didn't you, Maximillian?'
Still the boy said nothing, he seemed to have retreated into some kind of catatonic state, and Rafferty continued. 'You repaired the paddle with the glue so you could use it to canoe up the river to reach the meadow ahead of your stepmother and kill her. You could have reached there easily in five minutes—half the time it would have taken her to get there by car. Then, when you had returned, you broke the paddle again in case anyone should suspect you. How could you use the canoe, you must have reasoned? The paddle was broken. You even reminded your father, in my presence, that he hadn't replaced it, so I would know how long it had been broken, and that, in the unlikely event I would suspect you of her murder, you would have your alibi ready.
'It's funny,' Rafferty added almost to himself, 'but I remember noticing the day we found her body how straight the river was once it left Elmhurst, and I never considered it as a possible means of reaching the meadow. All I thought of was the road, and how long it would take to get to the meadow through those winding lanes from here or Elmhurst. To reach the meadow via the river would have taken only half the time, but, because I never took that into account, I dismissed you as a possible suspect almost straight away. You obviously cared a lot for your stepmother and you couldn't drive, wouldn't have been able to reach the meadow in time—or so I thought. But I was wrong, wasn't I, Maximillian? At least about the second aspect, though I agree with your father that you were genuinely fond of her. There would have been no point in killing her if her death caused you no grief. And then, of course, there were the flowers that were scattered under and around your step-mother's body. They puzzled me.
'Mrs Longman would never have ripped up the rare flowers that meant so much to her. So who had? It finally dawned on me who, and why. Firstly, you needed a reason to encourage her to come into the meadow, because as soon as she saw Thomson's tractor wasn't there, she would leave. So you waved a bunch of the wild flowers that you had just picked, to gain her attention, and when she challenged you, you carried on picking them. You weren't sure you would be able to overpower her, which was why you wanted her partly over-balanced leaning over, trying to stop you picking more flowers.'
Maxie raised his head. He made no attempt to deny Rafferty's accusation, instead, his gaze fixed on his grandfather's portrait. It was as if some communication passed between them. It appeared to give the boy strength. He turned to his father, his face expressionless, but his voice was filled with contempt. 'Mother's right, you're a failure, a nobody, a nothing. I wanted to be a success like Grandfather.' He frowned and after gazing thoughtfully at his grandfather as if for reassurance, he added softly, to himself, 'Perhaps I still can. Maybe it takes longer than I thought for the grief to work its magic?'
Rafferty felt the atmosphere in the room change. The tension was now a physical thing. Shore's powerful hands had begun to flex and unflex, as if he had Maxie's neck between them. His face was a colour kaleidoscope of deep emotions, and Rafferty, worried Shore's impressive self-control would fail him, wanted to get the boy out before it did.
Quietly, in a voice that was as calming and emotionless as he could make it, Rafferty told the boy. 'You're over fourteen, Maximillian. Over the age of criminal responsibility. You know right from wrong. The murder of your stepmother was carefully planned, premeditated, and I think the courts will agree with me. I must ask you to accompany me to the police station.' He glanced at Hilary Shore 'Perhaps your aunt will help you gather a few things together?'
'No!' Maxie's scream made him falter. Until now, Maxie had remained very quiet, whether from shock or disbelief at what was happening, Rafferty didn't know. But now, his matter-of-fact mention of practicalities seemed to get through to the boy where the previous dramatic re-telling of the murder had failed, and, as grim reality swamped the theories that had obsessed him for so long, he ran across the room to the portrait of Maximillian Shore screaming hysterically. 'Grandfather,' he begged. 'Help me. You've got to help me. It was your idea. I'd never have thought of it on my own. Make them see that I had to kill her.'
Appalled at the ghastly spectacle of the shrieking boy scrambling over the table to reach his grandfather's portrait, Rafferty could only stare helplessly at him.
It was Llewellyn who pulled the sobbing boy away. 'He won't help you, lad,' he soothed. 'Come with me now and get whatever you think you'll need.'
Docile now, as though stunned by the speed of events and the disproving of his omnipotent grandfather's theories, Maxie began to follow the sergeant. But as he passed his father, he clutched his arm in a pleading gesture, as if he had forgotten just who it was he had murdered. 'Father?'
If Maxie had forgotten whom he had killed, Henry hadn't. He stared, with a kind of horrified fascination, at the monster he had spawned, before, quite deliberately, he wrenched his arm from the boy's grasp and stepped back, leaving him utterly alone.
Blinking rapidly, Maxie swallowed hard, before turning to Charles Shore. 'Uncle?' he whispered. 'Tell him he can't do this to me. I'm a Shore. The rich can always evade the law. You taught me that.'
'But you're not rich, are you, boy?' Shore, may have managed to control his urge to physical violence, but his capacity to wound verbally was given full reign. His despised nephew had deprived him of his desire, and it made him cruel. 'You're not even a Shore,' he taunted. 'Your name's Longman and a Longman you'll remain. You gambled Barbara's life on a long shot and lost. Get out of my sight you mindless cretin, before I forget how much I have left to lose, and kill you myself.'
Maxie backed away, his face with its still childish curves, looked even more stunned at this latest rejection. He might be a murderer, but now he looked simply a pathetic child, a child seduced by dreams of wealth, and success, and power. As the family who had helped to twist his personality abandoned him, Rafferty experienced a twinge of pity for the boy. He managed to force it down and told him, 'As I said, you'll be taken from here to the police station.' He glanced at Henry, but couldn't bring himself to remind the man that Maxie was still his son and needed him. Henry had plainly had as much as he could take for one day. 'The state will provide you with legal representation, if necessary.'
He saw through the library window that WPC Green and Constable Hanks had arrived, and he gestured to Llewellyn to take the lad out to the waiting police car. Perhaps the housekeeper would be willing to bring along a few things for the boy later.
The gravel crunched and as the police car moved away, Rafferty caught a glimpse of Maxie's white face staring back at them. He looked frightened, bewildered, and alone, his body curled into a foetal position in the far corner. Rafferty sighed, and was relieved when the car turned onto the main road, and the boy's face, with its look of desperation, was whisked out of sight.
