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raised an eyebrow in a passable Dirk Bogarde, but Jacquie Carpenter was too young to appreciate it. ‘Should I be flattered?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said, still smiling. ‘You seem to have a habit of … getting involved, shall we say?’
    ‘I have been compared with Don Quixote in my time,’ he said, ‘and I suppose my old bike is the twentieth-century equivalent of Rosinante. The trouble is, the windmills. They just get bigger and bigger, don’t they?’
    ‘Tell me about Miss Goode,’ she said, the file on Ronnie discarded, the notebook at the ready.
    ‘I think you’ll find that’s Ms,’ he confided.
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘And I’m afraid I can’t tell you a great deal. She’s an NQT …’
    ‘A what?’
    ‘Aha, quite,’ he chuckled. ‘My sentiments exactly. She’s a Newly Qualified Teacher – a rookie in your manor, I expect. Been with us since September.’
    ‘Good at her job?’ Jacquie asked.
    ‘You’d have to ask Deirdre Lessing.’ It pained him to say it.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘You know,’ he smiled, ‘it’s quite uncanny how alike we are. Sadly, I do know the answer to that question. Deirdre is Senior Mattress – er … Mistress here at Leighford. In charge of girls’ welfare and distaff matters generally, She’s also Alice Goode’s mentor. Or is that mentress? I’m not sure.’
    ‘What was Ms Goode’s relationship to Ronnie Parsons?’
    ‘Relationship?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘I’m not sure she knew who he was. Leighford has over a thousand kids, Woman Policeman. Ronnie wasn’t taking English. Anyway, it’s not policy here to unleash NQTs on the sixth form.’
    ‘Not fair on the sixth form?’
    ‘Not fair on NQTs.’ Maxwell grinned. ‘Tell me, am I following the drift of this conversation right? Do you think that Alice Goode and Ronnie Parsons have … what? Eloped?’
    Jacquie Carpenter wasn’t smiling now. She just gazed steadily with those smouldering grey eyes at the smouldering grey old man across the desk from her. ‘We’re keeping an open mind,’ she said.
    ‘Do you know,’ he stroked his chin, ‘I remember seeing a painting of your sister in the Louvre a long time ago. Enigmatic to the last.’
    ‘How was Ronnie doing, at school, I mean?’ Jacquie Carpenter could change tack with the best of ’em.
    ‘No outstanding problems,’ Maxwell said. ‘Sinking a little in Bismarck’s Foreign Policy, but you show me a seventeen-year-old who doesn’t.’
    ‘Friends?’
    ‘A popular lad.’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Kicked a ball around with the lads at lunchtime.’
    ‘Girls?’
    ‘Nobody special, although …’
    ‘Yes?’ Jacquie Carpenter was very good at recognizing the un-finished sentence, the silence that betrays.
    ‘Well, I understand that Ronnie and Leila Roberts were something of an item a little while ago.’
    ‘She was the other sixth former on the trip?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Is that usual, taking sixth formers on a trip, I mean?’
    ‘Standard enough.’ Maxwell nodded. ‘It’s good practice for them. Leila’s thinking of going into teaching, so she’s clearly insane; but the practice’ll do her good. I don’t know who chose Ronnie – Anthea Edwards, I expect.’
    ‘We’ve already talked to Miss Edwards,’ Jacquie told him. ‘This should have been your trip, shouldn’t it?’
    Maxwell paused. His conscience sat staring him straight in the face. It had slipped a little from his sleeve. ‘Yes,’ he said levelly, the eyes dark, the jaw set. ‘Yes, it should.’
    ‘All right, all right,’ Maxwell slammed the glue down. ‘You’ve made your point, Metternich, now leave it alone, will you?’
    The cat glowered at him, sullen, resentful, but all the smugger for being right. Night had come to Leighford, all the better for being Friday night. The day’s rain had given way to a fine night and the half-moon played games of pitch and toss with the faery clouds. Maxwell leaned back in his attic hideaway and looked at the stars through his