Authors: Priscilla Masters
‘And the Godfreys?’ she prompted.
‘As far as I remember he was a bit of a wide boy while she was typical of a woman who wanted her own way. I remember she was saying she’d have this changed and that changed and she didn’t like this. She was quite a picky person. She slightly irritated me. She seemed to want to change everything. Original fireplaces, central heating system, all the colour schemes, paint over the banisters. She would have spent a lot of money –’ he gave a deep sigh – ‘removing every single vestige of a period property. Ghastly woman. She should have had a newbuild.’
‘She wasn’t pregnant?’
‘Not that I saw. I mean it’s a long time ago and she could have been in early pregnancy without it showing but I know she wasn’t obviously pregnant. I can’t recall much detail now but as far as I remember this was how they struck me. Mr Godfrey had made a lot of money in a fairly short time and . . .’ He laughed. ‘His wife was going to make sure she spent it. He appeared . . .’ He paused. ‘Indulgent. Does that help you?’
‘Yes. Thanks,’ Delia said. ‘You’ve been really helpful. I wonder if I might trouble you for the contact details of Mrs Isaac’s family.’
‘It’ll take a while,’ Plumley said. ‘It was a few years ago. Can I ring you later?’
‘That’ll be fine.’ WPC Shaw gave Plumley her card. ‘These are my contact details. If I’m not there just leave the names and addresses on the answerphone.’
‘I will.’ Plumley stood up and shook her hand.
As soon as he got the phone call from Sergeant Shotton, Alex Randall sent Paul Talith round to number 41 to talk to the Sedgewicks and tell them that they were following a lead at their previous house in Bayston Hill. He would be interested to note their reaction.
Talith broke the news to both Sedgewicks in the now familiar sitting room.
Alice appeared composed. In fact she didn’t react at all, but sat, hands folded on her lap, a polite half-smile on her lips, looking around the room. Her husband, however, was incandescent.
‘A lead,’ he taunted. ‘What lead?’
‘I’m sorry but I’m not at liberty to reveal that, sir,’ Talith said, watching the man’s face carefully.
The careful politeness failed to improve Aaron Sedgewick’s mood. ‘That’s right,’ he flung back bitterly. ‘Hide behind bureaucracy, why don’t you?’
Talith didn’t rise to the challenge.
Aaron thundered on. ‘I don’t know why you’re hounding us in this way,’ he shouted. ‘My wife was simply the person who
found
this wretched body.’ His eyes bulged as he spoke the word. There was no sympathy for a tragic death or even for the impact it might have had on his wife. Aaron Sedgewick was, Talith decided, an extremely self-centred man.
Sedgewick ranted on. ‘There’s nothing at all to connect my wife with the child’s death. I shall speak to Acantha and demand that you stop persecuting us.’
Talith thought the word ‘persecuting’ a little strong but he kept his cool, a talent he was fast honing to perfection.
‘We’re being as quick and thorough as we can, Mr Sedgewick.’
‘So why have you come round today?’
‘Just to clarify some details.’
‘Clarify? What details?’
‘The patio, sir, that you constructed in the garden of your old house?’
‘What about the patio?’ Sedgewick responded irritably. ‘This is quite ridiculous. It’s just a patio.’
‘We’re only doing our job,’ Talith said steadily. ‘That’s all. Now. The patio? Did you build it?’
‘Yes I did,’ Sedgewick admitted.
‘Yourself, sir?’
‘Yes. Well, I had some help from a firm of builders that I owned back then but I did most of the work. Want something doing and all that.’
‘Can you remember exactly
when
you built the patio?’
‘It would have been around 2003 or 4. I know it was sometime during the summer. It was really hot and then suddenly it turned wet. We had the devil of a job trying to drain the water off so we could lay the flagstones.’ He eyed Talith. ‘I admit I built a patio,’ he said, mocking him. ‘It’s hardly a major crime. You don’t even need planning permission. So what of it?’
Talith kept quiet and watched Sedgewick’s eyes narrow as he stopped blustering and started to work out what was behind this trail of questions.
‘Why are you interested in a small building project?’
‘We’ve taken the sniffer dogs round there,’ Talith said steadily. ‘They are specially trained to detect long-decayed bodies.’ He waited. His inspector had taught him the value of a pause of the right length and in the right place.
Aaron Sedgewick was scowling like a troll.
‘Exactly what are you implying?’
Again Paul Talith waited for Aaron Sedgewick to realize where this was heading – which he finally did.
‘You think my wife buried someone under the patio?’
Talith gave a swift glance at Alice. Even though her husband had just spoken the most outrageous of sentences which involved her she was still sitting, staring in front of her, a fixed smile on her face.
Talith felt a shiver. This woman was not quite right in the head.
He looked back at Aaron. And right in front of Talith’s astonished eyes the colour drained out of Aaron Sedgewick’s face. For a moment Talith even thought he would pass out. ‘Sir,’ he said urgently. ‘Sir?’
Aaron stared right past him, as though seeing his own ghost.
He completely ignored the presence of his wife, muttering, ‘My wife. My wife? My wife?’
Talith could see no point in pursuing the questions.
Half an hour later he was relating the result of the interview to Alex Randall.
‘Honestly, sir,’ he said. ‘I thought he was going to drop in front of my very eyes. He looked completely shocked, as though he had suddenly realized something. All the fight was gone out of him.’
‘Did he actually say anything?’ Randall asked.
‘He sort of muttered, “my wife, my wife, my wife”, over and over again and she just sat there with this weird smile on her face. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was glad to get out of there.’
‘What do you make of it?’
They looked at one another, possibilities streaming through their minds.
‘Oh my word,’ Alex said slowly.
Martha rang Simon that afternoon and he sounded clipped and strained.
‘Hello, Martha,’ he said glumly. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m well. Thank you, Simon. You?’
‘The girls are making things very difficult,’ he complained. ‘They’re hell. They won’t even try and like Chrissi. They’re being so unreasonable. Do they want me to be alone for ever?’
She thought he was being a little dramatic. ‘Simon,’ she said, ‘hear me out.’
‘You don’t like her either,’ he said glumly.
‘I don’t dislike Christabel,’ she said. ‘I think she’s fine but lots of people find it hard when they’re suddenly left on their own after being married for a long time.’
‘And?’ She could sense the hostility in his voice. He was guarded, negative, suspicious.
‘Why not have her as a girlfriend. Why all this talk about being married? What’s all the hurry?’
The other end of the line went quiet.
‘It’s because you haven’t got used to the fact of being alone. I know, Simon, because I’ve been through it myself. You’re simply rushing for a swift solution.’ She paused. ‘It’s more likely to be a disaster than if you wait.’
More silence. Then: ‘Have you not been tempted to marry again?’
‘At first I desperately didn’t want to be alone,’ she said, ‘rather than wanting to marry a specific person.’
‘And now?’
‘Mind your own business,’ she said, laughing.
And after a brief pause Simon joined her. ‘I shall listen to your voice,’ he said.
Almost as soon as she had put the phone down Alex Randall rang her. ‘Just keeping you informed, Martha,’ he said. ‘We’re digging up the patio at Bayston Hill, the house the Sedgewicks lived in before they moved.’
‘Why?’ she asked bluntly.
‘The sniffer dogs became frenzied there this morning – over one particular spot. They’re rarely wrong, Martha.’
She tried to keep the pictures out of her mind, of a further body – or even bodies – being found in another property.
‘Keep me informed, Alex,’ was all she said, but he sensed that she was disturbed.
Tuesday morning
The team was assembled and arrived at the house in Bayston Hill at nine o’clock. To their relief there were no journalists and no more than a passing interest from the other inhabitants of the road. They’d offered to move Mrs Mistery to a hotel for a few days but she would have none of it. ‘Absolutely not,’ she said. ‘Miss out on all the fun? This’ll probably be the only murder investigation I’ll ever be involved in. This is my moment of fame. Go to a hotel? You must be joking. I’m staying put and what’s more, if some of my very dear friends want to come to tea, which I’m sure they will, I shall invite them.’
Hughes and his team looked at one another, shrugged and carried on with their work, certain that a steady stream of elderly ladies would be observing what they could through Mrs Mistery’s patio doors.
Luckily the ground wasn’t still frozen. The slabs of concrete were heavy and they stacked them neatly against the fence. It took them all day to remove all the stones and underneath was a concrete level, which would take all the next day to take up with the help of a percussion hammer. Hughes swallowed a smile as he saw a rim of bird-like faces watching him through the window. See what the old biddies made of the noise of that. The building work, he noted, had been done very thoroughly. By four the light was going. They set up arc lights (another disturbance for the inquisitive women).
At six p.m. there was a briefing with plenty to report.
WPC Delia Shaw related the conversation she’d had with Plumley. ‘I’m just waiting for his call back,’ she said, ‘with the address Mrs Isaac moved to when she left the house in The Mount. He absolutely insists that no one had an unaccompanied viewing at number 41,’ she added.
Talith related the odd behaviour of Aaron Sedgewick at the Mount the previous afternoon, then Randall picked up the threads of the investigation of what lay underneath the patio stones in Bayston Hill. Could the baby have been kept there and moved? Were there other bodies?
‘We’ll know a bit more when we see what SOCO unearth,’ he said. ‘They’re still lifting the patio as we speak.’
Plumley rang back just as Delia Shaw was putting her coat on. ‘I’ve got the details you want.’ He rattled off an address in Birmingham.
‘Do you have a telephone number?’
There was the sound of papers rustling and Plumley gave her a Birmingham landline. She glanced at the phone. It was seven o’clock. She was already late.
She dialled the number anyway.
TWELVE
A
man answered the phone and listened politely as she spoke. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘I had read something about a child’s body being found in a house in Shrewsbury but I had no idea that the house in question was my mother’s.’
‘Is there any possibility,’ Delia suggested tentatively, ‘that I could come down and speak to you about the property?’
‘Of course,’ he said, sounding surprised, ‘though I can’t see that I can help you in any way. You do know my mother died a couple of years ago?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘It’s OK. She was elderly. She didn’t suffer. Her last couple of years with us were happy. The children got to know her. No regrets. Anyway, I’m around tomorrow if that’s any good.’
‘Yes – that would be really convenient.’
‘OK. I’ll see you tomorrow then.’ He sounded buoyant, unconcerned.
Innocent, she decided. ‘About eleven?’
‘That’ll be fine.’
‘Thank you,’ she said and hung up.
At least, Delia Shaw thought, as she switched the light off and left the room, now she too would have some contribution to make to the case.
Maliciously Roddie Hughes started the noisy work digging up the concrete at seven a.m. the following morning and was rewarded by a sleepy looking Mrs Mistery drawing back the curtains and looking slightly less delighted at being at the centre of a crime drama. They had also spoilt her fun by erecting a screen right around the small patio which completely blocked her view. They did not want Mrs Mistery’s geriatric gang of mates witnessing their activities, drinking cups of tea, pointing fingers and generally mischief-making.
He and the team worked steadily, lifting the concrete until they had exposed the underlying hardcore, finally exposing the soil.
They had almost finished this task when Shotton returned, bringing Holmes and Watson with him. As soon as they were out of the van, the dogs scampered towards the patio, eagerly pressing their noses to the newly exposed earth. They concentrated their attention over practically the same spot as before, yelping excitedly, wagging their tails and waiting for their reward. The SOCO team looked at one another.
They had a hit.
The M6 was its usual nightmare and WPC Delia Shaw worried that she would arrive late for her appointment with the Isaacs, but in the event, with the luck of a sudden clearing of the traffic and the aid of her Satnav she pulled up outside their house only a few minutes after eleven, having left a message at the station to let them know where she was going.
Mrs Isaac’s son lived in a similar house to the one his mother had inhabited, a large detached Victorian property near the centre of Moseley Village, a stylish suburb two miles south of Birmingham’s city centre. It was an area with its own character, a village green, shops and cafes, both bohemian and cosmopolitan, reminiscent of Greenwich Village, New York.
Two saloon cars stood in the driveway and the door was opened to her as soon as she knocked. The Isaacs were ready for her. They welcomed her warmly into a large, cosy kitchen, bright with cream bespoke units and amply warmed by an Aga. PC Shaw thanked them for seeing her and reassured them that no suspicion fell on either them or the late Mrs Isaac. They sat companionably around a kitchen table, a cafetière of coffee supplying the dual purpose of scenting the room and providing refreshment. Paul Isaac was a tall, dark-haired man in his fifties. Rebecca Isaac was quite a lot younger than her husband, maybe in her thirties, Delia noted. She was also heavily pregnant.
Paul Isaac spoke first. ‘I really can’t see how we can help you.’
PC Shaw gave them both a disarming smile. ‘It’s a very puzzling case and we feel we would like to get to the bottom of it,’ she said. ‘We haven’t really got any substantial leads so we’re clutching at straws.’ Another of her wide smiles. ‘Hence the trip down the M6 to see you. So anything – absolutely anything that you can think of – even if it appears irrelevant to the case, might just be the tip we need.’ Her smile was returned by both of them.
Paul Isaac spoke first. ‘It’s difficult for us to think of anything that can possibly have any bearing on your case,’ he said. ‘It was about eight years ago now that we brought mother to live with us. She was getting a little forgetful, a bit frail and we thought it safer to keep her under our eye. The house in Shrewsbury is a big place. Far too big for her. She couldn’t really manage it, even with help.’
‘What help?’ WPC Shaw asked sharply.
‘She had a lady come in in the mornings for a couple of hours,’ Rebecca said.
Delia Shaw drew out her notebook. ‘Her name and address?’
‘Maisie somebody,’ Rebecca said vaguely. ‘I can’t remember her surname. She lived somewhere on Castlefields. I probably threw away her contact details years ago – after mother died.’ She glanced quickly at her husband. ‘But she can’t have had anything to do with a baby. She was well into her fifties.’ Her hands brushed her swollen stomach.
‘How did your mother-in-law find her?’
Again it was Rebecca Isaac who answered. ‘Through an advert in the
Shrewsbury Chronicle
. She advertised to do cleaning and mentioned that she was particularly happy to work with the elderly as she’d done some sort of nursing. She sounded ideal for Mother.’ She gave another quick, puzzled look at her husband. ‘She was wonderful. She did everything, cleaned and shopped and tidied up, did any errands, even drove Mother to the doctor’s or the dentist’s. She picked up her prescriptions and cooked her lunch. She did just about everything. She was a real treasure. A find. Mother was really fond of her. In fact, she was so good that when we finally brought Mother to live with us we gave her a cheque for two thousand pounds. In recognition of her help.’
‘Very generous,’ Delia commented.
‘Well – we thought a lot of her. She was a lovely woman and she made Mother’s life so much easier.’ Paul Isaac seemed to think something more was expected and added to his wife’s comments. ‘She was pleasant too. Always friendly. When we visited she cooked us meals and generally made us welcome. To be honest, we couldn’t have wanted anyone better.’
‘What about her family?’
They looked at one another. ‘I don’t remember her mentioning a husband,’ Paul Isaac said dubiously. ‘And I haven’t a clue whether she wore a wedding ring or not. She might have had a son or a daughter but I don’t recall anything about them. She didn’t talk about anything to do with her personal life. We certainly never met any relations of hers. It was all about Mother.’
‘Do you know if a son or a daughter ever visited her at your mother’s house?’
‘Not that we know of.’ They answered in unison without any consultation, Paul Isaac adding unnecessarily, ‘If they visited when we weren’t there we wouldn’t have known anything about it, would we?’
‘Quite. And the garden?’
Paul Isaac answered again. ‘A firm of gardeners came round. Greenfingers they were called.’ He chuckled. ‘A very memorable name. They came round one morning a week, once a fortnight through the winter to tidy up. They did the lawns, the hedges, maintenance. They weren’t cheap but they kept the grounds immaculate. Mother wasn’t short of money and she would have been upset to have seen the place fall into neglect, so it was money well spent.’
Delia copied it all down religiously without a clue whether any of it would prove relevant. ‘So you brought your mother to live with you in . . . ?’ She looked up enquiringly.
‘October 2002.’
‘Why then?’
‘She was getting older. Into her eighties. Oh, I don’t know,’ Rebecca Isaac said. ‘The world suddenly seemed to have become a more dangerous place, people a little more vulnerable, families a little more precious. I lost a brother in the Twin Towers attack. He was my only brother. I have no sisters. My parents are both dead. We felt. We both felt,’ she corrected, ‘that we wanted what family we had near. Paul is an only child. The winter was coming. Travel can be tricky. The motorways . . . well.’ Rebecca Isaac gave her a sudden smile. ‘We don’t need to tell you, Constable Shaw. You’ve come down it this morning. It’s a nightmare. If there had been a sudden crisis we couldn’t have been certain of arriving even using the M54. We didn’t want her to go into a home even if Mother would have accepted that arrangement.’ She waved her hands around vaguely. ‘This is a big enough place. Plenty big enough. We wouldn’t be on top of one another. Paul’s children had both left school to go to university. We’d had some alterations done for her so she had her privacy and dignity, her own bed-sitting room and bathroom. I was more than happy to cook for her and make sure she ate properly.’ She looked up. ‘It seemed the obvious thing to do. We were all happy with the arrangement.’ Paul Isaac glanced at his wife and they smiled at one other. The arrangement, it seemed, had worked for both of them.
Delia noted the term of affection Rebecca had used for her mother-in-law. She called her ‘Mother’. This gave her a picture of the deceased Mrs Isaac, of a warm, independent person, dignified, loved and elderly. She could have had nothing to do with the concealment of a baby’s body, surely? They belonged in different worlds.
She tried to retrieve something from the interview. ‘I know this is a long shot but can you think of any circumstance that a child could have been secreted in the loft while your mother lived at number 41?’
Both of them shook their heads.
‘No one ever went there with a baby,’ Paul said, ‘not that we remember. Or pregnant. Our friends and acquaintances would have gone to antenatal clinics and pre-birth exercises, parent classes. That’s the sort of world we belong to, Constable Shaw – not concealing a pregnancy and then a child’s body, being ashamed of it like that. It isn’t our way. It’s not civilized. Even if someone we knew was pregnant and didn’t want to be they’d simply go and have a legal and safe termination on the National Health Service or privately in a clinic. None of our friends or acquaintances would go through the trauma of having a baby away from trained midwives, doctors, pain relief, a hospital, a paediatrician. It’s too risky. But if by a long long stretch of imagination they had found themselves in this awful and frightening situation and the baby died they wouldn’t just hide the body. They would want it buried, have a funeral, mourn. It’s our culture, Constable Shaw. It wouldn’t make any sense. It’s just not the way we do things.’
WPC Shaw could see the absolute, unarguable logic behind his words. ‘Excuse me asking,’ she said, not even knowing why she was asking this, ‘but how long have you been married?’
Paul Isaac answered very stiffly. ‘Rebecca and I were married in 2000. If it’s got anything to do with you.’
‘I am expecting our first child,’ Rebecca said gently, putting her hand over her husband’s. ‘Paul and his first wife were divorced in the late 1990s.’
‘Thank you.’ Delia Shaw knew she’d lost a bit of face with her last question but now she’d alienated the Isaacs she felt that she should try to retrieve something more tangible from the interview even if it was in a misguided direction and distanced them still further from the truth. ‘Your mother’s house was obviously worth a lot of money.’
The Isaacs waited, looking vaguely affronted at the bluntness of the comment and a little wary.
WPC Shaw felt she was in pursuit. ‘What was the value of her estate when she died?’
It brought out the sting in both of them. Rebecca’s mouth tightened and she gave a swift, worried glance at her husband.
‘I can’t see what that’s got to do with your enquiry,’ Paul Isaac said stiffly.
WPC Shaw waited.
‘A little over two million in all.’
‘That’s a lot of money.’
Paul Isaac dipped his head.
Delia Shaw addressed her next question directly to him. ‘Your father?’
‘Died back in the 80s.’
‘What did he do for a living?’
The Isaacs exchanged a strained look and appeared even more uneasy. Rebecca Isaac started rubbing her fingers together with a soft, dry, rasping sound.
‘He was an undertaker,’ Paul Isaac said reluctantly.
PC Shaw was taken aback. She hadn’t expected this answer. She had a moment’s hesitation while she wondered what to do next. She didn’t want to go just yet. She felt she was on the verge of discovering something of potential significance. Perhaps she could still flush something useful out of this interview. She stood up, decision made. ‘Would it be an awful nuisance if I took a look at the rooms your mother inhabited?’
‘If you must,’ Paul Isaac said reluctantly and WPC Shaw knew now that any pretence of friendliness was over.
They wanted her to go.
The Isaacs had converted two large, sunny rooms on the ground floor into a sitting room with an electric adjustable bed in one corner and a walk-in shower and bathroom, everything made easy for the elderly lady. It was clean and had obviously been scrubbed and tidied since the old lady’s death, yet there was still that lingering scent of an elderly female. A little like fusty rose petals. Delia looked around for something which would give her a clue into the late Mrs Isaac’s character. She scanned the room and finally found it in the bookshelves. The late Mrs Isaac had been an avid reader of crime fiction. She found plenty of classics, Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie as well as a few surprises, Patricia Cornwell and Michael Connolly. A Val McDermid.