Frozen Charlotte (21 page)

The man reluctantly shook his hand and Alex ushered him out of the interview room.

Minutes later he was speaking to Martha. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘What did you make of that?’

‘Two things,’ she said slowly. ‘He did put his finger on the pulse about it being a class thing but I’ve got a feeling we’re looking at this from the wrong angle. Let me think about it, Alex.’

‘And the other thing?’ Alex asked curiously.

‘He’s quite disdainful of family life,’ she said. ‘And again I’m wondering what bearing that can have had on this.’

‘Not very helpful, Martha,’ Alex said, smiling.

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘You know, Alex . . .’ She paused. ‘I still think he’s hiding something from you.’

He nodded in agreement.

‘Well, I shall have to speak to him myself later. I’ll get Jericho to give him a ring on Monday morning. What’s your next step?’

‘Speak to Dr Richmond,’ he said, ‘and I’m not looking forward to it. I think he’ll be a slippery customer – and on the defensive.’

‘Well. Time to go home for me,’ she said, ‘and hope Agnetha’s cooked the tea.’

Randall’s face clouded. ‘Yes.’

She picked her coat up off the chair. ‘Keep in touch, Alex.’

‘I will.’

She smiled. ‘Good luck,’ she said and left.

There was no point trying to get hold of Dr Richmond on a Friday evening, so Alex had to leave it to the Monday morning. He tracked his telephone number down easily enough in his private clinic and found him, as expected, in a defensive mood. ‘Dr Richmond, I believe you treated the late Alice Sedgewick?’

‘Late?’ the doctor queried sharply.

‘Yes. It appears she committed suicide on Thursday evening with a combination of alcohol and a fatal dose of barbiturates, tablets I believe you had prescribed for her.’

‘It’s correct,’ the doctor said stiffly. ‘I did prescribe barbiturates for her. She suffered from intractable insomnia and severe depression and as the NICE guidelines recommend benzodiazepines for this condition I prescribed them.’ He paused, mid flow. ‘I gave her strict instructions about dosing and told her that she was not to take them with alcohol.’

‘What was the cause of her depression?’

‘Come on, inspector,’ he said testily. ‘You know I can’t divulge that.’

‘You can with permission from the Medical Defence Union when it’s in the patient’s interest.’ He waited but the doctor was not offering anything more.

‘It’s possible the coroner might ask you further questions. I’m surprised that knowing of our involvement in this case you didn’t come forward and at least tell us she was vulnerable and having treatment from you.’

‘That too would have been divulging information.’

‘Did you consider her a suicide risk?’

Dr Richmond took a long time considering this question. ‘Not really,’ he finally said.

‘Even with the added stress of recent events?’

‘I haven’t seen her for a few weeks, inspector.’ He was being a little more polite now.

‘This is a private service. If she had
asked
to see me I would have seen her but she didn’t.’

‘Does that surprise you?’

For once Dr Richmond showed his human side. ‘Nothing my patients do surprises me,’ he said. ‘Patients are patients. Frequently unpredictable.’

‘Did she suffer from delusions?’

‘No.’ The doctor was insistent. ‘She was not psychotic – merely depressed.’

‘Thank you, doctor. ‘We’ll be in touch and you’ll be summoned to appear at the inquest, so might I suggest that you clarify things with your defence union.’

The phone was banged down. Alex listened to the dialling tone then rang the coroner’s office.

The first thing Martha had done when she arrived on Monday morning was to ask Jericho to contact Aaron Sedgewick. ‘I take it you heard that Mrs Sedgewick committed suicide on Thursday night?’

Jericho’s eyes brightened. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘It was on the local radio. Poor woman. First she ends up at the hospital with a dead baby. Next she tops herself.’ He risked a look at Martha. ‘Whatever will happen next, I wonder.’

‘Quite,’ she said dryly.

Martha had not been looking forward to this interview but it was unavoidable. Alice Sedgewick had apparently committed suicide and she needed to speak to her next of kin to ascertain the dead woman’s state of mind. She anticipated that considering his frequent business trips Mr Sedgewick would not be an easy person to speak to but he agreed to come to her office at 3 p.m. that afternoon. He was having a busy day, she reflected.

As was her custom she began the interview by offering her condolences. Sedgewick eyed her suspiciously but thanked her and sat down.

‘The evidence appears to indicate that your wife took her own life deliberately,’ she said.

As expected Sedgewick was immediately on the defensive. ‘You can’t know that,’ he said.

‘No,’ Martha agreed. ‘Without a note it’s difficult to know what goes on in a person’s mind, whether they simply want to sleep.’ She eyed Sedgewick thoughtfully. ‘Did your wife have difficulty sleeping, Mr Sedgewick?’

He appeared uncertain how to answer this question. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Yes – no.’

‘You know you’ll be expected to give evidence at the inquest speaking about your wife’s state of mind.’

‘Is that really necessary?’

‘Yes, considering she did not leave a suicide note which is the usual case. We need an explanation, Mr Sedgewick. At the moment we have none.’

Sedgewick’s temper burst through then. ‘All this has been stirred up by your lot.’

Martha leaned forward, her face firm. ‘Mr Sedgewick,’ she said, ‘get this clear. I am not the police. I am a coroner. It is my job simply to ascertain who has died, where they died and how they died. If this is not clear I shall have to give an open verdict. This is my policy when there is no suicide note and the death does not appear suspicious.’ She recalled Finton Cley’s words about the impact the suicide verdict had had on his family. ‘As far as is possible we would want to avoid an open verdict. It lacks clarity and finality. But neither myself or the police started this. It all began when your wife, for some reason still unknown to us, walked into the hospital with a dead child in her arms. A child who had been dead for a number of years and whose body had been concealed in your house. You understand that I must hold an inquest for the dead child too. It is another of my responsibilities, so I would like closure on that too. Now though we are fairly sure your wife was not responsible for the baby’s death, we obviously wonder what her state of mind was that she did this rather strange thing. Why didn’t she simply call the police? What was she doing up there anyway in the attic?’

‘She told you,’ he said furiously, ‘or at least the police. I was thinking of doing a loft conversion. She was simply inspecting the proposed site. That’s all. There is nothing in the least bit suspicious in that.’

‘No. But there is in the way she subsequently acted, Mr Sedgewick,’ she said and repeated herself. ‘I am not the police and they are not me. My role is simply to find out the circumstances surrounding the death of an unknown infant and subsequent death of your wife.’

‘You’re linking them together,’ he accused.

‘Naturally we are. What I want to know is what is this link?’

Sedgewick looked crushed and she continued, ‘Mr Sedgewick, we are truly sorry for your loss and regret recent events but you cannot blame us for this situation. We are simply trying to find out the truth. Do you understand?’ She met his eyes.

‘Yes.’

Martha consulted her notes. ‘According to the police your wife called this child Poppy.’ She looked up. ‘Do you know why?’

‘It was her grandmother’s name. It’s on her doll’s house.’

‘But why call a dead little boy after your presumably long-dead grandmother?’

‘Not a bloody clue,’ he said.

‘Further, she wrapped the infant up in a pink blanket.’

He frowned at her, his anger leaking into his eyes. ‘Pink. Blue. Has the world gone mad to focus on such things?’

Not the world, she thought.

A very disgruntled man left her offices soon after. She heard his car roar away just as Jericho appeared with a mug of coffee and a plate of chocolate biscuits. She smiled at him. Chocolate biscuits – on a china plate. He must know she was having a difficult Monday.

She was glad to finish work and drive home, even more pleased that Sukey and Agnetha had cooked that ultimate comfort food, shepherd’s pie. She teased Agnetha about making Swedish shepherd’s pie served with lingonberry jam which Sukey insisted tasted just like cranberry sauce.

Cranberry sauce? With shepherd’s pie?

Over tea Sukey eyed her and fidgeted and Martha knew she wanted to ask her something. ‘Go on,’ she said, finally putting her fork down. ‘Spit it out.’

‘They do a summer school in acting,’ Sukey said hesitantly. ‘It’s a bit expensive but apparently they start teaching you all sorts of useful things.’

‘What sorts of things?’ Like many people not in the profession Martha imagined one simply acted. How could you be taught it? It was surely simply a talent one either had or did not have. ‘Who are they?’ she asked. ‘Where is it?’ She wanted to ask, ‘and how much does it cost?’ but felt this was going a little too far in the interrogation and that her daughter would find it discouraging.

‘It’s a really good springboard, Mum.’

‘How long is it?’

‘A month – over the summer.’

‘And what do they teach you?’

‘I don’t know.’ She gave her mother a wide smile. ‘I haven’t done it yet. Methods, I suppose.’

‘Well, Suks,’ she said, ‘it seems to me that you’d better go to this school and find out.’ She smiled at her daughter, loving her enthusiasm. ‘Get me the details. Print them off the Internet and we’ll look into it together. What do you think, Agnetha?’

‘I think Sukey will make a wonderful actress,’ Agnetha said loyally. ‘She is a girl of so many talents.’ They smiled at one another.

‘Oh, Agnetha, we’re going to miss you when you go,’ Martha said. ‘You’re one of the family. How can you bear to leave us?’

Agnetha flicked her long pale hair behind her shoulders. ‘I want to be married, Mrs Gunn,’ she said. ‘I want to have children of my own and I hope very much that I have a daughter like yours one day.’

‘I’ll raise a glass to that, Agnetha,’ Martha said. ‘Well, here’s to you and your future, both of you.’

Agnetha and Sukey exchanged glances. ‘And yours, Mrs Gunn,’ the au pair said steadily. ‘What will be your future?’

It was a question Martha was unable to answer so she ducked it with a: ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’

It didn’t help that Simon rang very late that night. It was almost ten o’clock and he sounded upset. ‘Christabel’s finished with me,’ he said.

Martha switched the sound down. She had been about to watch the ten o’clock news. ‘Finished with you? Why?’

‘Can’t you guess?’

Unfortunately she could – and was proved right.

‘She couldn’t stand the hostility of the girls. Selfish little bitches.’

This one sure knew how to divide a family, Martha thought. Privately she felt that Christabel could have held back, bided her time. What was the hurry anyway? Simon had been widowed for a year. Why on earth did he feel he had to rush into
marriage
? The two girls had lost their mother not so very long ago. She couldn’t blame them for taking against another woman who was their age – and half of their father’s. Surely if she had really cared for Simon she would have waited and hoped that one day Simon’s daughters would accept her – even if the process might have been slow.

A thought struck her. ‘Simon,’ she said. ‘Whose idea was it to be married?’

‘Hers,’ he said shortly. ‘She’d had a boyfriend she was engaged to and he cheated on her. She said she felt insecure unless she was married. He persistently refused to marry her. I wasn’t going to tell you this, Martha, but she got pregnant, hoping he would marry her. He not only refused to but insisted if they were to stay together that she should have an abortion, poor girl. She was devastated. At about the time that I was feeling so vulnerable so was she. It was inevitable we should get together and comfort one another. The poor child.’

Something stirred in Martha, the smallest of understandings of a situation.

But she said nothing except: ‘Are you all right? Do you want to come round here? Drown your sorrows? You can stay if you want.’

He heaved a great big sad sigh. ‘Yes – no. I don’t know.’

She allowed him to be silent for a while.

‘No, I’d better not. I’ve already had a couple of whiskies. I’m probably over the limit. The last thing I want is to lose my driving licence. It’d be the last straw. I’d better stay here.’

She would have offered to drive across herself but it was late. She was tired and she didn’t want to push her attentions on him. Not for the first time she wished Martin was around. He would have jumped in the car, shared a ‘jar’ or two with his pal, talked over ‘varsity days’ and seen his friend through this dark hour which Martha believed would be shorter than Simon imagined.