Frozen Charlotte (9 page)

Alex prompted her delicately. ‘You wrapped it up in . . . ?’

‘I had a blanket,’ Alice said. ‘A little baby’s blanket.’

‘Where did it come from?’

Alice’s face changed again to become secretive. ‘I just had it,’ she said baldly.

Oh, yes? Alex thought.

The change of tone affected Acantha too. She gave her client a long, questioning stare but said nothing.

Alex thought. Already he was tossing a few points around in his mind. He had seen the blanket. It was no more than a few years old. Alice’s children must be well into their twenties.

‘Have you grandchildren?’ he asked.

Alice shook her head.

So this blanket had not been bought new for them. So for whom? A friend’s child? Then why hadn’t she given it? He squirreled the questions away. Now was not the time to interrupt. He needed to let Alice Sedgewick roll on without working out too much detail. So he left the question of the blanket, knowing he would return to it later on in the investigation. In such a puzzle he needed an explanation for every single anomaly.

‘Do you know anything about the child, Mrs Sedgewick?’

Acantha opened her mouth as though to speak, but said nothing, only giving her friend an encouraging look.

‘No,’ Alice Sedgewick said.

‘You know nothing about a baby being born in your house?’

She shook her head.

‘Or anyone who has been to your house who was pregnant?’

‘Not that I can think of.’

Acantha Palk spoke. ‘Do you know when the child died, inspector?’

‘Not exactly. We have a rough time scale.’

He returned to Alice Sedgewick. ‘How long have you lived at The Mount?’

‘A little over five years.’ Which was well within the time line.

‘Where did you live before you moved to The Mount?’

‘In Shawbury. Aaron was employed by the RAF so we lived there, in the village.’

Alex frowned. ‘This was before he went into business?’

Alice looked uneasy. ‘I’m not really sure about my husband’s business dealings,’ she said. ‘I only know he does a lot of travelling.’ Alice Sedgewick looked positively guilty now.

Unexpectedly this was another fact to be tucked away. Something about her husband’s business dealings made Alice very uncomfortable indeed.

Alex consulted his notes again. ‘When you were in the hospital and the sergeant took the baby from you, you said the baby’s name was Poppy. Why did you assume the child was a girl and where did you get the name, Poppy, from?’

Quite unexpectedly Alice’s eyes pooled with tears. She was almost too upset to cry properly. This was sheer, terrible, sniffing misery. Alex looked helplessly at Acantha who was looking equally confused.

‘I think we’ll have a bit of a break now,’ he said, keeping back the ace card that the baby had actually been a little boy. There was no need to tell her – yet.

While they were having a break he thought he’d give Martha a ring. He’d always known that she was more than superficially interested in some of the cases which came before her, particularly puzzling ones like this. If she had had her way, he knew that the coroner’s role would have included wearing a deerstalker, carrying a magnifying glass and doing part of the investigation herself. In fact he couldn’t absolutely swear that on occasions she hadn’t done a little sleuthing herself. He’d always had his suspicions that she had met some of the schoolchildren in the Callum Hughes case before they stood in front of her in the court. But he had said nothing.

Martha was sifting through an even bigger pile of paper than usual. A cold January, swine flu and Norovirus had resulted in a doubling of her usual workload. She listened, intrigued, as Alex spoke. ‘So you’re saying that the name, Poppy, meant something to her?’

‘It would seem so.’

‘The child she brought into the hospital was a boy,’ Martha observed. ‘Kind of lets her off the hook rather, doesn’t it?’

‘I thought that.’

‘But you say the name upset her?’

‘Without a doubt.’

As she spoke Martha was scribbling herself a list of things to do.

‘One,’ she wrote, ‘find out who Poppy was.’

Underneath she wrote, ‘Pink blanket?’

‘You think there is a connection between this Poppy and the pink blanket?’

‘You’re rushing me, Martha,’ Alex said and she could tell that he was smiling.

She asked her next question very softly. ‘Do you think Poppy is a real child?’

Randall was reluctant to answer but he knew he must. ‘Yes.’

‘Alive or dead?’

‘Dead,’ he said.

‘Has the husband shown up yet?’

‘Not a sign – nor of either of her children. Mrs Sedgewick is having her wish granted that the family be kept out of this.’

‘So far,’ Martha said. ‘Does she have grandchildren?’

‘No.’

‘Have you asked her why she took a dead child to the hospital?’

‘Not yet. That’s on my list.’

‘How long have they lived there?’

‘Five years.’

‘Ah.’ He could hear the excitement in her voice. ‘And do you know who the estate agent was who sold them the property?’

‘Martha.’ Again she could tell that Alex Randall was smiling. ‘Stop telling me my job.’

‘Sorry, Alex.’ She waited a moment. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I was going to ring you today.’

‘Yes?’

‘I had another of those odd phone calls last night. You know, the “Message to Martha” one?’

‘I thought they’d died down.’

‘So did I. I hoped they had but it seems someone is still trying to make me uneasy.’

‘And does it?’

‘Not so much for me, Alex,’ she confided. ‘I’m made of tough stuff. It’s Sukey I worry about. It wouldn’t be so bad if Sam lived at home though . . .’

She didn’t want to say it yet. Saying it would turn it from a hope to a certainty. And it wasn’t.

Alex must have picked up on her reluctance to finish the sentence. He cleared his throat.

‘I’ll come round later,’ he said, ‘and talk to you. Is this evening any good?’

‘At home?’

‘Yes. Is that a problem?’

‘No. No. Look – why don’t you come to supper? Sam’s gone back to Liverpool so I don’t have a male to cook for.’

‘No,’ he said abruptly, almost rudely. ‘No. I’ll come round after supper if that’s all right.’

‘Fine,’ she said, a little hurt. ‘I’ll see you later then.’

She wanted to ask him how he was but the opportunity hadn’t seemed to have arisen so she said nothing but hung up telling herself he had sounded perfectly well in control.

Her eyes lighted on the framed photograph of Sam that stood on her desk and she smiled. He was so very like Martin. He had the lot, hair that always stuck out, irregular teeth, an absolutely wonderful smile which seemed to encompass all the good things in life. Sam’s smile was exactly like his father’s, slightly hesitant, tentative, completely open, very, very happy, 100% genuine and complex. Six months ago she had guiltily removed Martin’s photograph from her desk and placed it in the drawer. After all these years, she’d had to say goodbye to him as she had to his son only that very morning, and she was still feeling a bit shaken, a bit bereft.

Alex returned to the interview room, thoughtful after the telephone call. He could tell the two women had had a chat, exchanged confidences and he could also sense that Acantha didn’t know all yet. Her face still held questions and a certain amount of frustration.

Alex sat down. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You know, Mrs Sedgewick, that at the moment we’re not charging you with anything. We simply want to find out where the baby came from.’

Acantha spoke. ‘Was the baby killed or did it die of natural causes?’

Alex responded quickly. ‘I can’t give you any details yet. All will be made public eventually. Now then. Shall we crack on with just a few more questions?’

‘Why were you so upset at the name, Poppy, Mrs Sedgewick?’

She gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, fully in control of herself now. ‘It sort of brought it all back to me.’

‘Brought what exactly?’

Acantha answered for her. ‘I would have thought that was obvious. The discovery of the body – the entire incident.’ She gave a self-confident smile which probably stood her in good stead in her work as a solicitor but rather irritated the detective.

He continued smoothly. ‘I need to know which estate agent you bought the house through.’

‘Huntley and Palmers.’

‘The name of the people you bought the house from?’

‘Mr and Mrs Godfrey. They were moving to Spain, Aaron said. I think they’d made quite a lot of money.’

‘Did they have any children?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t remember.’

‘Were there children’s things around the place when you viewed?’

‘I didn’t view.’ She spoke baldly and with a hint of challenge in her tone.

‘You didn’t see the house before you bought it?’ Alex struggled to keep surprise out of his voice.

‘I didn’t see the house before my
husband
bought it.’

Practically feudal, Alex thought.

‘Did you ever meet Mr and Mrs Godfrey?’

‘No.’ Said almost sullenly.

‘So you’ve no idea how old they were?’

‘Sorry. Obviously no.’

‘OK.’

Alex came to a decision. ‘One last question and then you can go.’

The look of relief on Alice’s face was tangible.

‘Why did you take the baby to the hospital rather than simply ringing the police?’

‘I don’t know.’ It was at least an honest answer. ‘Instinct, I suppose.’

‘Instinct?’ It seemed an odd explanation.

‘It’s where you go when you’re in trouble, isn’t it?’

It was an explanation – of sorts.

‘OK. We’ll leave it there. Do you mind if we contact your husband?’

For the first time he saw Alice Sedgewick’s smile, the light of humour touching her rather sad eyes. ‘That’s two questions, inspector,’ she said archly. ‘But I’ll answer. As I’ve already said I don’t want you dragging him back from his business trip. There’s no point. There’s nothing he can do. However it so happens that he’s left a message on the answer phone to say he’ll be back tomorrow. You can speak to him then.’

Alex wasn’t even tempted to quip that he would look forward to it.

Martha found it hard to concentrate that afternoon. Her mind kept flitting back to the subject of the dead baby. Boy, girl, pink, blue. It had lain there, slowly desiccating over the years. Whose baby was it? Who was its mother? Where was its mother? How had it died? Why had it died? Had it been wanted or unwanted? A teenager’s embarrassment? A married woman’s shame? How could a baby disappear if the mother had attended antenatal classes? What was the story behind it? Who was Poppy? Another baby? Another dead baby? What was Poppy to Mrs Sedgewick? Why had the name upset her so very much? Why had she driven to the hospital with a dead child? What had really triggered this bizarre action?

Martha felt her face twitch with curiosity.

Somehow she managed to sift through a reasonable amount of paperwork and take a few calls from doctors which would save post-mortems and an overworked team of pathologists including the newly reformed Mark Sullivan. She spoke to some relatives who had concerns about the residential home their mother had died in and promised to look into it. By six she was ready to go home. Her desk was cleared except for one envelope and her stomach was rumbling. Agnetha had promised to cook supper, salmon, new potatoes and a fresh green salad. Martha couldn’t wait.

The supper lived up to expectations and a little over an hour later she was sitting across the room speaking to Alex Randall.

As she had surmised from the phone call he appeared a little better than yesterday. Still tense around the mouth but his dark eyes sparkled as he shook hands with her.

She poured them both a drink and he got straight into it.

‘This is the first contact your mysterious person has made since . . . ?’ He looked up questioningly.

‘It’s been months, Alex,’ she said. ‘I haven’t heard anything for ages.’ She smiled. ‘All quiet on the Western Front. But then there was the phone call and today this arrived in my post.’

He studied the typed address on the envelope:
Martha Gunn, Coroner, Coroner’s Office, Bayston Hill, Shrewsbury, Shropshire
. No postcode. Then he slipped on a pair of latex gloves and slid the card out. ‘It’ll have my prints on it,’ she said, apologetically. ‘I didn’t know what it was.’

Alex Randall studied the card. It was the sort of note one might leave on a colleague’s desk. ‘Martha,’ it read, ‘please pick up your messages.’

He frowned. ‘It has to be someone who has had dealings with you professionally.’

‘I thought that. But where would I start? I meet upset relatives, angry relatives, grieving relatives every day of my life. Plenty of them. By the very nature of my job I deal with unexpected tragedy.’