Priscilla Masters: Frozen Charlotte

‘Yes?’

‘I wondered about moving the hot water tank. Then I noticed…’

‘What?’

‘I saw what I thought was a bit of old blanket stuffing up a hole. I thought there might be mice – rats even – so I pulled it out and it came out as well.’

‘That isn’t quite the story you gave the police,’ Acantha said.

Justin, very wisely, was saying nothing.

‘I’ve had time to think about it.’ Alice was more rational, defiant even. ‘Remember it properly.’ Acantha couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that her friend was defending something.

‘You must have realized there was no point in taking it to a hospital.’

‘I didn’t know where else to take her.’

‘How did you know she was called Poppy? Was her name stitched on the blanket?’

‘I don’t remember. There’s no point you pushing me. I don’t remember everything.’

‘OK,’ Acantha said resignedly. ‘But when you got to the hospital you simply sat there?’

‘I didn’t know the system.’ Alice was sounding aggressive now.

Her friend could have pointed out that she had had a broken night’s sleep as well as acting as both her lawyer and her guarantor so the least she owed her was a truthful explanation, but she had the feeling that if pressed Alice would hide behind the ‘I don’t remember’ explanation. It could be a very convenient way of avoiding the truth.

Acantha watched her drink her coffee, butter her toast, spread the marmalade. On the one hand she realized her friend was stressed and she must allow her some leeway. On the other hand she had been a solicitor long enough to know that when criminals couldn’t conjure up an explanation they frequently hid behind the excuse of a poor memory or amnesia.

Alice burst out suddenly, ‘Why do you keep asking? Why do you keep pressing me for answers, answers I don’t have. I don’t have the answers,’ she repeated. ‘You know that I was trying to work out the loft conversion and I came across…’

‘Yes, yes,’ Acantha prompted impatiently. ‘I know that but I don’t understand when you found the body why didn’t you just ring the police? And you -’ she looked directly at her friend – ‘haven’t even come near giving me a good reason.’

Alice looked confused and a little vulnerable. ‘There’s a lot I don’t remember and a lot I don’t know. I…’ It was as though the spark of an idea came to her. ‘I suppose,’ she said brightly, ‘I was temporarily insane.’

It all seemed a little too convenient. Acantha bit her lip, gave her husband a swift look across the table and knew his thoughts were very close to hers.

So she decided to press Alice. ‘Look, Alice,’ she said, ‘you may as well try and think up some answers other than that you don’t know, because at some point you’re going to have to answer all these questions to the police satisfactorily and if you can’t do that it may well be that they charge you.’

Alice looked alarmed. ‘What with? What on earth could they possibly charge me with? I haven’t done anything.’

‘I don’t know but I do know what the police are like. I’ve worked with them for enough years,’ Acantha said dryly. ‘They like answers, Alice, to their questions. Answers that make sense. And if they don’t get the right answers they get suspicious. It’ll be the worse for you, I can promise you, so you’d better start thinking and remembering.’

Her friend looked at her with dismay. ‘But I can’t remember.’

‘Can’t you?’

‘No.’ The two friends looked at each other and Acantha suddenly thought that though she would have called Alice Sedgewick one of her best friends she was realizing now that she didn’t really know her at all. She looked at her friend through new eyes. Her lawyer’s instinct was whispering to her that there was much more to this episode than met the eye. To her the entire story was unconvincing. Alice Sedgewick was holding something back. She could read it in her eyes.

Monday morning, 7 a.m .

Martha was woken by the alarm radio. She stretched out her hand to still it. She couldn’t cope with the news at this hour. She ought to retune it really so she was wakened by Classic FM or Radio Two but somehow she never quite got around to it. She had enough to think about. Work. Sukey to school. Another couple of days and Sam would be returning to Liverpool for a medical examination by the team’s doctor. Agnetha had offered to drive him back which suited Martha. She anticipated a busy week ahead with the poor weather. She expected plenty of slips and spills which in the elderly or vulnerable could so easily prove fatal. As a coroner she could never forecast what the week would hold and sometimes, on a Monday morning, she lay in bed for ten minutes and wondered, even sometimes tried to see into the near future. Hers was an interesting role, her job to tidy up after death. It wasn’t always possible and that was where her work could become difficult. But when she did ease suffering for the bereaved she could honestly say it fulfilled her.

Detective Inspector Alex Randall was at his desk by eight thirty a.m. A tall, spare man with a craggy face and deeply penetrating hazel eyes which normally were grave and serious, sometimes even a little sad. But occasionally they could light up with amusement and transform him into an attractive man in his early forties. He spent half an hour reading through Talith’s preliminary reports then put in a call to the coroner’s office.

Martha arrived at her office at a little after nine. And the first thing she noticed was that Jericho Palfreyman, her assistant, was waiting to ambush her, wearing what she called ‘that look’ on his face. A sort of suppressed excitement which told her some drama was afoot. He was a grizzle-haired man, Dickensian both in his looks and demeanour, even down to the habit he had of rubbing his dry palms together when intrigued. Jericho was one of those souls who had probably looked old from the age of thirty and hadn’t aged for the last twenty-five years. Martha simply couldn’t imagine him as anything but grey-haired, with slightly bowed shoulders which meant he usually looked up into people’s faces, giving him a slightly creepy look. He took a ghoulish delight in his job and squeezed out every last detail of sensational cases. His pleasure was exponentially increased if he learned of them before Martha so he was the one to inform her .

And this was just such a case.

‘Good morning, Jericho,’ she said and waited, deliberately not prompting him.

Jericho rubbed his hands together. ‘I’ve just had a call from Detective Inspector Randall, ma’am,’ he began then paused, wanting her to ask him what the inspector had wanted. It was a sort of cat and mouse game, a procedure he wanted to follow.

Martha sighed. ‘Yes, Jericho?’

‘He’s investigating a most strange and mysterious case,’ he said, pausing for a fraction of a second to extract the maximum satisfaction before he spilled the beans. As usual he spared Martha no detail, adding a few extra twirls of his own. ‘She’d wrapped the little girl in a pretty little pink blanket and then drove all the way to the hospital with it on her lap.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘On her lap, mind.’

She couldn’t resist a little leg-pull. ‘Really, Jericho, and how did they know all that?’

Jericho was unperturbed. ‘She must have done, mustn’t she, ma’am. I bet she didn’t have a car seat.’

‘Well, we’ll soon find out,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much for all that, Jericho,’ she said. ‘So the body is now at the hospital mortuary?’

‘That’s right, ma’am,’ he said. ‘They’re waiting to do the post-mortem. Detective Inspector Randall wants you to ring him the very minute you arrive.’