Priscilla Masters: Frozen Charlotte

But now they had important work to do. It was not the time to tackle him.

They moved into the post-mortem room.

Even Martha could see that the child was a newborn, a neonate. Stripped naked this was easy to see. There was a stump of an umbilical cord. Blackened and shrivelled but quite unmistakable. Its head was still elongated from its birth. Its skin was dark and papery; the bones looked soft. They stood around and looked at it, the remains of a pathetic infant who had never had the chance to live either at all or for more than a few hours. And Sullivan was right. It was a little boy.

‘Well,’ Alex said. ‘Talith’s statement clearly says that Mrs Sedgewick called the child Poppy, and referred to her as a girl. Wrapped her in a pink blanket.’

The blanket was neatly folded to the side. In a forensic bag was another blanket, tattered and partly eaten by moths or rodents. They all glanced over at it.

‘Was it wearing any other clothes,’ Alex asked.

Sullivan answered. ‘No. Just that.’

‘No nappy, no Babygro?’

‘Nothing,’ Sullivan said again. ‘Which supports the theory that this is a neonate and died round about the time of birth. I’ve had a quick look at the blanket the baby was wrapped in. There’s some staining which I think is meconium.’

Alex looked puzzled. ‘Sorry? I wish you wouldn’t use these medical terms.’

‘When a baby is born the first motion it passes is meconium, the liquor or water it’s swallowed whilst still in the womb.’

‘Thanks,’ the detective said.

Mark Randall held his finger up. ‘And there’s something else,’ he said.

‘Our little boy wasn’t exactly perfect. He has a harelip.’

‘Really?’ Martha was again reminded of Precious Bane .

‘Yes. Look.’ He inserted a finger behind the shrunken lip of the infant so they could see a distinct gap.

‘Good gracious,’ Martha said then narrowed her eyes. ‘But you don’t die of a harelip, Alex.’

‘No. Nor of a cleft palate which he also had.’

‘So who is the mother?’ Alex asked.

Sullivan met his eyes. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is the million dollar question.’

The mortician measured the crown to heel length.

‘Obviously,’ Alex said a little stiffly, ‘the big question is whether the child was born dead or alive.’

‘Yes,’ the pathologist agreed.

Sullivan worked without speaking, examining the lungs in great detail, taking tiny pieces for analysis under the microscope and scraping samples.

Then he spoke. ‘The whole thing hinges,’ he said, ‘on whether the lungs ever inflated. It looks to me as though there has been some partial aeration. It’s very difficult as the body is in this state of decay. Suffice it to say that I can’t see any wadding down the larynx or any sign of suffocation. I can’t see any obvious trauma.’ He looked up, at Martha this time. ‘To be honest, Martha,’ he said, ‘because of the advanced decay of the child I couldn’t say with any certainty whether it was born alive or dead. I couldn’t swear what exactly happened in a court of law. All I can say for certain is that I see no evidence of infanticide.’

She glanced at the row of pots. ‘Would your tissue samples show whether the lungs had ever expanded?’

‘Possibly. I think the child probably lived for a few minutes. Its lungs are partially expanded. It looks as though the cord was cut but not properly ligatured and the baby could have bled and died, even from shock. The mother – or we assume the mother – tried to wrap it up in that shawl.’ He indicated the scrap of material. ‘Then she concealed it.’

‘Time scale?’ Alex asked delicately.

Mark Sullivan again looked dubious. ‘Again I can’t be absolutely certain – somewhere between five and ten years or thereabouts.’ He started peeling off his gloves. ‘And even then if someone said categorically that it was eleven years or even four years I couldn’t argue. Not with certainty. Was there any collaborative evidence,’ he asked hopefully, ‘newspaper wrapping or something?’

‘Not that’s been unearthed so far.’

‘And the lady herself, can she throw any light on this?’

‘I haven’t spoken to her yet but from what Sergeant Talith tells me she’s calling the child “Poppy” and seems to thinks it is her responsibility. I’m not even sure she’s quite sane.’ He hesitated. ‘Was the child moved at any point?’

‘No, I don’t think so. There’s no evidence of that.’ He glanced again at the pathetic remains of the child. ‘It probably stayed where it had initially been put, in the space behind the airing cupboard, somewhere warm and dry, which is why it has been preserved in this particular way.’ He untied his apron and hung it up. ‘And that is all I can tell you for now. He was a full-term infant. The X-rays will prove that. He was born relatively healthy and without any obvious defects. DNA will isolate his race but he appears Caucasian. I can’t tell you why he was not born in a hospital, as I can’t tell you why his corpse was concealed. His DNA should give us his mother and father, if we ever find them.’

Martha looked at Alex. ‘You’ve enough to go on?’

He nodded, apparently recovering from his initial state. ‘Plenty.’ He smiled at her. ‘We’ve got a few leads and, of course, the fact that it was found in The Mount. We should get to the bottom of this.’

‘Good. Then to work.’

Alex Randall returned to the station and met up with Paul Talith. They spent a while together and were ready by five o’clock to face the press and make a statement for the six o’clock news. It was always better to give the press a considered statement. Otherwise they tended to write their own story.

Randall spoke in a slow, clear voice, sticking to the bald fact that the body of a newborn infant had been brought into the hospital on Saturday evening.

It wasn’t going to wash.

The inevitable questions followed. Firstly from a ginger-haired reporter sitting right at the back, speaking loudly, so everyone heard his question.

‘I understand that a woman brought the child in to the hospital. Is there anything to connect her with the dead child?’

Alex Randall kept his voice steady and calm. ‘We are keeping an open mind but it seems unlikely.’

The next question, from a tenacious blonde-haired woman from the Shropshire Star he had also anticipated.

‘Did the baby die from natural causes, inspector?’

‘I’d rather not say at this stage in the investigation. There has been a post-mortem but the results so far were inconclusive. We are awaiting the results of further tests.’ This would buy them some time.

The ginger-haired reporter at the back again: ‘I understand the baby had been dead for quite some time?’

‘That is correct.’

The reporter looked up. ‘How long, exactly?’

‘It’s hard to be exact but a number of years.’

All eyes were on DI Randall. The reporter seemed to be staring straight at him, frowning. The next question was the one he had hoped would not be asked.

‘Why did she take the body of a child who had been dead for a “long time” to a hospital ? Why not just ring the police?’

Alex said again that he was not prepared to comment specifically but they could surely understand that the woman had been understandably distressed by the discovery.

The press then tried to badger him for the exact location. They could find it out fairly easily, but Alex trotted out the usual statement about respecting people’s privacy. He finished with a pledge that he would keep them informed of developments.

There was a lot of muttering and the press finally dispersed.