Priscilla Masters - Frozen Charlotte

‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘She would have. But she didn’t. And I wonder why not. Out of loyalty to her friend, a sense of justice? Or I just wonder. It put her in a very powerful position over Aaron Sedgewick.’ She looked at Alex. ‘She might even have intended to blackmail him.’

‘You, Martha Gunn,’ Alex said, his lips twitching, ‘have a very nasty mind.’

She was unabashed. ‘So I believe. And in this job it has developed. But this does answer all your questions about Alice Sedgewick and her state of mind when she took the infant to the hospital.’

‘It certainly does,’ he said. Then paused. ‘I hate to put a dampener on this, Martha,’ he said, ‘but while it does explain all about Mrs Sedgewick, her state of mind, the attitude of her family, the pink blanket, the name Poppy, the fact that she returned to the hospital where she had “lost” her baby, it still doesn’t tell us anything about the identity of the dead child or how it came to be concealed in the attic of number 41 The Mount for somewhere between five and ten years. We know it can’t have been the baby that Alice lost. There never was any possibility that the newborn infant was Alice’s child. Not poor old Alice. With this letter we know that her pregnancy was terminated, something she was cruelly coerced into from which she never recovered. Certainly not her mental health.’ He stopped speaking, his face frozen and serious. ‘Is it possible that Alice abducted a substitute child which subsequently died?’

‘It’s possible,’ Martha agreed, ‘given her mental state. However I don’t really think that’s what happened.’

Alex was tempted to ask her again what was her verdict on the affair. What did she think had happened? Instead he forced himself to ask questions with more factual answers. ‘How did Acantha Palk appear to feel about her friend’s plight?’

‘Oddly enough I don’t really know,’ Martha said, frowning. ‘I don’t even know whether this was a surprise to her or she already knew that Alice had had a pregnancy terminated. Strange, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ He was silent for a moment then murmured, almost to himself, ‘So where does that leave us with this case? Whose was the baby?’ He searched her face, as though he would find the answer there.

Martha returned Alex’s long hard stare with one of her own. ‘You already know the answer in your heart, don’t you,’ she asked softly.

He laughed. ‘Do I? I don’t think so.’

‘Oh yes you do. What was it Holmes said?’ She smiled. ‘I don’t mean PC Shotton’s sniffer dog but the real McCoy. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.’

‘Go on, Martha,’ Alex prompted steadily.

‘Put it like this. It was never going to be anything to do with the Isaac family, was it? Apart from one tenuous connection. They already had their own children and didn’t live in The Mount anyway. They were on the edge of this but never part of it. I have a feeling that if you really delve into them money will be at their hearts. They strike me as avaricious people. You will find them guilty of some crime. They took their wealthy mother to live with them. No.’ She held up her hand. ‘I don’t think they would murder. It isn’t their style. It’ll be something maybe to do with duties or property. There will be some irregularity which your WPC picked up on, clever girl. Besides, look at it from another angle. An undertaker would never leave a body in an attic. Particularly such a tiny body. He would have ample opportunity for concealing a child in, say, a coffin due for cremation. It can’t be them and it isn’t them. The baby is not Poppy. Neither is it anything to do with the Isaacs.’

‘I agree.’

‘And now we know all about Alice and why she behaved as she did. Her mind was not robust after she was forced into having a termination when she had already built a bond with the child. It must have been terrible for her.’

Alex Randall looked at her intently. ‘What exactly are you saying, Martha?’

‘It’s a class thing,’ she said cryptically. ‘Now who was it who said that? It struck me as an interesting comment at the time. Now I see they couldn’t have been more right. It is a class thing.’

Alex was getting irritated. ‘You’re being just a mite too mysterious, Martha. I’m simply not with you.’

‘We took that comment the wrong way, didn’t we?’

DI Randall continued to be mystified.

‘It’s a little like when you look down the wrong end of a telescope. Instead of things appearing larger, they appear smaller. That’s what’s happened here. We were looking at the discovery of an infant’s body from the wrong end. Our little baby was not an unwanted infant. He was a very much wanted infant. But he wasn’t perfect so he died, probably very soon after birth. There was ignorance here, yes. But it came about through callous and cynical exploitation. Put it all together, Alex,’ she urged, ‘and you will have arrived at the truth. And by the way,’ she added, ‘when Mark Sullivan rang me with the findings of the post-mortem on Alice Sedgewick I did ask him if he would look up something else on the hospital computer.’

‘Anything I should know about?’

‘I think so.’

Baldly she related dates, times, details.

Alex took it all in without comment. Then he cleared his throat. ‘You mentioned I should have a holiday,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should go to Spain – again?’

‘Sounds like a good idea to me,’ Martha said.

He grinned at her, looking like a hopeful monkey. ‘I don’t suppose we could stretch the rules and you join me?’

‘Not this time,’ Martha said. ‘But perhaps before you go to Spain you might want to send someone round to pay a visit on… Now what was her name?’

Alex smiled.

As Alex had expected Petula Godfrey was not in the least bit pleased to hear that he had a few more questions to ask her.

‘What sort of questions? I’ve answered enough already,’ she grumbled.

‘I prefer to meet up with you face-to-face,’ he said calmly.

‘Look mate,’ she said tightly and now he could hear, almost taste, the panic in her voice, ‘this dead baby thing, it ain’t nothin’ to do with us. I haven’t got any kids. I have nothin’ to do with them. I hate the bloody things. I don’t like kids.’

‘We’ve been assuming, Mrs Godfrey, that the person who hid the baby’s body, also “didn’t like kids”.’ Alex remarked drily.

She came back quickly then. ‘When I say I don’t like ’em I don’t mean I’d bloody kill ’em. I know what’s legal, you know.’

‘Do you?’

There was silence from the other end of the phone. It was left to Alex Randall to wind up the conversation. ‘Well, thank you, Mrs Godfrey,’ he said. ‘We’ll be over some time tomorrow morning. Would you like to attend at Malaga police station or shall we come up to the house?’

‘The house,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not going to some ruddy Spanish cop shop.’

‘Till tomorrow then,’ Alex said politely.

When he got back to the station he spoke to WPC Delia Shaw. ‘I have a job for you,’ he said. She listened carefully, her eyes intelligent and understanding. ‘Yes, sir. And then…’

This time DI Randall did not take Gethin Roberts with him but Sergeant Paul Talith. He needed his thoughtful intelligence rather than Roberts’ obvious distraction with the flight delays, the poor accommodation and late food. Besides PC Gethin Roberts had an important job to do.

On the way over Talith was curious. ‘So why are you going over again, sir?’

‘Well,’ Randall said, stretching out his legs as far as he could. ‘We’ve excluded the Isaacs and Mrs Sedgewick is now dead which leaves Mr and Mrs Godfrey. They fit the time zone best anyway so we’ll focus our investigation with them.’