Priscilla Masters: Frozen Charlotte

‘Do you know anyone called Poppy?’

‘No,’ Mrs Palk responded stiffly. ‘She has a daughter called Rosie. She lives in London. She’s a barrister. She’s going to be very angry about this. Most inconvenient. The publicity, you know.’

Paul Talith felt as though his head was spinning. Publicity? Inconvenience? Not exactly the words he’d have used.

‘Might it be an idea to ask Rosie to come and stay with her mother?’

Mrs Palk looked awkward. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. They’re not particularly close. I think Rosie will want to distance herself from this. Besides – I did mention that to Alice. She is vehemently opposed to it. She doesn’t want Rosie to know anything about this business.’

‘It’s going to be hard keeping it from her,’ Talith ventured.

‘Yes, I know, sergeant,’ she said impatiently. ‘But those are her wishes. We can only respect them.’

Talith heaved a long sigh.

‘Look – I have a suggestion. Let me take her to my house. I’ll keep an eye on her. She’ll come to no harm.’

Talith was frowning. ‘Does she have a son?’

Acantha Palk gave a smile. ‘She won’t want Gregory around. She adores him. He lives in Turkey anyway. Let her tell him in her own way.’

‘What about her husband?’

Mrs Palk’s face changed as though a storm had blown across it. ‘Aaron Sedgewick is a very exacting man,’ she volunteered. ‘Exacting and probably the most self-absorbed person I have ever met in my entire life. He will only mind about this if it affects him either directly or indirectly.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘I don’t know. Probably on some business trip abroad. Maybe Germany. He goes there quite a lot. If she doesn’t want him to know about this…’ She left the sentence unfinished, hanging in the air.

‘He’s going to have to know at some point.’ Talith spoke bluntly. ‘For a start we’re going to have to make a search of the house – if that’s where the body was kept.’

Acantha shivered. ‘I wouldn’t like to be around when he finds out. He’ll worry it’ll affect his business and he has a hell of a temper too. He can fling things around with the best of them,’ she finished dryly.

Talith shrugged. ‘She didn’t give you any idea how this dead infant came to be with her?’

‘None.’

‘Do you have any idea who the child might be?’

‘No.’

‘Does the name Poppy mean anything to you?’

Acantha shook her head. ‘Look,’ she said awkwardly, ‘I’m sure this has nothing to do with it but Alice and Aaron quarrelled over Gregory years ago. I don’t think father and son have spoken since. Alice goes over to see him for a few weeks every year. Mother and son have remained close.’

‘What did Mr Sedgewick quarrel with his son about?’

‘I don’t know. Something silly in all probability. At a guess it would be more to do with Aaron than Gregory. Aaron is a very forceful personality.’

‘A control freak?’

She smiled. ‘If you want to call him that – yes.’ She seemed to want to say more but pressed her lips together tightly, containing whatever she had been tempted to say.

‘I don’t want to sound unkind or patronizing,’ she said finally, ‘but Alice is a very ordinary woman, very much in awe, enthralled by her husband’s wealth and status and Aaron drinks this up like nectar. Alice’s world is husband, son, daughter, home – in that order. This is completely strange and out of character. I’ve never known her do anything bizarre like this before. She always seemed nice. Ordinary.’

Paul Talith was floundering. ‘Her daughter, Rosie, is she exacting too?’

‘Oh yes. A chip off the old block all right. She’s a high flyer – a barrister with an eminent firm in London. Alice won’t want any scandal near her.’

‘Right,’ Talith said. ‘Well, it’s already been a long night. I’m happy for Mrs Sedgewick to go home under your care.’ He fingered the spot on the top of his head where he was just beginning to go bald. ‘We’re going to need a psychiatric assessment and wait for the result of the post-mortem. And how all this came about I really don’t know.’

Acantha almost smiled. ‘It’s going to take some unravelling, I agree. But not tonight, sergeant. And if it’s any help I would stake everything on the fact that Alice had absolutely nothing to do with the child’s death or the concealment of its body.’

Both Talith and Roberts resisted the temptation to ask the obvious question: so what was she doing nursing the corpse?

They watched the two women leave the station with a feeling of unreality. Had these events really happened or had they been one of those inexplicably strange and disturbing dreams?

Sunday January 10th, 8.45 a.m .

Martha woke feeling troubled and couldn’t understand why for a minute or two. Then she remembered. Last night, Sukey had arrived home at eleven, driven by her friend’s father, as promised. Martha had been just about to go to bed herself when her daughter had ‘rolled in’, in a state that people describe delicately as being, a little ‘the worse for wear’.

Martha had always subscribed to the idea that youngsters should be treated liberally and make their own rules for ‘responsible drinking’. Goodness – she’d had a hangover or two herself. She’d never made a big thing about alcohol. Sukey and Sam had had sips of wine with meals from around ten years old. Neither had liked the taste so they had reverted to smoothies, fruit juices and Coke so Martha was a little disappointed that this social experiment had patently not succeeded. Cigarettes yes, she had made a thing about those. She’d watched too many friends struggle to stop the habit and read too many post-mortem reports on smokers to believe they were anything but vile, smelly and harmful, but she really had hoped that both Sam and Sukey would develop a mature and sensible attitude to alcohol. Have a drink without necessarily having to get ‘pissed’, ‘ratted’, or any other of the words which were usually accompanied by a giggle or two. So she had watched her daughter stagger up the stairs, clutching at the banister with a feeling of dismay and it was this that was hanging, like a dark cloud, over her this morning, even though she had her family all together under one roof. It was at times like this that she missed Martin most. She wanted – needed – to have someone to talk this over with. She could have done with his common sense and sense of humour. But he had died when the twins were three years old so she had to make the decision herself whether she should play it down, ignore it, or make an issue of it. She lay in bed and couldn’t make up her mind. She frowned at herself. She wasn’t generally so indecisive. If she couldn’t bring up her own daughter properly – well – there was no one else.

Sukey was coming up to fifteen and Martha sensed she had a few turbulent years ahead. She herself had been a high-spirited teenager but she had had to work so hard to get into medical school that she had had little time for high jinks. She had the sinking feeling that her daughter’s path through the teenage years would be different.

Lying back in bed she reflected that for once it wasn’t Sam who was the focus of worry and attention. Even allowing for maternal pride she knew her daughter was exceptionally beautiful with a natural, long-legged, fine-skinned radiance. Perhaps when Sam had returned to the Liverpool Football Academy she should spend some ‘quality time’ with Sukey before her daughter slid further along the path of womanhood. Now Agnetha was going they would be together, largely alone in the White House.

And now she had made her decision. She would ignore last night.