‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘Martha, I’m in my late forties. Christabel is twenty-three years old. She works for me. She’s a secretary for the firm.’
‘That is quite an age gap,’ she agreed. ‘But doesn’t love conquer all?’
For the first time that night Simon gave her one of his rare smiles. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not all. Armenia and Jocasta are absolutely furious. They’re calling her a gold-digger and all sorts of names. It’s tearing me apart.’
She was watching his face. ‘There’s something more to this than simply a man falling for a woman young enough to be his daughter, isn’t there?’
He nodded. ‘I’m frightened that they’re right,’ he admitted.
Martha waited.
‘It’s hard to say this without sounding a snob but she doesn’t come from the best of backgrounds. Her father’s in prison for a violent robbery. Her mother – well it’s hard to know, but just let’s say that Chrissie has never had any money and I think possibly she
Martha was watching him carefully.
‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I don’t care. I think it’s that that terrifies me. I don’t care if she’s just professing love for me out of greed or avarice and I don’t care that my beloved daughters loathe her. Nothing seems to matter any more except the time I spend with her.’
Now she was worried. ‘You
‘Yes. I wasn’t like this with Evie.’ His eyes held mute appeal. ‘What’s happening to me, Martha?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a whole lot of experience with stuff like this. I suppose most people would call it infatuation.’ She reached out and touched his hand again to soften her words. ‘Forgive me but it sounds like a middle-aged man having a crisis. Have the girls actually met her?’
He shook his head.
‘You’ve set up a meeting?’
‘Yes, though goodness knows what I expect to achieve through it. The girls have quite made up their minds. I don’t even know if it’s fair to expose Chrissie to their spite.’
Martha was shocked to hear Simon reject his daughters in this way. They’d lost their mother. He was their only living parent. She didn’t know how to tackle this without alienating Simon herself.
‘Simon,’ she said slowly, ‘it’s very early days yet. I mean…’ She searched for something to say. ‘Evie’s only been dead for a year.’
‘And ill for three years before that.’
She nodded, unhappy to cross this boundary into her friends’ personal lives.
Simon’s dark eyes met hers, appealing for her to understand this. ‘It isn’t just sex, Martha. It’s having someone young, someone light, happy, cheerful, healthy, beautiful to do things with. So alive. As you say poor Evie was ill. I can hardly remember her well any more. Only the shell of the woman she was.’
‘Simon,’ Martha said tentatively, sensing something else now, ‘what do you want from me?’
‘I want to marry Chrissie,’ he said, ‘and I want the girls to accept her. They’ll listen to you. Talk to them – please?’
‘Why rush into marriage, Simon?’
‘Because I want to,’ he said simply. ‘I love her and I want to be married to her. Please speak to the girls or they will lose me.’ She caught the set of his jaw and knew he spoke no more or less than the truth. At the same time she felt a traitor to her once best friend. Evie would have been desperately unhappy at this turn of events but she must help – do what she could.
‘I will,’ she said, ‘if you really want me to but it won’t do any good. I know your daughters, Simon. They take after you. They’re determined and stubborn. They’re very strong characters.’
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Meet Chrissie for yourself. Make up your own mind.’
She reached out and touched his hand. ‘Not that it will make any difference to you?’
‘No.’
‘And then?’
‘Speak to Armenia and Jocasta.’
‘And if I think Chrissie is what
He smiled then. ‘I can’t ask you to lie for me.’ He hesitated, frowning. ‘I suppose,’ he said finally, ‘what I’m asking you to do.’ He looked straight at her. ‘I’ve been lucky in business and I’ve shown some very perceptive judgements. I suppose…’ He laughed for the first time that evening. ‘What I’m really asking is for you to check her out. I do trust your judgement, Martha. And I think you’re fair. I want to know. Am I being a complete fool? Have I lost all sense and reason?’
‘You think I can judge that on a brief meeting?’
‘I don’t know what else to do,’ he said simply, ‘or who else to trust.’
So now as well as the problem of the newborn infant Martha had this complicated and potentially tragic case to consider and she didn’t know whether she was up to it.
She simply stared at Simon. ‘All right,’ she said.
SEVEN
Roddie Hughes and his team were still working their way slowly through the house, much to the irritation of both Alice and Aaron Sedgewick. They made no secret of the fact that they hated them being there but Hughes refused to be hurried. He was a thorough man and knew his job – inside out – and the Sedgewicks could go to hell and back for all he cared. They were not going to deflect him from his job. If there was forensic evidence in this house, which might lead to the truth behind the baby’s death, he was going to find it. Once he’d left the property the opportunity would be gone. There was no returning and checking, rechecking. Forensic evidence would be lost or discredited and whatever the finding of the post-mortem, Hughes knew that the house in general and the attic in particular was a crime scene so he was leaving no stone unturned.
It was in one of the upstairs bedrooms, a room that he’d left until almost last, and had planned for the most cursory of examinations, that he made an interesting and unexpected discovery.
Aaron Sedgewick was hovering at the door, watching him resentfully as Hughes stepped inside. The two men looked at each other and for the first time Roddie Hughes wondered what Aaron Sedgewick’s role was in this case. As the two men sized each other up, Roddie started to believe that Sedgewick knew a little more than he’d been letting on. He was somehow involved in the baby that had turned up at the hospital on Saturday night. How, even Hughes’s mind couldn’t work out except there was something. He could read it in the man’s eyes. Some sorrow, some duplicity. Something. Guilt?
He spoke first, after he had glanced briefly around the room. ‘This looks like a children’s room, Mr Sedgewick. Was it
‘No,’ Aaron said shortly. ‘As you’ve probably realized my son and daughter are in their twenties. We’ve been here for five years. Ergo,’ he continued, ‘they didn’t live here as children.’ He turned on his heel and left, muttering something down the hallway about interfering busybodies and why couldn’t they just be left alone?
Hughes glanced around the room again. OK, so why had this room, which looked as though it had been repapered in the last few years, been decorated for children?
Puzzled, Roddie used his mobile to call Alex Randall.
Randall listened without interrupting. When Hughes had finished he finally spoke. ‘That’s interesting,’ he said. ‘Very interesting. I’ll be round in an hour or so.’
Alex Randall sat for a moment, thinking, then he picked up the phone and dialled the coroner’s number. Jericho answered and did his best to wheedle the information out of the detective. But Alex wasn’t playing and asked to
