speak directly to Martha.
‘She is in, inspector,’ he said disapprovingly, ‘but she’s very, very busy. The snow and all that.’
‘Yes, but I’d like to speak to her, please.’
Jericho was being at his most intransigent. ‘If you’d just like to tell me what it is, inspector, I can decide whether to interrupt her work.’ While smiling at Palfreyman’s Shropshire burr Alex was losing patience.
‘Will you just tell her that we’ve something of interest at the Sedgewick household,’ Alex said. ‘She might like to come and take a look.’
‘I’ll see,’ Jericho Palfreyman said pompously.
Two minutes later Martha’s voice came on the phone and instantly he could hear the suppressed humour. ‘Finally got past Jericho, Alex?’
He chuckled. ‘Yes.’
‘Now what’s all this about?’
He related Roddie Hughes’s discovery of a children’s room and instantly sensed her interest.
‘Do you know, Martha,’ he said, knowing he was playing right into her hands, ‘I think you should come round and take a look for yourself.’
‘Why?’
He laughed. ‘You’ll think I’m soft-soaping you or sucking up but it’s more to do with a woman’s intuition.’ Martha almost groaned. After Simon’s embarrassing revelation last night women’s intuition was not something she wanted to lay claim to.
But she couldn’t help herself. Her curiosity was overwhelming. ‘Go on, Alex.’
‘I just want your take on the situation. Besides -’ he was smiling as he pictured her face, eager and inquisitive – ‘it’d be a good opportunity for you to meet Alice Sedgewick yourself.’
‘But you believe she had nothing to do with the baby she took to the hospital?’
‘I know, Martha, but there’s something there. I may not be able to put my finger on it,’ Alex insisted, ‘but it’s there all right, deceit, concealment, something.’ He knew full well that her curiosity would get the better of her.
He was proved right. After the briefest of pauses Martha responded. ‘OK. I’ll be ready in a quarter of an hour?’
‘Thanks. I’ll come round and pick you up.’
She looked at the piles of notes waiting for her attention and sighed. She shouldn’t really be playing hookey. But she was very poor at simply sitting at a desk and working, hour after hour. Periodically she needed to leave it simply to maintain her concentration.
Twenty minutes later, through the window, she saw Alex’s car slide in beside hers and didn’t wait for him to run the gauntlet of Jericho again but went downstairs to meet him.
‘I thought you’d be in Spain by now,’ she jibed as she climbed in beside him.
‘I’ve asked the Malaga Guardia Civil to see if they can find a location for the Godfreys,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d better start there otherwise it could be a wild goose chase. They might be anywhere. All Roberts got out of Huntley and Palmers was a hotel address from five years ago. Apparently they were building their own villa. At first the Spanish police weren’t too helpful but when I told them it was a case of a dead child they were full of sympathy and anxious to help. You know what the Spanish are like about children,’ he added.
The throwaway comment brought a bitter pang to Martha. She and Martin had gone to Spain for a quiet, sunny week, early in March, years ago, when the twins had been almost one year old. She remembered the twin buggy and the scores of people who had stopped them to pore over the babies and tell them that in Spain twins were very, very lucky.
‘I have to say,’ she said as they drove around the ring road, ‘quite apart from anything else I’m very curious to meet Alice Sedgewick after all I’ve heard about her. She sounds so odd.’
‘Well,’ he said, pulling up, ‘your wish will be granted in minutes.’
The house was as she’d imagined it, helped enormously by having seen the picture in the newspapers. Once the reporters had sniffed out every available detail they had wasted no time filling their pages with the case. A photograph of the house, looking mysterious in the snow, had taken up a quarter of the front page of the
Number 41 was a stately, Victorian, mock-Tudor place, detached, with a short drive which led to a gravelled area right at the front. Two cars stood there and a large white forensic van.
Alex gave her a swift glance just before he raised his hand to the knocker. ‘Don’t expect Aaron Sedgewick to give you an easy time,’ he warned.
The door, however, was answered by Alice who looked even more wary than usual. ‘He’s upstairs,’ she said, presumably meaning the SOCO team rather than her husband. Martha decided she should introduce herself.
‘I’m Martha Gunn,’ she said in her precise voice. ‘I’m the coroner for this part of Shropshire. It’s my job to investigate the death of the child you brought to the hospital on Saturday night, Mrs Sedgewick. Inspector Randall thought it might be helpful if I came to the house to see where the baby was found.’
Alice regarded her silently for a moment then nodded, a sad smile contorting her face. ‘I don’t suppose I’ve much choice,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m learning that.’
Martha didn’t answer the obvious but smiled and shook her hand.
Roddie Hughes was waiting for them upstairs. He greeted Martha warmly. They’d met before and worked on more than one case together. ‘Before you go up to the loft,’ he said, ‘I just thought you might like to take a look in one of the bedrooms.’
They followed him through the open door and immediately saw what he meant. It was a small, square room, bright and sunny but with the chill of a room which is used infrequently – if at all. It was prettily papered in pale yellow with sprigs of lilac. It was a child’s room. There was a single bed in the centre. But what drew the eye was a beautiful doll’s house standing on a painted chest of drawers. It was a fine Georgian place, almost four feet high, three-storeyed, with sash windows. Over the front door was painted its name –
Confused, Martha glanced at Alex and saw that he was as surprised as she was.
Roddie Hughes spoke. ‘I found a couple more baby’s blankets and other such stuff in here,’ he said, pulling open the top drawer of the chest. ‘I’d lay a bet this is where she pulled the little blanket from. There’s more stuff. Toys and things, a rattle. It’s as though she decorated the room ready for a child.’
The three of them looked at each other.
Roddie frowned and scratched the side of his mouth. ‘Funny thing is,’ he said, ‘there’s lots of pictures of her kids, growing up around the place, but I can’t see any sign of the dolls house in them. This room was done up recently, four, five years ago, probably not long after they moved here.’
‘And there are no grandchildren,’ Alex said. Something twigged at the back of his mind. He had asked Aaron Sedgewick when they had moved in to number 41 whether any of the rooms had been decorated ready for a child. At the time he had been exploring whether the Godfreys had had children. Sedgewick had replied no. But this room was patently a child’s room. The Sedgewicks had only lived here for five years. So this room had been decorated
Back came the answer, whispering into his consciousness, clear as sunlight.
Was it possible then that Mark Sullivan had made a mistake about the age of the mummified baby? Was it after all connected with the Sedgewicks?
Randall had to force himself to recall. Mark Sullivan might have been a year or two out on the age of the child’s body but no one could possibly be mistaken as to its sex. The child who had been found in the attic had been a little boy. Not Poppy.
Another unbidden answer swam into his mind.
