The Godfreys sat very close together on one, the two police officers a little less close on the other.
‘Graciela,’ Petula screamed. The maid scuttled in.
Randall took a good look. It was more obvious on this visit.
Petula rapped out some orders to the maid who scuttled back across the passageway. ‘Right, fire away,’ Vince Godfrey said, ‘and as I said, watch what you’re sayin’.’
Alex reflected that litigation had made policing twenty times more difficult.
‘Now what’s all this about?’ Godfrey was suddenly urbane.
‘Children,’ Alex said without preamble or explanation. ‘It’s about children.’
‘We haven’t got any,’ Vince replied truculently.
‘Why not?’ Alex asked mildly.
‘’Cos we don’t bloody well want ’em.’ It was Petula who had supplied the answer. She leaned forward, lit a cigarette and blinked.
‘You don’t want them or you don’t have them?’
‘We don’t want them.’
The maid came in, carrying a tray of cups and saucers, a big round teapot.
‘And yet,’ Alex said heavily, ‘you went to great trouble and expense in a clinic to have multiple courses of IVF which failed and also other procedures, I believe.’ He did not look at either of the Godfreys.
Vince Godfrey was quick off the mark. ‘Where do you get your information from?’
Alex didn’t answer.
Petula pinned him with a stare.
Graciela poured out the tea, her face wooden and impassive.
Alex drew in a deep sigh. ‘From 1994 to 2001 you underwent extensive investigations and procedures because you badly wanted a family,’ he said. ‘But the treatments were unsuccessful and in the end the doctors advised you to consider adoption which can take a long time.’
Vince Godfrey cleared his throat noisily.
‘Shall I continue?’
Petula Godfrey was watching his face, mesmerized, as she lifted the teacup to her lips.
‘How am I doing?’
The question remained unanswered so Alex continued, ‘In 2002 in response to an advertisement you placed on the Internet a young lady from Poland came to live with you. Her name is Celestyna Zawadzki. She was seventeen years old.’ Alex kept his eyes on Petula Godfrey. She had gone chalk-white. In contrast her husband, he noticed with interest, had gone a deep, dusky red.
‘The reason that you couldn’t have children was to do with your wife, wasn’t it? You were OK. You’d been told that.’ Randall made an inspired guess. ‘You have a child from another relationship, don’t you?’
Without looking at his wife Vince gave a heavy nod.
Randall continued. ‘So you impregnated Celestyna Zawadzki; she bore your child. You were to pay her money.’
Vince had almost shrunk into his chair.
‘The trouble was that you were worried the authorities would home in on you, accuse you of coercion and so you neglected to take Celestyna to antenatal clinics or for any medical check-ups at all. But even there you struck lucky, didn’t you? You’d kept on Maisie Stokes who had nursed the old Mrs Isaac and Maisie Stokes had worked for a few years as a midwife. For a small consideration she was perfectly happy to supervise Celestyna’s antenatal care and perform the delivery. Celestyna was an ignorant girl. As far as she was concerned she was getting Rolls Royce treatment.’ He looked at Petula. ‘One of my WPCs has taken a statement from Maisie Stokes this very day, Mrs Godfrey. There isn’t any point you denying it. We knew someone like that had to be the mother of that little boy. What we didn’t understand was that there was also exploitation of the most wicked and callous kind.’
‘I don’t…’ Vince started and stopped abruptly, seeing the disgust on the detective’s face.
‘You kept Celestyna a virtual prisoner at your house and when she went into labour you gave her no medical attention. Unfortunately for you – and for her finances – the baby was not perfect.’ He gave Petula a quick glance. ‘I can’t see you pushing a Silver Cross pram around with the baby inside who had a harelip.’ He gave her a straight stare. ‘And so the baby died, didn’t it?’
‘I’m sayin’ nothin’,’ Vince said.
Graciela scuttled in with a second pot of tea. Alex gave her a sharp scrutiny.
‘Now you were left in a dilemma, weren’t you? You had a dead baby, a boy whom you just wanted to get rid of and still no child of your own. And of course Petula likes to get her own way. She still wanted a baby. So you sent Celestyna Zawadzki back to Poland, telling her she hadn’t fulfilled her end of the bargain. You paid her fare and you hid the body of the baby upstairs, in the loft.’
Vince and Petula watched, frozen.
‘And then,’ Alex said, ‘you came to Spain.’
SEVENTEEN
He rang Martha from the airport. ‘We got the name of the girl from Maisie Stokes,’ he said. ‘Celestyna Zawadzki. But all she could tell us was that she was from Poland. Tracking Celestyna down might be a little more difficult.’ He chuckled. ‘This is turning into an international affair,’ he said. ‘I just might get a trip to Poland out of it too.’
‘Good luck,’ she said. She didn’t dare add, So what now?
Interpol agreed to help search for Celestyna and using passport controls and work permits they finally found her living in a small town just north of Krakow. Initially Alex rang her up. Her English was good but she wanted nothing to do with what had been an unhappy episode in her life. ‘They told me the child would not live,’ she said, ‘that it’s mouth was somehow not normal and it would not be able to feed. They told me this.’
Who knew what the truth was.
‘I am married now with a child of my own. My husband knows nothing of my past or of my baby who died.’
‘He was born alive?’
‘With a weak cry. I knew at once that something was wrong.’
Alex related the conversation back to Martha. ‘I feel I should speak to her myself,’ she said.
Celestyna was a little more amenable to Martha once she had explained who she was and why she was ringing.
‘We’ll be holding an inquest on your son.’
‘I would prefer not to attend,’ Celestyna said quickly. ‘I do not want to return to England, ever. I did not like it there – or the people.’
‘That’s all right,’ Martha said. ‘You do not have to attend but sometimes people want to. Would you like to give your child a name rather than the inquest be held on an anonymous infant?’
Celestyna was horrified. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It will make him a real person. Please no.’
‘Did you have an idea of a name?’
‘Of course not,’ Celestyna said bluntly. ‘He could never have been my child. There was no point in my thinking of a name for him.’
‘I would like to call him something,’ Martha said. ‘What is the name of your father?’
‘Martyn,’ the girl said. ‘We spell it with a “y” in Polish.’
‘Then he shall be called Martyn Zawadzki.’
It was three weeks later that Alex arrived at her office to talk. The inquest on Alice Sedgewick had been held the week before. Martha had returned a verdict of suicide and had read out the letter. It had been her revenge on Aaron Sedgewick. She had enjoyed watching him squirm right through the slow, deliberate reading which Jericho Palfreyman had elected to do. Somehow his ponderous voice, combined with his lank grey locks had seemed appropriately grave.
And though the forensic evidence was not strong enough to return anything but an open verdict the inquest was held on Martyn Zawadzki and in a rare gesture of generosity Aaron Sedgewick offered to have the baby