even though half blocked by Foster’s considerable bulk. The wife was thin, with a tightly drawn face and hair lacquered a very unnatural shade of red. The sparkling sequined reindeer on her jumper was by far the most cheerful—not to mention the most tasteful—thing in the room. She’d perched on the edge of the sofa, part of a hideous three-piece suite done in peach plush, and kept glancing at the large tele vision hulking in one corner of the room, its sound muted, as if she couldn’t bear to tear herself away.
Tired of standing around waiting for frostbite to set in while he watched the techies do their jobs, Babcock had decided to call on the previous own ers of the barn. He’d gone on his own, intending to give his subordinates the rest of their evening off before the investigation swung into full gear tomorrow, but he’d begun to wish he had brought along a friendly face.
“I’d very much like to know what’s going on, Inspector,” demanded Tom Foster, as if he had summoned Babcock for an interview. “You lot have been up and down our lane all night, making a muck of things. We’ll be lucky to get our car out in the morning.”
His accent was broad Mancunian. Babcock didn’t know about the wife’s, as she hadn’t spoken, even though her husband had included her in his perfunctory introductions.
“It’s Chief Inspector,” Babcock said mildly, but he didn’t apologize for the inconvenience. “Mr. Foster, I understand that, until recently, you owned the old barn down by the canal.”
“That’s right,” agreed Foster, his bald head gleaming in the glare of the ceiling light. “Bought the property as an investment fi ve years ago, didn’t we?” If he’d hoped for confirmation from his wife, he was disappointed, as her eyes had swiveled back to the girls in skimpy Santa outfits parading across the telly screen.
“Figured we couldn’t lose, with the property market going up, and we didn’t, oh no.” Foster allowed himself a satisfi ed smirk.
“Made as much on the sale of the barn and surrounding pasture as we spent on the whole place, including this house. Of course, the house was in a terrible state, and the own ers left it full of moldy old bits. Had to call the junkman to haul them off.
“We’ve done the house up proper since. All the mod cons.”
Foster looked round with the pride of a monarch surveying his kingdom.
Babcock realized he was beginning to grind his teeth, and that he was sweating inside his overcoat. He made a conscious effort to relax his jaw and unfastened the top button of his coat. “Mr. Foster, has the barn been in use since you bought the property?”
“What’s all this about the barn, Inspector?” Foster’s temporary joviality vanished. “Have those kids been getting into things? I won’t have them crossing my property—I’ve told them often enough—and if they’ve been trespassing down the building site, the Bonners have a right to know.”
“It’s not kids, Mr. Foster. The builder, Mrs. Newcombe, made a discovery. Someone mortared a baby into the barn wall.”
In the shocked silence that followed Babcock’s announcement, he heard a faint squeak, like the mew of a distressed kitten. He’d succeeded in removing Mrs. Foster’s attention from the tele vision.
“What? What did you say?” Foster shook his head as if he had water in his ears.
“A baby,” whispered Mrs. Foster. “He said they found a baby.
How horrible.”
Babcock relented a fraction. “It’s been there a good while, Mrs.
Foster. Perhaps years.” On second thought, he wasn’t sure why the passage of time made the child’s fate any less terrible, but Mrs. Foster nodded, as if he’d said something profoundly comforting. Neither husband nor wife expressed any concern for Juliet Newcombe’s ordeal.
“Before our time, then.” Foster seemed to find some personal satisfaction in that.
“We won’t know for sure until the experts have examined the child’s remains,” said Babcock smoothly. He wasn’t about to reveal to the Fosters that the experts’ opinions might not give him a well-defined time frame, nor did he intend them to know how handicapped he was by the lack of that knowledge. “That’s why I need to know if there’s been any activity in the barn in the time you’ve owned it.”
“Never go down there, myself,” said Foster. “But we see if anyone goes up and down the lane. And we’d see lights if there was any funny business at night.”
Babcock had surveyed the prospect from their front garden himself, and felt quite sure that the bend in the lane would block any view of lights in the barn. “So you’re saying you haven’t seen anything?”
The struggle between the desire for importance and the wisdom of noninvolvement was clearly visible in Foster’s face. Caution won out. “No. No, I can’t say as we have.”
“When exactly did you sell the property to the Bonners?”
Foster screwed up his already round face in concentration, so that he looked like an overripe plum about to burst. “Must be just on a year, now. After Christmas. Old hulk of a place—we thought sure the Bonners would raze it and build new. And why on earth would they hire an inexperienced girl as a contractor? We said as much, but they paid no heed. Taken leave of their senses, if you ask me.”
Juliet Newcombe must be in her late thirties, Babcock calculated, and he doubted very much that she would think being referred to as a “girl” a compliment. “Why
“Referred by his high muckety-muck up the lane,” said Foster, jerking his head towards the Barbridge road. “Dutton. Piers Dutton.
Though if you ask me, he’d like you to call him Lord Dutton.”
“We’ve asked him for drinks a half dozen times. He always has some sort of excuse,” added Mrs. Foster. Babcock felt a twinge of
sympathy for the neighbor, stalked by the social-climbing Fosters, who had undoubtedly been angling for a return invitation and a look at the Victorian manor house.
Piers Dutton . . . an unusual name, he thought. Then a gear meshed in his brain and he realized where he had heard it. Piers Dutton was Caspar Newcombe’s partner. Perhaps Dutton had felt more sociable towards the Bonners, and it was only natural that he should recommend his partner’s wife to his new neighbors—although considering that his relationship with the Bonners would be ongoing, he must have had confidence in Juliet’s ability to do the job.
“And the people who owned the property before you? The Smiths, wasn’t it? If you could give me a contact address for them—”
“But we haven’t heard from them in years,” said Mrs. Foster.
“Have we, Tom?” Babcock pegged her as one of those women who wouldn’t like to say the sun was shining without confi rmation from her husband. When Foster nodded in agreement, she went on. “You see, we came along just as they’d put the place on the market. They’d expected to take their time looking for something else, but as it was, they went into rented accommodation—a flat here in Nantwich, I remember. We sent them a Christmas card that first year, but we never heard from them after.”
“Have you any idea where they meant to go?” asked Babcock.
It seemed the simplest things always turned out to be the most diffi cult.
“I know they had a grown daughter in Shropshire, but they hadn’t decided what they wanted to do. Only that they’d had their fill of farming, and they’d made enough on the sale of the property to give them a quiet retirement.”
“If you have the address of the rented flat, perhaps they left forwarding instructions.”
Mrs. Foster looked stricken. “But I’d not have saved it, not when we didn’t hear from them the next Christmas.”
“Of course not.” Babcock had the disheartening vision of names
of unresponsive recipients crossed off the Christmas card list, year after year. “What about the estate agent who handled the sale?”
“Craddock and Burbage, on the High Street,” said Tom.
Babcock made a note in his notebook, although he doubted he’d forget. Jim Craddock, like Kincaid, was an old schoolmate—one who, unlike Kincaid, had stayed in Nantwich and taken on the family business.
He’d have to hope the Smiths had left forwarding information with the estate agent, or that they’d remained on friendlier terms with some of their other neighbors. And that was assuming, of course, that they were both still living. “They were an older couple, then, I take it?” he asked. “No children left at home?”
