Frozen Charlotte (12 page)

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
they
think?’

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

Thursday

R
oddie 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
your
children’s room?’

‘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 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.
Mucho mucho afortunado
.

‘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
Shropshire Star
.

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 –
Poppy’s House
.

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.
A child?

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
by them
for a child. Which child? Who was the child?

Back came the answer, whispering into his consciousness, clear as sunlight.
The child is Poppy
.

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.
Then Poppy is someone else. Somewhere else
. So now there were two children. Poppy and the little boy.

They heard a sound in the doorway. Alice Sedgewick was watching them. ‘What are you doing in here,’ she asked steadily.

Alex spoke for them all. ‘We wondered where the blanket that you had wrapped around the child had come from. Mr Hughes here was under instruction to investigate.’

‘Why didn’t you simply ask me?’

Randall swallowed. It was always the simplest of questions that tripped him up. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, trying to laugh it off. ‘For some reason I didn’t think of that.’

Alice said nothing but eyed them warily.

Martha broke the silence, stepping towards the doll’s house. ‘This is lovely,’ she said. ‘How old is it?’

‘Only a few years. It’s a hobby of mine. There’s a shop that sells doll’s houses in Shrewsbury. They also sell all the little bits and pieces to go inside. I enjoy decorating them.’ She looked up apologetically. ‘Aaron calls it “playing with dolls”. He thinks it’s incredibly childish.’ She gave a smile which was both naive and confiding at the same time.

‘Did you decorate this room?’

Alice Sedgewick nodded. ‘When I was a little girl I had my grandmother’s doll’s house. It had been made out of an orange box. It wasn’t nearly as fine as this. But it had genuine Victorian pieces in it.’ Alice smiled to herself, a smile both dreamy and vague.

‘It had a tiny dining table and chairs, even some plaster of Paris hams and food. Bread. A dresser.’ She smiled. ‘An upright piano. In the nursery,’ she said, ‘were some dolls. They were stiff, porcelain, made of one piece, no separate limbs.’ She looked up. ‘They’re called Frozen Charlottes. Actually the name comes from a poem, I found out. An American poem about a girl who froze to death on her way to a party because she was too vain to wear a woollen shawl.’ She smiled. ‘So there you are. Frozen Charlotte. It reminded me.’ Her eyes met Martha’s. ‘The child I took into the hospital was that way. Stiff. No limbs. Lifeless. Look . . .’

She slipped the catch at the side of the doll’s house and opened the door, which was actually the entire front wall. Inside was divided into six rooms. There was a staircase which led from the ground floor right to the top. It was quite exquisite. The furniture inside looked old but might easily have been reproduction. Alice Sedgewick drew a tiny porcelain doll from the cot in what looked like the nursery, rocking horse, toy bricks, a train with four carriages, an abacus. The doll was an inch long, moulded in one piece, naked, of white porcelain with painted black hair, spots of blue for her eyes, a thin red line for her mouth. She placed the doll in Martha’s palm and gave her a long hard look. ‘Frozen Charlotte,’ she said.