Frozen Charlotte (24 page)

‘No. Not really.’

‘Then would you mind?’

Half an hour later Martha had read through the letter. And part of the story unfolded.

Dear Canthie,

By the time you read this I will be dead but I had to set the slate right by you. I want you to speak to Gregory, to explain. He has been such a devoted son, loving and caring as much as he could when his father was so – well – difficult. As you know Aaron is the stronger of us two and can be a little . . . just a little, overbearing.

My behaviour must have seemed inexplicable to you as perhaps other things might have struck you in the past. But you have said nothing. Ten years ago, I unexpectedly found that I was pregnant. I was very confused. Gregory and Rosie were grown up. I had not expected to have another child so late in life. I was in my forties. Then as I made certain that I was not mistaken I was thrilled. Absolutely ecstatic, if you want to know. It seemed like a gift. A great gift. From above. I had loved being a mother and missed my children, in particular when Gregory left home. I hated the boarding-school years. This child, I vowed, I would keep close to me. But Aaron put all sorts of objections in my way. He worried the child would be deformed. You know how he likes things his way and hates what he sees as imperfections. In fact he was livid that I was pregnant. At first he accused me of being simply careless but as I got more excited about the child he started accusing me firstly of having deliberately tried to get pregnant and then that it was not his child but a lover’s. Acantha, I never had a lover. It was undoubtedly his child. But he would not accept it. He insisted. Absolutely insisted that I have an abortion. I tried everything to persuade him that it was our child, pointed out how close he was, in particular, to Rosie and that this could perhaps be a second daughter but he became violent and said, quite cruelly, that it might be another son. I am so sorry and guilty now. When I went to the doctor and said I did not want this child, I was lying. Since then I have lived with the consequences of that lie. That child has stayed in my mind ever since. I called her Poppy. Every day I hear her cry. I see her face. I nurse her. I play with her. Aaron thought if we moved house it would make me forget. But I made a room for her in the new place and Aaron finally lost his temper. He made an appointment for me to see a psychiatrist and told him I was mad. I wanted to tell Dr Richmond but Aaron sat in with me and I could say nothing of the truth. Dr Richmond diagnosed me with depression. So I allowed myself to be drugged and treated for an illness I did not have. I was simply grieving for my lost daughter. Acantha, you must have wondered why I decorated a bedroom in children’s wallpaper. I did it for Poppy. I bought her clothes, a cot, blankets, toys.

When I found the baby in the attic I believed it was her, that somehow she had not been aborted but had lived and died – somewhere. I took the old blanket away from her. I nursed her. I wrapped her in a new blanket and took her back to the hospital so she would not haunt me any more. But I was wrong. She has. She has not left me. Poppy is still here with me and now we must go together. Please explain to Gregory. Tell him I will miss my visits to him. Thank him for the happiness he has given me. Thank you, dear friend, for all you’ve done. Give my love to my family. Tell Aaron I am with Poppy. One last wish: I wish to be cremated and my ashes scattered somewhere near the hospital. I believe they have a garden there for such purposes. Goodbye, my darling. I am happy.

Martha looked up. ‘You couldn’t have suppressed this,’ she said. ‘Not her last words to her son. Her dying wishes.’

‘Well, I didn’t, did I?’

There was no remorse coming from Mrs Palk. She was on the defensive. Martha leaned forward. ‘I shall put this letter in the hands of the police,’ she said. ‘It’s up to them whether they charge you. It will find its way to Gregory Sedgewick. I think,’ she said, fingering the sheet of paper, ‘that it’s one of the most poignant notes I’ve ever read.’

SIXTEEN

A
s soon as Acantha Palk had left, Martha rang Alex Randall. ‘I have something for you,’ she said, deliberately not telling him what it was. ‘I was wondering whether to bring it over.’ She looked out of her window. The winter sunshine had set the snow sparkling. She felt a yearning to be out there, in the brightness and the cold.

‘Does it help us with our case?’

‘I think it might.’

‘What is it?’

She laughed. ‘Don’t deny me my moment of drama, Alex,’ she said. ‘You’ll find out in fifteen minutes.’

Alex was in his office when she arrived. Without a word she handed him the note. He read it through and she watched his expression change from pity to sorrow, through grief, finally landing at anger. He looked up. ‘Are you going to tell me where you got this from?’

‘Have a guess,’ she teased.

He steepled his fingers together and met her eyes. ‘Mrs Palk,’ he suggested.

She nodded.

‘And I would think,’ he added, ‘that it was probably Aaron Sedgewick who asked her to—’

‘Destroy it,’ she finished for him. ‘He wouldn’t think of anyone but himself. He would have read it through and realized that it accused him, threw him in a bad light. So . . .’

Alex glanced down at the sheet of paper. ‘I can see why.’

‘You might see why, Alex, but I take a very dim view of this.’

‘But Mrs Palk didn’t destroy it, did she?’

‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘She would have. But she didn’t. And I wonder why not. Out of loyalty to her friend, a sense of justice? Or I just wonder. It put her in a very powerful position over Aaron Sedgewick.’ She looked at Alex. ‘She might even have intended to blackmail him.’

‘You, Martha Gunn,’ Alex said, his lips twitching, ‘have a very nasty mind.’

She was unabashed. ‘So I believe. And in this job it has developed. But this does answer all your questions about Alice Sedgewick and her state of mind when she took the infant to the hospital.’

‘It certainly does,’ he said. Then paused. ‘I hate to put a dampener on this, Martha,’ he said, ‘but while it does explain all about Mrs Sedgewick, her state of mind, the attitude of her family, the pink blanket, the name Poppy, the fact that she returned to the hospital where she had “lost” her baby, it still doesn’t tell us anything about the identity of the dead child or how it came to be concealed in the attic of number 41 The Mount for somewhere between five and ten years. We know it can’t have been the baby that Alice lost. There never was any possibility that the newborn infant was Alice’s child. Not poor old Alice. With this letter we know that her pregnancy was terminated, something she was cruelly coerced into from which she never recovered. Certainly not her mental health.’ He stopped speaking, his face frozen and serious. ‘Is it possible that Alice abducted a substitute child which subsequently died?’

‘It’s possible,’ Martha agreed, ‘given her mental state. However I don’t really think that’s what happened.’

Alex was tempted to ask her again what was her verdict on the affair. What did she think had happened? Instead he forced himself to ask questions with more factual answers. ‘How did Acantha Palk appear to feel about her friend’s plight?’

‘Oddly enough I don’t really know,’ Martha said, frowning. ‘I don’t even know whether this was a surprise to her or she already knew that Alice had had a pregnancy terminated. Strange, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ He was silent for a moment then murmured, almost to himself, ‘So where does that leave us with this case? Whose was the baby?’ He searched her face, as though he would find the answer there.

Martha returned Alex’s long hard stare with one of her own. ‘You already know the answer in your heart, don’t you,’ she asked softly.

He laughed. ‘Do I? I don’t think so.’

‘Oh yes you do. What was it Holmes said?’ She smiled. ‘I don’t mean PC Shotton’s sniffer dog but the real McCoy. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.’

‘Go on, Martha,’ Alex prompted steadily.

‘Put it like this. It was never going to be anything to do with the Isaac family, was it? Apart from one tenuous connection. They already had their own children and didn’t live in The Mount anyway. They were on the edge of this but never part of it. I have a feeling that if you really delve into them money will be at their hearts. They strike me as avaricious people. You will find them guilty of some crime. They took their wealthy mother to live with them. No.’ She held up her hand. ‘I don’t think they would murder. It isn’t their style. It’ll be something maybe to do with duties or property. There will be some irregularity which your WPC picked up on, clever girl. Besides, look at it from another angle. An undertaker would never leave a body in an attic. Particularly such a tiny body. He would have ample opportunity for concealing a child in, say, a coffin due for cremation. It can’t be them and it isn’t them. The baby is not Poppy. Neither is it anything to do with the Isaacs.’

‘I agree.’

‘And now we know all about Alice and why she behaved as she did. Her mind was not robust after she was forced into having a termination when she had already built a bond with the child. It must have been terrible for her.’

Alex Randall looked at her intently. ‘What exactly are you saying, Martha?’

‘It’s a class thing,’ she said cryptically. ‘Now who was it who said that? It struck me as an interesting comment at the time. Now I see they couldn’t have been more right. It
is
a class thing.’

Alex was getting irritated. ‘You’re being just a mite too mysterious, Martha. I’m simply not with you.’

‘We took that comment the wrong way, didn’t we?’

DI Randall continued to be mystified.

‘It’s a little like when you look down the wrong end of a telescope. Instead of things appearing larger, they appear smaller. That’s what’s happened here. We were looking at the discovery of an infant’s body from the wrong end. Our little baby was not an
unwanted
infant. He was a very much wanted infant. But he wasn’t perfect so he died, probably very soon after birth. There was ignorance here, yes. But it came about through callous and cynical exploitation. Put it all together, Alex,’ she urged, ‘and you will have arrived at the truth. And by the way,’ she added, ‘when Mark Sullivan rang me with the findings of the post-mortem on Alice Sedgewick I did ask him if he would look up something else on the hospital computer.’

‘Anything I should know about?’

‘I think so.’

Baldly she related dates, times, details.

Alex took it all in without comment. Then he cleared his throat. ‘You mentioned I should have a holiday,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should go to Spain – again?’

‘Sounds like a good idea to me,’ Martha said.

He grinned at her, looking like a hopeful monkey. ‘I don’t suppose we could stretch the rules and you join me?’

‘Not this time,’ Martha said. ‘But perhaps before you go to Spain you might want to send someone round to pay a visit on . . . Now what was her name?’

Alex smiled.

As Alex had expected Petula Godfrey was not in the least bit pleased to hear that he had a few more questions to ask her.

‘What sort of questions? I’ve answered enough already,’ she grumbled.

‘I prefer to meet up with you face-to-face,’ he said calmly.

‘Look mate,’ she said tightly and now he could hear, almost taste, the panic in her voice, ‘this dead baby thing, it ain’t nothin’ to do with us. I haven’t got any kids. I have nothin’ to do with them. I hate the bloody things. I don’t like kids.’

‘We’ve been assuming, Mrs Godfrey, that the person who hid the baby’s body, also “didn’t like kids”.’ Alex remarked drily.

She came back quickly then. ‘When I say I don’t like ’em I don’t mean I’d bloody kill ’em. I know what’s legal, you know.’

‘Do you?’

There was silence from the other end of the phone. It was left to Alex Randall to wind up the conversation. ‘Well, thank you, Mrs Godfrey,’ he said. ‘We’ll be over some time tomorrow morning. Would you like to attend at Malaga police station or shall we come up to the house?’

‘The house,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not going to some ruddy Spanish cop shop.’

‘Till tomorrow then,’ Alex said politely.

When he got back to the station he spoke to WPC Delia Shaw. ‘I have a job for you,’ he said. She listened carefully, her eyes intelligent and understanding. ‘Yes, sir. And then . . .’

This time DI Randall did not take Gethin Roberts with him but Sergeant Paul Talith. He needed his thoughtful intelligence rather than Roberts’ obvious distraction with the flight delays, the poor accommodation and late food. Besides PC Gethin Roberts had an important job to do.

On the way over Talith was curious. ‘So why are you going over again, sir?’

‘Well,’ Randall said, stretching out his legs as far as he could. ‘We’ve excluded the Isaacs and Mrs Sedgewick is now dead which leaves Mr and Mrs Godfrey. They fit the time zone best anyway so we’ll focus our investigation with them.’

Talith thought for a moment then said, ‘I just don’t see how they can possibly fit in,’ he said. ‘They don’t fit the profile at all.’

‘And what is the profile?’

‘I don’t know.’ Talith frowned. ‘Some ignorant young girl, I suppose. I mean from what you said Petula Godfrey’s streetwise. She’s the sort who’d have an abortion in her lunch break and get back to work in the afternoon without giving a backward glance. That’s the sort of woman she is, sir.’

Alex said nothing but remained silent and thoughtful.

The phone call couldn’t have been better timed. Delia Shaw rang just as Alex switched his phone on at the luggage carousel at Malaga airport. Randall listened then gave out some more instructions.

Chez Godfrey looked just as opulent this time around as it had a fortnight ago but this time Alex Randall thought it looked a bit tacky. Talith was well impressed though. He whistled through his teeth as they approached the tall gates. ‘Must be worth a packet,’ he observed, ‘especially over here.’

Petula was distinctly on edge to see them for the second time. Wearing skintight jeans, spiky heels and a pink sweater she met them at the foot of the stairs and gave Alex a hard, hostile stare. ‘I don’t know why you’ve come back,’ she said. ‘You’re wastin’ your bloody time. I would have thought you would have realized you’ll get no help from us. We don’t know nothin’ about no dead baby.’

‘I think you do,’ Alex said steadily, ‘and that’s why we’ve come back.’

Petula Godfrey wobbled on the steps and clutched at the handrail but she had lost none of her fighting spirit. ‘You better watch what you’re sayin’,’ she said. ‘My husband has an evil ’abit of takin’ people to court if he thinks they’re spreadin’ rumours.’

‘It’s only rumours if it isn’t the truth,’ Alex said mildly. ‘You may not like it, but the truth is the truth, isn’t it?’

Vince Godfrey was standing in the doorway, his face thunderous. He must have been a very scary guy in the school playground, Talith thought, as they reached him.

‘What’s goin’ on here,’ Godfrey said, bunching up his fists, ready for a sparring match. ‘Why have you come troublin’ us innocent people?’

‘I simply want some answers,’ Alex said, deliberately low key.

‘What kind of answers? How can we answer stuff we don’t know nothin’ about? It’s so obvious, plod,’

Godfrey continued. ‘This ain’t somethin’ we know anythin’ about.’ He gave a heavy, theatrical sigh.

‘Just answer my questions.’

‘Well keep it clean then. Don’t go makin’ wild accusations unless you can prove them.’ Vince couldn’t resist tacking on a threat: ‘Or you’ll regret it.’

This time Randall and Talith were shown into a more formal sitting room, carpeted and plush with two large red sofas facing each other.

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.