Frozen Charlotte

by Priscilla Masters

  She couldn’t resist a little leg-pull. ‘Really, Jericho, and how did they know all that?’

  Jericho was unperturbed. ‘She must have done, mustn’t she, ma’am. I bet she didn’t have a car seat.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon find out,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much for all that, Jericho,’ she said. ‘So the body is now at the hospital mortuary?’

  ‘That’s right, ma’am,’ he said. ‘They’re waiting to do the post-mortem. Detective Inspector Randall wants you to ring him the very minute you arrive.’

  ‘Then I must do so, mustn’t I? I’ll have coffee in my office,’ she said, then remembered something. ‘Oh, by the way, Jericho, do you know the number of a painter and decorator? I want to revamp my study and I’m terrible at decorating. It’ll take me from now right up to next Christmas.’

  ‘As it happens, ma’am,’ he said, ‘I do. I can give you the number of a very reliable person who can be trusted to do a neat job honestly.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Of course Jericho would know someone, she reflected. He knew everything. She copied the number down, resisting her assistant’s offer to set the whole thing up for her and went into her office to ring Alex Randall.

  She knew the number off by heart. She and Detective Inspector Randall had worked together on a number of cases. She liked him very much. He was professional, polite, private. An enigma.

  She dialled his office number. ‘Morning, Martha,’ he said.

  ‘From what Jericho has already told me this sounds a very odd case, Alex.’

  ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘Odd and puzzling. Not least what this woman’s part was in the drama.’

  ‘Alice,’ she said slowly. ‘Alice Sedgewick. Have you met her yet?’

  ‘No. Sergeant Talith has and thinks she’s very strange. A bit weird and disturbed.’

  ‘But presumably not a child killer? Does he think she’s responsible for the child’s death?’

  ‘Well, apart from a few points which have puzzled him I can’t see how she could have been. It really depends on how long the baby has been dead for and I have the feeling we won’t be able to pin the pathologist, Mark Sullivan, down to a precise number of years. Alice has lived at The Mount for five years. Delyth Fontaine’s opinion is that the baby has been dead for longer than that. So, if Mrs Sedgewick was responsible for the child’s death, she would have to have brought the body with her when they moved into The Mount. I suppose the body would have to have been kept in the same environment or its condition would have deteriorated.’

  ‘Delicately put, Alex.’ She wanted to ask what points exactly had puzzled Paul Talith but knew she would have to wait. ‘If she had done that why suddenly would she lose her rag and come up to the hospital with it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe something she had hidden from her husband? Something to with the proposed loft conversion?’ He gave a dry chuckle. ‘There are plenty of questions to be answered.’

  Martha agreed. ‘Well whatever we’ll have to have a post-mortem if only to find out whether the infant was born dead or alive. Can we see if Mark Sullivan is available to do a post-mortem? Today if possible.’

  ‘Do you want to attend, Martha?’

  ‘I think I ought to, although I’ve a ton of work ahead of me. Winter really is the season of death, isn’t it? Luckily,’ she added hastily, ‘most of them from natural causes. But I have a nasty feeling that this will become a cause célèbre. It’s just the sort of sticky mystery that makes a good headline – better than the economy or the deaths of our troops abroad. And definitely better than the secret date of the election. If the press start sniffing around let me know, won’t you? And let me know as soon as you have a time for the PM? I’m available all afternoon.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘As the A &E department at the hospital is such a public place we’re not going to have a hope of keeping this quiet. It might be an idea if you made a brief statement to the press and kept them informed. It’ll at least minimize their tendency to make up an entire story. Let’s try and get them to stick to the facts.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It strikes me that behind this little drama is a tragedy, some woman in desperate straits. Let’s not make it worse for her whoever she might be.’

  ‘Right. I agree.’ He paused. ‘Family well?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Yours?’

  It was something she’d never done, made any comment about his family, enquired about them. She didn’t even know whether he had any children. She knew there was a Mrs Randall but he never mentioned her name or said anything about her at all. It was almost as though when he was at work she didn’t exist. Martha had been to his office on a number of occasions and observed that there were no pictures on his desk. In fact nothing personal at all. He was an enigma who seemed to want to remain so and she hesitated to intrude but she had known him for years now and her question had been no more than a polite response that had slipped out before she could check it.

  ‘Aah,’ he said, which could have meant anything at all.

  Alex rang back at lunchtime. ‘PM at three,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Can you still make it?’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Martha said grimly. ‘Is Mark Sullivan going to perform?’

  ‘Yes. He’s working today and has agreed to do it.’

  ‘Good. There’s no one better.’ She could have added a few words more but discretion and all that.

  Provided he’s.. .

  I hope he’s.. .

  The missing word was ‘sober’.

  In the end she said nothing except: ‘See you later then, Alex.’

  As she drove to the hospital mortuary she worried about Mark Sullivan. It was no secret that Sullivan, one of the cleverest pathologists she’d ever worked with, had a drink problem. A serious drink problem which affected his work at times. She had watched him perform post-mortems with shaking hands, bloodshot eyes, an uneasy gait and seeming to exhale pure, neat alcohol. At those times she was glad that his subject was not a living person. And yet, when he was good, sober and alert, as a pathologist he was very, very good, like the girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead. He seemed to be one of those pathologists who could tease out information from seemingly invisible marks, find evidence deep inside the tissues, of trauma or an assault – or even sometimes the other way round when a death appeared suspicious and a suspect held, he had the talent to find a clot or a haemorrhage or some other natural cause of death. And as every law enforcer knows it is as important to free the innocent as to convict the guilty. For the sake of what would almost certainly prove to be a very delicate case she hoped that today Sullivan would be at his sober best.

  Her wish was granted. Sullivan himself opened the key-padded door with a sweeping gesture and a wide grin.

  ‘Martha,’ he said. ‘A challenge ahead.’

  ‘Yes indeed.’

  He looked bright and clean and – yes as she scrutinized him she knew he was – sober. Absolutely stone cold sober. He smelt of coffee and vaguely of a spicy aftershave. His teeth looked bright and white, his skin clear. Best of all he looked confident, sure of himself. Happy. She hadn’t seen him look this good for years. It was a puzzle. What had wrought this change? He bounced her scrutiny back with a mocking defiance and she was sure he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  ‘Alex will be here in a minute,’ he said.

  She followed him down the corridor and Sullivan continued talking. ‘I have the poor little scrap ready and waiting. A newborn male infant. Superficially I’d say the child’s cord was cut but not properly ligatured and he bled to death.’

  Something struck Martha. ‘Did you say he?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He made a face. ‘Even I can sex a child, Martha.’

  She was sure Alex had mentioned something about a little girl in a pink blanket. But when Alex Randall arrived a few minutes later the sex of the baby wasn’t foremost in her mind. If Martha thought Mark Sullivan looked well Detective I
nspector Alex Randall looked simply terrible, as though he had hardly slept for weeks. His eyes were puffy and he looked strained and exhausted. Whatever was going on in his life it must be something quite dreadful to have this awful effect on him. She’d never seen him look quite so bad. He avoided Martha’s searching, enquiring glance as though he knew he looked rough and was embarrassed for her to see it too, resenting both her cognizance and her concern. He passed a hand over his face wearily, pressing his fingers into his eyelids almost with pain. Something was patently very wrong. Martha felt concerned. She was fond of Alex. They were not only colleagues but friends – even though she could not say she had got to know him well. She had always suspected there was tragedy lurking somewhere in his life but he had never confided in her and she had never asked.

  But now they had important work to do. It was not the time to tackle him.

  They moved into the post-mortem room.

  Even Martha could see that the child was a newborn, a neonate. Stripped naked this was easy to see. There was a stump of an umbilical cord. Blackened and shrivelled but quite unmistakable. Its head was still elongated from its birth. Its skin was dark and papery; the bones looked soft. They stood around and looked at it, the remains of a pathetic infant who had never had the chance to live either at all or for more than a few hours. And Sullivan was right. It was a little boy.

  ‘Well,’ Alex said. ‘Talith’s statement clearly says that Mrs Sedgewick called the child Poppy, and referred to her as a girl. Wrapped her in a pink blanket.’

  The blanket was neatly folded to the side. In a forensic bag was another blanket, tattered and partly eaten by moths or rodents. They all glanced over at it.

  ‘Was it wearing any other clothes,’ Alex asked.

  Sullivan answered. ‘No. Just that.’

  ‘No nappy, no Babygro?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Sullivan said again. ‘Which supports the theory that this is a neonate and died round about the time of birth. I’ve had a quick look at the blanket the baby was wrapped in. There’s some staining which I think is meconium.’

  Alex looked puzzled. ‘Sorry? I wish you wouldn’t use these medical terms.’

  ‘When a baby is born the first motion it passes is meconium, the liquor or water it’s swallowed whilst still in the womb.’

  ‘Thanks,’ the detective said.

  Mark Randall held his finger up. ‘And there’s something else,’ he said.

  ‘Our little boy wasn’t exactly perfect. He has a harelip.’

  ‘Really?’ Martha was again reminded of Precious Bane .

  ‘Yes. Look.’ He inserted a finger behind the shrunken lip of the infant so they could see a distinct gap.

  ‘Good gracious,’ Martha said then narrowed her eyes. ‘But you don’t die of a harelip, Alex.’

  ‘No. Nor of a cleft palate which he also had.’

  ‘So who is the mother?’ Alex asked.

  Sullivan met his eyes. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is the million dollar question.’

  The mortician measured the crown to heel length.

  ‘Obviously,’ Alex said a little stiffly, ‘the big question is whether the child was born dead or alive.’

  ‘Yes,’ the pathologist agreed.

  Sullivan worked without speaking, examining the lungs in great detail, taking tiny pieces for analysis under the microscope and scraping samples.

  Then he spoke. ‘The whole thing hinges,’ he said, ‘on whether the lungs ever inflated. It looks to me as though there has been some partial aeration. It’s very difficult as the body is in this state of decay. Suffice it to say that I can’t see any wadding down the larynx or any sign of suffocation. I can’t see any obvious trauma.’ He looked up, at Martha this time. ‘To be honest, Martha,’ he said, ‘because of the advanced decay of the child I couldn’t say with any certainty whether it was born alive or dead. I couldn’t swear what exactly happened in a court of law. All I can say for certain is that I see no evidence of infanticide.’

  She glanced at the row of pots. ‘Would your tissue samples show whether the lungs had ever expanded?’

  ‘Possibly. I think the child probably lived for a few minutes. Its lungs are partially expanded. It looks as though the cord was cut but not properly ligatured and the baby could have bled and died, even from shock. The mother – or we assume the mother – tried to wrap it up in that shawl.’ He indicated the scrap of material. ‘Then she concealed it.’

  ‘Time scale?’ Alex asked delicately.

  Mark Sullivan again looked dubious. ‘Again I can’t be absolutely certain – somewhere between five and ten years or thereabouts.’ He started peeling off his gloves. ‘And even then if someone said categorically that it was eleven years or even four years I couldn’t argue. Not with certainty. Was there any collaborative evidence,’ he asked hopefully, ‘newspaper wrapping or something?’

  ‘Not that’s been unearthed so far.’

  ‘And the lady herself, can she throw any light on this?’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to her yet but from what Sergeant Talith tells me she’s calling the child “Poppy” and seems to thinks it is her responsibility. I’m not even sure she’s quite sane.’ He hesitated. ‘Was the child moved at any point?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. There’s no evidence of that.’ He glanced again at the pathetic remains of the child. ‘It probably stayed where it had initially been put, in the space behind the airing cupboard, somewhere warm and dry, which is why it has been preserved in this particular way.’ He untied his apron and hung it up. ‘And that is all I can tell you for now. He was a full-term infant. The X-rays will prove that. He was born relatively healthy and without any obvious defects. DNA will isolate his race but he appears Caucasian. I can’t tell you why he was not born in a hospital, as I can’t tell you why his corpse was concealed. His DNA should give us his mother and father, if we ever find them.’

  Martha looked at Alex. ‘You’ve enough to go on?’

  He nodded, apparently recovering from his initial state. ‘Plenty.’ He smiled at her. ‘We’ve got a few leads and, of course, the fact that it was found in The Mount. We should get to the bottom of this.’

  ‘Good. Then to work.’

  FIVE

  Alex Randall returned to the station and met up with Paul Talith. They spent a while together and were ready by five o’clock to face the press and make a statement for the six o’clock news. It was always better to give the press a considered statement. Otherwise they tended to write their own story.

  Randall spoke in a slow, clear voice, sticking to the bald fact that the body of a newborn infant had been brought into the hospital on Saturday evening.

  It wasn’t going to wash.

  The inevitable questions followed. Firstly from a ginger-haired reporter sitting right at the back, speaking loudly, so everyone heard his question.

  ‘I understand that a woman brought the child in to the hospital. Is there anything to connect her with the dead child?’

  Alex Randall kept his voice steady and calm. ‘We are keeping an open mind but it seems unlikely.’

  The next question, from a tenacious blonde-haired woman from the Shropshire Star he had also anticipated.

  ‘Did the baby die from natural causes, inspector?’

  ‘I’d rather not say at this stage in the investigation. There has been a post-mortem but the results so far were inconclusive. We are awaiting the results of further tests.’ This would buy them some time.

  The ginger-haired reporter at the back again: ‘I understand the baby had been dead for quite some time?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  The reporter looked up. ‘How long, exactly?’

  ‘It’s hard to be exact but a number of years.’

  All eyes were on DI Randall. The reporter seemed to be staring straight at him, frowning. The next question was the one he had hoped would not be asked.

  ‘Why did she take the body of a child who had been dead for a “long time” to a hospita
l ? Why not just ring the police?’

  Alex said again that he was not prepared to comment specifically but they could surely understand that the woman had been understandably distressed by the discovery.

  The press then tried to badger him for the exact location. They could find it out fairly easily, but Alex trotted out the usual statement about respecting people’s privacy. He finished with a pledge that he would keep them informed of developments.

  There was a lot of muttering and the press finally dispersed.

  The last thing Alex did before going home that evening was to set up a meeting with Mrs Sedgewick and her solicitor on the following morning.

  Then he went home, feeling his spirits sink as he turned into the drive of his house.

  Martha cooked shepherd’s pie for tea. It was one of Sam’s favourites and he would be leaving in the morning. She hoped he would pass his medical examination and be pronounced fit to play again but she was also holding in her heart that throwaway comment about possibly playing for Stoke and living at home. She was trying not to get too excited about it, but oh, how she wanted him back here. She missed having a male around the place. She loved this cooking for a hungry lad, the washing of muddy clothes and dirty boots. She loved the noise of the place when he was around because, unlike his sister, who seemed to move around silently and whose only noise was her beloved pop music, Sam could do nothing quietly. He always made a noise, stumping around in his boots, clomping up and down the stairs. And his voice, again, unlike his sister’s silky tones, was gruffly masculine. While the pie was browning under the grill she rang the number Jericho had given her and arranged for the painter and decorator to come round on Thursday evening to give her a quote for the study. She felt content.

  Only one thing happened that evening to disturb the domestic heaven. At around nine o’clock the telephone rang. Martha picked it up and heard the song playing. It was one which was becoming uncomfortably familiar to her. The slow beat of Adam Faith’s 1964 hit ‘Message to Martha’. Martha listened for a minute then spoke. ‘Hello, hello.’ As she had expected there was no response except that the phone was put down softly and she was left with that creepy feeling that someone was out there, watching her, with some intent.