Baby Drop

by Jennie Melville

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

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  Contents

  Jennie Melville

  Whispers from the Past

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Whispers from the Past

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Whispers from the Past

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Whispers from the Past

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jennie Melville

  Baby Drop

  Jennie Melville, a pseudonym for Gwendoline Butler, was born and brought up in south London, and was one of the most universally praised of English mystery authors. She wrote over fifty novels under both names. Educated at Haberdashers, she read history at Oxford, and later married Dr Lionel Butler, Principal of Royal Holloway College. She had one daughter, who survives her.

  Gwendoline Butler’s crime novels are hugely popular in both Britain and the United States, and her many awards included the Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger. She was also selected as being one of the top two hundred crime writers in the world by The Times.

  Whispers from the Past

  A soft old voice was talking: ‘Good girls don’t have babies out of wedlock. Now you must always remember that, good girls don’t have babies out of wedlock …’

  Another voice protesting: ‘The bairn’s too young to hear that sort of talk. It’s that book you keep reading; put it away, Granny Niven, and don’t dwell on it. The child is too young for such talk.’

  ‘Never too young for that. Tell the wean.’

  Mary Ellenor, a gentleman’s servant, debauched by an apprentice coachmaker. Hanged for infanticide.

  Agatha Ashbrook, who was very stubborn and would not give any account of her life. (So she was probably a prostitute, or a bunter or a moll or mackerel, in the slang of the day.) Hanged for infanticide.

  Chapter One

  ‘She put her hand in mine as confidingly as if she had known me since her cradle.’

  The Old Curiosity Shop , by Charles Dickens

  Charmian Daniels drove home from Slough to Windsor on the day in November that the castle burned. As she moved across the bridge which spans the Thames at Windsor that November afternoon, she looked out of the car window to see the Castle blazing. Flames leapt, dark clouds of smoke spiralled to the sky, she fancied she could hear the roar of the fire as it took hold. It was like Valhalla-on-Thames.

  She had been thinking of death and murder, as who would not who had been talking to a mother whose child had disappeared. Gone through the door with a man and never come back. The fire chimed in with her mood, almost of despair. Things should burn, could burn, must burn.

  She drew the car into the slip path where she sat viewing what was so clearly a tremendous conflagration; she wound down the window, she could smell smoke and charred wood. In the darkening autumn sky, with soft rain beginning to fall, she could see the yellow and gold of the flames and the redness at their heart. Too far away to feel the heat, she could imagine it. A smut came through the window and fell on her hand, she dusted it away. A bit of history there, she thought, a burnt bit of Windsor Castle.

  She sat there wondering if the fire was a symbol, that she was watching the House of Windsor burn down. Then she thought about the people who lived and worked in the castle like the Dean and clergy of St George’s chapel, the Poor Knights of Windsor in their lovely terrace of ancient houses, the Constable of the Castle in his tower. Some of these people were her friends. She thought of Lady Mary Erskine who worked (as far as she could be said to work anywhere) in the library rubbing lanolin into rare bindings, and Canon Kerinder who preached so beautifully but with one eye on the clock because the Queen didn’t like more than ten minutes, and General Bunty Binns, veteran of several wars and the first female Poor Knight. The Castle was a small town, where people lived and worked and died; more than just the home of a sovereign. Over the centuries since William the Norman had run it up on a contrived hill of earth and stone in order to hold down the English, it had been sometimes loved, sometimes neglected, and several times rebuilt. It was home to so many besides the Queen and her Court.

  They’d be in there fighting the fire, she knew that much. Lady Mary would be carrying out the valuable contents of the library, she might be swearing at the damage to her hands and nails and protesting that she was due out to dinner tonight, please; and Canon Kerinder would probably have joined the Castle Fire Brigade, he was a practical man and had been an engineer in the Navy before taking Holy Orders and would have rolled up his sleeves and got down to it while still keeping an eye on the clock. What time was Evensong in winter?

  Ahead of her lay the curving sweep into the town, behind which lay Edred’s Yard, a tiny cobbled rectangle where Mr Madge, Goldsmith and Silversmith, sixth of his name, and successor to an even longer line of craftsmen going back to 1780 before the French Revolution had a shot at creating the modern world, kept his jewellery shop, still called Chs Tuscombe’s, the name of the original owner. Mr Madge was a magisterial and enigmatic figure with a certain theatrical flair. In his shop she had reserved, awaiting the safe birth, a Victorian gold and coral bauble for a child about to be born, but whose birth promised to be hazardous. Charmian found the idea of this coral ring, which had belonged to an earlier generation, somehow gave security to the new arrival.

  As she had stood in the shop, she had remembered, goodness knows why just then when she was feeling happy, a conversation earlier that day with the man she was going to marry. A memory and her own response.

  He had telephoned. Early in the morning, when she was still in bed.

  ‘Forgiven me?’

  ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  A typical understatement from her, she had thought about it all night, dreams and all.

  There was more to the conversation but that was all she remembered at that moment. Thinking about it.

  As she put the receiver down, a thought flashed into her mind.

  I always wondered what went wrong with that first marriage of his … asked around but people don’t tell you that sort of thing.

  The urge he had to dominate. Irritation moving quickly into anger and something more. The hand on her shoulder, and her own instant reaction. Jerking away.

  If there had been any violence, she had no doubt how instantly and hard she would have reacted. Nature and training would have made her respond.

  Perhaps it’s me, she thought, still standing looking over the jeweller’s counter. ‘I can be awkward, difficult, even to those men I like. Them, most of all. Perhaps I resent them or my reaction.’

  ‘Miss Daniels?’ The jeweller’s soft old voice had recalled her to the moment and they had completed their transaction, and she left the shop.

  She had followed the road down Peascod Street towards Maid of Honour Close where she lived. On her left would be the new Mother and Baby Clinic where a young friend of hers, her god-daughter, Kate, lay expecti
ng her first child. Before that clinic, so modern and clean, there had been a children’s home, and before that a Foundling Hospital, in front of which was a patch of open scrubby ground near the Barracks, known in the nineteenth century as a Baby Drop, where the unfortunates who bore a child outside marriage would place their babies to be taken into the Foundling Hospital.

  Behind her, out past the district of Cheasey and in what remained of open country before you came to the industrial belt of Slough, she had left a weeping young woman. Biddy Holt was thirty years old, blonde, pretty, and very near despair.

  ‘See her,’ Mary Erskine had said to her yesterday, summoning her with an urgent telephone call. ‘Just see her.’ She added: ‘Soon, please.’

  ‘Look, you sent me a message, I came.’

  ‘So you did, thank you.’ Mary had sat back, she was not giving up.

  ‘I can’t do anything.’ Not strictly true, she could if she so desired. For a couple of years now, Charmian had been head of SRADIC (Southern Register, Documentation and Index of Crime), which meant she had access to all files on all important investigations, she could inspect at will. More, she had created her own small team to look into cases that interested her. Charmian had moved up the police ladder quietly and skilfully, beginning in Scotland, then moving to an English provincial force, serving in Deerham Hills, transferring to the Metropolitan Police, and moving to Windsor to head her own unit. In so doing she had created her own image, of a woman of force and charm, who could stand up to her male colleagues without losing her looks. She had red hair which was highlighted now with touches of silver, she was slim, and she chose her clothes well. Looks counted. ‘I like the way you’ve done this room.’

  Lady Mary had recently removed herself from the large elegant family house to a small modern flat overlooking the Home Park and the Castle itself. ‘Still close to the Queen,’ she had said cheerfully. She was tall, blue eyed, with golden hair, the classic English beauty with looks inherited from a great-grandmother who had been a Gaiety Girl and had married an earl. There had never been enough money in the family, but Lady Mary, a natural gambler, was always hard up even if the cards and horses were going her way; she was always in love, usually disastrously, but underneath remained faithful, in her fashion, to the impecunious soldier whom she planned to marry.

  ‘It’s the pinkiness that’s so good,’ said Charmian, ‘ that lovely browny pink that cheers the spirit without looking pallid. Lovely curtains.’ They were of heavy corded silk of great richness but saving money never worried Lady Mary. Money she had not, excellent, expensive tastes, inherited from the great-grandfather who had known beauty when he saw it, she certainly did have.

  ‘I had help, your god-daughter helped.’ Kate Rewley had trained as an architect but now took a passionate interest in interior decoration. She had tried to lay strong hands on Charmian’s own home but had so far been resisted. ‘Don’t change the subject,’ Lady Mary had gone on, getting back to what really interested her. ‘At least let her meet you. I spoke to Kate when I visited her in hospital yesterday and she said to speak to you, that you’d help.’

  Thank you, Kate, Charmian said inside.

  ‘But I’d have thought of you, anyway … She blames herself, you see. She let him go with the man.’

  ‘Just a nameless man?’

  ‘She was expecting a father, Harry Allen, to collect her on the school run, she had a phone call to say it would be a father. Perilla Allen rang, said she had sprained her wrist, and she couldn’t drive. Harry would be doing the run.’

  ‘But she didn’t know the man who came?’

  ‘No, never seen him before. She didn’t know Harry Allen, either. But the child seemed to know him, went off as merry as a grig. It seemed all right. She had no reason to believe there was anything wrong.’

  Not until the real father had turned up afterwards.

  ‘You’re not telling this story well, Mary.’

  Lady Mary sighed. ‘ Doing my best.’

  ‘What did the man who was supposed to collect the child say? I presume he was questioned?’

  ‘Yes. Says he called, found no child waiting, rang the door bell whereupon Biddy had hysterics more or less. He knows nothing else.’

  Charmian frowned. ‘Lot of No, nos here. So many gaps. Was it unusual to have a substitute driver? Had it happened before? Who knew?’

  Mary frowned. ‘So ask her.’

  ‘I’ll ask you: what sort of a person is she? The sort of mother who will let her child go off with a stranger? And has she done it before?’

  Mary seemed to have nothing to say, except: ‘I think the detective, the police, you know, they came at once, did ask that sort of question.’

  ‘They will have done. Who’s handling the case?’

  ‘A chap called Feather.’ It seemed such an unlikely name for a man who was heavily built.

  ‘I know Dan Feather, usually called by his initials, DF, he’s good.’

  ‘Good manners, anyway.’

  ‘You’ve met him then?’

  ‘Biddy asked me to be there. She hasn’t got a husband, she needed someone.’

  And Lady Mary, with all her connections in various powerful rich families and her perch in the house of Windsor, was a useful ally.

  ‘I suppose she’s a cousin of yours,’ said Charmian, knowing the aristocratic network of relationships into which Lady Mary fitted where you knew your cousin back to the reign of George III of Hanover and England.

  ‘As a matter of fact, she isn’t. But we came out together and have kept up ever since … Not that Biddy was your average deb,’ she added thoughtfully.

  Charmian was diverted for a moment. ‘I didn’t know you were a deb, and did a season.’

  ‘Of course I did. Everyone did.’ – Everyone of a certain family connection, that is, Charmian added to herself. ‘But it was yonks ago.’

  Charmian went back to the missing child. ‘What about the father, what part does he play?’

  ‘He wasn’t there. They don’t live together. Never have.’

  ‘You mean aren’t married?’

  Lady Mary was defensive. ‘Well, that’s no big deal these days.’

  But Charmian knew that in the social class in which Lady Mary moved where there might be a title and an estate, a matter of inheritance, marriages from which an heir might spring were the rule. At least for the first marriage, afterwards you could choose. Property mattered.

  ‘So he’s married already? With children? Thank you, I’m getting the picture.’

  Perhaps she had sounded a mite too disapproving, her Scottish puritan background did show through her surface sophistication at times. ‘How’s your love life,’ said Mary aggressively.

  Charmian ignored this question. When Lady Mary was bad tempered, it meant she was unhappy, and Charmian was sufficiently fond of her friend not to want to probe into this unhappiness. You didn’t always cure a pain by lancing it. In any case, Charmian was planning to be married herself at Christmas, having at last got round to admitting it would make her happy, which Mary knew very well. Charmian was approaching the event with a mixture of hope and caution, she had been married once before, when much younger; it had not worked well. Better luck second time round, she would need luck, there could be a problem.

  ‘How old is the missing girl?’ she asked.

  ‘Eight years old.’

  ‘How long has she been missing?’ But she had heard something of the case already and knew it was already too long.

  ‘Seven days.’ Mary added: ‘Biddy rushed to the school, only to be told that not only was she not there now, but she had not been there for the last three days.’

  ‘How strange.’

  ‘It’s because it’s strange that I thought you’d be interested.’

  Charmian considered. Her god-daughter’s pregnancy had sensitized her to mothers and children. ‘I’ll see what I can do, but no promises.’

  She knew Inspector D. F. Feather; she could go straight in, in
an official kind of way, and get a polite but official kind of answer which would tell her as little as Feather could manage to get away with. But he could be approached. She had discovered that he started work early and that then he might talk as he drank his first cup of tea of the day. He had no wife and his work was both his spouse and his consolation. There had been a Mrs Feather but she had left the scene and no one knew where. Some of his more jaundiced subordinates said that he was just the sort to have her buried under the floorboards. But he was a good detective. There was a girlfriend, so she’d heard.

  And when she walked in to his office early the next morning, and saw his tall broad-shouldered figure, thick fair hair, greying at the sides, eyes bright blue, a large hand dangling a teabag over a mug of hot water, she thought he did not look at all like a man who had killed his wife and hidden her under the bed, but very much like a policeman whose wife had walked away sadly because he hadn’t looked at her, not really looked, for a long time. But life had given her several sharp knocks, perhaps they had softened her, because to her surprise she had discovered that she was now as capable of falling in love as any woman. ‘I have become a romantic,’ she admitted.

  Feather looked up in surprise. ‘Morning, ma’am.’ He knew what to say, as Lady Mary had said: he had good manners. ‘Like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘It’s about the Holt child.’ She accepted the tea. ‘Your case?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ He frowned. ‘ One to handle with care on all sides.’

  ‘Because of the mother?’

  ‘In part, of course, but it’s one of those complicated family backgrounds. She’s divorced, but the girl wasn’t Holt’s daughter, she was the child of Peter Loomis.’

  ‘Peter Loomis? Good Lord.’

  ‘Yes, Peter Loomis, MP. He was tried for killing his wife.’

  ‘But the jury couldn’t come to a verdict.’

  ‘That’s right. The judge gave them a talking to and sent them back, but they still couldn’t bring in a majority verdict. So they had another trial.’