Baby Drop

by Jennie Melville

  ‘She’s picked up this story …’ He looked directly at Charmian, so she knew he was taking it seriously. ‘She says she’s picked up some story of a little girl been seen in the street at Windsor.’

  A little girl, running in the streets.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Down Peascod Street and then outwards towards the Slough Road.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday, and once before.’

  ‘And seen by whom?’

  ‘A woman Dolly Barstow met in a shop. She thinks the woman knew the child was Sarah although she didn’t say so. She was telling everybody that would listen … One day the girl was dancing, the next day she was crying.’

  Charmian drew some patterns in pencil on her blotter. ‘Have some coffee while I think it over’ She nodded to the coffee machine.

  He got up and helped himself. ‘Can I pour you a cup?’

  Charmian didn’t answer, she was still occupied drawing a complicated series of circles.

  ‘Kate is thinking of asking Dolly to be godmother to the infant.’

  ‘I thought she might,’ said Charmian absently. ‘ What you’ve just told me fits in with something the family are saying: that the child wandered. I don’t know what to make of it. I’ll have to tell Dan Feather.’

  ‘Of course.’ And then, because he had worked with her for some time, and was married to her god-daughter, and because he liked her, he said: ‘How are things with you?’

  ‘Pesky,’ Charmian said, after a moment of thought, leaving Rewley to make what he could of that.

  Which he did. Something in her own life is not right, and that only means one thing, her relationship with Humphrey. I shan’t tell Kate. He had mixed feelings about Humphrey whom he both admired and found alarming. There was a touch of remoteness that took some coming to terms with.

  Feather said: ‘Could it be her? Could it be Sarah?’

  ‘The description fits, Dolly would make sure of that.’

  ‘So she is still alive?’

  ‘Could be.’

  But doing what? Crying, laughing, dancing.

  ‘This is secondhand. I’ll have to see that woman for myself.’

  ‘Of course.’ But Charmian knew that Dolly would have got it right. Whatever that woman had seen, or had thought she had seen, Dolly would have checked and reported accurately. ‘It fits in, in a nasty kind of way, with the stories we’ve been hearing.’

  ‘Life is nasty.’ Feather brooded. ‘That I can testify to … I’ve got something else … Almost forgot to tell you, this stuff drove it out of my mind.’

  ‘The dead boy?’

  ‘You read my mind … Yes, the boy. He wasn’t hard to identify, he was a runaway from a foster parent. His parents were killed … killed each other in a suicide pact. Had a shot at taking him with them but he survived. Not for long enough unluckily.’

  ‘How long had he been on the loose?’

  ‘The foster parents reported him missing twelve days ago … but it was from South London so he’d travelled. He had a bit of money on him and the social worker on his case had advised the foster parents to let him have a bit of freedom. He wasn’t over what had happened to him, he was still disturbed. He thought he was homeless.’

  ‘He was,’ said Charmian. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Joe.’

  Joe, homeless, wandering, lost.

  ‘There’s a bit of good news … the locket. Now it’s been cleaned up, the gold mark date can be read … it was gold, by the way. The date is 1906 and the mark is Birmingham. There are traces of the goldsmith’s own mark but this is difficult to read. It helps date the baby’s skeleton, beginning of the century, and the pathologists confirm this, so we aren’t pursuing any inquiry there. That’s one worry the less.’

  Then he said: ‘I’m sending you some photographs of the locket, and you can see the real thing if you come round.’

  The packet of photographs was delivered just at the end of her working day when she was packing up to go home. She was alone, Jane and Amos had taken themselves off.

  She spread the photographs, three in number, on the table before her. Greatly enlarged there was the front with a flourish of two entwined initials upon it, closed. Then the back, with a delicately chased pattern, and then the locket, open to show the photograph of the young woman, girl really, she was very young. Could she be the mother of the child?

  The locket was solid, nice to look at, and good value for money. It could never have been expensive but it had survived the years in the soil in good shape.

  She traced the outline with her finger, as if it would put her in touch with the baby.

  I wonder if I could identify the child?

  No, an impossibility. There was nothing but the locket and there were quite a few like it in the crowded display case of Mr Madge the jeweller’s.

  That evening, she dropped in on Mr Madge; he was pleased to see her and opened his shop.

  She closed the door behind her whereupon it gave a pleasingly old-fashioned tinkle. She usually felt that she had stepped back a century when she visited the shop.

  ‘The ring is not ready yet, I fear.’

  ‘I thought I’d just ask on my way home.’

  ‘I had one of your colleagues in here earlier.’ Mr Madge produced a large soft chamois duster with which he started a slow, languorous polish on a small Victorian teapot shaped like a cannon ball. Charmian coveted it at once.

  ‘That’s a nice piece.’

  ‘It is. It has my great-grandfather’s mark on it. The old Queen.’ This was Victoria in Windsor, no other queen quite counted. ‘Her habitual wedding present to members of the court and her neighbours. Silver or silver gilt, depending on rank.’

  Must ask Humphrey if he has one, Charmian thought, and whether it was silver or silver gilt.

  ‘A few got solid gold,’ said Mr Madge, ‘but not many.’

  ‘What was the call about?’ But she guessed she knew: Sarah.

  Mr Madge looked down at the teapot in which he could now see a distant distorted reflection, all nose, of his own face. The duster performed an extra flourish.

  ‘To ask if I’d seen a child, a little girl wandering.’

  ‘Had you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve heard all about it and know who the little girl is?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Naturally I have been interested and concerned. It’s always a terrible sadness when a child is missing. Sometimes they just run, poor little souls.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘I used to try and help … ran a little club for those lost … I called them the lost, but I had to close it.’ He shook his head. ‘People get the wrong ideas of what you’re trying to do.’

  Charmian looked sympathetic. She had heard about the club, her business to learn that sort of thing. A long time ago and no harm meant was her judgement. Madge was an innocent in a rough world.

  ‘I know the family. Long-time customers of this firm. My father and his father before him served them and we’ve always looked after the family silver. The jewellery goes to Garrards, but that one can understand.’ Garrards also served the Queen and so deserved the respect of Mr Madge.

  ‘So you know all about the family, then?’

  Mr Madge put his head on one side as if he knew all about everything and everyone and had no intention of talking about it. ‘One of our best families but they have known their tragedies.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ A neat way of putting it when scandal might be an apter word.

  ‘Of course, they’ve always had money, that helps,’ observed Mr Madge, revealing an unexpected strain of realism. ‘More money than sense some of them,’ he added, reinforcing this impression.

  ‘It seems to be no secret whose child Sarah is.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Mr Madge put his head on one side again. ‘Not common knowledge up and down Peascod Street. I know, of course, with my contacts with the family. Lady Grahamden brought the child in once or twice,
they never made any bones about acknowledging the relationship. In fact, she was the only grandchild.’

  He said was, Charmian noted, was the only grandchild, past tense. She didn’t like that somehow, Mr Madge knew the temperature of the local water better than most.

  So the general feeling, in spite of these stories of the child being seen, was that she was dead.

  ‘Of course, Mr Peter might start again. Pity he didn’t marry when he had the chance …’

  Some way of talking about a death by violence. ‘ He’s got the chance still.’

  ‘I meant with Mrs Holt, she’s the one. But after the …’ He hesitated.

  ‘The trial?’

  ‘Yes, after the trial, he turned in on himself. Well, you can understand that … he went abroad.’

  The classic remedy of the English upper class when in trouble. No jury had found Peter Loomis guilty but his wife had died in his house and there had been a bruise on her head.

  Murder or suicide? The jury had given Peter the benefit of the doubt. Society in general had not been so kind.

  ‘She killed herself, poor lady. Somehow she did it to herself, unlikely as it seems,’ said Mr Madge. ‘She was Deveraux and that family have always been mad.’ But he spoke without a lot of force.

  Even he doesn’t believe it, Charmian thought. Murky waters here.

  His eyes were on her, he was waiting for her to speak. He knows I want something and it wasn’t just the ring. Wonder what he really thinks about my marriage with Humphrey? Not the right class? Well, I could tell him something about Humphrey. Except he probably knows, knows all the family secrets, good and bad. Charmian reached into her briefcase where the photographs of the locket were. ‘ Have a look at these. Do they say anything to you?’

  Mr Madge took them up. ‘ Wait a minute, let me change my spectacles … that’s better. Is this connected with Sarah?’

  ‘Not directly. I’ve just got a feeling about it.’ Nothing had appeared in the press about the bones of the baby, but he might know. Mr Madge seemed to be tuned into the local ether.

  He studied the photographs with care. ‘I don’t recognize the young woman.’

  ‘No, I never thought you would. It’s a blur anyway in the photograph and not much better when you see the real thing. Of course it was dirty.’

  She shouldn’t have said that, he gave a sharp look as he handed the photographs back. ‘Been cleaned up, has it?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Fingerprints?’

  ‘No, no fingerprints.’ Any fingerprints would be from hands long dead. Except it was itself a fingerprint of time.

  ‘It’s a nice little bit of jewellery. Not valuable, of course. I’ve got a tray of similar lockets over there.’ He nodded towards the dark recesses of the shop where the top of a suit of armour, the headpiece, the helm sans ballon and beaver (living near the Castle you picked up information about armour, willy nilly), stood on the dusty table. From a shelf above the armour, an aspidistra dropped a sad long leaf, yellowing at the edge. But the bowl in which the plant sat looked like a decent piece of early Worcester. You never knew with Mr Madge’s darker corners, the valuable jostled with the rubbish. He seemed to like them all, none ever seemed to be sold or to be dusted. Perhaps he liked the dust too.

  He saw her gaze. ‘ The past does reach out and touch you, doesn’t it? All the time. You can’t get away from it.’

  She didn’t think he wanted to; she left him looking sad and thoughtful.

  The telephone was ringing when she got into the house in Maid of Honour Row. For a moment she considered letting it ring so that the answerphone picked it up, but curiosity got the better of her. Probably curiosity was the reason why she became a detective: there were questions and she wanted them answered.

  It was Rewley and this was his official voice, this was not to be a conversation about Kate.

  ‘I’ve found the woman who claims to have seen the child, the little girl, dancing and then crying in the street.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Oh, I know a woman who knew a woman … it was a chain,’ said Rewley vaguely. He always had mysterious sources of information. ‘She’s Ms Amy Mercer, and she works in a supermarket called Yourshop in Windsor. She works on a checkout desk overlooking a window so she gets a good view down the street and up the hill. She can see a lot. She says so and I’ve had a look myself and can confirm it.’

  ‘Is she a good witness? Did you believe her?’

  ‘She believes herself certainly, and that always carries a certain conviction. Yes, I suppose I did believe her, although that may not mean much. She described the girl; first laughing and dancing in the gutter, next day crying.’

  ‘It was next day?’

  ‘Yes, Thursday and Friday of this week.’

  It was Sunday now: no rest days for either of them.

  ‘She got the clothes right: cotton dress and little school jacket.’

  But there was something in his voice.

  ‘So what was wrong?’

  ‘She used to work for Lady Grahamden. In the kitchen.’

  ‘Ah. So not totally disinterested?’

  ‘Well, you have to ask yourself … Might have some motive for inventing a story.’

  Charmian considered. ‘And she told a lot of people about the sighting?’

  ‘She’s that sort of woman.’

  ‘And no one else saw anything.’

  ‘If so, they’re not saying. But someone might come forward.’

  ‘I shall have to see this woman for myself.’

  ‘Any day. Just go shopping.’

  ‘I probably will. I need some cat food.’ Muff was on the prowl already.

  ‘Amabel Mercer, don’t forget. And she calls herself Amy.’

  The conversation ended there with no pleasantries. A missing girl, a newly dead boy, and a long-dead baby, a trio joined by the thread of time that had suddenly drawn a loop round them.

  The telephone rang again, and it was Humphrey and this time, guessing who it was, she let the answerphone take the message.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Shall I ever forget the manner in which those handsome proud eyes seemed to hold mine?’

  Bleak House

  Six days, one hundred and forty-four hours, how many minutes, how many seconds? Too long for a child to be missing.

  Charmian did not like the way it was going. Time was sometimes life itself, you could feel it ticking past. She could today and not only her own life but perhaps Sarah’s also.

  An unremarkable day otherwise with so many meetings and reports to read and to dictate that there was no opportunity on that Monday to visit Yourshop. It wasn’t an establishment she had gone inside but she had passed it once or twice and thought it looked cheap and cheerful. A false reading probably, not so cheerful and maybe not so cheap, because Rewley had supplied the information (he always knew everything) that it wasn’t doing at all well.

  She would visit when she could make time. There she was, thinking about time again, it was on her mind. Or her conscience. You had to use it well, her mother had said, or it got back at you. Time with her now was something she had to cut up into little slices and dole out in portions, not always in the way she wanted but in the way her life demanded.

  Inspector Feather had informed her that a MIRIAM, a Multiple Incident Room, had been set up to deal with the two investigations: the dead boy and the missing girl. They might be linked.

  No one was investigating the skeletal baby which was about to be given a small quiet burial. Since no one knew what faith, if any, the mother had professed, or whether the child had been baptized or not, the burial would take place in the large municipal cemetery on the London Road and would be conducted by the Vicar of St Alcuin’s in the East.

  She got her secretary to ask when the ceremony would take place. ‘Early morning? Nine o’clock? All the vicar can manage?’

  She went herself to the funeral, one of only two mourners, the other being Insp
ector Feather. As the simple ceremony went on, they were joined by an elderly woman in deep black whom Charmian, who had met the species before, recognized as a professional mourner.

  Strange, how some people, usually women it had to be admitted, seemed to enjoy funerals. Perhaps they were doing the mourning in advance for themselves. This woman had kitted herself out with a loose black coat and a big hat. She sat several rows behind Charmian in the little chapel, then followed them out to the churchyard, where she watched as the little coffin was lowered into the grave.

  Charmian shrugged her shoulders as Feather came up, and nodded towards the woman. ‘ Why do they come? And where do they come from?’

  Feather nodded back. ‘I’ve seen that one before. Or anyway the outfit. Perhaps they hire them out.’

  ‘I’m going to have a word with her,’ Charmian murmured to Feather. But when she turned round, the woman was gone.

  The duality of life came home to her: she was worried about the girl, depressed at the dead boy, and interested and saddened about the little skeleton, now returned to the earth, but she would be going out to dinner at what would undoubtedly be an expensive restaurant and then on to the opera at Covent Garden.

  The weekend approached with little or no news. There was one exception of a personal nature.

  Before she went to London to meet Humphrey (of course, she was going) there was a letter on the doormat, a little chewed by dear Muff but readable, giving the inconvenient information that her house helper (which was how Mrs Chatham liked to be called) was going to marry someone she had met on the holiday and would not be coming back.

  She met Humphrey who looked tired but said he was looking forward to the evening. The opera performed was Strauss’s Salomé. Not perhaps the wisest opera, a tale of obsessive sexual passion, to see when relations with your partner are strained. As the last terrible words, ‘ Tuée cette femme’, were uttered Charmian felt hollow inside.

  Getting into the car, Humphrey seemed to feel the same. ‘ Sorry to subject you to that. I’d forgotten how savage it was.’

  Charmian nodded. One way and another, there’s been a lot of blood shed around me. And some of it has left a stain. – Only she didn’t say this aloud. But it came out another way.