‘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
Roddie 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.’