The site was well lit by naked electric lights suspended at intervals from the joists. Roddie Hughes pointed out the planking around the hot water tank and the floorboards. ‘They don’t look as if they’ve been disturbed for years,’ he said, ‘which fits in with Dr Sullivan’s theory.’
‘But not with the way Alice Sedgewick is behaving,’ Martha observed. ‘She is recalling something more recent and personal.’ Neither Alex nor Hughes made a comment yet Martha felt they did not disagree with her, only that they had no comment to make.
She looked around her for some clue, some idea. ‘Alex,’ she said, ‘do you think it’s a bit of a flimsy story, this business of the tank being in the way of the loft conversion?’
He glanced around. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It does sort of stick out in the centre a bit. I mean if it wasn’t there you’d have a huge clear area. Enough for a couple of bedrooms and en suites . If that was what you wanted.’
‘Mmm,’ she responded. ‘Anything else up here?’
‘Not really.’ Roddie Hughes stepped back towards the loft access and the retractable ladder.
Apart from the signs of the SOCO team there was little else of interest on the top floor but she was glad she’d taken a look.
It was as she was descending the ladder that ideas began to take shape. Sergeant Paul Talith had said something about Alice switching the electric light back on when he had taken her upstairs to show him where the baby’s body had been. From Talith’s statement, most of which had been relayed to her by Alex, Alice had left the house with the child’s body and not returned until the following morning, when she had been accompanied both by her friend and, more importantly, Sergeant Paul Talith.
As she descended the ladder, Martha noticed that she was having to use both hands to cling on to the frame of it. No mean feat if she’d also been carrying a dead baby. And then to be practical and lucid enough to attend to that one small detail of switching off the light? Something else struck her. When the baby had been found, it had been wrapped in a tattered woollen blanket which, according to the SOCO’s report, had been recovered from here, in the loft. So Alice had unwrapped the body which had underneath been naked. Surely she must have seen that it was a boy, not a girl? Why this insistence that the baby was a girl? Where had the name Poppy come from? Had it come from the doll’s house or had Alice put the name on the house because of some other child?
While Alex was driving her back to her office Martha relayed all these thoughts to him.
‘I’ll need to speak to Mark again,’ she said, ‘check up on the age of the corpse. See how flexible he can be but I agree with Roddie. The planking Alice removed did look years old. At least five years.’ She frowned as she left the car and was still frowning as she climbed the stairs to her office.
Jericho was ready with some coffee, having watched the police car turn around on the gravelled drive. ‘I’ll have it in my office. Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ve a call to make.’
Sullivan sounded just as jaunty as when she had last seen him and responded quickly to her questions.
‘Are you sure that the baby has been dead for more than five years?’
‘Well – yes. The condition of the child indicated this, together with the condition of the blanket, which was tattered and fragmented. Roddie Hughes brought in a piece of the planking which encased the tank. There were rust spots around some of the nail heads. No, Martha,’ he continued, ‘I stick to my guns. I think the body had been sealed up in a warm, dry atmosphere for years – maybe as many as eight years but certainly more than five.’
‘Is it possible,’ she asked delicately, ‘that the baby was moved in that time? Could it be that when the Sedgewicks came to live in number 41 that she or her husband brought the body with them?’
Mark Sullivan thought for a minute or two before answering. ‘Unlikely,’ he said. ‘Not impossible but unlikely. They would have had to mimic the exact conditions in which the child had been held for the previous five or so years. Besides that, Roddie Hughes showed me the photographs of the planking around the child. There’s no evidence that it’s ever been removed and then replaced.’ There was a pause while Sullivan gathered his thoughts together.
‘As I see it,’ he said firmly, ‘the most likely scenario is that the baby died almost at the point of birth, whether from natural causes or not is too difficult to tell as the state of decomposition is far too advanced to ascertain. If you want,’ he said slowly, ‘I could come over but it’s getting late and…’
‘No thanks, Mark,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. I’ve got someone coming round to the house at six so I can’t be late. I’m having the study decorated. He’s calling in to give me a quote.’
‘OK, I’ll be in touch. Just get back to me if you have any more questions.’
She put the phone down and fiddled with her pen. This case was proving quite a puzzle. But Sullivan appeared adamant that the child’s body was more than five years old and hadn’t been moved from the time when it was initially sealed up by the water tank in the loft of number 41. That let the Sedgewicks right off the hook. Had this happened a year or two ago when Sullivan had been drinking heavily she might have suspected he had made a mistake in his conclusion, but this new, sober Mark, was a different person. She didn’t think he was likely to make errors at all.
She pulled up outside the White House at ten to six. Just a few minutes later Agnetha was showing in a man in his forties wearing low slung jeans. He had a mop of curly brown hair and an impish grin and was no more than five feet four inches tall. He held out a gnarled hand. ‘Tony Pye,’ he said. ‘You must be Mrs Gunn. I’ve heard a lot about you from Jericho. We’re friends. Drink at the same pub.’
‘Right.’ Martha swallowed a smile at the thought of Jericho Palfreyman and Tony sharing a couple of pints down at the local. She could just imagine Jericho leaking the latest drama that he was supposed to keep secret.
Incorrigible.
‘Shall we look at the room?’
Tony took a long, critical look at the half-painted walls, the thick layer of gloss paint on the skirting board, the moulded ceiling, the French windows, the splashes of paint on the floor where she and Sam had finally given up the effort. He gave his verdict: ‘Lovely room. What exactly did you have in mind?’ Like Jericho he was another one with a pleasant Shropshire burr. Shrewsbury born and bred.
‘Plain emulsioned walls, the skirting board and ceiling stripped and repainted.’
‘Did you want to get the paint yourself?’
‘I know the colour I have in mind. A sort of jersey cream with sage walls.’
‘I can get you a couple of shade cards,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop them off. Much cheaper if I get the paint.’ He grinned. ‘I get it trade price.’
‘Well that’s that then,’ she said. ‘How much?’
She’d already decided that he was going to do it.
He gave her a price roughly what she’d had in mind.
‘And when can you start?’
‘Next week.’
EIGHT
Friday
Alex wanted to put some questions to Alice Sedgewick alone. He didn’t want her husband aggressively taking over the entire interview, threatening and generally being obstructive. He wanted to get to the bottom of the entire affair and quickly but, like most experienced detectives, Alex Randall knew that investigations could and would not be hurried. The facts would tease themselves out bit by bit.
He had a think about how best to solve this problem and finally decided to ring Acantha Palk and request that she bring her client down to the station.
‘We’ll only keep her an hour or so,’ he said. ‘I just want to ask her a few questions. Clarify a couple of points. That’s all.’ He kept his voice deliberately casual.