Alex Randall too was having a troubled evening. As he had been driving home he had been chewing over Delia Shaw’s words and as though he had punched a hole through a paper wall, he saw the new dimension it would give to the case. So he forced himself to consider the case from this new and different angle and ask the right questions. What sort of woman would have had a child under these circumstances? Someone very young. Someone naive. Someone ignorant and vulnerable. Someone who could be exploited. Someone who had failed to access the very accessible National Health Service.
He turned into his drive, almost avoiding looking at his home, feeling the usual sinking sensation. He sat for a while in his car, reluctant to move and enter the house. Then the front door opened.
Friday
He rang her so early he broke into the tail end of yet another distorted and distressing dream, this time of a large bird hovering over a tombstone, squawking throatily and pecking at the moss that obscured the chiselled lettering on the stone. It was a very vivid dream. She could see all the detail of the bird, feathers stuck to its beak where it had pecked carrion, strands of pinkish flesh, the blue-black on its feathered wings. As it pecked she deciphered some of the words of the engraving: In Loving Memory of Poppy, darling daughter . A few more pecks and she would read more detail. But the bird stopped pecking and perched on the top of the stone, giving a harsh caw. And then the cawing translated into a telephone ringing. She picked up the receiver and couldn’t stop herself from giving an enormous yawn into it.
‘He-e-llo?’
She wasn’t really surprised to hear Alex’s voice. He had been so much in her thoughts, even through the nightmare.
‘I’m sorry to ring you so early,’ he said, speaking in a steady, controlled voice which didn’t fool her for a moment, ‘but I have both good news and bad news and you did ask me to keep you up to date,’ he reminded her.
‘I’m beginning to regret it,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m not even properly awake yet. I saw the headlines last night, Alex,’ she added. ‘I wish they’d left it for a day or two. Anyway, you’ve interrupted a particularly unpleasant dream for which maybe I should be grateful.’ She reflected. ‘Good or bad, you said. Well… it’s too early for bad news.’ She sat up, awake now. ‘So, give me the good. Aaagh.’ She gave another huge yawn.
‘The good news is this,’ he said. ‘The bones are not human but that of a small dog. It was confirmed by Dr Sullivan last night. He took a quick look and had no doubt. Some time ago someone must have buried a pet dog and then a year or two later a patio was built over the grave.’ He paused. ‘There’s nothing suspicious about it and nothing else sinister in that area.’
‘That is good news,’ she said. ‘And a relief, though it doesn’t explain why Aaron Sedgewick reacted in such a dramatic way when he learned the patio was to be dug up, does it, Alex? What did he suspect his wife had done? Not buried a family pet, that’s for certain. He’d have said.’
‘I don’t know, Martha. But we’ll almost certainly get nothing more out of him.’
‘And her?’
‘We’ll never get anything more out of her, Martha,’ he said quietly. ‘Alice Sedgewick committed suicide some time in the night.’
‘No? Oh no. Alex.’ The worst of it was that she knew that the dark shadow that both of them had sensed yesterday evening had been exactly this, that Alice Sedgewick would kill herself.
Alex repeated the news slowly and factually. ‘I worried half the night about her fragile state of mind and the story in the newspaper. If only they’d kept it back just for twenty-four hours. We could have released the fact that the bones were not human. It would have made all the difference. I hoped she wouldn’t read it or hear it on the television but she obviously did.’
‘You’re certain it was suicide?’
‘Pretty much so. Barbiturates and alcohol and she had a history of mental instability. Just look at the way she behaved last Saturday. Irrational.’
‘Yes. So it would appear. Did she leave a note?’
‘It appears not. At least none has been found.’
‘Was her husband at home at the time?’
‘No,’ Alex said dryly, ‘he was away on business yet again. Not far away. Coventry this time. According to him he’d planned to be away until the middle of next week. He tried to ring her this morning and got no reply so he was worried.’
‘It must have been very early,’ she observed, glancing at her bedside alarm. It was seven fifteen.
‘A friend rang him late last night, apparently, telling him about the newspaper article. He tried to ring his wife but got no reply. He imagined she was either watching television or had had a couple of drinks and gone to bed with some sleeping tablets so didn’t worry too much. When he got no reply again this morning he asked Mrs Palk to call in and check that everything was all right. She has a key to the house.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I thought that. Anyway she let herself in and found Alice spreadeagled across the bed, fully clothed, bottle of barbiturates in her hand, a glass of water spilt on the floor. She said the body was cool to the touch which inclined us to think that she had died some time during the previous evening or the early part of the night. The police surgeon was called at six and pronounced her dead at seven a.m.’
He’d wasted no time in letting her know.
She was silent for a minute, gathering her thoughts. Then she spoke. ‘Check it, Alex,’ she urged. ‘Check it all. Is there a newspaper at home? Was she in the habit of watching the local evening news on the television? Which friend called him, the hotel he’s at. Log the calls to his home and to Mrs Palk. Check it,’ she repeated. ‘Check it all.’
Alex smiled. ‘You wouldn’t be trying to teach me my job, would you, Martha,’ he murmured.
She laughed too. ‘It might sound like it,’ she said, ‘but I know you would have done all these things anyway. I was simply encouraging you.’
Randall was quiet for a moment then he spoke softly. ‘You’re wasted being a coroner,’ he murmured. ‘You should have joined the force. You’d be a commander by now.’
She laughed out loud then. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘It’s not the way I would liked to have gone. I enjoyed studying medicine and I wouldn’t want to be anything but a coroner. But, oh dear, Alex,’ she said with feeling. ‘What a tragedy. That poor woman.’
‘Exactly. Is it OK if we move it to the mortuary?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Move it.’ She hesitated. ‘No note, you say?’
‘No.’
‘Shame. It might have provided us with some answers.’
‘Yes. And saved some time.’
‘So who or what or when is in the frame now?’
He chuckled. ‘Are you sure you’re awake enough for this?’
‘I am now.’
‘Well, in the time frame we’re talking about, i.e. the last five to eight or so years there are the three families involved. The Sedgewicks who are probably out of the picture unless they brought the baby’s body with them when they moved house, which is unlikely. But if the baby had been kept in a warm, dry environment and the body was moved straight from one to the other, even possibly refrigerated during the move, it is possible. The most suspicious thing about them is Alice Sedgewick’s odd behaviour. And now, of course, there is her suicide which points to an unsound mind.’ He paused. ‘I might suspect a guilty conscience if she hadn’t thought the child was a girl. She didn’t seem duplicit enough to use that to throw us off the scent.’
‘Go on.’
‘Then there are the Godfreys.’
‘You haven’t said much about them.’
‘No, because apart from them being pretty objectionable people I can’t really see where they could possibly fit into the greater picture. She says she’s never been pregnant. They haven’t got any children and don’t appear to want any. She doesn’t even like children.’