And to top it off, he knew he couldn’t forgo his duty visit to his great-aunt Margaret, case or no case, and he had better get it over with before his appointment with Dr. Elsworthy at Leighton Hospital.
Margaret was his mother’s mother’s sister, and the only link remaining to his family. Nor had she anyone else. A childless spinster, she had been a fiercely independent career woman, overcoming her working-class background as her sister and his mother had never been able to do. Ronnie had admired her, even as a child, although he couldn’t say that he had known her well. Great-aunt Margaret hadn’t been a woman with a knack for children, and it was only in the last few years, with his mum gone, that he had begun to develop a relationship with her.
Unfortified even by his usual coffee—it was too cold in the kitchen to stand about while it brewed, much less drink it—he shrugged into his overcoat and headed for the door. But with his hand on the knob he hesitated, then, with another curse, turned back and picked up the single- malt whisky, red bow and all. He could always buy himself another—and better—bottle, but he couldn’t go calling on Christmas morning without a gift.
The private care home was on the outskirts of Crewe, in a neighborhood of quiet and prosperous semidetached houses. He knew the place wasn’t bad as far as care homes went—he’d had enough experience in his job with council-run establishments that skirted the health-code criteria—but no amount of wood polish and fresh flowers could quite disguise the underlying odor of human incontinence and decay.
It was early for visitors, but he knew the residents were given their breakfast at what Great-aunt Margaret always called an uncivilized hour, and he also knew that Margaret would be most alert early in the day.
Although the matron, a large and obnoxiously cheerful woman, greeted him with even more than her usual bonhomie, he’d taken the precaution of slipping the whisky bottle into a shopping bag. The residents were not supposed to have alcohol on the premises, but he sidled past Matron with a smile and not the slightest twinge of guilt.
He found Margaret alone in the residents’ sitting room, her chair tucked in beside a gaudy artificial tree. In a bright red woolen suit, she looked like a present left behind by an absentminded Father Christmas. Her fine white hair had been styled into a wreath of curls, her nails varnished in the same cheery color as her suit.
“You look fetching,” Ronnie told her, bending to kiss her papery cheek.
“For all the good it does me.” Her voice was still strong, with the slight huskiness he suspected was due to the unfiltered cigarettes he remembered her smoking when he was a child. Her bones, however, had felt fragile as dried twigs when he’d rested his hand on her shoulder, and she looked frailer than the last time he’d seen her.
“Where are the other inmates, then?” he asked, pulling the nearest chair a bit closer to her. It was one of their standing jokes, and she smiled appreciatively.
“Off enduring their families for the day, most of them. Makes me glad I’ve only you to torment me.” She never said she liked his visits, or asked when he was coming again, but he suddenly guessed that the bright suit, the nail varnish, the freshly styled hair were all in his honor. She had looked forward to his coming, and he felt a rush of shame.
To cover his discomfort, he rustled in the bag and revealed the
bottle of whisky. “Thought you might want to keep this a secret from Matron,” he whispered.
“Too bloody right,” agreed Margaret. Taking the bag from him, she tucked it beside her in the wheelchair and gave him a conspiratorial smile as she covered it with the rug she kept over her knees.
“There should be some use for being crippled, I always say.
“Now,” she said, fixing him with a beady gaze, “tell me what you’re doing here at this ungodly hour on your holiday. Has that wife of yours mended her ways?” Margaret had never had anything good to say about Peggy, but at least now Babcock wasn’t obligated to defend his ex-wife.
“Afraid not, Auntie.”
“Lucky for you,” she sniffed. “So it will be work, then, unless your prompt appearance is just an excuse for avoiding our little Christmas feast.”
Babcock colored, knowing he would have made an excuse if one hadn’t presented itself. Murder scenes were one thing, but meal-times at the care home were beyond his powers of endurance.
His struggle must have been apparent, because she sighed and said, “It’s all right, boy. I can’t say I blame you, especially considering the state of Reggie Pargetter’s bowels these days. Why don’t you tell me about your case?”
He could see no need for secrecy, as what little he knew would be public knowledge as soon as the local presses recovered from their Christmas hiatus. So he told her what they had found, and where, ending by saying, “I’m just on my way to Leighton for the postmortem.”
Margaret sat silently, her head bowed, for so long he thought she had lost the drift of the conversation, or perhaps even dozed.
But then she looked up, and he saw that although the lines in her face seemed etched more deeply than before, her eyes gleamed with understanding.
“It was an act of desperation,” she said softly. “Do you see? Whoever buried that child suffered an unthinkable grief.”
The dream began, as it always did, with Kit running through the Cambridgeshire cottage in search of his mother. He felt an increasing sense of urgency, but the rooms seemed to elongate ahead of him, as if he’d fallen into the wrong end of a telescope. He ran faster, his panic mounting as the rooms seemed to stretch into tunnels.
Suddenly the kitchen door appeared before him. He stopped, his chest aching, seized by a dread that froze his fingers even as he reached for the doorknob. His mother needed him, he told himself, but his hand felt leaden, his feet rooted to the floor. His mother needed him, he knew that, but he couldn’t make himself go farther.
Then, before he could back away, the door swung open of its own accord. Kit swayed as he saw the room before him. The floor and walls curved upwards like the sides of a bowl, and at the bottom lay his mother. She lay on her side, her knees drawn up, her head resting on one arm, as if she had just lain down for a nap.
It’s a cradle, he thought, the room was her cradle and it had rocked her to sleep. He would wake her. She was depending on him to wake her and he mustn’t fail.
But when he knelt beside her and brushed back the fine fair hair that had fallen across her face like a veil, he found that her skin was as blue as glacier ice, and felt as cold to the touch. The sound of his own scream echoed in his head.
Kit’s eyes sprang open and he kicked and pummeled the bedclothes as if he could free himself from the nightmare’s grip. As the cold air hit his sweat-soaked T-shirt, he shivered convulsively and came fully awake. For a moment, the dream’s disorientation continued, then he realized that not only was he not in the Grantchester cottage where he had grown up, but he wasn’t in his room in the
Notting Hill house, either. He was in Nantwich, at his grandparents’, in Duncan’s old room.
Jerking himself upright, he peered at Toby, still sleeping soundly in the next bed. Good. That meant he hadn’t screamed aloud. He didn’t want to think of the humiliation if he’d brought the whole bloody house running. He wiped his still-damp face with the corner of the duvet and considered the slice of light showing through the gap in the curtains. It seemed to be morning, but there was no sound of movement in the house, and Tess still slept curled in a hairy ball at his feet. Beside her lay a dark oblong. Squinting, Kit edged his foot closer to the object, until he could feel its weight and its odd-shaped lumps. His sudden spurt of fear resided and he felt an idiot.