Frozen Charlotte

THREE

Sunday January 10th, 8.45 a.m .

Martha woke feeling troubled and couldn’t understand why for a minute or two. Then she remembered. Last night, Sukey had arrived home at eleven, driven by her friend’s father, as promised. Martha had been just about to go to bed herself when her daughter had ‘rolled in’, in a state that people describe delicately as being, a little ‘the worse for wear’.

Martha had always subscribed to the idea that youngsters should be treated liberally and make their own rules for ‘responsible drinking’. Goodness – she’d had a hangover or two herself. She’d never made a big thing about alcohol. Sukey and Sam had had sips of wine with meals from around ten years old. Neither had liked the taste so they had reverted to smoothies, fruit juices and Coke so Martha was a little disappointed that this social experiment had patently not succeeded. Cigarettes yes, she had made a thing about those. She’d watched too many friends struggle to stop the habit and read too many post-mortem reports on smokers to believe they were anything but vile, smelly and harmful, but she really had hoped that both Sam and Sukey would develop a mature and sensible attitude to alcohol. Have a drink without necessarily having to get ‘pissed’, ‘ratted’, or any other of the words which were usually accompanied by a giggle or two. So she had watched her daughter stagger up the stairs, clutching at the banister with a feeling of dismay and it was this that was hanging, like a dark cloud, over her this morning, even though she had her family all together under one roof. It was at times like this that she missed Martin most. She wanted – needed – to have someone to talk this over with. She could have done with his common sense and sense of humour. But he had died when the twins were three years old so she had to make the decision herself whether she should play it down, ignore it, or make an issue of it. She lay in bed and couldn’t make up her mind. She frowned at herself. She wasn’t generally so indecisive. If she couldn’t bring up her own daughter properly – well – there was no one else.

Sukey was coming up to fifteen and Martha sensed she had a few turbulent years ahead. She herself had been a high-spirited teenager but she had had to work so hard to get into medical school that she had had little time for high jinks. She had the sinking feeling that her daughter’s path through the teenage years would be different.

Lying back in bed she reflected that for once it wasn’t Sam who was the focus of worry and attention. Even allowing for maternal pride she knew her daughter was exceptionally beautiful with a natural, long-legged, fine-skinned radiance. Perhaps when Sam had returned to the Liverpool Football Academy she should spend some ‘quality time’ with Sukey before her daughter slid further along the path of womanhood. Now Agnetha was going they would be together, largely alone in the White House.

And now she had made her decision. She would ignore last night.

Sergeant Talith began the day with a phone call to Detective Inspector Alex Randall. The phone rang and rang in his house until finally it was picked up and Talith heard his inspector’s voice. ‘Sorry to ring so early, sir.’

‘That’s all right.’

But Talith had the feeling it was not all right. Something was wrong. He listened out for background noise and heard none. No wife asking him what was going on, no children, no radio, no television. All was eerily quiet in the Randall household.

He outlined the drama of last night and Alex listened silently until his sergeant had finished, then advised him. ‘You’d better get a warrant to search her house. Presuming that’s where she found the infant’s body.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I wonder if there’s anything else there. And Talith.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Whatever Mrs Sedgewick says her husband is going to have to know all this as well as the rest of the family. This is bound to get out and make headlines. Better give the house a ring and forewarn him.’

‘She says her husband’s abroad on business, sir.’

‘Well – maybe he is. Best find out before you break in, though I presume Mrs Sedgewick has a key to her own house so you won’t need to batter the door down.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Keep me informed, Talith. Let me know if there are any developments and I’ll speak to Martha in the morning and interview Mrs Sedgewick myself.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Talith put the phone down and wondered. There was usually some camaraderie between officers – Christmas parties, social occasions. He knew most of his colleagues’ spouses, even a few of their children. But Alex Randall? He was married. He mentioned a wife sometimes, in a vague sort of way. But he’d never met her; neither had anybody else from the Monkmoor station. There were no invitations to barbecues or family parties. No one he knew had ever been to Inspector Randall’s home and he never talked about children, so presumably there were none.

Strange.

Sam was full of football talk as she prepared the breakfast and though Martha was happy to hear him chatting away she wished that for just ten minutes a day Sam would talk about something else. Instead of that he was always either on the phone, talking to his old friends about Life in The Club, or sitting in the kitchen, telling her about people she did not know or incidents she did not understand, at least, not with an insider’s understanding. She realized with dismay that the inevitable had happened. He had grown away from her, into another world and she felt a pang as she watched him. Had it been the wrong decision to allow him to move to Liverpool? But, she argued, he had wanted it so very much. She and Martin had decided that they didn’t want to lose their children to boarding school, but surely this was different? Had he not taken up the chance to attend the Liverpool Football Academy it would have passed him by – and with that the chance at least to become a professional player. She shouldn’t be a selfish mother, keeping her son at her side and deny him such an opportunity – but oh, this was hard. She watched his eager, freckled face as he talked on the phone to some pal or other. ‘Yeah but did you see the tackle in the second half?’

There was talking on the other end and Sam interrupted hotly. ‘It was a foul. Definitely.’

She resisted the temptation to ruffle his spiky red hair which appeared to be getting redder by the day. He could thank his mother for that, she thought, touching her own copper curls with regret. All her life she had wanted black hair. The blacker the better. Raven locks. Silky curls. She dreamed about having black hair.

She sighed. It wasn’t going to happen even if she could have persuaded Vernon Grubb, her hairdresser, to conspire with her.

Back to Sam. She had known one or two widows who had needed to keep a hold over their sons as some sort of perverted substitute for their dead husbands, but it was not her way. She boiled the kettle to brew a cafetière, surreptitiously watching him with a smile on her face. His top incisors still crossed. He still had his freckles and the angry-looking hair which he complained acted as a beacon on the football pitch. Not only because of the bright colour but because it stuck up all over the place in spite of the gel which he plastered on it. He still had the same jerky way of talking as he hung up the phone and proceeded to try and educate her in the finer points of the game and for the n th time explain the offside rules and the point of the intense training. ‘See, Mum, you just have to do weights and things to get your strength up and keep your tendons supple or you get injured and that’s bad news.’

She turned around. ‘Is it a fault of the training then that you have this problem?’

‘Well, yes and no,’ Sam said seriously. ‘I kind of meant to kick one way and hadn’t quite decided how to play the ball. My mind went one way and my knee the other. See?’

‘Ye-es.’

‘Then we have to so some really weird exercises, stretching and things, a bit like ballet and they’re supposed to help too.’

She took the box of eggs out of the fridge and wondered how long it would be before Sukey and Agnetha appeared. Her son was hungry.

‘How long are you going to wait for, Mum?’

‘Have a bowl of cereal to start,’ she said. ‘I thought it’d be nice if we had breakfast all together this morning. It’s not often we can do this, Sam.’

Her son grunted and helped himself to some Shredded Wheat, still keeping up the running sports commentary. ‘Half the trouble is, Mum, that if you miss a ball, a really important ball, people don’t forgive you. They keep on and on about it and reputation’s important. This is a very important time for me. Michael Owen was not much older than me when he played in the World Cup. The clubs are starting to pounce on guys my age.’ He didn’t even realize that she was only listening with half an ear. ‘Paul Driscoll – well – he’s been transferred to Stoke. He’ll be playing full games next season. Fantastic.’ She noticed that his eyes were shining and his crooked grin was stretched wide as he polished off the bowl of cereal. What she failed to notice was the surreptitious glance he aimed in her direction.

Sukey appeared just before ten o’clock, yawning and pushing her white-blonde hair out of her eyes. ‘Morning, Mum. Morning, Sam.’ To Martha’s relief she looked relatively normal.

‘Did you have a nice time last night?’ Though she’d tried to keep the edge out of her voice Martha could hear the censorious tone all too clearly.

Sukey gave a deep sigh. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘It was all right.’

‘You don’t sound very sure.’

Sukey gave her a smile, turned to the fridge, poured out some apple juice and took a deep swig. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I find the whole thing a bit boring. I mean you can’t talk or anything. The music’s too loud.’

‘You’re very young to have reached this cynical point,’ Martha said, deciding that her decision to say nothing about alcohol had been the right one. Sukey wouldn’t be the first or last person to drink too much because she had, in fact, found the evening unsatisfactory. She’d done the same herself, particularly in the early months just after Martin had died when social occasions had been really tough, friends awkward, not knowing what to say and she’d hated being introduced as a ‘widow’. She hated the word.

‘I know I’m cynical, Mum.’ Sukey gave another deep sigh, took a second swig out of her glass and Martha sensed her daughter wanted to talk.

She waited.

‘What was it like when you met Dad?’

‘It was at a party – at someone’s house.’ Martha smiled to herself. ‘The music was really loud. Blasted our eardrums out. We spent a few minutes screaming at each other, unable to make out a single word then we went outside, although it was pouring with rain. We just found an old brolly in the hall and stood under it. We talked and talked and talked.’

She closed her eyes, remembering the rain splashing off the edge of the umbrella, the wetness of the driveway, the sound of water everywhere, the eagerness in both their voices because they had both known they had met someone on the same plane.

Sukey’s eyes were bright. ‘I wish he was still around, Mum. I wish I could remember him.’

Martha nodded. Sam was looking across. ‘Me too,’ he said gruffly. ‘I wonder what he’d think of me being a footballer.’

Although Martha couldn’t know she gave the right answer, the one Sam needed to hear. ‘He’d have been very proud of you.’

‘Sometimes,’ Sukey said dreamily, ‘I think I can remember things, a snatch of a laugh or fingers tickling me.’ She closed her eyes as though struggling to conjure up these faint and elusive memories. ‘I so wish I had a dad.’

Martha stood back from the Aga. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I just have to concentrate on being very glad that I have you,’ she said. ‘Both of you because it’s all I have of your father.’ She smiled at Sam. ‘You’re so like him, you know, in many ways. You look like him. Apart from…’

‘The hair,’ Sam said, smiling at her. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

Sukey was quiet for a moment, too motionless not to be forming some other thought. ‘Mu-um’, she said at last, ‘does it always happen that the guys you fancy don’t fancy you?’

Martha laughed. ‘Mostly. In my experience anyway.’

‘Did you fancy Dad right away?’

She needed to be truthful. ‘Not at first, no. He wasn’t the most handsome of men. It was later, when I talked to him, that I realized what a very nice, kind and intelligent person he was. That was when-’

‘So he fancied you first.’

She nodded. ‘He said he thought I looked different.’ She smiled. ‘He said later on that he’d been right.’

She laughed then realized Sukey was watching her, needing something from her. ‘Darling,’ she said to her daughter, ‘you’re very young. You will meet people you think you love and find out you were wrong and you’ll meet people who don’t initially attract you but interest you and quite often they turn out to be the really good things in your life. Now then,’ she said, wiping her hands down her apron, ‘enough chatter. It’s time to get the breakfast on.’

‘What about Agnetha?’

‘She’ll be down when she smells the bacon.’

Martha enjoyed herself cooking the huge breakfast for the family. Perhaps it was the Irish in her but it felt so normal, the house filled with the scent and sound of bacon frying. A warm, comfortable, greasy, sizzling, winter’s smell. As they sat around, munching toast and the fry-up, sipping juice and coffee, Agnetha appeared, already dressed in tight skinny jeans and a scarlet sweater. Sam and Sukey were teasing each other.

‘So how was last night,’ Sam asked his twin as he crunched on a bit of crispy bacon.’

Sukey shrugged. ‘Oh, you know. OK, I suppose. You ought to come out with us one evening.’

‘Maybe I will,’ Sam grunted, ‘though it’s not really my scene.’

‘Not sure it’s mine either.’ Sukey sighed loudly. ‘But I must have a “scene” otherwise there’s no point being a teenager. Dire. Let’s change the subject. How long do you think you’ll be injured for?’

‘I’ve got to have a check-up with the doctor next week,’ Sam said. ‘But really I feel absolutely fine now. One hundred per cent so I think I should be playing again by next weekend.’

‘Don’t you ever get fed up with football?’

‘Never,’ Sam answered fervently, as though she had asked a devout Christian whether he ever got fed up with God. ‘But…’ He stopped abruptly and they all looked at him, his mother, sister and Agnetha. He went red. Almost red enough for his face to clash with his hair.

‘What is it,’ Martha prompted gently.

Sam coloured even more. ‘It’s only been mentioned .’

They all waited.

‘It’s just a possibility,’ he said carefully, ‘that I might be lent to Stoke too – just for a season.’

Martha’s heart leapt but it was Sukey who said it. ‘You could live at home with us?’

Sam grinned at them all. ‘Except Agnetha. You won’t be here, will you?’

‘I will be a married woman,’ she said primly, ‘back in Sweden.’

‘But it would still be good,’ he said uncertainly, ‘wouldn’t it?’

Martha raised her glass of juice. ‘Certainly would,’ she said. ‘We’ll drink to that.’ She gave the slightest of glances in her daughter’s direction. ‘Won’t we, Suks?’

Her daughter went only ever so slightly pink.

‘I was wondering,’ Agnetha continued tentatively, ‘if you would allow her to be one of my bridesmaids possibly?’

‘Yes. Yes, Agnetha. Of course, provided she’d like to. You know Sukey.’

Sukey was beaming. ‘I’d love to, Mum. My friends at school will eat their heart out. A Swedish wedding. Wow.’

Talith had had to apply to the magistrate for a warrant to search the Sedgewick abode. It was granted without demur. He then tried the home telephone number Alice had given him but, as he’d expected, no one picked up. Instead the call was diverted straight to answer phone. He left no message. Perhaps Aaron really was abroad, as his wife had claimed, though surely he would have a mobile phone? Practically everyone did these days. He rang the number Acantha Palk had left him and explained that they needed access to the Sedgewick’s house.

She seemed unsurprised. As a solicitor she would have anticipated this request. Maybe had even warned her client/friend of this likelihood. There was no ‘I’ll have to check’. Instead she responded calmly. ‘That’ll be fine. We’ll meet you there in half an hour to let you in.’

‘How is she this morning?’

‘Calmer.’

He wanted to ask so much more, whether Alice had said anything about how she had found herself at the hospital with her bundle, but instinctively he knew all this would have to be done formally, according to the book and on the record, so he arranged to meet them both at The Mount in half an hour.

At eleven, as she was putting on her make-up, Martha was surprised to have a telephone call from Simon Pendlebury. Simon had been married to her friend Evelyn but Evelyn had died of ovarian cancer almost a year ago and since then they had shared the odd friendly dinner every couple of months or so. It was uncharacteristic for him to ring her early on a Sunday morning and when he spoke she quickly realized that this was not the only uncharacteristic thing about his telephone call. He sounded agitated – a little nervous. Almost unsure of himself. He was a strange man, who had been a great friend of Martin’s in their university days, an accountant who seemed to have made an awful lot of money in a very short space of time. Martha didn’t quite trust him. There was a dangerous aura around him but she did enjoy his company – perhaps because of this. He spoke urgently. ‘Martha,’ he said, ‘I’d really appreciate it if you could spare me an evening. This week?’

‘Of course, Simon. Is Wednesday any good?’

‘Yeah. Yeah. I’ll see you at Drapers’. Eight o’clock?’

‘Fine.’

‘Thanks, Martha, I appreciate it,’ and he put the phone down, leaving her to wonder what on earth was going on? She had never heard him so unsure of himself, or so grateful for her company. It was all odd. She smiled at herself in the mirror. She was going to learn something new about this man she’d known for almost twenty years. In the meantime, she looked out of the window and watched a few flakes of snow swirl outside. What were they going to do today?

It was midday by the time Talith had gathered his team together. They arrived at The Mount in a large van and a police car. Talith looked up at the property. It was imposing. A three-storeyed Victorian house with black and white gables in perfect condition and well tended gardens. The snow lay thickly on the roof giving it a Christmas card air. Talith had to remind himself what he was here for – nothing like a Christmas card, more like a horror film. His policeman’s eye registered the oblong shape in the snow where a car had recently stood and the skid marks in the drive, presumably where Mrs Sedgewick had driven out – in a great hurry by the look of the gravel spewed up and slushy. He indicated the marks to the police photographer who snapped them obediently. Beneath a thick blanket of snow lay another car, a white Mercedes with a personalized number plate. AS 10. Aaron Sedgewick’s presumably? This car had obviously sat here for the last few days, which gave further credence to the ‘away on business’ claim. In fact there was no sign of life around the property at all. No lights, no roar of a central heating boiler. The front curtains were tightly drawn. The Mount looked abandoned.

Mrs Palk pulled up minutes later, in a blue Mazda. She climbed out, smartly dressed in a fur-trimmed black anorak, tight black jeans and Ugg boots. Alice followed her, still in the same shabby clothes she had been wearing the night before. She still looked pale but perfectly composed and avoided meeting Talith’s eyes. From her coat pocket she drew a Yale key on a small chain and silently unlocked the door.

Behind her Talith sucked in a deep, apprehensive breath, a little ashamed of the fact that he was so nervous at entering. There had been something so morbid, so ghoulish about the remains of the tiny child, and a woman who nursed it as though it was a live infant baby had upset him. It took him back to a moment he preferred to forget, a time when he was eight years old and he and his dad (who was a great fan of Hammer Horror movies) had watched a black and white Boris Karloff film, The Mummy . Though it had been an old film and he could see now that the special effects had been clumsy and Boris Karloff’s movement jerky and unrealistic, it had scared the pants off him at the time. Even now he felt silly thinking it had so terrified him but his dad had been a film buff and had laughed when his son had spent at least half of the movie cowering behind the settee. Talith still felt ashamed of himself.

And he felt exactly the same now, entering this House of Horror. Except that he was a detective sergeant now and could not cower behind the sofa any more. He must face up to this.

He shook himself, but it was still there, that icy finger creeping up the spine.

What else would he find? How many more dead babies?

The hall felt chilly and smelt very slightly musty.

He must take charge. ‘Do you want to show us where you found the ummm baby, Mrs Sedgewick?’

She nodded towards the staircase ahead. ‘Upstairs. We’re thinking of using the loft for an extra bedroom and bathroom. I thought I’d better take a look up there.’ She gave a half smile, both vague and vacant. ‘I wasn’t sure how feasible – or pleasant – it would be as the water tanks are all up there.’ Another smile. ‘I thought it might be noisy – and a bit cold. And I wasn’t sure how the windows would work.’ She could have been showing someone over the house and trying to put them off, Talith thought, not pointing where she had discovered a baby’s rotten corpse. He took charge. ‘Let’s take a look, shall we?’

He glanced into the rooms as they passed. They were, as he had expected, luxuriant and well-ordered. There were cream carpets, coordinated curtains, smart, polished antique furniture. And yet it felt little used. It was very tidy and impersonal. Apart from comfortable wealth there was no clue as to the Sedgewick’s characters and interests. Talith wondered whether Alice did her own cleaning. Probably not, he decided. She was more likely to have a ‘daily’. He followed her up a wide, mahogany staircase with a narrow strip of dark red carpet anchored by brass stair rods and then towards an extending loft ladder on the landing. Acantha drew up in the rear, saying nothing, but she kept a suspicious eye on the white-suited forensic team ahead of her, as they clambered, noisily bouncing up the ladder. Perhaps she too, was apprehensive at what they would find at the top.

‘How long have you lived here?’ Talith asked the question conversationally but Alice Sedgewick wasn’t fooled. ‘Only five years,’ she said deliberately, turning around and reading his eyes.

His next comment was equally polite but probing. ‘It’s a very big house for a couple whose children have flown the nest.’

Alice turned around again with that perceptive and unsettling stare. ‘My husband likes big houses,’ she said, adding to herself, ‘even though he isn’t here that much.’ There was resentment in her tone and Talith wondered whether she shared her husband’s enthusiasm for living in big houses.

They reached the top of the ladder. Alice Sedgewick put her hand out to the left and flicked a light switch on illuminating the entire loft space with four swinging light bulbs. Talith made a mental note of even this small action. She’d remembered to turn the switch off then last night as she’d left the roof space, even though she must have been holding her grisly burden. Not someone in a panic then but a woman calm enough to carry out an action of economy. So she had either been in control of herself, had acted automatically or maybe, just maybe, it was possible that someone else had switched the light off.

Already Talith’s policeman’s mind was starting to look at scenarios, possibilities and ask the relevant questions.

The loft was neatly boarded. There was plenty of headroom and four bare electric lights so they had a good view. Now they could see how huge the roof space was. Big enough for a couple more bedrooms and bathrooms. Talith straightened up and looked around. It held the usual loft contents: a couple of suitcases, a few boxes stacked neatly to one side, beams and spiders’ webs, insulation against the roof. There was a soft, urgent scrabbling in the corner. Mice? Bats? Rats?

It was easy to see where Alice had found the infant. In the far corner stood a hot water tank partly boarded in. Behind it and to the side was a pile of dust and rubble. Talith and the team approached the area. In the rubble was a small piece of tattered woollen cloth so smothered with the dust it was hard to tell what colour it had once been. So, as Delyth Fontaine had suggested last night, Alice must have found the infant partly covered, unwrapped it, taken it downstairs and found the blanket in which she had wrapped the child to bring it to the hospital. She had provided the newer pink blanket herself. From where? It had been no larger than a cot blanket – nowhere near adult sized. But it was surely a long time ago that a baby had been resident here, in number 41. Alice Sedgewick’s children were in their twenties.

As though reading his mind, she followed his gaze. ‘That’s where I found her,’ she said very quietly. ‘I – there was some plasterboard around the hot water tank. I thought I’d take a proper look to see if it should be moved. I pulled off some of the boards surrounding it.’ Alice was walking towards the spot very slowly, in a trance, speaking softly to herself, as though she had forgotten they were there. ‘Then I found her, waiting for me. She was wrapped up.’ Her eyes were wide open now but unfocussed. ‘She’d been lying there all that time. Not buried at all. Just stuffed behind an…’ There was a look both of grief and horror in her face.

‘Hey.’ Acantha put her arm around her friend’s shoulders. ‘Hey.’

It looked as though Alice Sedgewick was beginning to lose the plot again, Talith thought. And yet, though the content of her tale was enough to tip the sanest mind into hysteria, there was, around Alice Sedgewick, a complete lack of drama. She had simply related the story in a flat, quiet voice.

The SOCOs had already slipped on their gloves and were stepping towards the spot ready to bag up the tattered woollen rag, but not before Talith had seen some staining on it, dark and rusty. As a policeman he’d seen enough of this particular mark before to know exactly what it was.

Acantha saw it too and intervened quickly. ‘Don’t you think it would be better if all this was continued back at the station while your people look around?’

Talith nodded slowly. The team would work better unhampered anyway.

He took a quick sweep of the area, frowning. He couldn’t really see why Alice Sedgewick had investigated the area around the water tank. If he had been considering converting the loft into further living space it wouldn’t immediately have struck him as that important.

He had a quick, quiet word with Roddie Hughes, the scene of crimes investigator. A sharp-eyed Essex boy who had moved up to Shrewsbury a few years ago because he’d visited the town for a weekend and liked it so much he’d decided to stay rather than go home.

‘Take a quickie round the house,’ Talith said. ‘I’m wondering where that little kid’s blanket came from.’ He thought for a minute. ‘Unless she’s got grandchildren, of course.’

As they trooped downstairs, he was already adding that to the list of questions he wanted answers to.

As they reached the hall he made his decision and spoke to the two women. ‘I can’t see any point dragging you down to the station today,’ he said. ‘The senior investigating officer, Detective Inspector Alex Randall, will take over tomorrow. It’ll be up to him how he conducts the case.’ He omitted to mention that how things proceeded would also depend on the results of the post-mortem. Talith wasn’t sure whether he was glad or sorry he would be handing over responsibility for the case. It promised to be interesting but probably frustrating too. He had the feeling that winkling out the truth would prove to be a challenge equal to any police officer’s talents. Even Detective Inspector Alex Randall. A time lapse between what might have been a crime and the discovery of a body always made a case harder to solve and it might be hard to determine what exactly the time lapse had been. The SOCOs would be looking for other clues as to how long the child had lain concealed. But there was no doubt about it. DI Randall would be taking over the investigation in the morning and probably he, Sergeant Paul Talith, and definitely PC Gethin Roberts, who was right at the bottom of the pecking order, would be relegated to the Second Division. Talith was a fan of the ‘beautiful game’ and whenever possible he liked to use sporting jargon to describe his work. It made his job sound dangerous, exciting, energetic, and besides it made him feel better.

Acantha looked vaguely surprised at their release and Talith had the feeling she had expected a long grilling of her client most of the afternoon, so he explained his reasoning. ‘I’ve done what preliminary work is necessary, Mrs Palk.’ He glanced at Alice. ‘This is quite a strain on Mrs Sedgewick.’ A further quick glance at Alice confirmed that she was looking wan. ‘I think we should leave her alone for now until DI Randall takes over, the examination of the house is complete and we’ve done some further investigations.’ He gave a ghost of a smile. ‘I take it you’ll vouch for her.’

‘Yes,’ Acantha said, a little stiffly.

‘Have you contacted Mr Sedgewick?’

‘No.’

‘So you don’t know when he’ll be back?’ He addressed the question vaguely to both women. It was Acantha who answered.

‘Not a clue,’ she said airily. ‘Aaron rather makes up his own rules, doesn’t he, Alice?’

This elicited a vague nod.

‘He rarely tells Alice exactly when he’ll be home but always manages to arrive unexpectedly,’ Acantha explained then gave a wide, slightly mischievous smile. It transformed her face, melted away the severe expression and replaced it with a softness and humanity that made her look instantly attractive. ‘When she was younger I used to think he imagined he’d walk in on her doing something she shouldn’t.’

Both Alice and Sergeant Talith were startled. Alice stared at her friend.

Talith pursued the comment. ‘You mean another man?’ He gave a sceptical glance at Mrs Sedgewick.

‘Oh no,’ she said hastily. ‘No. Nothing like that. All the other things Alice wasn’t allowed to do. Eating chocolate, having a glass too much red wine. Talking for too long on the telephone. Wearing shoes in the house, not rinsing out coffee cups before putting them in the dishwasher. Having a Chinese takeaway or even worse a pizza delivery. There were a hundred things she wasn’t allowed to do. The children not in bed when they should have been, watching soaps on the television.’ She gave an amused grimace. ‘You don’t know what control is until you’ve met Aaron Sedgewick, sergeant.’

Alice was round-eyed with incredulity at Acantha’s forthrightness but she stayed silent, not defending her husband or contradicting her friend’s opinion.

‘I can hardly wait,’ Talith responded dryly.

He kept his last question back until they had walked outside into the freezing air. ‘Does Aaron Sedgewick have a mobile?’

Again it was Acantha who answered for her friend. ‘Probably. Everyone does these days, don’t they? But I don’t know the number. Alice,’ she said, ‘do you?’

‘Yes,’ Alice answered politely, ‘I’ve got it written down by the telephone in the kitchen but I’m only supposed to ring it in an emergency.’

Talith felt stunned. What on earth constituted an emergency in the mad Sedgewick household?

It struck him then that Alice Sedgewick was bobbing in and out of reality like a boat whose tether is loosened by a gentle but insistent current. At some point she might well drift all the way downstream.