by Rebecca Tope
Maggs shrugged. She had hoped for more adult conversation, while knowing that this was a forlorn wish. Olivia was working three days a week, and Annie shared a nanny with another family, so both mothers were pursuing their chosen professions. From what Maggs could glean, that meant that both sets of parents virtually never saw each other. Her own work as alternative undertaker, arranging burials in a field for eco-minded customers, was very seldom mentioned. After the nervous and mildly scandalised giggles that had emerged from the class when she first disclosed the deplorable fact, she and they had opted to avoid any further direct reference to it.
‘Well, it’s half past eleven already,’ she said impatiently. ‘Merry’s going to want some lunch soon. Have you seen all these fabulous carvings?’ She pointed at the stone man, whose eye she had felt on her for the past ten minutes. Meredith had been burbling nonsense to herself, also staring up at the figure from time to time. A feeling born of medieval superstition was taking hold of them both, Maggs thought fancifully. ‘I’m sure he’s watching us.’
‘Who? What?’ Olivia looked startled. ‘Where?’
‘The gargoyle. There’s a few of them, but the one just up there has a much more lively look than the others, don’t you think? I could have sworn he moved just now.’
‘You’re mad. It’s just a carving. Probably meant to ward off evil spirits. Isn’t that always what they were for?’
‘Probably.’ Maggs was finding it difficult to drag her gaze away. High up on the wall like that, he would see all kinds of behaviours and secrets that those on the ground were too distracted to notice. ‘I think there’s something special about him. There must be a story somewhere.’
‘I thought so when I first saw him,’ came a new voice. ‘You expect him to burst free at any moment, don’t you?’
‘Thea!’ Maggs embraced her employer’s wife with genuine gladness. ‘It’s ages since I saw you. How’s everything? Where’s Hepzie? We’re waiting for Annie. You’ll like her. This is Olivia. And Simon.’ Simon was slumped uncomfortably in his buggy, head lopsided and drool on his chin. Thea barely glanced at him.
‘Hello,’ she said to Olivia. ‘And hello to you, little Meredith. What a big girl you are now.’
‘She’s just said a new word,’ Maggs announced with pride.
‘Wow! She’s a prodigy.’
‘I didn’t hear it,’ said Olivia, with a hint of sulk.
‘It was before you got here. She said “man” and pointed at the chap up there. Where’s Hepzie?’ Maggs asked again. She had a great fondness for Thea’s cocker spaniel.
‘I left her with Drew and the kids. They wanted to take her on a walk over the fields. I thought she might be a bit of a handful, with all this lot.’ She looked from buggy to buggy, and then asked, ‘So where’s this other person? I’ve got all sorts of goodies here for our picnic.’ She indicated a bulging bag, which had the neck of a wine bottle protruding from the top. ‘Including some Cava. It’ll be horribly warm if we don’t bustle.’ Then she smiled. ‘Isn’t Winchcombe gorgeous? Like another age. I forgot how amazing it is.’ She waved at the street of small characterful houses leading away from the town centre. ‘They’re all different, you know. There’s a kind of madness to it.’
‘We should give up on Annie and just go,’ said Olivia. ‘She can phone to find out where we are.’
‘Hard to stick to precise times with a small child,’ said Thea, as if she knew what she was talking about. It was well over twenty years since she’d had to worry about such things.
‘What was that?’ Maggs had heard a sound that penetrated all else. Traffic was passing, people were talking, but through it all she caught a small whimper – which did not come from either child close by.
Both Thea and Olivia looked at her blankly. ‘What was what?’ said Thea.
‘I heard a baby cry. Just a quick bleat. Over there.’ Maggs pointed to the side wall of the church and the yew trees facing it.
‘It must have been a cat,’ said Olivia. ‘There’s nobody there.’
‘I’ll just pop round and see,’ said Maggs. ‘Cats don’t make that sort of noise, especially in the middle of the day. They’re virtually nocturnal, you know.’
‘Leave Meredith here, then,’ said Thea. She laughed. ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if you found an abandoned baby in the church porch? That would please him up there. Just like old times, it’d be.’ She waved at the stone man. ‘He must have seen a whole lot of that kind of thing. Wonder what he thinks about the twenty-first century. Must be boring by comparison.’
But nobody was listening to her. Maggs had gone round the wall into the church grounds and Olivia was intent on trying to straighten her little boy.
‘Hey! Come here!’ Maggs was suddenly shouting at them. ‘Call the police. Quick!’
‘What?’ Thea began to push Meredith’s buggy through the church gate. Then, seeing that Olivia hadn’t moved, she abandoned her charge and went on alone. ‘Watch her, will you,’ she called back at the other woman, who turned to her and nodded. She looked almost frozen with bewilderment.
Maggs was at the corner of the church wall beyond the big window, staring down at something out of sight at the back of the building. The very familiarity of her stance told Thea that this was terribly bad news. As she approached, she could hear the whimper that had alerted Maggs. It definitely wasn’t a cat, but a lamb might make such a sound. But what would a lamb be doing in a churchyard? Before the question was formed, she was standing at Maggs’s shoulder, seeing for herself exactly what was there.
A child was sitting in a buggy, pushed right against the church wall. Inches away lay a human form, crumpled and still. The side of the face was misshapen. Fair hair formed an untidy halo around the head. The light summer clothes were not disarrayed – cut-off blue trousers and a cream-coloured shirt suggested a carefree day in the sunshine, something far too flippant and optimistic for death to stand a chance of prevailing. But death had prevailed anyway. ‘It’s Annie,’ said Maggs. ‘And Bethany.’
‘She’s dead,’ said Thea.
Maggs squatted down and laid a gentle hand on the bare neck. ‘Still warm,’ she said. ‘But no sign of a pulse. It must have happened only a little while ago – maybe while I was right here with Merry.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Where’s Merry?’ she demanded.
‘Just over there. Olivia’s with her. She might be phoning the police, like you said.’
‘We should go and see. And take Bethany with us. She can’t stay here.’
‘No.’
Maggs gripped the buggy’s handle, only to realise that it was impossible to move it without touching the child’s dead mother. ‘Help me lift her,’ she ordered Thea. ‘I can’t get her away otherwise.’
As they carefully extracted the pushchair and its occupant and set it down a few feet away, the little girl repeated the soft cry that had first alerted Maggs. It was definitely like the bleat of a lamb, Thea insisted to herself. A self-effacing little sound, almost apologetic. ‘Poor little thing,’ she groaned. ‘What a dreadful thing to happen.’ She looked up. ‘Do you think a stone fell off the roof or something?’
‘Can’t see anything,’ said Maggs, in a steely tone.
‘What then?’
‘Somebody bashed her, Thea. Isn’t it obvious?’
‘What with?’
‘I don’t know. There’s plenty of stuff lying about.’
‘I can only see stones. Why couldn’t one of them have fallen on her? Why can’t it be an accident?’
‘Because she’d have had to be lying down with the side of her head facing up. Nobody does that. Or standing with her head bent down to her shoulder.’ Maggs enacted the posture, making her point quite vividly. ‘It wasn’t an accident.’
Thea was visibly resisting the inevitable conclusion, one hand on the buggy, rocking it slightly. Maggs led the way back to the church gate. Olivia was standing passively outside it, Meredith and Simon sitting side by side in their buggies. Simon had woken up
and was reaching towards Meredith, his face full of keen interest. He was a nice-looking child, Maggs thought idly, but little Bethany far outshone both the others when it came to looks. New-grown blonde hair framed a winsome little face. Big blue eyes and a ready smile made her everybody’s darling. A poor, motherless little darling now, which was a tragedy beyond imagining.
‘Did you call the police?’ she asked Olivia.
‘Pardon? Oh – no. I didn’t know what I should say to them. What’s the matter? Where’s Annie? That’s Bethany, isn’t it?’ She eyed the child with something like distaste.
Maggs spoke slowly and loudly, in the belief that this was the only way to get through to the woman. ‘She’s been attacked. She’s lying round there dead.’
Olivia’s eyes went oddly opaque and tiny. They seemed to draw into her head like a snail’s. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Well, it’s true,’ said Thea. ‘Let me make the call. You two should see to the little girl. Phone her father or somebody. She’s the important one now.’
Maggs forced a smile at little Bethany, who was a lot smaller than her own chunky daughter. ‘Poor old you,’ she crooned. ‘We’d better get somebody to come and take you home, eh?’ Bethany wriggled her shoulders coquettishly and ducked her chin. ‘Where’s your bag, then?’ Every mother carried a large bag filled with spare nappies, wipes, food, drink, clothes, toys and assorted objects deemed essential for a day out with a small child. Bethany’s was slung over the bag of her three-wheeled pushchair. ‘No wonder it was so heavy,’ Maggs muttered, as she removed it. ‘Let’s see if there’s some nibbles in here.’
She unpacked a plastic box, which proved to contain a veritable feast. Only then did she remember they had scheduled a picnic, which explained the hard-boiled eggs, muesli bars, cold sausages and quite a lot of fruit.
‘She can’t eat that here,’ Olivia protested. ‘Simon’s going to want some if you start feeding her now. She doesn’t look hungry, anyway.’
Maggs ignored her and calmly broke a muesli bar into thirds, issuing a piece to each infant. ‘It’s for distraction,’ she said shortly.
Thea had walked a few yards away, speaking urgently into the phone. ‘Yes,’ she repeated loudly. ‘You’ll find us easily. Three women with three small children. Outside the church in Winchcombe.’ She threw Maggs a glance of appeal, to which there was no possible response other than a friendly smile.
‘Have you ever had to do this?’ she asked Olivia, for no clear reason. ‘Dial 999, I mean.’
‘Me? Absolutely not. The whole thing’s terrifying. I just want to get away and let the police do whatever it is they do. I’m hopeless with anything like this.’
‘There isn’t anything like this,’ Maggs corrected her shortly. ‘This is just about as bad as it gets. Lucky the kids are too young to understand.’ She looked at Bethany, nibbling quietly on her wholesome snack. ‘Poor little thing. What monster would do such a thing to an innocent child?’ Her insides were congealing, her hands beginning to shake, and she wondered at her own reaction. Then she remembered Karen Slocombe, Drew’s first wife, who had died and left two small children to get along as best they might. The association was suddenly unbearable and she felt her face crumple. ‘And what did Annie ever do to deserve this?’ she sniffed.
‘I still can’t believe she was killed on purpose. How long do you think they’ll be?’ Olivia was jittering from foot to foot. ‘Can’t we get further away?’ She glared angrily at Maggs. ‘Why did you have to go snooping round there anyway? We could be practically at the picnic place by now.’
Maggs worked as an undertaker; she knew the strange effects that death could have on people. She had seen apparent heartlessness before. But this was personal and altogether unacceptable. ‘And leave this little sweetheart beside her dead mother? Don’t you think it’s lucky I heard her when I did?’
‘Oh – I suppose so. I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s all such a shock.’
Thea came back to join them. ‘They’ll be here in a few minutes,’ she said. ‘One of us ought to stay with her, really. It’s the decent thing to do.’ She looked Olivia squarely in the face. ‘You were her friend,’ she hinted.
‘Me? I’m not going. What about Simon?’
Meredith prevented any response by kicking her feet violently against the buggy and breaking out in a tuneless babble that was plainly preparatory to expressing displeasure.
‘She wants to get out,’ said Maggs.
‘She’s not walking yet, is she?’ asked Thea. ‘You can’t let her crawl around here on the pavement.’
‘She could have a bit of freedom amongst the gravestones,’ said Maggs. ‘She’s used to gravestones, after all, even if ours are a bit different.’
‘No, she can’t. Besides, they’re mostly around the back. There’s nothing much on this side.’ The mood was turning dark, the horror of Annie’s death throwing a grim pall over everything. But at the same time, the children must not be upset, if it could be avoided. ‘What about phoning her husband?’ Thea reminded Olivia. ‘You must have the number.’
‘Why must I? All I’ve got is Annie’s mobile number. Her phone’ll be in her bag, presumably, with all her numbers in it.’ She shook her head as if there was nothing more to be done.
But Thea was not to be dismissed. ‘This bag?’ she asked, raising the one that Maggs had removed from Bethany’s pushchair. ‘We can look for it, then. Her husband’s number is sure to be in it. What’s his name?’
‘Mike,’ said Maggs. ‘They’re Mike and Annie Henderson. But are you sure we should? Isn’t it better to wait for the police?’
Thea was rummaging in the bag. ‘I can’t see it, anyway. She must have a handbag somewhere. Still with her, probably.’
The appearance of a police car put an end to the matter. Two uniformed officers, one male and one female, stood alertly before them, waiting for enlightenment. For Thea there was a numbing familiarity to the whole procedure, but for Maggs it was new and traumatising. Despite the fact that her husband had been a policeman for some years, she had experienced little direct contact with the force. Her ageing parents had lived most of their lives in Plymouth, reasonably law-abiding, but in no way relishing any attentions from the powers of justice. The general attitude had been that they were a necessary evil, liable to get things wrong and pursue ill-chosen avenues when it came to enforcement. Maggs was a natural rebel, thinking for herself and disdaining many of the smaller social rules when it suited her.
But this was a violent death and the police were an inevitable component. They had to be given facts, carefully and patiently, once they had inspected the body and called for all the different individuals necessary for the investigation of a murder. The presence of three little children evidently discomposed them. The female officer almost wept when she understood who Bethany was.
Quite why it was Maggs who supplied the essential information, rather than the capable Thea or the more closely connected Olivia, remained obscure. ‘Her name is Annie Henderson. She lives in Somerset. She has a husband called Mike. I last saw her six weeks ago, or thereabouts.’ She turned to Olivia every few seconds for confirmation of everything she said. Finally, she burst out, ‘Really, Olivia knew her much better than I did. They kept in closer touch.’
So finally the police questioned Olivia, who said there was nothing more to add.
‘What exactly were the arrangements?’ asked the female officer. ‘Time you were to meet, and what you intended to do? When did you last see your friend?’ She frowned. ‘How late was she, before you found her?’
‘Um …’ said Olivia, looking at her watch. ‘We were meant to meet here at about eleven. Both Annie and Maggs had to drive about fifty miles, so we weren’t sure if they’d arrive exactly on time. We were going to have a picnic in the park, and let the children have a bit of freedom.’
The policewoman looked to Thea. ‘And you? How are you connected?’
Thea hesitated
, struck by the assumption that she could not be the mother of any of the babies. She was forty-five. The assumption was, strictly speaking, wrong.
‘I’ve known Maggs a long time,’ she said. ‘And Meredith’s my god-daughter – sort of.’ There was to be no formal christening, but Thea had accepted the role of ‘special aunt’, which would in earlier times have been formalised by the church.
They all knew that the questions were barely relevant. These junior uniformed officers were not authorised to engage in any sort of real investigation. All they had to do was complete a few initial basic details, the prime one being the identity of the deceased. Unless there was one even prior to that: was the victim actually irrevocably dead? For that a police doctor must attend – and that person was expected at any moment.
Olivia was the first to point out that she for one could not think of any reason to hang around. ‘The children will be getting hungry,’ she said impatiently, ignoring the residual traces of food in the infant fingers. Then she glanced at the knot of inquisitive passers-by, hovering on the pavement opposite the church. ‘And it’s not really good for them to be here, is it?’
Nobody contradicted her, but neither did they agree. ‘Where’s Mrs Henderson’s car? She did drive here, presumably?’
The three women gave equally blank looks. ‘No idea,’ said Maggs. ‘Most likely along the street somewhere. There was plenty of space when I got here. Where are you parked?’ she asked Olivia and Thea.
Thea waved towards the town centre. ‘Just down there,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ added Olivia.
Very little time had passed since the police officers had arrived, Maggs realised. There was still a sense of controlled panic, holding the line until reinforcements showed up. Hypotheses, sidetracking into a search for a weapon or questions as to relationships all had to wait for more senior investigators. There was no way the positioning of cars could be relevant.
‘We can’t just go,’ she said, looking at Thea. ‘Can we?’