CHAPTER TWENTY
‘I doubt we’d get an exhumation order,’ said Stratton, when Ballard telephoned to report on his meeting with Dr Slater. ‘Was he buried locally?’
‘Hasketon. That’s just outside Woodbridge, where they lived. Reverend Milburn was pals with the vicar there.’
‘Did you talk to him?’
‘Yes. I called him from the station at Lincott. He didn’t think there was anything untoward … I got the impression he didn’t think much of Mary/Ananda, though. Flighty was the word he used. Quite polite compared to some of the stuff we’ve been hearing, but then he is a man of the cloth.’
‘No help there, then,’ said Stratton. ‘The death certificate is certainly unusual – and McNally’s right, it wouldn’t have got past a coroner if he’d had to examine it – but it’s all so …’
‘Bizarre,’ supplied Ballard.
‘It’s that, all right. And unless someone else comes forward to tell us about it, or the bloody woman confesses when we find her, there’s not going to be enough evidence to do anything about it.’
‘On a slightly different subject,’ said Ballard, ‘Slater was sure that the boy’s name wasn’t Michael, and I was just wondering if Roth might have given him a different name, along with his mother.’
‘Yes, but “Ananda” is meaningful. To them, anyway.’
‘So’s Michael,’ said Ballard. ‘I nipped home and looked it up in Pauline’s book of baby names. It means “like the Lord”.’
‘Only like the Lord? I’m surprised they stopped there. But they do call him something else, don’t they? Wait a minute …’ He put the receiver down to flick through his notebook. ‘“Maitreya”. Mind you, Michael was an archangel, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes. Oh, by the way, Lamb spoke to my guv’nor and we’ve sent a policewoman up to the Foundation to keep an eye on him. Still no sign of Mary/Ananda … We’ll just have to hope the picture in the papers does the trick.’
Stratton was massaging his temples and wondering what the hell to do next, when Grove lumbered in and stood in front of his desk, grinning.
‘What have you got to be so bloody cheerful about?’ asked Stratton.
‘Turn up for the books, old son. Your pin-up girl made the late edition and someone’s just called about her. A Mrs Dora Wheeler, lives in Suffolk. Dunwich, so you’re in for a trip to the seaside tomorrow, because she says she’s got some very interesting information about your Mrs Milburn. Wouldn’t tell me any more, other than that she’s been trying to find her for years—’ Grove stared at Stratton. ‘Give us a smile, for God’s sake – it’s good news.’
‘Sorry,’ said Stratton. ‘I know it’s good news, but I’ve got a horrible feeling it’s going to lead to more complications. The woman’s a menace. Leaves a trail of destruction wherever she goes.’ He told Grove about Dr Slater and the suspicious circumstances of the Reverend Milburn’s death.
‘Bloody hell! Obviously chooses her prey carefully, though – vulnerable old men …’
‘Lloyd wasn’t old. And Roth – that’s the chap in charge at the Foundation – certainly isn’t vulnerable, although I did get the impression he was pretty taken with her, in his way.’
‘Perhaps it’s all men, then. Oh, I managed to get hold of Lloyd’s aunt this afternoon. She says he was still at school in 1944, evacuated to Wales. You said your woman was in Suffolk then, so a meeting seems pretty unlikely.’
‘Never mind. It was just a thought. Thanks, anyway.’ Stratton stood up. ‘Right, I’d better clear this little jaunt with Lamb, then.’
Reading the paper at home after a piece of his sister-in-law Doris’s steak-and-kidney pie – EDEN FACES GRAVEST HOUR – Stratton suddenly remembered that he’d made a date with Diana for the following evening. Lamb had been remarkably sanguine about Stratton’s visit to Dunwich, suggesting that he drive to Lincott afterwards to see Ballard ‘in case of developments’ and adding that he should stay the night and return to London the following morning.
When he telephoned Diana in Chelsea and explained the situation she announced, to his utter amazement, that if he had to spend any length of time in Suffolk, she’d be happy to join him. ‘A friend of mine has a cottage down there. She hardly ever uses it, and she’s always telling me I can go whenever I like. I’ve never taken her up on it before, but now … well, it might be fun.’
Diana, thought Stratton, would know people with country cottages going spare. ‘Ordinarily,’ he said cautiously, ‘I’d like nothing better, but I’d be working, so there wouldn’t really be any time—’
‘Not during the day, but you’ll be free in the evenings, won’t you? I can take a few days off – the alligator crisis has passed, thank goodness – and I’d enjoy playing at keeping house for you.’
‘It’s a lovely idea,’ said Stratton, ‘but – even if I had to spend some time up there, which I don’t know, because I’ve no idea how the thing’s going to pan out – the local police would need to know where I was, and I could hardly tell them I was … you know …’ Stratton tailed off, aware that he sounded ungrateful and churlish.
‘I know you couldn’t, darling, but they’re not likely to want to contact you in the middle of the night, and you can always go back to wherever you’re supposed to be staying in the morning, can’t you? Of course, if you don’t want me to come …’
After a bit more of this, Stratton had agreed to a provisional arrangement, at the same time hoping that the circumstances in which it might happen wouldn’t arise. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Diana – he did, very much – and the idea of actually spending the night with her was tremendous, especially as it was something they’d only managed a couple of times before. It just seemed a bit of a hole-and-corner way to go about things, and mixing up work and Diana was bound to cause problems. She could be so impulsive, and this tendency – at least where it concerned men – had, in the past, led to disaster. Not that he was anything like those men, of course, but this time it might have disastrous consequences for him. What if he and Diana were together in Suffolk and Ballard were to find out? He supposed it wouldn’t be the end of the world – after all, Pete had seemed more amused than upset – but all the same, it wouldn’t look very professional. God knows what Ballard would think about it, and if – God forbid – he mentioned it to anyone else, Stratton really would be for the high jump. Besides which, he had a lot on his plate and he needed to concentrate on it.
He turned back to the Daily Mirror, trying to shrug off the feeling of uneasiness. In any case, he told himself, it would probably never happen so there was no sense in getting steamed up about it. The House of Commons will hold an emergency session to hear whether or not the Prime Minister will obey the ceasefire order of the United Nations Assembly … Stratton’s eyes strayed past advertisements for Magic Margarine and Bear Brand nylons to the bottom of the page. Eden tries to justify his war by calling it a police action … The truth is this: There is NO treaty, NO international authorisation, NO moral sanction for Eden’s War. He wondered what Pete was doing. On a troop ship somewhere, presumably, sailing towards Christ knew what. We’re all so powerless, he thought. We don’t control anything – we’re just shunted through life like pieces on a chessboard. Sighing, he turned off the gas fire and trudged upstairs to bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Stratton, who’d learnt to drive after the war, had brought his own car, a black Ford Popular, purchased when they came out a couple of years earlier. Driving to Dunwich, he wondered if Lamb’s insistence that he stay the night at Lincott might not have been something to do with his superior’s concern about his ability to get back in the dark in one piece. It would be a bloody long drive anyway – Dunwich was at least a hundred miles from London, and Lincott, being right on the other side of the county, was a good sixty miles again.
Heading towards the coast, he squinted into the bright winter sun and thought, as he always did when in the car, how much Jenny would have enjoyed the ride. Arrivi
ng, he parked by the shingle beach and walked back, past the pub and the post office and down a row of cottages until he found Mrs Wheeler’s house, which was next door to the village school.
Apparently oblivious to the yells coming from the narrow, muddy garden, where a large number of children were playing some sort of complicated game involving a ball, a cricket bat and a lot of chasing and dodging and tagging, Mrs Wheeler sat Stratton down in the back parlour which, spotlessly clean – if, despite the fire in the grate, a little chilly – was clearly the room kept nice ‘just in case’, and went to make a pot of tea. Bright-eyed and cheerful, with a comfortably middle-aged figure, Mrs Wheeler settled herself on the sofa opposite him and accepted a cigarette. ‘I couldn’t believe it when my husband showed me the picture in the paper. We thought she must be dead because she never came back or wrote or anything.’
‘Why did you want her to contact you?’ asked Stratton.
‘My husband said …’ She broke off, looking anxious. ‘He said I shouldn’t telephone because you might take him away, and I have to say I was in two minds myself, which is why I didn’t want to say too much when I called, but I felt we had to tell you, really.’
‘Take who away?’ asked Stratton. ‘I think,’ he added, with an encouraging smile, ‘you’d better tell me everything from the beginning.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Mrs Wheeler’s hands twisted nervously in her lap.
‘It’s all right,’ said Stratton. ‘Take your time.’
‘Yes, well … Mrs Milburn was a neighbour, you see. When we lived in Woodbridge. I don’t know if you know Suffolk at all, but that’s about twenty miles from here – we lived there after we were married, up to the middle of 1946. I never knew Mrs Milburn that well, but we’d pass the time of day, you know … Anyway, a couple of weeks after VE Day, she came to my house with the baby and asked if I’d look after him for a couple of days because she had some business to attend to. She didn’t say what it was, but her husband had died the week before so I thought it must be to do with that.’
‘Did you know the Reverend Milburn?’
Mrs Wheeler shook her head. ‘I’d only seen him once or twice. He was an invalid, hardly ever left the house. The doctor was always calling. There were some people who said he was going to see her, not her husband, that they were carrying on, but it was just gossip and I don’t think there was any truth in it.’ Clearly, thought Stratton, Mrs Wheeler was a woman with a kind and unsuspicious nature. ‘Anyway, she came along with Tom—’
‘That would be the baby, would it?’
‘That’s right. He was about eighteen months old at the time. I agreed to look after him for her, so she brought his clothes and that – my twins were just over a year at that time, so their things would have been too small – then off she went and that was the last we saw of her. We never had so much as a postcard.’
Stratton produced his photograph of Mary Milburn. ‘And it was definitely this woman who left the child, was it?’
‘Oh, yes. No question about that. Very nice-looking she was, and always well turned out. When she didn’t come back, my husband went round to her house but it was empty and the people next door hadn’t seen her for days. We went to the police, but they couldn’t find her. Then we paid a solicitor to search for her, but he didn’t do any better, so in the end we decided to treat him as a gift from God and bring him up as one of ours. We had to ask at the surgery to find out when his birthday was – Dr Slater was gone by then, of course. So I’ve got five of my own, and Tom. I’m thinking,’ she added shrewdly, ‘that you haven’t found Mrs Milburn, or you wouldn’t be here, but when you do, will we have to give him back? She never registered his birth, you see, and he’s got no idea – he thinks he belongs to us. The police said we had to go to court about it, but the magistrate said we could keep him – it’s all in the records. He was only a baby then, of course, but he’s nearly twelve now, and if he had to lose his whole family … As far as the others know, he’s their big brother. I know that would be pretty unlikely, given their ages, but they’re not old enough to understand things like that yet …’ Eyes round with distress, Mrs Wheeler put a hand to her mouth. ‘I can’t bear to think of him being taken away.’ She took a handkerchief from the sleeve of her cardigan and began dabbing her eyes.
Stratton stared out of the window while she composed herself. Children – Mrs Wheeler was obviously minding others as well as her own – seemed to explode in all directions in a blur of muddy knees, flying wellingtons, flapping scarves and apple-red cheeks. Their excitement and glee were infectious, and Stratton found himself grinning. In the middle of the mêlée, one boy, who looked to be about ten, had upended a smaller girl and was tickling her mercilessly, so that she yelped and shrieked with laughter, and two identical tow-headed boys were helping a taller, dark-haired boy to his feet. Impressed by the evident solicitousness of the pair, Stratton, looking more closely, saw that the dark-haired boy wore a calliper on one leg.
Following the direction of his gaze, Mrs Wheeler said, ‘That’s Tom. He caught polio when he was eight. The epidemic … He was lucky, really, that it’s only down one side. We were terrified he’d end up in an iron lung.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Stratton, thinking of the monstrous metal carapaces he’d once seen on a polio ward, whooshwhooshing rhythmically as they ‘breathed’ for the poor sods incarcerated inside, only their heads visible as they’d stared, endlessly, up at the ceiling. ‘Wouldn’t wish that on your worst enemy.’
‘They’ve always looked out for him,’ said Mrs Wheeler. ‘Ever since he got ill – Johnny, my youngest, was only three at the time, but even he knew he had to be gentle. I was always worried about him getting knocked over, because they don’t half tear about, but they’re very careful. And,’ she nodded in Tom’s direction, ‘if he does fall down, they help him back on his feet.’
‘I’d like to meet him,’ said Stratton. Mrs Wheeler looked at him fearfully. ‘It’s all right,’ he reassured her. ‘I’m not going to take him away.’
Mollified, Mrs Wheeler opened the window and shouted for Tom to wipe his feet and come inside.
Pale-faced and freckled, with dark brown hair flopping over his brow, Tom was as neat featured as the woman who’d given birth to him, but without either Michael’s breathtaking good looks, or his air of solemnity. His damaged right leg gave him a curious rolling gait and up close, Stratton could see that his right shoulder was lower and narrower than his left, and his right arm, unmuscled, hung limply. Not wishing to embarrass him, Stratton held out his left hand. Tom looked at it for a moment as if puzzled, and then, at a nudge from Mrs Wheeler, wiped his grubby left hand on his shorts and held it out to be shaken, with a diffidence that reminded Stratton of Pete at the same age.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Stratton,’ he said. ‘How do you do?’
‘I …’ Panic leapt in Tom’s brown eyes. ‘I …’ He turned to his mother with a speed that made him lurch, off balance. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I haven’t.’
‘I know that,’ said Stratton. ‘I was paying a call on your mother, and I wanted to meet you, that’s all. That’s not so terrible, is it?’
Tom ducked his head and blushed a delicate shade of pink that made Stratton think of strawberry ice. He was clearly of a similar age to Michael – could Mary have had twins? – but he had none of the sophistication and polish. He was a nice, ordinary kid. Stratton found himself thinking that, despite the handicap, Tom might well have been dealt a better hand in life than the boy who was, presumably, his brother.
When he’d returned to the garden, Mrs Wheeler turned to Stratton. ‘Why are you trying to find Mrs Milburn? Has she done something wrong?’
‘We’re not sure yet, but we are concerned about her safety.’
‘Do you need to tell Tom about her? That he’s not ours, I mean. Even if she doesn’t want him—’
‘Even if she did,’ said Stratton, ‘I very much doubt that any court
would give a child back to a woman who’d abandoned him as she did, especially when he already has a good home.’ Especially, he added silently, one who’d very likely murdered the kid’s father and then blackmailed the family doctor into falsifying the death certificate. ‘And I don’t think you need tell him.’ At least, he thought, not for the moment. ‘I can see,’ he added, ‘that he’s very happy here.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Mrs Wheeler nodded vigorously. ‘He is. And what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, can it? My husband – he’s out at work – he’ll be ever so pleased. He’s a blacksmith, though it’s more fancy ironwork than horseshoes nowadays. We’re not rich – can’t be rich with six children, can you? – but we get by.’
Stratton smiled at her. ‘Looks to me as if you do rather better than that. Tell me, when Mrs Milburn came to your house with Tom, did she have another baby with her?’
Mrs Wheeler shook her head. ‘Just him.’
‘Did you ever see her with two babies?’
‘No. She only had the one child, I’m sure of it. I never heard anything about a brother or sister. She didn’t leave another child with someone else, did she?’
‘Not as far as we know,’ said Stratton, thinking that if she had he wouldn’t be surprised. ‘When’s Tom’s birthday?’
‘Twentieth of December. He was born in 1943.’
‘And you’re sure he didn’t have a twin?’
‘Sure as I can be,’ said Mrs Wheeler. ‘I mean, he might have had a twin who died – it happens sometimes – but I never heard of it. They didn’t mention it when we asked at the doctor’s surgery about Tom. I suppose there’s no reason why they should have told me, but all the same …’
Stratton returned to his car and sat staring out at the slate-grey sea, washing down the fish-paste sandwiches he’d brought for lunch with cold tea from his thermos flask. Then he took out his notebook and flipped through it until he found the notes he’d taken when Ballard reported his interview with Dr Slater. The doctor’s account tallied with Mrs Wheeler’s, and there was no reason to believe that either one of them was lying. Dr Slater had said that Mary’s child was ‘little more than a baby’ when the Reverend Milburn died in May 1945. A child of eighteen months, which Mrs Wheeler had said was Tom’s age when Mary’d left him with her, was almost a toddler. That could mean ‘little more than a baby’ couldn’t it? And Ballard had said Slater had been pretty clear that the kid’s name wasn’t Michael. Perhaps his impression that Michael was about twelve had been wrong. Perhaps he was younger – tall for his age – and Mary had had him the following year. Or Michael was Tom’s twin – they weren’t always identical – and Mary had, for some reason, kept him hidden. But why? It wasn’t something a normal mother would do, but Mary, as was becoming increasingly evident, was anything but normal, not only as a mother, but as a human being.
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