Baby Drop

by Jennie Melville

  Kate sounded happy. ‘I got up today, they let me go to the bathroom myself.’ Off her pretty cell was an even smaller bathroom. ‘And last night when I couldn’t sleep I took a walk round the room.’

  ‘Did you, dearest?’

  ‘I was careful, a bit nervous. Silly, isn’t it? But I didn’t want to risk the baby.’

  She was at risk herself.

  ‘Of course, Kate.’

  ‘Once you start on this baby business, you want to do it well.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ She was repeating herself out of want of better words of love and support.

  ‘I want to be a loving mother.’

  ‘I know that.’ Charmian held Kate’s hand, it was hot and dry.

  ‘But you know sometimes I feel angry. Go away, baby, I say to myself. I wish you weren’t here, I’ve had enough, there’s not room for two of us. Go away and let me get back to being myself … Can you understand that?’

  ‘Can’t I just,’ said Charmian, thinking of the love and resentment and violence that was growing up in her relationship with Humphrey.

  Kate hung on to her godmother’s hand. ‘I could do with seeing more of my husband … but he’s got a case.’

  Charmian nodded. ‘I know that.’ As his boss, she had given him the case, and might be on the point of giving him the case of Sarah. ‘He’s tied that one up, though.’ But she had this new case waiting in the wings.

  ‘He telephones a lot and always comes in the evening when he’s finished for the day. Only sometimes I’m asleep and they won’t let him wake me.’ Kate sounded resigned but sad.

  I ought to go easy on Rewley, not give him the Sarah Holt business to handle, thought Charmian. I shouldn’t put it on him. But she knew she would, she could be ruthless, work was work.

  ‘But he leaves messages and books and flowers. I’m reading a lot.’

  ‘Good. Anything I can get you?’

  ‘No, just come when you can … You help.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘You get it right, how I feel. My mother doesn’t, not even Rewley. Perhaps men can’t, but you do.’ She always called her husband Rewley, everyone did. ‘ He looks at me with love, too much love, it worries me, and Anny buys me expensive bedjackets and nightgowns’ – she looked down at the trifle of chiffon and swansdown on her shoulders which had been her mother’s latest gift, – ‘and says why not get in a special nurse.’

  ‘Anny’s always had too much money.’ Charmian delivered the judgement briefly. Anny was her best and oldest friend, and a fine artist, but money had let her get away with more than she should.

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘AWOL,’ said Kate sadly. Her father always absconded when family crises loomed, he loved his daughter as he loved Anny but sometimes he preferred to hide. With a bottle of whisky if possible.

  ‘But you understand.’

  They sat in silence for a minute, then Charmian said: ‘I’ve been there, you know … I had to make a decision once, I made it, but I’ve never known if it was the right one … But it didn’t seem the right time to have a child. Perhaps it never is. And the father …’

  Kate looked at her. ‘Not around? He didn’t stay around?’

  ‘You could say that.’ He’d been dead, as it happened, but no need to go into it. Not a tragedy if you didn’t make it so.

  Her throat felt tight, pushing emotion aside, she walked to the window to look out. From this window in this sheltered room, she could see over the wall to the patch of rough ground that was all that was left of Baby Drop.

  The area was larger than she had expected, stretching in the dark towards a thick belt of bushes and trees beyond which it was lit by a row of street lamps.

  She could imagine the flitting, nervous figures of the girls who had hidden in the shadows before they laid their baby down. Some just wrapped in rags, but others, so she had been told, nicely dressed with a little trinket or two about them, a necklace, a locket, or a tiny bracelet. She had also heard that one or two were buried under the loose turf. Not all deaths of the infants were natural. You could think of their ghosts out there, poor little creatures.

  ‘I saw someone walking around there last night when I went to the bathroom … because it was so special being allowed to move round, I took my time. I stood by the window. I could see in the moonlight.’

  Charmian frowned. ‘ This person … man or woman?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell. Huddled up in clothes.’ Kate meditated. ‘A huddle, it was.’

  ‘Doing anything special?’

  ‘No, just walking around.’

  Charmian came back from the window, and stood looking at her godchild. She didn’t like what she saw.

  Kate said in a small voice: ‘It’s haunted out there.’ Kate sat back against her pillows. ‘I can feel it.’

  ‘What you need is a strong-minded female friend.’

  ‘Dolly Barstow is looking in.’

  ‘She’ll do.’

  Dolly Barstow was a detective sergeant who had worked with Charmian: she had been seconded to another police force for a few months and was now back but doing a course in medico-legal studies which seemed to mean working in a hospital for part of the time, and then sitting at the feet of lawyers in King’s College, University of London. Charmian, who had taken an ambitious route herself in the past, liked Dolly. Kate and Dolly had been close friends for some while.

  Charmian hugged Kate. ‘I’m off. Look after yourself.’

  ‘They don’t let me do anything else.’

  She drove home to Maid of Honour Row, passing the Castle, which was still burning, with the smoke and smell of charred wood hanging over the town. Her own small house was quiet, the cat Muff met her with a soft sound which probably was a suggestion for food, this being the subject which usually drove her to communicate.

  Charmian spooned out some food on to her special dish which had DOG on it in large black letters. Muff did not mind, she had been a cat for a long time and knew exactly who she was.

  Charmian prepared and ate her own modest meal. Her marriage was planned for two months ahead and she was on a strict diet.

  After she had eaten, she telephoned Inspector Feather at the Incident Room.

  ‘He’s gone home, ma’am.’

  She could and did call his house, a woman’s voice answered the telephone, to Charmian’s surprise. So he’s got someone, she thought. Not the wife, she would have known her, and this speaker sounded young. Pleasant. And she seemed to recognize Charmian’s voice, to know she was someone you had to listen to, but to know also that Feather would not be pleased, and to be willing to say so. He was worn out with this new case, had been up most of last night while they dragged the river near the railway, and had now gone to sleep in front of his favourite television programme.

  Charmian pressed her point.

  ‘I’ll get him,’ said the voice doubtfully. Lover, housekeeper, sister, aunt, or just friend? Not aunt, Charmian decided, she sounded too young, but this left a wide choice.

  ‘Please.’ And when he came, trying to sound alert, Charmian began: ‘About the missing girl …’

  ‘Yes, I’m worried too. It’s been a bad day.’

  ‘Bad news?’

  ‘No news, that’s the worst sort. No witnesses, no sightings, not even false alarms …’ He took a deep breath, and came quite awake. ‘At least she’s not in the river.’

  ‘Plenty of other places.’

  ‘We’re looking,’ said Feather grimly.

  ‘I’ve seen the mother.’

  ‘What did you make of her?’

  ‘A bit puzzling … The story she told me was just slightly different.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Feather. ‘We’d better compare notes.’

  ‘But she did tell me about the doll, and showed me the child’s collection, family of dolls.’

  Feather said: ‘ I suppose the girl actually has gone.’

  ‘What an idea.’

  ‘Keeps coming into
my mind … Only her word for it.’

  ‘You don’t pull your shots.’

  ‘I’ve shocked you, ma’am.’

  ‘No.’ The shock was that she was not shocked. ‘ It is something you have to think about.’

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘But you were convinced the child was dead.’

  ‘Not incompatible,’ said Feather heavily.

  Charmian said: ‘I just have a hunch, but search the open ground behind the Princess Mother and Baby Clinic.’

  For this was Baby Drop territory and what had been a good spot for a burial might have lingered in folk history and been used again. Some sites did attract their own history.

  Chapter Two

  ‘ “Now, Dolly, I am not clever, you know that very well and you must be patient with me like a dear.” ’

  Bleak House , by Charles Dickens.

  Mist from the river mixed with smoke from the Castle which still smouldered, and the clouds hanging low over the town, pressed the mixture down on the town and in through cracks in windows and doors. Charmian smelt it as she dressed and drank some coffee, Muff, as she came in from the garden, had the smell of it on her fur, and Charmian thought her own hair had picked up a smokiness. She stood under a hot shower to let it wash out. Her hair needed cutting, but Humphrey was on his way home from China and he liked her hair long.

  It was the first time that she had let what he liked about her appearance influence her, consciously anyway, and it felt strange. Looking back, her previous strong determination to dress only for herself and what pleased her now seemed arrogant and selfish. There were others in the world, you loved some of them and why not give pleasure if you could.

  All the same, if shoulder-length hair had not suited her, then she would not have worn it. No motives are totally pure.

  This thought refreshed her, restored the balance to what was, she admitted, an astringent personality, so she emerged from the shower in a good mood. It was hard being a changed woman. For a long time now, she had thought of herself as being solitary, capable of having temporary attachments but nothing lasting. She had chosen to be like this, it seemed safer.

  So it had been a surprise when tender, anxious love could come springing back. It was a spring, new and vigorous, as if the stream had been running underground all this time but had now burst forth.

  An engagement ring, a vast blue sapphire flanked by diamonds almost as large, was even now being altered to fit her finger by Mr Madge, the jeweller. Mr Madge’s shop, tucked away in a precinct called Edred’s Yard, which must be pre-Norman as old and quiet as he was himself. As well as jewellery and gold and silverware, he dealt in antique objects, anything that took his fancy from fine delicate china to a suit of armour which stood at the back of the shop next to a large collection of objects of all sizes that might have come from anywhere, Germany, Italy, China, and ancient Rome or Babylon, anything in short that might have caught Mr Madge’s or his father’s eye, and the value of which was hard to assess. The dust thicker here at the back of the shop where the objects gave the impression of not having been disturbed since the death of the late King. But Mr Madge kept his old customers in the town, county, and Castle. Humphrey and Humphrey’s ring were well known to him, as it had been to his father and his father before that. They had cleaned and reset it for several generations.

  Charmian took a quiet, secret, half-ashamed satisfaction that her finger was more slender than that of the original ancestral Kent owner. It was one of those rings that wealthy landed families (gentry, they used to be called) keep by them for the engagement of the eldest son. No one but Humphrey was left now, he was only and all, heir to whatever there was left; a small estate in Dorset, some careful investments, and a good deal of old-fashioned jewellery.

  He would probably telephone again today from Bonn or Peking or wherever he was, and they would sort things out. But he must never show anger to her again, however maddening she was, not direct, physical anger, or she’d be off. Probably having given him a black eye first. That was how she felt at the moment: strike first.

  She towelled her hair and considered the day. Her task was to know about all the investigation of serious crime in her remit, to be informed, to make sure she was informed (not as easy as it sounded, all policemen liked to keep their own secrets if they could), and to undertake an independent inquiry when she saw fit.

  She did not exercise this right too often, but her small inquiry team which George Rewley headed, and who was assisted by Amos Elliot and Jane Gibson, both detective constables, was beginning to be well known. And somewhat feared.

  They were known for never giving up. She had recently sent them, like ferrets, into a fraud case where they were investigating the investigators.

  She drank her coffee in the kitchen, wondering if Inspector Dan Feather had started the inspection on the Baby Drop land, or if he would give it low priority. She drank her second cup of coffee, thinking about Kate and looking absently at the dust on the shelves opposite which the morning sun made obvious. Someone ought to do something about it. She had a housekeeper who appeared twice a week to clean and polish but she was at present sunning herself in Morocco, enjoying what she called her ‘winter break’. The widow of a policeman, she had a string of admirers, one of whom had gone on this trip with her. She had offered a touch of sympathy to Charmian for being about to marry again. ‘You’re better off on your own, dear, that’s something I’ve learnt. Not that my Jim was a nuisance, he was a good man, but there’s the freedom to pick and choose, and now I’ve got it, I mean to keep it. But there, this new one you’ve got …’

  Charmian appreciated the force of the word ‘got’ here.

  As Charmian was dressing, the telephone rang.

  ‘Rewley here.’

  ‘How’s Kate?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Uncomfortable and cross. If only her blood pressure would stop whizzing about.’ There were other complications and hazards for Kate and her baby, as they both knew. ‘ But I didn’t ring about that. I think we’ve got to the bottom of this business and I can leave Jane to wrap it up. Jenkins Junior did not do anything wrong himself but he fed information to Jenkins Major who was able to profit.’ These were not the real names of the characters concerned. ‘And Jenkins Major had something solid in Jenkins Super who was sent in to do the books …’

  ‘A chain?’ said Charmian.

  ‘A chain. I’ve got some papers for you to sign.’

  ‘That’s good, because I want to speak to you. I’ve got a series of meetings. Come to the library about twelve.’

  Her department had recently been moved nearer to the town and was now housed in an ancient building which the Police Authority had bought and promised to preserve without spoiling its character. The foundations of the building were probably fifteenth century, so Charmian had been told, on which an Elizabethan building had been superimposed, only to be replaced in its turn by a Queen Anne construction so that Charmian worked in a string of rooms that had ceilings and panellings from the very early eighteenth century. The floors sloped, the doors were warped, and every draught sped through the window-frames, but she loved it. She issued the invitation with some pleasure: the library was her own invention. On a tight budget, her own assistant there was a young librarian who came in three mornings a week. Otherwise, she was on her own. But in some ways she preferred it so, it was a place to work privately.

  Only a small fund had been allowed her to set it up, but she had taken the best professional advice from the local university (from which the librarian came), so that she had a well-chosen library on criminology, forensic science, and pathology. In addition, she had three shelves of local history. Nice neat volumes, some in old calf, others rebound in strong red and blue by prisoners in the local prison workshop.

  These were all on open shelves, to be used by the carefully chosen group who had access to the library, but in a locked cupboard she had a few files on cases she had been involved with, some of
the material here was too inflammable to be made public.

  ‘You’re a historian manqué,’ her friend Anny Cooper had said, when Charmian let her in to view the room. She put her hand on the row of local history books. James Henderson on Saxon Windsor and Norman Windsor. Mowett and Fraser: The growth of Windsor under the Tudors. Eliza Charteris: Windsor in the Eighteenth Century. Joseph and Mary Frost: Windsor Traders and Craftsmen.

  ‘You know me too well.’

  ‘I know you always underestimate yourself. You’re doing it now.’ Anny turned her head away. ‘ This marriage, don’t let Humphrey call the tune.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that.’ Charmian tried to sound confident.

  Anny shrugged, not answering.

  ‘You don’t like Humphrey.’ It might be the time to question Anny about his earlier marriage but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  ‘No, that’s not true, although all that family can be tough customers.’ She didn’t see Charmian wince as she turned towards her. ‘I think I’m jealous, you get on better with my daughter than I do, and sometimes you seem to get on with my husband better than I do myself.’

  ‘How is Jack?’ asked Charmian with sympathy. Anny and her husband had a marriage that came to pieces every so often. Anny was rich, a talented artist, and Jack was neither.

  ‘On a toot.’ Anny was gloomy. ‘He’ll kill himself one day.’

  ‘He’ll come back when Kate’s had the baby.’

  ‘Yes, and I shall be glad to see him, it’s always the same. I drive him away, then welcome him back. Take no notice of me, I admire what you’ve done here.’ She took a book from the shelf. Trout on Local Buckinghamshire Customs, first edition too. I have it myself. Inherited, I didn’t buy it. You’re making a good collection.’ She smiled, apologizing without words as Anny so often did. ‘ You know more about Windsor than I do, yet I’ve lived here almost all my life and you’ve only been here a few years.’

  ‘Almost ten,’ said Charmian, thinking that to know the district was her shop, and that she knew more than Anny guessed, even more about what Jack got up to than she let on. ‘And you can’t live in a place like Windsor without developing a strong sense of the past.’