Frozen Charlotte by Priscilla Masters Page B

embarrassed for her to see it too, resenting both her cognizance and her concern. He passed a hand over his face wearily, pressing his fingers into his eyelids almost with pain. Something was patently very wrong. Martha felt concerned. She was fond of Alex. They were not only colleagues but friends – even though she could not say she had got to know him well. She had always suspected there was tragedy lurking somewhere in his life but he had never confided in her and she had never asked.
    But now they had important work to do. It was not the time to tackle him.
    They moved into the post-mortem room.
    Even Martha could see that the child was a newborn, a neonate. Stripped naked this was easy to see. There was a stump of an umbilical cord. Blackened and shrivelled but quite unmistakable. Its head was still elongated from its birth. Its skin was dark and papery; the bones looked soft. They stood around and looked at it, the remains of a pathetic infant who had never had the chance to live either at all or for more than a few hours. And Sullivan was right. It was a little boy.
    ‘Well,’ Alex said. ‘Talith’s statement clearly says that Mrs Sedgewick called the child Poppy, and referred to her as a girl. Wrapped her in a pink blanket.’
    The blanket was neatly folded to the side. In a forensic bag was another blanket, tattered and partly eaten by moths or rodents. They all glanced over at it.
    ‘Was it wearing any other clothes,’ Alex asked.
    Sullivan answered. ‘No. Just that.’
    ‘No nappy, no Babygro?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Sullivan said again. ‘Which supports the theory that this is a neonate and died round about the time of birth. I’ve had a quick look at the blanket the baby was wrapped in. There’s some staining which I think is meconium.’
    Alex looked puzzled. ‘Sorry? I wish you wouldn’t use these medical terms.’
    ‘When a baby is born the first motion it passes is meconium, the liquor or water it’s swallowed whilst still in the womb.’
    ‘Thanks,’ the detective said.
    Mark Randall held his finger up. ‘And there’s something else,’ he said.
    ‘Our little boy wasn’t exactly perfect. He has a harelip.’
    ‘Really?’ Martha was again reminded of Precious Bane .
    ‘Yes. Look.’ He inserted a finger behind the shrunken lip of the infant so they could see a distinct gap.
    ‘Good gracious,’ Martha said then narrowed her eyes. ‘But you don’t die of a harelip, Alex.’
    ‘No. Nor of a cleft palate which he also had.’
    ‘So who is the mother?’ Alex asked.
    Sullivan met his eyes. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is the million dollar question.’
    The mortician measured the crown to heel length.
    ‘Obviously,’ Alex said a little stiffly, ‘the big question is whether the child was born dead or alive.’
    ‘Yes,’ the pathologist agreed.
    Sullivan worked without speaking, examining the lungs in great detail, taking tiny pieces for analysis under the microscope and scraping samples.
    Then he spoke. ‘The whole thing hinges,’ he said, ‘on whether the lungs ever inflated. It looks to me as though there has been some partial aeration. It’s very difficult as the body is in this state of decay. Suffice it to say that I can’t see any wadding down the larynx or any sign of suffocation. I can’t see any obvious trauma.’ He looked up, at Martha this time. ‘To be honest, Martha,’ he said, ‘because of the advanced decay of the child I couldn’t say with any certainty whether it was born alive or dead. I couldn’t swear what exactly happened in a court of law. All I can say for certain is that I see no evidence of infanticide.’
    She glanced at the row of pots. ‘Would your tissue samples show whether the lungs had ever expanded?’
    ‘Possibly. I think the child probably lived for a few minutes. Its lungs are partially expanded. It looks as though the cord was cut but not properly ligatured and the baby could have bled and died, even from shock. The mother – or we