Wading Into Murder (3 page)

More to the point, there might not be anyone at the police station. They were all here. Lady Longtree confirmed the thought.

“We will do better to find help here instead,” she declared. “The policeman over there is a detective inspector, I believe, and he might be interested in this case. He has a good face at any rate.”

Screwing up her courage, Laura approached him. He met her halfway, looking furious despite the pleasant face. “The Baths are closed,” he told her. “May I ask who you are and why you were in there?”

Laura decided to go on the offensive. “I wonder if you could help me,” she countered. “I went into the Baths before the closure was announced, and found this baby left on the rocks on the lower level. I would like to see that it is returned to its mother.”

The policeman stared at her, taken aback. “You found a baby in the Baths? Are you quite sure?”

“Of course I am,” Laura answered crossly over the infant’s cries. “I would not say so otherwise.”

The policeman snatched the child from Laura’s arms and probed its wrappings with careful fingers. She watched, appalled. He was searching for a bomb.        

Satisfied that there were no hard objects wrapped around the baby, the detective thrust it back at Laura. Inexplicably, it had stopped screaming but the smell was worse than ever.

He wrote her name and the place where she was staying in a little notebook and then signaled to a young policewoman standing nearby. She trotted over obediently.

“This is Sergeant Prescott, my assistant,” he told Laura. “If you will go with her, she will give you all the help you need.”

Sergeant Prescott gave him a sour look, possibly wondering why she was being saddled with the smelly baby detail instead of the more interesting bomb search, but she did as she was told.

 “We have some emergency supplies at the station – food and nappies and so on,” she told Laura without much enthusiasm. “Once we have the baby fixed up I can take your statement. Perhaps a towel and something hot to drink for you.” She didn’t offer to take the baby, which had resumed its howls.

Someone pointed a camera at Laura and clicked. A mental image of the picture flashed into her mind: an American woman with soaking wet hair and soggy clothes standing outside the Roman Baths during a bomb scare in England, holding a stolen baby in her arms while being interrogated by two suspicious police officers. How had she got into such a ridiculous situation?

Because you can’t control your curiosity and you never look before you leap,
her ex-husband would say. Thomas, the charming if enigmatic man who had shared her adventures last summer would say much the same thing, but with admiration instead of disapproval. She wished he was here.

The two officers stepped aside to exchange a few words, and Laura looked for Lady Longtree and William. They were nowhere in sight, and she was surprised. They had seemed so friendly, and she hadn’t expected Lady Longtree especially to desert her. Perhaps it was because she didn’t like getting involved with the police.

Sergeant Prescott came up behind her. “This way,” she said, taking a firm grip on Laura’s elbow and steering her in the other direction. “It’s not far.”

Laura obeyed, aware that people were staring at her. No doubt they assumed she was involved in the bomb scare. How did one go about proving non-involvement? One woman especially seemed unable to tear her eyes away…

“The mother!” she gasped. “Over there – it’s the mother!”

Another shock followed. Just behind the woman were Lady Longtree and William.

CHAPTER THREE

Sergeant Prescott turned to look in the direction of Laura’s pointing finger. “The mother?” she asked in bewilderment. “You mean the baby’s mother?”

“Yes,” Laura answered. Wrenching her arm from the policewoman’s grip, she sprinted toward the woman. The Sergeant pounded after her.

Fear transfigured the mother’s face as she watched them. She turned and ran. Despite her bulky clothing she moved fast, and she quickly disappeared into the maze of narrow, twisting streets around the square.

Laura stopped, frustrated. There was no hope of finding the mother if she didn’t want to be found. But why would a mother run away from her own child? Had the police frightened her?

The Sergeant grabbed Laura’s arm again and held on tight until they were inside her office in the police station. Suspicion exuded from every pore of her stiff body. Picking up a phone, she asked someone to come for the baby and supplied Laura with the promised towel and cup of coffee. It smelled as if it had been brewing since early morning, but it was hot and Laura drank it gratefully.

“First, I need information about you, who you are and what brings you to this country,” the Sergeant instructed when the baby had been borne away. “I shall need your passport too. Then I would like to know everything you can tell me about this baby, how and where you found it, and why you thought the woman you saw in the square was its mother.”

Obediently, Laura handed over her passport, a professional card identifying her as Dr. Laura Morland, explained that she was a professor of gender studies in New York and had come to England to teach a seminar in Oxford, as well as to walk and do some sightseeing. Next she launched into an account of seeing the baby with its family at the airport, and then finding it in the Baths.

Sergeant Prescott frowned skeptically and began to pepper her with rapid-fire questions like who had hidden the child in the Baths and why, and whether the cleaning woman had been the baby’s mother or the woman in the square. When she didn’t get the answers she seemed to want, she asked the questions again from a different perspective, until Laura felt dizzy with denials. Clearly, the policewoman didn’t believe she was just an innocent bystander.

“I saw an article in the newspaper about an international organization that steals babies, and I wondered if there’s a connection with this baby,” Laura said finally, hoping the comment would divert suspicion from her. “I also wondered if there could be a connection between the baby’s presence in the Bath and the bomb scare.”

“What makes you think that?” Sergeant Prescott snapped.

Laura shrugged. “It’s such a coincidence that both should occur on the same day. I thought the bomb scare might have been a way to make sure no one was in the Baths until… Well, I suppose until the baby had been picked up by whoever was supposed to take it away, but then I came along and fouled things up.”

The Sergeant looked thoughtful, and for a moment she seemed to forget her interrogator role. “That is certainly possible,” she murmured, more to herself than to Laura. “I wonder…”

Her thought was interrupted by knock on the door. A young constable who looked no more than fifteen came in, expertly cradling a now contented baby. It was sucking greedily at a bottle. When it saw Laura it promptly spat out the nipple and began to scream again.

“After all I did for you,” Laura joked to the child. The comment fell flat. Neither the constable nor the Sergeant smiled.

“Made an appointment at the clinic,” the constable informed Sergeant Prescott. “Just in case. Had a hard time, poor little mite.”

“I thought the baby might have been drugged,” Laura volunteered, and could have bitten off her tongue. The police would probably think she was trying to disclaim any responsibility if drugs were found in the baby’s system.

To her surprise and the Sergeant’s obvious disapproval, the constable agreed. “I thought that myself,” he told her. “What made you think so?”

“The baby seemed to fall asleep at odd moments,” Laura answered. “It would start screaming, a normal reaction considering what was happening to it, then fall asleep as if it couldn’t help itself. I also wondered if the drug had affected its stomach. The smell seemed unusually strong.”

“Yes, that’s what I noticed,” the constable replied. “She was quite a stinker. Still, I think most of it has come through, if you take my meaning.”

“She? It’s a girl then? I wonder if the other one is too,” Laura mused.

Sergeant Prescott resumed control of the interview. “I believe we have all the information we need for the moment, Dr. Morland,” she told Laura. “You can leave the matter in our hands now. We may have more questions for you, however, and I need to know how to reach you.”

Laura provided the necessary information and left with a sigh of relief. They hadn’t taken her fingerprints or kept her passport, so maybe they didn’t really suspect her of stealing the baby. Regardless, she intended to leave the puzzle in their competent hands and get on with her trip.

She consulted her watch. In a few hours she would meet her fellow travelers on the bus tour she had decided to join after she finished the Cotswold Way. Walking trips left no time for sight-seeing, she had discovered - unless one could walk at the marathon pace of British ramblers, who were reputed to manage three castles before lunch. She could not. Besides, sitting peacefully on a bus while someone else drove and handled the logistics sounded wonderfully peaceful. All she had to do for the next few days was watch scenery and enjoy the sights.

After that, she would head for Oxford to teach her seminar. Recently, she had compiled a series of lectures on the effects of religious and political turmoil on women’s status across the world today. Since her field was the evolution of gender stretching back more than a million years, this was a more contemporary issue than she’d tackled before and she was anxious to see how the material would be received, particularly its most tragic aspects like slavery and the excesses of fundamentalism like stoning women to death for presumed adultery.

A more pleasurable interlude would follow – a long weekend with Thomas, her co-adventurer from last summer.

An old man with rheumy eyes and shabby clothes came up to her as she passed the Baths again on her way back to the B&B. Laura was almost certain she had seen him before, crouched against the stone wall that bordered the Baths.

“Excuse me, Miss,” he murmured.

Laura hesitated, torn between an urgent desire to get out of her still soggy clothes and a long-standing inability to be rude to panhandlers. Reluctance to walk away won, and she reached into her pocket for some spare change. Even if it went for a drink, it would make him happy for a bit at least.

“No,” he said clearly, “not money. It’s about the ba -”

A middle-aged woman ran up and grabbed his arm before he could finish his sentence. “Come along now, Joe,” she instructed. “No talking to strangers, you know that. Time to go home.” 

The apologetic smile she gave Laura was conspiratorial, as if they shared an understanding of how peculiar old people could become. Laura was irritated. All her sympathies were with the old man. Besides, he clearly knew something about the baby and she wanted to hear what it was.

“It’s all right,” she told the woman stiffly, and turned to Joe with a smile. “I’ll be glad to hear what you have to say, Joe,” she assured him. The woman looked appalled and hustled him away before he could reply.

Laura followed at a discreet distance and made a mental note of the house they entered. She would come back and talk to Joe when he was alone.

This was the same area where the mother had disappeared, she realized. Maybe she could find her again and get her to talk – this time without a policewoman on her heels and a howling baby in her arms.

A lanky figure turned into the street ahead of her. William?

Laura hurried after him. Definitely William. She saw him stop in front of one door, then another, and try to open them with the key he’d found in the Baths.

“William!” she called. He turned and smiled.

“Hi, Laura,” he said cheerfully. “My grandmother and I heard you say the woman in the square was the mother, so we followed her. I’m pretty sure she went into one of the houses on this street, so I thought I’d try the key I found in a few doors. It’s the wrong kind, though. Too old-fashioned.”  He held it out.

Laura smiled back, delighted to know that he and Lady Longtree hadn’t deserted her but had instead been trying to help. “Thanks!” she said. “I wonder what the key goes to,” she added, examining it.

“I think it’s for that rusty door at the back of the springs you couldn’t open,” William said. “That’s the only door I can think of that’s old enough. Someone has cleaned up the key, too. See those scrape marks, as if they did it with steel wool or sandpaper?” William pointed to some vague marks that Laura discovered she could barely discern without her glasses.

“I’ll take your word for it,” she told him. “Your eyes are a lot better than mine.”

“Maybe the person oiled the door, too,” William went on. “It would be interesting to find out. Doors can look rusty and old and still work.”

Laura nodded. “Worth a try - unless we have to climb back down that wall to get to the door,” she amended hastily.

“I know how to get to it from the other side,” William assured her. “If the key works, we can get in that way.”

Abruptly, Laura remembered the paper in her pocket. “I found this piece of paper near where you found the key,” she explained, pulling it out. “I think the cleaning woman I saw running away might have dropped both of them. Maybe they fell out of her pocket but she was in too much of a hurry to stop and look for them.”

She smoothed out the paper. “It looks like a sketch of the underground space in the Baths, and there’s some writing. Not English, though.”

 William peered over her shoulder. “Definitely the Baths,” he pronounced. “That black dot probably marks the place where you found the baby. And I think the writing is Arabic – all drawings and squiggles. I’ve seen it before.”

A door opened further up the street and a man stepped out, cigarette in hand. His eyes flicked in her direction and Laura drew back hastily. “I think that’s the baby’s father,” she hissed. “I don’t want him to see me. He might remember me from the airport and wonder why I’m prowling around.”

William reacted instantly. Taking her arm as if they were out for a casual stroll, he led her in the other direction. “Let’s duck into that alley and watch,” he whispered.

The man stood on the doorstep smoking. Definitely the father, Laura saw from her hiding place. He didn’t look again in her direction but she had the impression that he had indeed seen her, perhaps recognized her from the airport.

She watched as he ground out his cigarette with one heel and sauntered toward a woman who had just turned the corner into the street. For a moment Laura thought she was the mother. The resemblance was very strong. Then she realized that this woman was much younger, more girl than woman. A niece perhaps?

The girl’s steps slowed as the father came closer, and Laura thought she looked frightened. Then, seeming to regain courage, she thrust her chin in the air and nodded coolly at the man as they passed. He reached out to touch her and made a remark Laura couldn’t hear, though she suspected it was lewd. Shrinking away from him, the girl walked quickly up the house he had just left.

“I’m going to try to talk to her,” Laura whispered. “A woman is better, I think.”

William nodded. “I’ll watch from here.”

As soon as the father was out of sight, Laura ran up to the girl and touched her lightly on the arm. “Excuse me,” she said politely. “I wonder if you know the woman whose baby I found…”

The young woman whirled. “You are the one who found her!” she breathed, and her hands flew to her face. “May Allah bless you for what you have done. But you must not be here, he must not see you.”

“The father you mean?”

The young woman looked alarmed. “How do you know…” she faltered.

“I saw them in New York, at the airport,” Laura explained hastily. “That’s how I knew who the baby was, and I wanted to return it to its mother.”

“Allah is with us, that you should see them even there,” she girl said brokenly. “But you must not speak. Please, I beg you, they must keep her. She cannot return, not yet…”

“The police must keep the baby, you mean?”

The girl looked down the street the other way, and her eyes widened with fear. “I must go inside! She is coming.”

Laura followed her gaze and saw an older woman in a black headscarf and long coat coming around the corner. Not the father, but perhaps his mother. Matriarchs could inspire fear too.

“Thank you for telling me how to get to the square,” she said loudly to the girl as the older woman approached. “I will remember your directions. Goodbye.” The girl sent her a grateful look and turned to go inside.

Nodding pleasantly to the older woman, Laura walked back to the alley. She heard the old woman question the girl sharply in a strange language and the younger woman’s placating reply, and hoped her ruse had worked. The girl had been brave to talk to her at all.

“What did the girl say?” William whispered as she approached.

“That the mother wants the baby to stay with the police. I think it’s because they’re terrified of the father.”

William’s face lit up. “Let’s watch until he comes back and see if we can find out,” he said eagerly. “I’ll pretend to be a salesman of some kind and get him talking. I’ll bet he’s the type of man who loves to boast about himself.”

Laura was impressed. For someone so young that was a perceptive observation. The salesman idea was another matter.

“You don’t look much like a salesman,” she objected with a dubious look at William’s soggy trousers and spiky hair. “You haven’t got anything to sell, either. Besides, I don’t like the look of that man. There’s a predatory feeling about him.”

She shivered. “I’m too cold to stand here much longer, anyway.”

“I’m cold too,” William admitted, hugging his arms around his chest and jumping up and down to get warm. “I’ll dream up a good costume and come back later. I’m quite clever at foreign accents and disguises. They’ll never know who I am.”