The Family Upstairs(16)
PC Shah recalled the sound of flies. He said he thought someone had left a pair of clippers running, or an electric toothbrush. The bodies, they said, were in the very earliest stages of decay, still recognisable as an attractive, dark-haired, thirty-something woman and an older man with salt and pepper hair. Their hands were linked. Next to them lay the corpse of another man. Fortyish. Tall. Dark hair. They all wore black: the woman a tunic and leggings, the men a kind of robe. The items, it transpired, had been homemade. They’d later found a sewing machine in the back room, remnants of black fabric in a bin.
Apart from the buzzing flies, the house was deathly quiet. The police said they wouldn’t have thought to look for a baby if it hadn’t been for the mention of her on the note left on the dining table. They’d almost missed the dressing room off the master bedroom, but then they’d heard a noise, an ‘ooh’, PC Shah had said.
An ‘ooh’.
Libby steps slowly up the staircase and into the bedroom. She peers around the corner of the door into the dressing room.
And there she’d been! Bonny as anything! That’s what PC Robbin had said. Bonny as anything!
Her flesh crawls slightly at the sight of the painted crib. But she breaks through the discomfort and stares at the crib until she is desensitised. After a moment she feels neutral enough to lay a hand upon it. She pictures the two young policemen, peering over the top of the crib. She imagines herself, in her pure white Babygro, her hair already a full helmet of Shirley Temple curls even at only ten months old, her feet kicking up and down with excitement at the sight of the two friendly faces staring down at her.
‘She tried to stand up,’ said Robbin. ‘She was pulling up at the sides of the cot. Desperate to be taken out. We didn’t know what to do. She was evidence. Should we touch her? Should we call for back-up? We were flummoxed.’
Apparently, they’d decided not to pick her up. PC Shah sang songs to her while they waited to hear what they should do. Libby wished she could remember it; what songs had he sung to her, this kind young policeman? Had he enjoyed singing her the songs? Had he felt embarrassed? According to the article, he’d gone on to have five children of his own, but when he found Serenity Lamb in her crib, he’d had no experience of babies.
A crime scene team soon arrived in the house, including a special officer to collect the baby. Her name was Felicity Measures. She was forty-one at the time. Now she is sixty-five and newly retired, living in the Algarve with her third husband. ‘She was the dearest baby,’ the article quoted her. ‘Golden curls, well fed and cared for. Very smiley and cuddly. Incongruous given the setting in which she’d been left. Which was gothic, really. Yes, it was quite, quite gothic.’
Libby pushes the cot and it creaks pathetically, evidencing its great age. Who was it bought for? she wonders. Was it bought for her? Or for generations of babies before her? Because she now knows there are other players in the story of her. Not just Martina and Henry Lamb, and the mystery man. Not just the missing children. Neighbours had spoken of not two, but ‘numerous’ children, of other people ‘coming and going’. The house was filled with untraceable bloodstains and DNA, with fibres and dropped hairs and strange notes and scribbles on walls and secret panels and a garden full of medicinal herbs, some of which had been used in her parents’ apparent suicide pact.
‘We are setting ourselves free from these broken bodies, from this despicable world, from pain and disappointment. Our baby is called Serenity Lamb. She is ten months old. Please make sure she goes to nice people. Peace, always, HL, ML, DT’, the note by their decaying bodies had said.
Libby leaves the room and slowly wanders the house, seeking out some of the strange things found in the aftermath of the deaths. Whoever else had been in the house the night of the suicides had run, the article said, leaving wardrobe doors flung open, food in the fridge, half-read books open on the floor, pieces of paper torn from walls leaving behind their Sellotaped corners.
She finds one of these strips of Sellotape on the wall in the kitchen, yellowed and crisp. She tugs the small shred of paper from it and stares at it for a moment in the palm of her hand. What had been on the piece of paper that the people fleeing this sinking ship had not wanted other eyes to see?
There is a fridge in the country-style kitchen, a huge rusting American-style fridge, cream and beige, probably quite unusual in the UK in the eighties, she imagines. She pulls it open and peers inside. Speckles of mould, a pair of cracked and broken plastic ice trays, nothing more. In the kitchen cupboards she finds empty enamelled tins, a packet of flour so old that it has turned to a brick. There is a set of white teacups, a chrome teapot, ancient pots of herbs and spices, a toast rack, a large tray, painted black. She scratches at the black paint to reveal the silver beneath. She wonders why someone would paint a silver tray black.
And then she stops. She has heard something. Some sort of movement from upstairs. She slides the tray back into the cupboard and stands at the foot of the stairs. She hears the sound again, a sort of dull thump. Her heart quickens. She tiptoes to the landing. There it is again. And again. And then – her heart rate doubles at the sound – someone clears their throat.
Mr Royle, she thinks, it must be Mr Royle, the solicitor. It couldn’t be anyone else. She’d shut the door behind her when she arrived. Definitely.
‘Hello?’ she calls out. ‘Hello. Mr Royle!’