‘Seventy-eight.’

‘Seventy-eight up in court on a murder charge. On the other hand, should she be allowed to profit from her crime? Should she be permitted to terrorize pedestrians in a smart little Ford Fiesta?’

‘She won’t,’ said Crocker.

Something in his voice brought Wexford to his feet. ‘Why? What d’you mean?’

The doctor slid lightly off the edge of the desk. ‘I told you I’d lost a patient. Elsie Parrish died last night. A neighbour found her and called me.’

‘Maybe that’s for the best. What did she die of?’

‘A stroke,’ said Crocker, and went.

Ginger and the Kingsmarkham Chalk Circle

‘THERE’S A GIRL downstairs, sir,’ said Polly Davies, ‘and she says someone’s taken her baby out of its pram.’

Chief Inspector Wexford had been contemplating a sheet of foolscap. On it, written by himself in the cause of crime prevention, was a politely worded request to the local authority, asking them to refrain from erecting scaffolding around their rented property a full nine months before building work was due to commence. Because of the scaffolding there had already been two burglaries and an assault on a young woman. He looked up from the paper, adjusted his thoughts and sighed.

‘They will do it,’ he said. ‘Leave their babies about I mean. You’d never find them leaving their handbags outside shops.’

‘It was outside her flat, sir, not a shop, and the thing is, whoever took the baby left another one in its place.’

Slowly Wexford got up. He came round the desk and looked narrowly at Polly.

‘Constable Davies, you have to be pulling my leg.’

‘No, sir, you know I wouldn’t. She’s a Mrs Bond and she says that when she went downstairs to fetch in her pram, her baby had gone and another one been put there.’

Wexford followed Polly down to the ground floor. In one of the interview rooms a girl was sitting at the bleak, rectangular, plastic-topped table, drinking tea and crying. She looked about nineteen. She had long straw-coloured hair and a small childish face, naive and innocent and frightened, and she was wearing blue denims and a tee-shirt with apples and oranges and cherries printed all over the front. From her appearance one would not have supposed her to be a mother. But also in the room was a baby. The baby, in short white frock and woolly coat and napkin and cotton socks, slept in the uneasy arms of Detective Constable Loring.

It had occurred to Wexford on the way down that women who have recently had babies are, or are said to be, prone to various kinds of mental disturbance, and his first thought was that Mrs Bond might only think or only be saying that this child was not hers.

‘Now, Mrs Bond,’ he began, ‘this is a strange business. Do you feel like telling me about it?’

‘I’ve told it all,’ she said.

‘Well, yes, but not to me. Why not start by telling me where you live and where your baby was?’