‘I wondered that and thought maybe they hadn’t liked to tell me and hurt my feelings, so I telephoned my friend Nora. She works at Lovells funeral directors in town. She’s a good friend and we often have a chat and a laugh about the goings on behind the scenes at the funeral parlour. You wouldn’t believe some of the things she tells me!’ So much for confidentiality, Beth thought. ‘My friend Nora said Lovells hasn’t been contacted to arrange the funeral of David Jennings,’ Angela Slater concluded with satisfaction.

‘Perhaps they’re using a different funeral director,’ Beth said, suggesting the obvious.

‘That’s what I thought too,’ Angela said in a conspiratorial tone. ‘But I’ve checked all the funeral directors within a twenty-mile radius, and none of them has been contacted to arrange the funeral.’

Beth stared at her while Matt remarked dryly, ‘That shows some dedication.’

Beth threw him a warning look. They got on well together, but he wasn’t renowned for his subtlety.

‘Not only that,’ Angela Slater continued, leaning forward slightly. ‘There isn’t a death certificate. I got Nora to check the register of deaths. The baby isn’t listed, which it should have been. You have to register a baby’s death just like you do an adult’s.’

Beth was momentarily speechless, not so much because of what Mrs Slater was saying, but the lengths she’d gone to.

‘If a baby is stillborn then it has to be registered on the stillborn registry, but you have forty-two days to register.’

‘I know that,’ Mrs Slater said impatiently. ‘But if a baby is born alive and then dies, its death has to be registered within five days as with any other death. Even if it only lives for an hour.’

Beth held Mrs Slater’s gaze. ‘It was stillborn,’ Beth said, as Matt wrote.

‘No. It wasn’t stillborn. It was alive. I heard it cry.’

‘You didn’t mention that before when we spoke,’ Beth said. ‘You told me you couldn’t see the baby’s face because it was covered by a blanket in the Moses basket.’

‘I couldn’t see it, but I heard it.’

‘So why didn’t you tell me that the last time?’ Beth asked.

‘I didn’t think I had to. I just thought you’d assume it was alive. It was only after you said that the Jennings had told you the baby was dead that I realized the significance of what I’d heard.’

Beth paused for a moment and looked thoughtful. ‘When exactly did you hear it cry?’ she asked.

‘As the midwife lifted the Moses basket into her car. I was upstairs looking out of my bedroom window. The fanlight window was open and I heard it cry. A funny little mewing sound.’

‘Could it have been a cat you heard?’ Matt asked, which Beth thought was a reasonable question.