opened the door by the handle of the ordinary catch, and Yoti noted the Yale-type lock was snibbed. The hall was small and had the imprint of the house-proud slave. A hat and umbrella stand stood against one wall, a small table flanked by a chair fronted another. On the table was a bowl of dying roses; above it hung an oval mirror reflecting the open front door. Dark green linoleum covered the floor of the hall and passage leading to the rear.
“Room to the right, Sergeant,” Essen said tightly. “The door was shut, but I managed to open it without mucking up possible prints. She’s lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. And the baby’s cot is empty.”
Yoti closed the door, and the light from the open fanlight emphasised the lines which suddenly appeared about his wide mouth. Abruptly he strode to the bedroom, paused just within the door frame. The scene was registered as a succession of pictures: beginning with the meticulously made bed, then the blind-protected windows, the body of the woman on the floor, and finally the empty cot beyond the foot of the bed.
“Thring says he and his wife are sure that Mrs Rockcliff left the child alone in the house,” Essen said. “None of the neighbours have seen it since last Monday. Looks like the woman returned to find the baby-thief on the job, and was done in because she recognised him.”
It was a pleasant room, the drawn linen blinds creating a pseudo-coolness, and the sunlight penetrating at one side to fashion a finger of gold to caress a dead hand upon a blue rug. There was light enough to see the lacy draperies of the baby’s cot, the feeding bottle on the small table, the miniatures on the walls.
Only now was he conscious of the flies blundering about, of the staleness of the air, of the silence about him and of the noises without. On tiptoe he left the doorway to step over the body and reach the cot. He could see the valley on the tiny pillow where the baby’s head had rested, and his mind was so crowded with the consequences of that empty cot that the murder of the mother was then of small moment.
He went back the road he had come ... over the body ... again paused in the doorway, to look at the cot before permitting his eyes to concentrate on the dead woman, lying partially on her back, one arm above the head, the other outflung. “You been through the house, of course?” he said to Essen. “Yes. Back door locked. All the windows fastened. Nothing out of place.”
“We’ll begin at the beginning ... your brother-in-law.”
Passing to the porch and so into the brilliant sunlight, Yoti addressed himself to Thring.
“You live next door, Mr Thring. When did you see Mrs Rockcliff last?”
“Matter of fact, several days ago,” replied the neighbour. “My wife last saw her about eight on Monday evening. Mrs Rockcliff was then going out.”
“Without the baby?”
“She never took the baby out with her at night.”
“Just left it in the house ... alone?”
“Yes. That’s what made us worry. Yesterday morning Mrs Rockcliff didn’t take in her milk and paper, and didn’t collect her mail from the box. When more milk was left this morning, and more papers, and another letter, we got concerned about the baby in case Mrs Rockcliff hadn’t come home on Monday night. I knocked at the front door several times this morning. I went round the back and knocked again. I didn’t think to try if the front door was unlocked.”
“Mrs Rockcliff never left the baby with anyone when she went out?”
“Not that we know of, and the wife’s a pretty observant woman. In fact, she’s said more than once it was a shame to leave the infant all alone in the house at night.”
A car slid to a halt beyond the knot of people gathered at the street gate.
“How old was the baby?”
“Eleven weeks.”
“You were on speaking terms with the mother, I suppose?”
“No more than that,” Thring replied, adding: “Excepting that I’ve done her garden now and then. We know the baby’s age because we knew when Mrs Rockcliff went to hospital and when she came home.”
A blind man could have told by the footsteps on the cement path that a doctor was walking it. Dr Nott was tall, large and dark. He wore no hat, and the leather bag appeared as having been tormented by rats.
“Spot of bother, Sergeant?” he surmised as though commenting on the weather.
“Mrs Rockcliff, Doctor, seems to be dead.”
“H’m! And the baby?”
“No baby. Crib’s empty. Looks crook to me.”
“It will be crook ... if the baby has been abducted. What’ll it be? The fifth?”
Yoti went into the house, followed by the doctor. Essen planted himself in the doorway, and the constable stolidly regarded Mr Thring and continued to say nothing.
At the bedroom, Yoti stepped aside to permit Nott to enter. He watched the doctor release the spring blinds, turn to regard the cot. It seemed that the baby was of prior importance even to Doctor Nott, for he came back to the cot to peer into it and at the feeding bottle on the low table, having no apparent interest in the dead woman. He gained Yoti’s approval by touching nothing ... till he came to examine the body. Presently he said:
“Lower the blinds.”
Yoti nodded, waited for the blinds to reduce the starkness of Death, withdrew before the doctor and crossed the hall to the lounge. The doctor thumped his bag on the polished table, sat on the table-edge and produced cigarette-case and lighter.
“Been dead, I’d guess, about thirty-six hours,” he stated. “Takes it back to last Monday night ... sometime. Hit with something blunt and heavy. Could be a hammer, or the point of a walking-stick handle.”
“Was done as she entered the bedroom, I suppose?”
“Looks like it. Merely the one blow was enough.”
“Know anything about her?”
“A little. Came to me early in December. Wanted to book in at the hospital. Managed it all right, although she’d left it very late. She told me she had come up from Melbourne after her husband had been killed in a road accident.”
“Why come to Mitford, d’you know?”
“Yes. Said she thought the dry conditions here would be better for her lungs. I agreed when I found that one was touched.”
“Where did she live in Melbourne?”
“I don’t know that, Yoti. She did say that her doctor was in practice in Glen Iris. Doctor Allan Browner.”
“You contact him about her?”
“No reason to. Can’t you get her background?”
“Haven’t tried so far. Neighbours aren’t helpful.” Their eyes clashed. “If the baby isn’t located we’re going to have our backs bent.”
“Can’t go on,” Nott said, sadly, and Yoti fancied he saw disapproval on the large white face. “What d’you think they’re stealing babies for?”
“I’ve been asking myself that one. Can understand a woman pinching a baby because she had to have one, but no woman wanting a baby would pinch five, and commit murder. And don’t sit there being superior. You ought to know why a lunatic pinches babies, lunatics being up your street, not mine.”
The table rocked when Nott slid off.
“I can make four guesses, one for every infant,” he said, his dark eyes wide and hard. “And each guess would make you shiver, tough as you have to be. You’ll have the CID crowd out here again, I suppose?”
“Possibly, depends.” Nott saw relief come to Yoti. “They’re sending a detective-inspector to look into these baby cases, a man who boasts he has never