Chapter 57

CHAPTER 57

MARPLE SAT PATIENTLY on one side of a narrow steel table, waiting for the angry young doula to calm down. Jane Robinson was twenty-four years old, with hair that appeared to explode from her head in a blast of brown curls. She had huge, expressive eyes and full lips, frosted with pink gloss. She wore skintight black jeans and an equally confining T-shirt, sliced around the collar to reveal pink bra straps. Her iPhone sat on the table in front of her in a neon-orange case.

The doula ranted at length, her thick Scouse dialect nasal and lightning paced, with dropped g ’s and h ’s in every phrase. Spanish would have been easier to decipher.

Marple was able to pick out complaints about the temperature of the room, the quality of the tea, the odor in the loo, and the fact that Robinson had been called in at all, as she was probably the lowest of the low at the hospital—or, as she called it, the “ozzie.”

Marple endured the tirade for a full five minutes.

“But what do you care?” Robinson concluded with a sneer, practically out of breath from her screed. “You so posh ’n’ all.”

“Finished?” asked Marple politely.

Robinson glared at her. “For now, yeah.”

“I’m not posh,” said Marple.

“You sound it,” said Robinson, cocking her head. “You sound like Knightsbridge.”

“That’s a long story,” said Marple. “I can show you my US passport.”

“Why you in ’ere instead of the Ken doll, then?”

Marple had asked Dodgett to step out of the room. “Because I thought you might be more comfortable talking to a woman,” she said.

She watched Robinson go from trying to stare her down to looking furtively around the room and then at her own fingernails. Marple started probing, with the accent as her opening.

“The woman you spoke to,” she said, “was her accent posh like mine?”

“What woman?”

“The one who told you how to pick out the babies.”

Marple was operating on jet lag, fueled only by a packet of stale biscuits passed out on the flight. But if there was a parallel to the lactation nurse in New York, she figured the brassy doula in front of her might be it. And she also sensed that beneath the tough facade, fear was setting in.

Robinson squirmed in her seat. “You can’t arrest me for talking to somebody.” She pronounced it soomboody.

“I can’t arrest you at all, Jane. As I said, I’m from the US. I have no authority here. I just want to talk with you. Because I think you know more than what you’re saying. In the States, we would call you a person of interest.”

“Yeah?” said Robinson. “What makes me so interesting?”

“I think you know the answer to that,” replied Marple.

Finally, Robinson lifted her head and stared Marple straight in the eye. “Look, I didn’t know what would happen. With the babies.”

“I didn’t say you did,” replied Marple. “But something did happen to the babies.”

Marple could tell that Robinson was hiding something. She could feel it. And she knew that if she let it simmer, it would eventually come out. But she didn’t have time to let things simmer. The long hand on the wall clock ticked another notch. Marple leaned forward in her chair.

“Jane, if you talk to me, I’ll try to help. But you have to do it NOW !” On the last syllable, Marple slammed her hand down flat on the table, inches below the doula’s chin. It sounded like a gunshot. Robinson bolted upright in her seat. Her eyes darted around the room as if looking for an escape route. She glanced at the red light on the security camera, then back at Marple.

“Now,” Marple repeated, her voice soft and gentle again. Robinson was crumbling. Marple could read it in her darting eyes and in the almost imperceptible twitch in her upper lip.

“If I tell you something,” said Robinson, “will you let me be?”

“Depends on what you tell me.”

Robinson rubbed her hands together slowly and lowered her eyes. “I didn’t talk to anybody but my sister.”

“Your sister. What’s her name?” asked Marple.

“Megan.”

“Older? Younger?”

“Older. Two years.”

“And Megan is where?”

“Somewhere in New York City,” said Robinson. Her voice softened. “Maybe you can find her—keep her from trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Like what happened here,” said Robinson.

Marple leaned in even closer. “What hospital does Megan work for?”

Robinson shook her head and scoffed. “Megan doesn’t have the noggin for that. She’s just a fancy child minder, like a nanny.”

“A nanny for whom?”

“She wouldn’t tell me.”

Marple tapped Robinson’s cell phone. “Call her.”

Robinson pulled the phone toward her but didn’t pick it up. “She won’t answer. Her mobile is off. She said no texting or chatting until the job is done.”