Free The Cradle Will Fall by Mary Higgins Clark

endless quarreling, she
    wanting to be cajoled, babied.

     
    A suspicion that had been sitting somewhere in his subconscious
    sprang to life. Was it possible that Vangie had become involved
    with another man, a man who did not want to take responsibility
    for her and a baby? Had she confronted that other man, hurled
    hysterical threats at him?

     
    He realized that he was shaking hands, murmuring thanks to
    a man in his mid-sixties. He was slightly built but sturdily attractive,
    with gray hair and bushy brows over keen, penetrating
    eyes. "I'm Dr. Salem," he said. "Emmet Salem. I delivered Vangie
    and was her first gynecologist. She was one of the prettiest things I
    ever brought into this world, and she never changed. I only wish I
    hadn't been away when she phoned my office Monday."

     
    Chris stared at him. "Vangie phoned you Monday?"

     
    "Yes. My nurse said she was quite upset. Wanted to see me
    immediately. I was teaching a seminar in Detroit, but the nurse
    made an appointment for her for today. She was planning to fly
    out yesterday. Maybe I could have helped her."

     
    Why had Vangie called this man? Chris tried to think. What
    would make her go back to a doctor she hadn't seen in years? A
    doctor thirteen hundred miles away?

     
    "Had Vangie been ill?" Dr. Salem was looking at him curiously.

     
    "No, not ill," Chris said. "As you probably know, she was expecting
    a baby, and it was a difficult pregnancy."

     
    "Vangie was pregnant?" The doctor stared in astonishment.

     
    "I know. She had just about given up hope. But in New Jersey

     
    she started the Westlake Maternity Concept. You may have heard
    of it, or of Dr. Highley—Dr. Edgar Highley."
    "Captain Lewis, may I speak with you privately?" The funeral
    director had a hand under his arm.

     
     
    “Excuse me,” Chris said to the doctor. He allowed the funeral
    director to guide him into the office.
    The director closed the door. “I’ve just received a call from the
    prosecutor’s office in Valley County, New Jersey,” he said.
    “Written confirmation is on the way. We are forbidden to inter
    your wife’s body. It is to be flown back to the medical
    examiner’s office in Valley County immediately after the
    service tomorrow.”

     
    They know it wasn’t suicide, Chris thought. Without
    answering the funeral director, he turned and left. He wanted to
    see Dr. Salem, find out what Vangie had said to the nurse on the
    phone.

     
    But Dr. Salem was already gone. Vangie’s mother rubbed
    swollen eyes with a crumpled handkerchief. “What did you say
    to Dr. Salem that made him leave like that?” she asked. “Why
    did you upset him so terribly?”

     
    WEDNESDAY evening Edgar Highley arrived home at six
    o’clock. Hilda was just leaving. He knew she liked this job.
    Why not? A house that stayed neat; no mistress to constantly
    give orders; no children to clutter it.

     
    No children. He went into the library, poured a Scotch and
    watched from the window as Hilda disappeared down the street.

     
    He had gone into medicine because his own mother had died
    in childbirth. His birth. “Your mother wanted you so much,” his
    father had told him again and again. “She knew she was risking
    her life, but she didn’t care.”

     
    Sitting in the chemist’s shop in Brighton, watching his father
    prepare prescriptions, asking questions: “What is that? What
    will that pill do? Why do you put caution labels on those
    bottles?”

     
    He’d gone to medical school, finished in the top ten percent of
    his class. He’d interned at Christ Hospital in Devon, with its
    magnificent research laboratory. He’d become a member of staff;

     
     
    his reputation as an obstetrician had grown rapidly. But his project
    had been held back by his inability to test it.

     
    At twenty-seven he'd married Claire, a distant cousin of the
    earl of Sussex. She was infinitely superior to him in social background,
    but his growing reputation had been the leveler.