No Mark upon Her

“I want a bow,” said Charlotte.

“And you shall have one, lovey,” Gemma told her. They were sitting on the floor in Betty Howard’s colorful, crowded flat, picking through Betty’s stock of wide grosgrain ribbon.

“Blue.” Charlotte’s delicate little face was set in determination. This was serious business. For Gemma, not quite realizing what she was getting herself into, had promised her an Alice in Wonderland–themed party for her birthday on Saturday.

Fortunately, Betty had offered to make her a dress—or more accurately, a costume. Charlotte, entranced with the John Tenniel illustrations in Kit’s old edition of Alice, had spent hours pouring over the color plates in which Alice wore a yellow dress with a blue pinafore, and atop that, another starched white pinny.

Gemma had shown the book to Betty with some trepidation, but Betty had just laughed and said, “Sure I can make that, Gemma. Piece of cake for an old hand like me. You think I didn’t whip up things like that for my own girls?”

A seamstress since childhood, Betty had started in millinery at sixteen, then gone on to sew everything from clothes, to soft furnishings, to costumes for the Notting Hill Carnival. With her five girls grown and only her son, Gemma’s friend Wesley, still at home, she ran a thriving little business from her flat in Westbourne Park Road.

This afternoon Gemma had brought Charlotte for a final fitting. And a good thing it was the last, Gemma thought, because unless Charlotte was allowed to take the dress home, there was no way Gemma was getting her out of it without a tantrum. If Gemma had wished Charlotte would take more interest in girly things, she’d now been repaid in spades.

“What about this one?” Gemma asked, spying a piece of ribbon in a cornflower blue that exactly matched the blue pinafore. “Will that do, Betty?”

Betty eyed the length from her place at the sewing machine. “Should be long enough. Did you get a clip?”

Reaching for her handbag, Gemma pulled out the hairdresser’s clip she’d picked up at a chemist’s shop.

As Betty took the clip and the ribbon, she said to Charlotte, “You’ll have your Alice Bow in no time, little miss.”

Charlotte, who had picked up the book and was once more engrossed in studying the illustrations, looked up at Gemma. “I want yellow hair.”

“Well, that, lovey, is one thing you cannot have. And look.” Gemma took the book from her and turned to another of the Tenniel plates. “In this one, Alice has red hair, just like mine. So Alice can have hair any color she likes.”

Charlotte nodded in tentative agreement, but her brow was creased in a frown. “Not curly.”

“Why not curly?” Gemma twined a finger in the mop of Charlotte’s curls. “I’ll bet Alice wished she had hair like yours.”

“She did?”

“I’m sure she did.”

From the sewing machine, Betty grinned. “You don’t think Alice wished she had hair like mine?” Her kinky dark hair was going gray, and most days she tucked it up in a bright bandanna. Today she wore a scarf in the same yellow as Charlotte’s dress.

Charlotte giggled. “That’s silly.”

“Not to me, it isn’t,” said Betty with a smile. But when her eyes met Gemma’s, Gemma knew they were both thinking of the day when Charlotte might wish her skin was the same color as Alice’s.

Charlotte reached for Gemma’s bag and began to root inside. “I want a clip,” she said.

Gently, Gemma took the bag back. She had a surprise buried in its depths that she’d have to be more careful to keep from prying little hands and eyes.

A few weeks ago, she’d found an antique brown-glass pharmacy bottle in a stall at Portobello. She’d bought a fancy paper label for it, on which she had hand-lettered the legend DRINK ME. It was to be the centerpiece of the cake Wes was making for the party.

“There’s not another one,” she said. “You’ll have to wait for your bow. And you can’t wear that until Saturday, mind you. Don’t forget. Why don’t you go help Betty?” she added as a distraction.

Gemma watched Charlotte as she jumped up and padded over to the sewing machine in her stockinged feet. The idea of being separated from the child in just a few days’ time suddenly took her breath away. How was she going to bear it?

And yet, when she’d gone to the station that morning, she’d felt as if she were coming home. She’d realized how much she’d missed the camaraderie, the routine, and most of all, the intellectual challenge. Would there ever be any happy middle ground? she wondered.

Well, she would find out soon enough—if, that is, she got to start back at work on Monday. She’d had a word with Alia about doing a temporary child-minding stint—Plan B, in case Duncan got hung up in this case.

And it was looking increasingly tricky.

Especially after last night. His reaction when she’d told him about her encounter with Angus Craig worried her. Her husband—she was still trying that one on—was an even-tempered man, a man whose habit was to think things through before he acted. But the fact that he was slow to anger made the strength of it all the more powerful, and what she’d seen in his face last night had been cold fury.

She couldn’t downplay her experience with Craig—she was as certain as she’d ever been of anything that she’d been in real danger that night in Leyton. Nor could she have kept it from Kincaid. But now she was very much afraid that he was going to do something rash.

And with no part in the investigation, she felt helpless and frustrated at her lack of control.

Her hopes that she and Melody would come up with something useful that morning had come to naught, although Melody had said she’d keep looking through the files.

Gemma didn’t believe she’d been wrong about Craig’s pattern. But perhaps it had been overly optimistic to think that other female officers who’d been Craig’s victims might have reported the rape without naming the assailant.

“There you are, little missy,” said Betty. While Gemma had been musing, Betty had bunched the ribbon and stitched it into a bow on the machine, then handwhipped the bow to the clip. Now she fastened it in the cloud of Charlotte’s hair.

Charlotte, her face rapt, touched it with exploratory fingers, then ran to Gemma. “I wanna see.”

“Oh, my,” said Gemma, turning her in a twirl so that she could admire the full effect. “I’m not sure if you look more like Alice or a princess. Here, let’s have a look, shall we?” She was digging in her handbag for her compact mirror when she saw the message light flashing on her phone. How had she missed a call?

Her heart gave the little skip it always did when she was separated from the children or Duncan. But when she checked the message log, she saw that the call had been from Melody, and it had been followed by a text.

It said, “Urgent, boss. Must talk.”

Gemma looked up. “Betty, would you mind if Charlotte stayed for just a bit? Something’s come up.”

Kincaid pulled out of the Craigs’ gravel drive into the road that wound back through Hambleden. Dusk had settled over the rooftops, washing the hamlet in rose and gold. Lights were blinking on, making luminous pools of windows. Smoke spiraled up from chimneys.

It was such a cliche, Kincaid thought as he gazed at the village, trying to distance himself from the rage that was still causing his hands to shake. A place of perfection, with a monster dwelling at its heart.

Beauty and evil, nested one within the other.

Did the evil go unacknowledged in this place? he wondered. Or were others aware but powerless?

Reaching the Stag and Huntsman, he made a sudden swerve into the car park. He wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to find out. Besides, if he didn’t check Craig’s alibi now, before his guv’nor learned of his visit to Craig, he might not have another chance.

He found a space for the Astra and locked it. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he turned off his phone and walked into the pub. He might as well gain himself a little time.

The Stag and Huntsman, he saw immediately, was a welcoming establishment, old-fashioned by nature rather than design, the sort of place one would want to go of an evening for a regular drink before dinner.

It was still quiet, and the clientele looked local and at ease. He hoped that, for once, Angus Craig would forgo