'His name?'
Arrowood's eyes widened in surprise, but he shrugged and answered, 'Andre Michel.'
Gemma wrote down the man's name and London address, as well as the time Karl Arrowood claimed he'd left his friend, although she knew there was no way to prove how long the drive from Tower Bridge to Notting Hill would have taken in evening traffic; nor, once he arrived home, would it have taken Arrowood more than five minutes to murder his wife and call for help.
'Mr. Arrowood, did you notice anything odd about your wife's movements or behavior in the past few days? Did Dawn give you any indication that she might be frightened?'
'She did seem a bit distracted yesterday morning. But I thought it was just because the damn cat was off- color.'
'That's Tommy?'
'Rotten little beast. I've told Dawn a thousand times to keep that cat out of the…' Arrowood trailed off, as if realizing he'd have no more opportunities to chastise his wife. The muscles in his strong face sagged abruptly, and he rubbed a hand across his mouth. 'I can't believe she's really gone.'
*** Kincaid had risen with Gemma and seen her off in a gray dawn that presaged rain. She'd been pale and pinched with exhaustion, but he knew it would serve no purpose to nag her about getting more rest.
After fixing Toby his favorite breakfast of fried eggs, Kincaid deposited the boy at Hazel's and drove to his office through a steady downpour. He had always liked the Yard on a Saturday. Although the place was never truly quiet, the normal cacophony of activity was reduced to a hum, the ringing of telephones intermittent rather than constant, and he often took advantage of the opportunity to catch up on unfinished business. First, he called the prospective tenant he had lined up for his flat and arranged a viewing; then he rang Denis Childs, telling him they would be occupying the Notting Hill house as soon as possible.
Then, after a token shuffling of papers, he came to the conclusion that he could no longer delay acting on the disquiet that had niggled at him since the previous evening, despite his fear that Gemma would feel he was undermining her authority. Retrieving Marianne Hoffman's file, he read it from beginning to end. When he had finished, he picked up the phone and rang Denis Childs back, requesting permission to liaise with Notting Hill CID in the investigation of the murder of Dawn Arrowood.
*** She just couldn't figure out what made her new neighbor tick. Betty, her name was, Betty Thomas. If you spoke to her, she smiled and answered in her soft Caribbean accent, but that was all. If you tried to continue the conversation, she'd dig her toe in the pavement and look away, and after a minute you'd give up.
The father was an upholsterer, she'd learned that much, and the family came from Trinidad, in the West Indies. They kept themselves to themselves, but sometimes on the warm evenings she could smell their cooking, so different from the food her own family ate.
The summer days were warm and long, the air filled with the smell of the moldering rubbish that piled up on the pavements, and the rats grew fatter than the neighborhood cats. She took to gazing out her window, elbows on the sill, making up stories to herself about the Thomases and a rather pimply boy across the street called Eddie Langley. Everyone else she knew had to share a bedroom with brothers and sisters or grandparents, sometimes even aunts and uncles, but that only made her feel lonelier. Her mother hadn't been able to have any more children because of some sort of female problem that was never properly explained, and her grandparents had died in Poland during the war.
She felt connectionless, as if her little family had failed to pass some basic but secret test. She began to imagine that she was adopted, that somewhere she had another family, not Polish, not Jewish, and much more glamorous than the family in which fate had chosen to place her. Taking refuge in the library, she devoured biographies of film stars and long romantic novels with invariably tragic endings. In that way the summer passed, and it was not until the start of school in the autumn that she thought much about Betty Thomas again.
The previous year the old school on Portobello Road had been reorganized as boys only and renamed Isaac Newton. Girls were shunted out of the neighborhood to the comprehensive in Holland Park, and she and Betty Thomas were placed in the same class.
It seemed only natural that the girls should fall in together on the long walk home that first day, silently at first, then in desultory conversation.
'She's all right, don't you think, the new teacher?' Betty offered in her soft voice. 'But the subjects, we did them two years ago in Trinidad.'
'What's it like there? Trinidad.'
'Warm. Like this, but more so, all the time. But a lot of the folks are poor, and my daddy, he thought he could do better here. Now he says we shoulda stayed at home.'
'Do you want to go back?'
Betty shrugged. 'Not for me to say.'
'There are some nice things here,' she said, feeling a bit defensive. 'And school will be easy for you if you've already done the subjects.' It was a clear day, just hot enough to make the pleated woolen uniform skirt itchy on bare thighs, and as they walked on she began to perspire. 'It's not fair, the boys getting to stay at the old school. And my mother wouldn't give me bus fare, said she wouldn't waste the money when I had two good feet.'
'My mother said I mus' be havin' a fever to even think such a thing.' Betty rolled her eyes in imitation, and both girls giggled.
Emboldened, she asked, 'Why won't you ever talk to me at home?'
'Your family don't like coloreds living next door. Though my daddy, he says the Polish Jews are better than some.'
'It's not that they don't like it,' she said, torn between embarrassment and a desire to defend her parents. 'It's just that they're afraid of trouble, like what happened over in Elgin Crescent last year. But I don't really see what that has to do with us.'
Betty gave her a skeptical glance. 'You don't mind if the other kids in the neighborhood won't talk to you?'
Shrugging, she answered, 'I'm used to being alone. And besides, I'd rather talk to you.'
They walked in silence for a bit, then Betty stopped and looked full at her, as if she'd come to a decision. 'When I saw you, that first day, I thought you looked like the painting of an angel they had in our old church, in Trinidad.'
'Me? An angel?' No one had ever said anything like that about her before. Her oval face was ordinary; her soft brown hair neither strikingly blond nor brunette; her eyes were too pale for beauty. A warm glow began in her midriff and spread outwards. 'I wish I could see the painting,' she said wistfully.
'Oh, she is that lovely, with her sweet face and the sky all blue and gold behind her. Of course,' Betty gave her a sly smile, 'I don't know if you wanna be that good. Or if your mother and father, they would let you go in a Catholic church.'
'No, and no,' she answered, laughing.
'I think I'm going to call you that. Angel. It suits you.'
'Angel,' she repeated, trying it out on her tongue, liking the sound, and the image of the painting in her mind.
And so she became Angel, to Betty, to Betty's brother, Ron, and to all the friends that came after. This small thing constituted not only the cementing of her friendship with Betty, but the beginning of an identity that would separate her finally from her family. What she didn't realize was that the image of the angel in the
