"Maybe he loved her," Gemma suggested.

Sylvia looked at her as if the comment were too absurd to deserve an answer.

"Mrs. Arrowood," Kincaid interjected, "are your sons close to their father?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Let's see, the elder, that would be Richard? He must be twenty-four now, and his brother, twenty-two?"

"I congratulate you on your math, Superintendent."

"And has either of them followed in their father's footsteps?"

"If by that you mean the antiques trade, no. They both work in the City. Richard's in insurance. Sean's in banking."

"Could you give me their addresses? Just routine," he added, seeing her instant wariness. No point in getting the wind up her any more than necessary at this point.

When she had complied, with obvious reluctance, he thanked her and they said good-bye.

"If one of the sons did it, they'd have to have known, or at least suspected, that Karl hadn't made any provision for them," Gemma observed when they were back in the car. "And what about Marianne Hoffman?"

"Maybe he left money to her, too," Kincaid suggested, and Gemma gave him a quelling look. "Okay, that's a bit far-fetched, I admit. But I think it's certainly worthwhile having a word with Arrowood's sons."

CHAPTER SIX

By the winter of 1961, Angel could hardly remember a time when she hadn't been friends with Betty and Ronnie. Although Ronnie, she had to admit, had seemed different since he'd turned sixteen and left school. For one thing, he'd started referring to her and Betty as "little girls"; for another, he'd stopped listening to American pop music with them and started talking a lot of high-sounding nonsense about jazz and the black man's influence on the development of music. This in particular hurt Angel's feelings, making her feel as if she'd been deliberately excluded.

But Ronnie was smart, there was no doubt about that. He'd been taken on as an assistant at a local photographer's, and he roamed the streets of Notting Hill with the camera he'd bought with his wages. He intended to make something of himself, he told the girls, and he swore he'd never do manual labor like his dad.

"I wouldn't exactly call upholstering furniture 'manual labor,' " Betty had snapped back. "It's a skilled trade. You make him sound like a navvy."

But Ronnie had no patience with her or with his parents, and saved every shilling he made towards the day when he could move into his own flat. The girls shrugged and learned to amuse themselves without him, although Angel missed his teasing and his bright smile more than she had imagined possible.

That autumn, she had finally badgered her father into buying a television, and the novelty helped a bit to fill the gap left by Ronnie's absence. They were one of the few families in the neighborhood to own such a thing, and it held pride of place in the sitting room. The girls huddled in front of the grainy black-and-white screen, watching the latest pop idols on Oh Boy! as Angel imagined herself older, glamorous, moving in the same exalted circles as the stars on the telly.

A moan from her mother's bedroom brought her swiftly back to earth. Her mother suffered more and more often from what she called "one of her headaches." She would vomit from the pain, and only darkness and quiet seemed to bring her any relief. Her father fussed about as helplessly as a child on her mum's bad days, and Angel coped with the household tasks as best she could.

Whenever possible, she escaped to Betty's. Although Betty's family had to share a bathroom on the landing with two other families, the flat was always filled with the scents of good things cooking and the cheerful sound of Betty's mother's singing. It was Betty's mum who taught Angel to prepare West Indian dishes, and to buy yams and aubergines and the strange, slimy okra pods from the stalls in the market. "Who goin' to teach you to cook if your own mother don't, girl," she'd said, shaking her head in disapproval.

But it had never occurred to Angel that there might be anything terribly wrong with her mother until the leaden February day she came home from school and found the doctor in the sitting room, his black bag by his side.

"What is it?" she asked her father, her heart thumping with sudden fear.

"Your mum's had quite a bad headache today." Her dad looked exhausted, and for the first time she saw the deep lines scoring his cheeks. "Even worse than usual. The doctor's given her something for the pain."

"But why- What's wrong with her?"

"We don't know," answered the doctor, a portly, bald man whose patient voice belied his stern expression. "I think we shall have to take some pictures, Xrays, of your mother's brain. Then we shall see."

"Will she have to have an operation?"

"That's one possibility, but it's too early to say."

"I'm sure she'll be fine," her father told her, sounding as if he were trying to reassure himself as much as her. But Angel somehow knew, in a moment of gut-squeezing terror, that her life was about to change forever.

Anthony Trollope was buried here. And William Thackeray," Kincaid told Gemma as she bumped the car through the gates of Kensal Green Cemetery. It was just before eleven o'clock on Tuesday morning, and they had been told that Dawn Arrowood's remains were to be interred in a graveside service.

"My God." Gemma stopped at the first junction of roads and tracks that traversed the place. "It's immense. I'd no idea." Kensal Green lay at the northern edge of Notting Hill, tucked against the slow curve of the Grand Union Canal on one side and the Harrow Road on the other. A sign at the gate had informed them that this was a wildlife refuge, which meant that the grass was not mown nor the graves tended unless specifically directed by the owners of a plot. Desolate and shaggy under the gray December sky, the place had an air of comfortable decay. The bouquets of plastic flowers placed on the occasional grave looked pathetic and inadequate against the rank wildness of nature.

"It was a business. By the 1830s Londoners had run out of places to bury their dead. The churchyards were all full. So they formed a corporation to find land and build cemeteries. This was the first one, and very successful it was. It was quite the rage to be buried here." Seeing Gemma's dubious glance, Kincaid added, "Honestly. I'm not joking."

"And how do you know so much about it?"

"I've been here before," he replied, but didn't elaborate.

"Do you know how to find Dawn's gravesite, then?"

"Um, I'd go to the right, and look out for cars."

"That's very helpful," she said sarcastically, but did as he suggested. She followed the road for some way before she saw a dozen cars pulled up on the verge, empty. Away in the distance she glimpsed a knot of people in dark clothes, but the track leading in that direction was barred to motor traffic.

"Looks like we walk from here." Stopping the car, Gemma looked down at her shoes and grimaced. She'd been expecting something far more civilized. "Let's just hope it doesn't rain."

"I wouldn't tempt it," Kincaid warned, laughing, as he took her umbrella from the door pocket.