She was wondering if Radio Luxembourg would play the new Elvis record tonight when an engine sputtered nearby. A lorry pulled up to the curb in front of the house next door. The lorry's open back held mattresses, an orange sofa, a chair covered with a bright flower print, all jumbled together, all blistering in the hot August sun.
The driver's door opened and a man climbed out and stood gazing up at the house. He wore a white shirt and a dark tie, and his skin was the deep color of the bittersweet chocolate her mother used for baking.
A woman slid from the passenger side, her pumps clicking against the pavement as she touched the ground. Like her husband, she was smartly dressed, her shirtwaist dress crisply pressed, and as she stood beside him she looked up at the house with an expression of dismay. He smiled and touched her arm, then turned towards the bed of the lorry and called out something.
From amid the boxes and bundles emerged a girl of about her own age with thin, bare, brown legs and a pink ruffled dress. Next came a boy, a year or two older, tall and gangly. It seemed to her that the family had blown in on the hot wind from somewhere infinitely more exotic than this dingy London neighborhood of terraced houses with peeling plasterwork; somewhere filled with colors and fragrances she had only imagined. They trooped up the steps together and into the house, and the street seemed suddenly lifeless without them.
When it became apparent that they were not going to reappear right away, she hugged herself in frustration. She would tell someone, then, but who? Her mother wouldn't be back for an hour or two, but her father would be at the café, his usual custom after a good morning's trading at his jewelry stall.
Leaping from the steps, she ran. Down Westbourne Park into Portobello, nimbly dodging the fruit-and-veg stalls, then round the corner into Elgin Crescent. She came to a halt in front of the café, pressing her nose against the glass as she caught her breath. Yes, there he was, just visible at his favorite table in the back. Smoothing her dress, she slipped through the open door into the café's dim interior. The patrons sat in shirtsleeves, men reading Polish newspapers and filling the hot, still air with a heavy cloud of smoke from their pipes and cigarettes.
She coughed involuntarily and her father looked up, frowning. "What are you doing here, little one? Is something wrong?"
He always thought something was wrong. She supposed he worried so because of his time in the war, although he never talked about that. In 1946, newly demobbed, her father had arrived in England with her mother, determined to put the war behind him and make a life for himself as a jeweler and silversmith.
In spite of her precipitous arrival nine months later, he had done well. Better than some of the other men in the café, she knew, but still he clung to the things that reminded him of the old country: the smell of borscht and pierogi, the dark paneling hung with Polish folk art, and the company of buxom waitresses with hennaed hair.
"No, nothing's wrong," she answered, sliding onto the banquette beside him. "And I'm not little. I wish you wouldn't call me that, Poppy."
"So, why does my very grown-up daughter come rushing through the door like a dervish?"
"We have new neighbors in the house next door."
"And what's so special about that?" he asked, still teasing.
"They're West Indian," she whispered, aware of the turning of heads. "A father and mother and two children, a boy and a girl, about my age."
Her father considered her news for a moment in his deliberate way, then shook his head. "Trouble. It will mean trouble."
"But they look very nice-"
"It doesn't matter. Now you go home and wait for your mother, and stay away from these people. I don't want you getting hurt. Promise me."
Hanging her head, she muttered, "Yes, Poppy," but she did not meet his eyes.
She walked home slowly, her excitement punctured by her father's response. Surely he was wrong: nothing would happen. She knew there had been trouble when West Indian families had moved into other parts of the neighborhood, rioting even, on Blenheim Crescent, just round the corner from the café. But she'd known most of their neighbors since she was a baby; she couldn't imagine them doing the sort of things she'd heard the grown-ups whispering about.
But when she reached Westbourne Park, she saw a crowd gathered in front of the house next door. Silent and watchful, they stood round the lorry, and there was no sign of the new family.
For a moment she hesitated, remembering her father's instructions; then a dark face appeared at an upstairs window and the crowd shifted with a rumble of menace.
Without another thought for her promise, she pushed her way through to the back of the lorry, scooped up the biggest box she could carry, and marched up the steps. With a defiant glance back at the crowd, she turned and rapped on the door.
As they descended the stairs from the top floor of the house, Kincaid heard the faint but insistent ringing of a telephone. The sound seemed to be coming from the vicinity of the coat rack, and Gemma swore under her breath as she crossed the room and plunged her hand into the pocket of her jacket, retrieving her phone.
From the stillness of her face as she listened, Kincaid guessed that they would not be spending a romantic evening celebrating the beginning of a new era in their relationship.
"What is it?" he asked when she disconnected.
"A murder. Just up the road, near the church."
"You're in charge?"
She nodded. "As of now, anyway. The superintendent can't be reached."
"Any details?"
"A woman, found by her husband."
"Come on. You'll be quicker if I drive you up the road." His adrenaline had started to flow, but as they hurried to the car, he realized with a stab of disappointment that no matter how challenging the case about to unfold, he would be merely an onlooker.
He saw the flash of blue lights to their left as they crested the hill. Kincaid pulled up behind the last of the panda cars, then followed Gemma as she greeted the constable deployed to keep back onlookers.
"What can you tell me, John?" she asked quietly.
The young man looked a bit green about the gills. "I took the call. Gentleman came home and found his wife between her car and the hedge. He called the paramedics but it was already too late- she was dead."
"How?"
"Throat cut." He swallowed. "There's a lot of blood."
"Has the pathologist been called? And the scene-of-crime lads?"
"Yes, ma'am. Sergeant Franks took command until you arrived, ma'am."
Kincaid saw Gemma grimace, but she said merely, "All right, John, thank you. You'll get the area cordoned off before the SOCO's get here?"
"Yes, ma'am. Constable Paris has it in hand." As he spoke, a female constable appeared from behind the last of the patrol cars. She began unrolling the blue-and-white tape that would delineate the crime scene.
Following Gemma as she spoke to the young woman, Kincaid was the first to see the approach of a heavyset man already clad in the requisite white crime-scene coverall. This must be Sergeant Franks, whom Gemma had mentioned with dislike and a grudging respect. Balding, middle-aged, his face creased by an expression of perpetual discontent, Franks addressed Gemma without preamble. "You'd better suit up, then, before you go any further."