"Okay." Kit shuffled a stack of small, oblong cards. "Are you ready for another one? What plant did the monk Gregor Mendel use for his experiments in genetics?"
"That's not fair," said Gemma from the sink, where she and Kincaid were doing the washing-up from dinner. "You haven't given us any choices for the answer."
"That makes it too easy," protested Kit. "Just guess."
Kincaid dried a saucepan with a flourish. "I don't have to guess. I know the answer. Sweet peas."
"Oh, majorly unfair," howled Kit. "I'm going to find a harder question."
"What? You want us to guess but you don't want us to get it right?" teased Kincaid. "Why don't you take Toby upstairs for his bath while we finish up in the kitchen? That way we'll have more story time."
Toby was under the table, playing with a new tugboat and singing to himself, utterly oblivious to the history of biology going on over his head.
Gemma and Kincaid were taking turns reading to Toby before bed, a practice Gemma had acquired from Kincaid in the time they had known him. It was something her family had not done, so that she enjoyed old books as much as new, and often found herself wishing she'd had the comfort of such a bedtime ritual as a child. She found it touching that since they'd moved into the house, Kit, who of course was allowed to stay up a good deal later, seemed to find some reason to come upstairs just in time to curl up on his bed for the night's offering.
As the boys trooped upstairs after the expected grumbling, Gemma thought about the success of Kit's Christmas gifts. The science questions were an obvious hit; the lead soldiers were proudly arrayed on his desktop, where he could continually rearrange their formations; and although he hadn't said anything directly about the photo of his mother, Gemma noticed that he'd put it on his nightstand.
"I haven't had a chance to tell you what happened today," she told Kincaid as she hung up the dishcloth. "I came out to Superintendent Lamb."
He gave her a quizzical look. "Came out?"
She patted her stomach. "I am now officially pregnant. I can bulge as much as I like."
"That's terrific, love," he exclaimed, giving her a hug. "I take it he was politically correct?"
"More than." Remembering what else Lamb had said, her smile faded. She was not going to mention that! "Fern Adams came to see me just as I was leaving the station," she added, wanting to change the subject. "She wanted me to know that Alex came to her flat after he left the crime scene last night."
"Why tell you? It doesn't provide him an alibi."
"I'm not sure. She's a bit of an odd duck, and something of a loner. I had the feeling she wanted a chance to plead Alex's innocence… and that maybe she just wanted to talk to someone."
"You do tend to radiate empathy like the pied piper," said Kincaid.
Hearing an odd note in his voice, Gemma turned to look at him. "What?"
"I'm just wondering about Bryony Poole. Has it occurred to you that she's as tall as a man, and probably as fit? And that she might have made up the business about the photos of Dawn and Alex just to put suspicion on Farley?"
"You're not saying you think Bryony could be the killer? I don't believe it! And even if she were physically capable, what motive could she possibly have?"
"If we knew that, we'd be laughing, wouldn't we? Maybe she was in love with Karl-"
"That's ridiculous. She's crazy about Marc Mitchell, and besides that, it doesn't account for Marianne Hoffman."
"True. I just think the idea is worth considering. And can we afford to overlook anything at this point?"
There was no arguing with that, but Gemma didn't feel any happier with the idea of investigating someone she'd come to think of as a friend.
Not even half an hour of The House at Pooh Corner improved her temper, and she went to bed still cross with Kincaid. Glad enough to have Geordie's warm body as a barrier between them, she found herself wondering if combining home and work was really such a good idea.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
By the mid sixties Portobello Road was on the tourist map. The antique stalls had attracted the attention of the picture post in the fifties. By 1966, Reader's Digest was writing in glowing terms of the bargains to be had in Portobello Road, claiming there were '20,000 potential customers, antique dealers and American store buyers' every Saturday.
– Whetlor and Bartlett,
from Portobello
By the spring of 1968, Angel had long since come to know the girl Karl had hired to work in his shop as friend rather than rival. Her name was Nina Byatt, and she was married, with a small son. Nina's husband, Neil, a taciturn, bearded man, now worked with Karl, taking selected items round to the auction houses.
These days Karl kept the shop stocked with things Indian and Oriental along with the more traditional antiques, catering to the new fascination with meditation and the exotic.
The shop flourished, as did everything Karl touched. He moved them from the flat in Chelsea to a town house in Belgravia, in Chester Square, an exclusive address befitting his growing status. But Angel found the severe, gray brick house unwelcoming, the neighborhood cold and unfriendly compared to their Chelsea mews. Nor did it suit the farmhouse furniture she had begun to covet.
Not that it mattered what she thought- Karl was entertaining clients from abroad more and more often, and their tiny Chelsea flat had not been suitable for such affairs.
Usually these customers spoke German. Using his family's connections in Germany, Karl had found a source of Russian art objects "liberated" by the Germans during the war, particularly Russian icons. Karl arranged for them to be shipped into the country; Neil then sold the goods for him at auction, fetching a large profit.
On the few occasions when Angel saw these icons before they went to auction, she found them terribly moving. The sad faces of the saints and the jewellike colors reminded her of the paintings she'd seen in the Polish café as a child. Of course, she knew now that those paintings had been cheap reproductions, but at the time they'd invoked wonder. Wonder had been possible then, the world still a place where the good were rewarded and the wicked punished for their transgressions.
Karl had proved that homily false, if he had done nothing else.
With Angel now thoroughly dependent on heroin, Karl saw no reason to keep the rest of his business dealings from her. The little stash he kept in the house was only the tip of the iceberg. Nor did he buy it just for the occasional use of his friends- he bought it to sell, in large quantities, and at an enormous profit. That money in turn fueled the antiques business, giving him the inventory to make a success of it. Money begat money, and if a few poor souls fell by the wayside because of it, Karl considered it no business of his.
As for Angel, if she failed to please him, or stood up to him over something, he simply withheld her supply until she complied with his wishes. The longest she managed to hold out was two days, but in the end her will was no match against her craving for the drug.
After that she managed her habit fiercely, refusing to increase her dose, but she'd finally learned the bitter lesson that she couldn't walk away- not from the drug, not from him. And she'd seen what happened to those without help or support, gaunt specters begging in doorways, or selling themselves on the street. Once, she walked in on two prostitutes shooting up in the public toilet in Hyde Park. She ran out and was promptly sick in the shrubbery, weak with horror over what lay in wait for her.