Deborah Crombie - And Justice There Is None

"She was positive," answered Gemma. "And it's not the sort of thing you'd mistake."

"But an elderly lady-"

"Not elderly," she corrected. "Older. And sharp as a tack. And although Arrowood does seem an unlikely candidate, I've seen stranger things."

"If it's true, his phobia didn't prevent him from lifting the body of his dead wife."

"Shock might account for that. What I wonder is if he could have brought himself to cut her throat, and so decisively. There were no hesitation marks."

"Maybe he paid someone else to do it," Kincaid suggested.

"In that case, knowing what he would find, would he have touched her?"

"Has this turned you into an Arrowood apologist? I thought you were dead set on him as Dawn's killer."

"No," Gemma answered, a trifle crossly. "I mean no, I'm not ruling him out. I'm just playing devil's advocate."

"Well, let's see what the former Mrs. Arrowood has to say about him." They had reached Lower Sloane Street, a bastion of elegant and expensive red brick town houses, just below Sloane Square. Kincaid whistled under his breath. "He certainly set her up in style."

Gemma had rung ahead, suspecting that it might be difficult to pin down Karl's former wife without an appointment. Sylvia Arrowood must have been watching out for them because she opened the door before they rang the bell. She was tawny, slender, and extremely well preserved for a woman he guessed to be in her fifties. It intrigued Kincaid that she was the same physical type as Dawn Arrowood- had Karl been guilty of trading in the old model for the new?

"You must be the police," she said. "Can we do this as speedily as possible? I've an appointment." Her tone clearly said that her time was important and theirs was not.

Kincaid put on his most bland expression to hide his irritation. When he asked if they could sit down, she did not conceal hers. "We'll try to inconvenience you as little as possible, Mrs. Arrowood," he began as he took quick stock of the room.

It was filled with what he judged to be expensive antiques and objets d'art, but this was a room to be looked at, not lived in. There was something oddly off balance about it, and after a moment he realized what it was. The room was just slightly overcrowded, and he sensed this was due not to a love of the objects acquired, but to greed. Why have one priceless Georgian table, or Sèvres vase, when you could have two?

"…lovely flat," Gemma was saying.

Mrs. Arrowood perched on the edge of one of her gilded armchairs, watching them, her only acknowledgment a nod.

"You do realize why we're here?" Kincaid spoke a bit more sharply than he'd intended. "Your ex-husband's wife has been murdered."

"And why do you think that should be of particular concern to me? I never met the woman. I haven't seen Karl in years."

"How long have you been divorced?" asked Gemma with just a hint of sympathy in her voice.

"Thirteen years. Karl left me when Richard was eleven, and Sean, nine. Have you any idea what it's like to bring up boys that age on your own?"

"I can imagine," Gemma replied. "Mrs. Arrowood, we've been told that your husband had a vasectomy during his marriage to you. Is that true?"

Sylvia Arrowood stared at her. "Why on earth do you want to know that?"

"It's relevant to the case. I'm afraid I can't give out any details."

Shrugging, Sylvia said, "Well, I can't see any harm in telling you. I wanted another child after Sean, and the bastard went out, without discussing it with me, and got himself fixed. 'Just to make sure,' he said, 'that there won't be any accidents.' I never forgave him for that."

"No, I can see that." Gemma glanced at her notebook. "Mrs. Arrowood. Was your husband upset by the sight of blood?"

"How do you know about that? A shaving nick would make Karl swoon, as giddy as a girl." Sylvia smiled, but Kincaid didn't get the impression that it was in fond remembrance. "You're not thinking the bastard murdered his little wife, are you? That's absurd!"

"Why?"

"Not just because he couldn't bear anything to do with blood. Karl's much too cruel for something so clean and quick. He likes to torture his victims slowly. And why would he do such a thing… unless she was having an affair?" Sylvia seemed to read confirmation in their expressions. "I see. Well, I can tell you, he'd have made her pay, all right, if he found out. But he'd have drawn it out- it's much more likely he'd have turned her out in the street with nothing, sent her back to whatever grotty suburb she came from. By the time he married her he didn't need money," she added bitterly. "He could afford to go slumming."

"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."

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.