Kissed a Sad Goodbye (12 page)

“Yes. That was Annabelle’s favorite, the one with the little Chinamen.” While a pretty woman in late Victorian dress dozed in an armchair, a swarm of Chinese the size of pixies struggled to pull a canister of tea to the top of a table, where a teapot and cup sat waiting. “I’m afraid now it would be considered racist, but I’ve always thought the poster had great charm, and Annabelle made up stories about the little men—even named them, I believe. Their faces are so individual.” William stared at the drawing for a long moment, then said softly, “I’m afraid I’ve not taken it in yet, not really.”

“Have you seen the police?”

“The police? No. But Jo says … Jo says they told her we can’t bury … we’re not to arrange the funeral, because …” The kitchen timer dinged, and William lifted the teapot with apparent relief. He pushed his spectacles up on his nose and carefully poured a little milk into his cup before adding the tea.
The milk first, always, after steeping the loose tea at least five minutes in a warmed pot
. Annabelle had taught
Reg that when they were children, and she had learned it from her father.

And like her father, she had always insisted on bone china, arguing that the development of English china and the drinking of tea were so intertwined as to be inseparable. It had been an esthetic preference as well, because she felt the delicacy of the porcelain affected the taste of the tea, and because the perfection of the ritual mattered to her as much as the quality of the tea itself.

Forcing himself back to the present, Reg said, “I’m sure the police don’t mean to be insensitive,” although he didn’t like to think of the reasons they might need to keep Annabelle’s body. “You can understand that they have to be thorough about these things.” He took his cup and added a spoonful of sugar. Annabelle had nagged him into cutting down from two spoons to one, insisting that too much sugar blunted the taste of the tea. He added a second teaspoon and stirred.

“I don’t understand how something like this could happen,” William said slowly. “They say she was in the park.… But why would she have gone alone to the Mudchute at night? Surely Annabelle would never have been so foolish.…”

Surely not, thought Reg, but had any of them known Annabelle as well as they thought? And how could her death have been random, a grotesque coincidence unconnected with the events of the past few days? But beyond that, his mind closed in upon itself, refusing to follow the chain of probabilities to a possible conclusion.

Looking up, William met Reg’s gaze. He grimaced. “I’m so sorry, my dear boy. I didn’t mean to imply that you had been remiss in any way. This must be difficult enough for you as it is. Your plans …”

How could he tell William that it had been months since Annabelle had been willing to discuss their wedding, and that when he’d asked her point-blank to set a date, she’d refused? Lifting his cup with both hands, he sipped
at the tea. It was too hot, but he welcomed the mingled sensations of pain and pleasure on the delicate tissues of mouth and tongue. Anything was better than numbness. Carefully, he said, “You and I know how headstrong Annabelle could be. And I’m sure we both learned that most of the time it was easier to let her have her own way than to fight a losing battle. But this time I let her go too far.…” His eyes filled with tears.

Reaching out awkwardly to pat him on the shoulder, William said, “You mustn’t blame yourself. It’s just as you said: Annabelle liked her own way about things. But she was a dear girl, all the same, everything a father could have wanted.” His face convulsed with emotion and he looked away, staring into the leafy rectangle of the kitchen window.

Reg gave him time. Without asking, he added a little milk to William’s cup, filled the cup with fresh tea from the pot, then rose and retrieved the still-steaming kettle from the hob. When he’d topped up the pot with hot water, he turned back to the cooker and stood gazing, like William, out of the window. He felt the air move round his face, heavy as a hand, warmer than his skin; it seemed to have no power to dry the sweat sliding under his collar.

Jo’s children were playing in her garden next door—he could hear their voices fading in and out intermittently, like a radio broadcast from a far-off country. It might have been himself he heard, his voice mingled with Jo’s and Annabelle’s as they played in this same garden.… Had it been this green when they were children? Perhaps it had, for he remembered suddenly that Annabelle had liked to pretend it was the jungle in Sri Lanka, and that her mother’s hedge of rhododendrons was a plantation of tea bushes. He wondered if there was some genetic factor involved in the inheritance of passions, for in Annabelle, William’s fascination with tea had appeared full-fledged and undiluted, while in Jo it had never aroused more than a mild interest.

When she’d been too young to read the more complicated text in her father’s books, Annabelle had demanded explanation of the pictures, and they’d fueled her imagination. One wet spring day in the garden, she’d decided they would pick tea. It would be the finest tea, a royal tea, she’d proclaimed as she armed Reg and Jo with baskets and instructed them to pluck only the bud and the first leaf from each stem.

They had not been discovered until the poor rhododendrons had been stripped of almost every tightly furled pink bud, and when confronted by her furious and baffled mother, Annabelle had shouted that she’d only been doing the job properly. She’d spent a week in her room after that.

“Do you remember when Annabelle plucked the rhododendrons?” he asked.

William smiled. “And when her mother allowed her out of her room, she nearly burned the shed to the ground, trying to dry the leaves.”

Reg walked round the table and sat again, slowly. He wrapped his hands round his Wedgwood teacup and stared at the skin forming on the surface of the tea, clouding it, just as time would cloud their memories and Annabelle’s sharpness would disappear beneath a film of kindly self-deception. She would become the “dear girl” William thought her, and her father’s illusions would remain unmarred by the less-than-perfect person Annabelle had been.

Looking up, he met William’s eyes.
“Nothing
meant more to Annabelle than the business. I know that.” Reg heard the bleakness, unexpected, in his own voice, but he continued. “We have to carry on the way she would have wished. We owe her that.”

J
ANICE
C
OPPIN TOOK A LAST BITE
of her donut, then brushed the flakes of sugar icing from her desk. Sipping her coffee to wash away the sweetness, she reshuffled her
paperwork and scowled. She’d groused under her breath last night when Mr. Scotland Yard had sent her to Reg Mortimer’s flat. While she thought Mortimer a bit of a poser, she hadn’t relished seeing him white and ill with the news, suddenly bereft of all his charm.

But perhaps she hadn’t been quite fair to the superintendent. There were worse tasks, including the one Kincaid had undertaken himself last night—informing the dead woman’s sister and accompanying her to the morgue. And he
had
asked her if she wanted to attend the postmortem this morning—she just hadn’t been able to admit that she wasn’t sure she had the bottle for it, and she couldn’t have borne embarrassing herself in front of him.

It was even remotely possible, she supposed, that when Kincaid had told her to go home last night and see to her family, he hadn’t been condescending to her because she was female. His sergeant had mentioned having a young son, so he would be familiar with the difficulty of making arrangements.

Janice wondered if they were sleeping together. It happened often enough, and she sensed an unspoken familiarity between them that went beyond the requirements of the job. Not that she cared, of course—if the woman was daft enough to get involved with her superior officer, that was her problem.

But if she was going to give Kincaid credit for some sensitivity, perhaps she ought to give his advice a second thought as well. He’d said there was no such thing as an unimportant witness in a murder investigation, even old George Brent—though they’d got no further forward when they’d interviewed him.

This was her patch, her neighborhood; she had history and a knowledge of these people that outsiders couldn’t begin to appreciate. It was time she put it to good use. She’d have another word with old George, even if it meant apologizing for some long-ago slight.

First things first, though. Standing up, she dropped
the donut wrapper in the bin and flicked the crumbs from her jacket. Reg Mortimer’s description of the busker in the tunnel had brought immediately to mind the controversial son of Lewis Finch, a local property developer who had made his name and fortune in the rebuilding of the Docklands. She couldn’t imagine what connection Gordon Finch could have had with the late Annabelle Hammond, but she had a pretty good idea where she might find him.

T
HE THREE TERRACED HOUSES AT THE
end of Ferry Street had been built in the late seventies, the first phase of a massive waterside housing scheme that had failed because of the oil recession. Only the jutting angles of the rooflines were visible now over the brick wall and well-established private gardens that separated the houses from the street, but they were spectacular enough to make Kincaid wish he could see them from the river.

Janice Coppin had been his informant—when she’d heard the address last night, she’d wrinkled her nose and pronounced that the houses looked like a house of cards in the process of collapsing. He smiled now at the aptness of the description, but he found he liked the playful quality incorporated into the strong geometric design, and he wished the economic climate had allowed completion of the project.

According to Janice, in the intervening years, the economy had recovered, plummeted, and recovered again. Recently, an old building that stood between the private gardens and Ferry Street had been converted into flats, and it was here that Annabelle Hammond had lived.

The door to Annabelle’s flat faced on the side street, a bit of pavement running down to the water. A bronze plaque set into a concrete base informed Kincaid that this was Johnson’s Drawdock, and was the site of the old ferry to Greenwich. He turned and looked across Ferry Street, his
eye caught by the bright red and blue cars of the Docklands Light Railway thundering across the old Millwall viaduct into Island Gardens Station, almost directly across the street.

Crime scene tape fluttered across the flat’s entrance alcove, where Gemma stood chatting with the uniformed constable left to keep an eye on things. “The lads were a wee bit impatient with the lock,” the constable was saying as Kincaid joined them. “So I’m to hang about until we get it sorted.”

“Go get yourself a cuppa,” said Gemma. “Or even a bite of lunch?” she added with an interrogatory glance at Kincaid.

Kincaid nodded. “I expect we’ll be here a few minutes. Time enough for a quick break if you’d like.”

“Right, sir. Cheers.” He gave them a wave as he started across the street towards the park.

Kincaid raised an eyebrow as he looked at what was left of the lock on Annabelle Hammond’s door. “I think ‘brutal’ might be a bit more descriptive.”

“Inconsiderate of her not to have left us with a key,” Gemma said as she pushed the door wide and Kincaid followed her in.

He glanced at her, concerned. Gemma seldom indulged in sarcasm, but when she did it was her way of whistling in the dark. The door swung closed behind them and suddenly the silent vacuum of the airless hall seemed louder than a symphony. “Good soundproofing,” he commented as he switched on the lights and scooped up the post scattered on the floor. After flipping quickly through the letters, he put them on a side table. “Nothing too interesting, but we’ll go through it later.”

“No revealing letters addressed to herself?”

“No such luck. Just bills, from the look of them.” He glanced from Gemma to the closed doors lining the T-shaped corridor. “Eenie meenie?”

Gemma considered, then pointed to the door at the other end of the T’s short arm. “That one.”

“Right.” The sand-colored Berber felt soft under his feet as he walked down the hall. “No expense spared on the carpet,” he commented.

“No expense spared anywhere, I should think,” said Gemma, close behind him. “A flat in this building must have cost a pretty penny.”

Opening the door, he found that they had chosen the sitting room. They stood on the threshold, staring. It was a large room, done in simple, spare furniture, the color scheme one of neutral sands and oatmeals. On its far side, French windows looked out over an enclosed garden, and it was the greenery framed in the glass panes that provided the room’s focal point.

“It’s beautiful,” murmured Gemma, moving into the room. “Restful. She must have loved the garden.”

From a small, flagged patio, steps led down to a walled oasis. A white wooden table and chairs stood under the trees at one end, a few pots of impatiens provided splashes of color, and on the lush rectangle of lawn, a croquet set had been abandoned, as if someone had been called away midgame.

The waiting garden gave Kincaid a stronger sense of life interrupted than he’d felt standing over Annabelle Hammond’s body in the morgue.

Turning away, he examined the room curiously. The SOCOs had been a bit more delicate in here, it seemed, and had left little evidence of their presence other than the thin dusting of fingerprint powder. There was a fireplace on the left-hand wall, fitted with gas logs and framed on either side by custom-built shelves filled with books. What people chose to read never failed to fascinate him, and he crossed the room to take a closer look.

There were a number of hardcover best-sellers, and a handful of titles that he recognized as being novels about successful women overcoming obstacles. None showed a particularly adventurous or introspective turn of mind, and all were tucked neatly between brass or alabaster bookends, with the spines arranged according to height
rather than by content or author. It seemed as though Annabelle Hammond had been as tidy in her reading habits as she was in her housekeeping, and had reserved her passions for things other than books.