for the portrait contest and I'd thought at first that Sidney would be perfect, with all the modeling she does. I did try with her but the result was too professional looking ...something about the way Sidney deals with facing a camera? With showing off clothing instead of being a subject? Anyway, I wasn't happy with it and I was casting about afterwards, still looking for someone, when Sidney showed up with Jemima in tow." Deborah frowned, obviously putting any number of things together at once. She said in a cautious voice, "What's this about, Barbara?"
"The model's been murdered, I'm afraid. This poster was in her lodgings."
"Murdered?" Deborah said. Lynley and St. James both stirred in their chairs. "Mur dered, Barbara? When? Where?"
Barbara told her. The other three exchanged looks, and Barbara said, "What? Do you know something?"
"Abney Park." Deborah was the one to reply. "That's where I took the picture in the first place. That's where this is." She indicated the weather-streaked lion whose head filled the frame to the left of the model. "This is one of the memorials in the cemetery. Jemima had never been there before we took the picture. She told us as much."
"Us?"
"Sidney went as well. She wanted to watch."
"Got it. Well, she went back," Barbara said. "Jemima did." She sketched a few more details, just enough to put them all in the picture. She said to Simon, "Where is she these days?
We're going to need to speak to her."
"Sidney? She's living in Bethnal Green, near Columbia Road."
"The flower market," Deborah added helpfully.
"With her latest partner," Simon said, dryly. "Mother - not to mention Sid - is hoping this will also be her final partner, but frankly, it's not looking that way."
"Well, she does rather like them dark and dangerous," Deborah noted to her husband.
"Having been affected in adolescence by a plethora of romance novels. Yes. I know."
"I'll need her address," Barbara told him.
"I hope you don't think Sid - "
"You know the drill. Every avenue and all that." She rolled the poster back up and looked among them. Certainly there was something going on. She said, "Beyond meeting her with Sidney and then taking the picture, did you see her again?"
"She came to the opening at the Portrait Gallery. All the subjects - the models? - were invited to do that."
"Anything happen there?"
Deborah looked at her husband as if seeking information. He shook his head and shrugged. She said, "No. Not that I ...Well, I think she had a bit too much champagne, but she had a man with her who saw she got home. That's really all - "
"A man? Do you know his name?"
"I've forgotten, actually. I didn't think I'd need to ...Simon, do you remember?"
"Just that he was dark. And I remember that mostly ..." He hesitated, clearly reluctant to complete the thought.
Barbara did it for him. "Because of Sidney? You said she likes them dark, didn't you?"
BELLA MCHAGGIS HAD never before been placed in the position of having to identify a body. She'd seen dead bodies, of course. She'd even, in the case of the departed Mr.
McHaggis, doctored the setting in which death had occurred so as to protect the poor man's reputation prior to phoning 999. But she'd never been ushered into a viewing room where a victim of violent death lay, covered by a sheet. Now that she had done, she was more than ready to engage in whatever sort of activity would scour from her mind the mental image.
Jemima Hastings - not a single doubt that it was Jemima - had been stretched out on a trolley with her neck wrapped up in thick swathes of gauze like a winter scarf, as if she needed protection from the chilly room. From that, Bella had concluded the girl had had her throat cut and she'd asked if this was the case, but the answer had come in the form of a question, "Do you recognise ... ?" Yes, yes, Bella had said abruptly. Of course it's Jemima. She'd known the minute that woman officer had come to her house and had peered at that poster. The policewoman - Bella couldn't remember her name at the moment - hadn't been able to keep her expression blank, and Bella had known that the girl in the cemetery was indeed the lodger gone missing from her house.
So to wipe it all away, Bella became industrious. She could have gone to a session of hot yoga, but she reckoned industry was