No Mark Upon Her

who had picked up the book and was once more engrossed in studying the illustrations, looked up at Gemma. “I want yellow hair.”
    “Well, that, lovey, is one thing you cannot have. And look.” Gemma took the book from her and turned to another of the Tenniel plates. “In this one, Alice has red hair, just like mine. So Alice can have hair any color she likes.”
    Charlotte nodded in tentative agreement, but her brow was creased in a frown. “Not curly.”
    “Why not curly?” Gemma twined a finger in the mop of Charlotte’s curls. “I’ll bet Alice wished she had hair like yours.”
    “She did?”
    “I’m sure she did.”
    From the sewing machine, Betty grinned. “You don’t think Alice wished she had hair like mine?” Her kinky dark hair was going gray, and most days she tucked it up in a bright bandanna. Today she wore a scarf in the same yellow as Charlotte’s dress.
    Charlotte giggled. “That’s silly.”
    “Not to me, it isn’t,” said Betty with a smile. But when her eyes met Gemma’s, Gemma knew they were both thinking of the day when Charlotte might wish her skin was the same color as Alice’s.
    Charlotte reached for Gemma’s bag and began to root inside. “I want a clip,” she said.
    Gently, Gemma took the bag back. She had a surprise buried in its depths that she’d have to be more careful to keep from prying little hands and eyes.
    A few weeks ago, she’d found an antique brown-glass pharmacy bottle in a stall at Portobello. She’d bought a fancy paper label for it, on which she had hand-lettered the legend DRINK ME . It was to be the centerpiece of the cake Wes was making for the party.
    “There’s not another one,” she said. “You’ll have to wait for your bow. And you can’t wear that until Saturday, mind you. Don’t forget. Why don’t you go help Betty?” she added as a distraction.
    Gemma watched Charlotte as she jumped up and padded over to the sewing machine in her stockinged feet. The idea of being separated from the child in just a few days’ time suddenly took her breath away. How was she going to bear it?
    And yet, when she’d gone to the station that morning, she’d felt as if she were coming home. She’d realized how much she’d missed the camaraderie, the routine, and most of all, the intellectual challenge. Would there ever be any happy middle ground? she wondered.
    Well, she would find out soon enough—if, that is, she got to start back at work on Monday. She’d had a word with Alia about doing a temporary child-minding stint—Plan B, in case Duncan got hung up in this case.
    And it was looking increasingly tricky.
    Especially after last night. His reaction when she’d told him about her encounter with Angus Craig worried her. Her husband —she was still trying that one on—was an even-tempered man, a man whose habit was to think things through before he acted. But the fact that he was slow to anger made the strength of it all the more powerful, and what she’d seen in his face last night had been cold fury.
    She couldn’t downplay her experience with Craig—she was as certain as she’d ever been of anything that she’d been in real danger that night in Leyton. Nor could she have kept it from Kincaid. But now she was very much afraid that he was going to do something rash.
    And with no part in the investigation, she felt helpless and frustrated at her lack of control.
    Her hopes that she and Melody would come up with something useful that morning had come to naught, although Melody had said she’d keep looking through the files.
    Gemma didn’t believe she’d been wrong about Craig’s pattern. But perhaps it had been overly optimistic to think that other female officers who’d been Craig’s victims might have reported the rape without naming the assailant.
    “There you are, little missy,” said Betty. While Gemma had been musing, Betty had bunched the ribbon and stitched it into a bow on the machine, then handwhipped the bow to the clip. Now she fastened it in the cloud of Charlotte’s hair.
    Charlotte, her face rapt, touched it with exploratory fingers, then ran to Gemma. “I wanna see.”
    “Oh, my,” said Gemma, turning her in a twirl so that she could admire the full effect. “I’m not sure if you look more like Alice or a princess. Here, let’s have a look, shall we?” She was digging in her handbag for her compact mirror when she saw the message light flashing on her phone. How had she missed a call?
    Her heart