Where There's Grief, There's Smoke

The words "Ida Arnold" begin Chapter 3 of Greene's Brighton Rock (1938). It is here that Ida emerges in her own right from Fred Hale's mediated eyes. Ida has questions about Fred's death, things that don't add up, and she is determined to get some answers. Later in the chapter she attends Fred's funeral, and her creator gives us this:

"She came out of the crematorium, and there from the twin towers above her head fumed the very last of Fred, a thin stream of grey smoke from the ovens. People passing up the flowery suburban road looked up and noticed the smoke; it had been a busy day at the furnaces. Fred dropped in indistinguishable grey ash on the pink blossoms: he became part of the smoke nuisance over London, and Ida wept." (36)