Back at her own desk, and after unsuccessfully trying to telephone Delilah’s flat, Poppy telephoned home and spoke to Miss King – thankfully the bill had now been paid and the phone was reconnected. But Aunt Dot wasn’t there. She was at the hospital, visiting Monsieur Stanislavski. Miss Baylis, the theatre manager, had said she would drop Dot home later. Poppy filled Miss King in on the goings on at Oscar’s and asked her to pop down the road to see if she could find Delilah. The operator had told her the telephone had been disconnected that morning. Poppy thought this odd, but then reminded herself that Delilah was much like her aunt and probably hadn’t gotten around to paying her bill either. After being assured that the sensible and surprisingly daring Miss King would do her best to find Delilah, Poppy put down the telephone and readied herself for work.
As had become her daily habit Poppy first watered her potted begonia and marvelled at its ability to survive in the smoke-filled newsroom. Neither Poppy’s parents nor Aunt Dot smoked. Grace had enjoyed an occasional cigarette in the garden. Delilah, of course, loved her “ciggies” and used a foot-long tortoiseshell and onyx cigarette holder. It had probably cost the girl – or whoever had bought it for her – more than Poppy would earn in six months at The Daily Globe.
Delilah earned her own income as an actress, but far exceeding that was her stipend from her rich father and what she inherited after her mother’s death. However, despite being a very wealthy woman, Delilah rarely spent any of her own cash. She didn’t have to, as she was never short of suitors who showered her with gifts. Which was why Poppy and everyone else who knew the young actress were so surprised at how hard she had fallen for Adam Lane. Delilah had been monogamous since she met the handsome young actor in the summer. Poppy had even caught her flicking through the wedding pages in the latest Vogue, drooling over the photographs of the hitching of actress Beatrice Lillie and Sir Robert Peel.
Everyone who was anyone, apparently, had been invited to attend, but Delilah had turned it down in favour of a weekend away in Monte Carlo with Adam. That was most unlike Delilah. She would have heart palpitations if she thought she were missing out on the latest gossip and goings-on of high society. Poppy had not been invited, although she had joined the press scrum outside the gates of the churchyard with Daniel. Only the Vogue photographers had been allowed access into the church grounds. And a moving picture photographer too.
Poppy had later watched the newsreel with Delilah and Aunt Dot at the Electric Cinema in Chelsea. They all declared that Beatrice had looked “scrumptious” and Sir Robert “very spiffing indeed”. Aunt Dot, accompanied by Marjorie Reynolds, had not attended the church service either; there was no wheelchair access and she declared that she would not be carried in front of the Vogue photographers; but she had made it to the reception in the evening.
Poppy pulled herself up. This was no time to be thinking about society weddings. She straightened the edges of the five Jazz Files on her desk, then checked her watch and noted that it was half past three. It had been a jam-packed day. First the morning meeting with Marjorie Reynolds at the Empire Tea Rooms, followed by the intriguing discussion in St Bride’s Church, where Poppy heard about the murdered Russian family, the missing British spy Ruth Broadwood, and the possibility that Andrei Nogovski had murdered Selena. And then Delilah’s sudden visit with the news that Adam had “disappeared” after a sword fight with a mysterious man: all of this before her near arrest at Oscar’s Jazz Club! Poppy sighed; it had been an exhausting day and it wasn’t nearly over. She would just have to keep going on caffeine and adrenaline.
She shuffled through the five files and extracted Vasili Safin’s. Only a single sheet of notes and a photograph – taken on the steps of the Russian embassy when Safin had arrived to assume the post of interim ambassador and trade commissar three weeks earlier. He looked impatient to get inside, his mouth set above his goatee. The notes told her very little. He was a widower, a close associate of the leading Bolshevik Josef Stalin and a card-carrying member of the Russian Communist Party. He had, apparently, spent a number of years in a Siberian work camp due to his involvement as an agitator in the aborted 1905 revolution. His wife had sadly died in his absence. He had no children. As far as his London connections went, none were recorded. Not much there then, other than a good reason to hate the Russian royals. Let’s see if there’s anything on his partner in crime, thought Poppy, and turned to Andrei Nogovski.
She reminded herself that this was a Jazz File containing celebrity gossip and not a Secret Service dossier. She did not expect to find evidence in here linking the Russian to the deaths of the royals, but she did hope to find something linking him – or perhaps Safin – to Selena and the Fabergé eggs.
Inside was a single typed sheet of paper and two photographs. The sheet confirmed what she already knew about Nogovski: he had arrived in London in early September to take up an appointment as a security consultant for the Russian embassy. Poppy noted that the timing was unusual, as the old ambassador – a White Russian – had still been in residence at the time. It was only with recent events in the Crimea, where it seemed near certain that the Whites would lose the civil war, that the ambassador had resigned and been temporarily replaced by Comrade Safin. So why had a Bolshevik been given the appointment of security consultant? Perhaps it was a compromise on behalf of the interim government in Moscow. Or perhaps it was because of the next note – that Nogovski had formerly been a member of the tsar’s not-so-secret police – that he had been appointed. He knew the royals and he knew the revolutionaries. He was uniquely placed to deal with both sides. There was nothing to indicate why Nogovski had changed from White to Red; only that he had.
Then there was a paragraph about his personal life. Or lack of it. He was thirty-four years old and single, or at least with no known family. The author of the report – Rollo? Ike? Ah, it was both of them; the initials RR and IG appeared at the bottom of the page – had noted with some disappointment that there were no known “dalliances”. He had not been seen at any celebrity parties apart from events hosted by the Russian embassy.
He had, however, been part of the welcoming party to greet the Romanov refugees off the ship from Malta. And there was a photograph to accompany it. Nogovski was standing next to a man Poppy assumed was the former ambassador. They were being introduced to Empress Maria Federovna and her entourage, including Prince Felix Yusopov and Princess Irina. Poppy could tell little from the static image, and wished there was a moving image with subtitles. Was Felix looking directly at Nogovski? Was Nogovski looking back? It appeared that way, but it was hard to know for sure. And what if they were? Were they summing one another up? Did they know each other from back in Russia? They must have if Nogovski formerly worked for the royals. She wondered when Nogovski had “turned” – the file didn’t say – and she had no way of knowing which side he was on when Rasputin was murdered. Had he been involved in the cover-up? Had he been part of the police detail that had cleared Yusopov and his fellow assassins of murder and declared there was no charge to answer? She made a note to try to get some more information from Ivan Molanov. The Russian archivist would hopefully be able to fill in some of these gaps – if he was willing to talk about it. It would probably be wise for her to wait for Rollo to get out of the slammer and ask him to talk to his old friend.
Poppy picked up the second photograph and was surprised to see that it was another photograph of Princess Selena in Paris back in 1912, starring in the George Bernard Shaw play. It was the photograph of her standing with a bouquet of flowers next to Vladimir Lenin – it must have been misfiled. It belonged in the Selena file, which Poppy still had in her drawer from yesterday’s research. She pulled out the dead woman’s file and took a paper clip to attach the photograph to the duplicate.
But then she noticed that the photographs were not exactly the same. The second picture had been taken from a different angle and included some people in the background behind Selena. She turned the photograph over and read the caption: “Princess Selena Romanova Yusopova and her security guards with Vladimir Lenin, Paris, June 1912. Arms and the Man run, Paris Opera House.” Security guards? She hadn’t seen them in the other photograph. There were two of them: one a slim, middle-aged man with a thin face, the other… the other…
Poppy scrabbled around in her drawer to find a magnifying glass. She peered through the glass at the younger, bearded man and tried to look beyond the facial hair. Could that be Andrei Nogovski? She looked intently into his eyes and for a moment it felt as though he were looking back. A shiver ran down her spine. She had looked into those eyes before – and they into hers – at the press conference at the embassy last week. It was indeed a younger Andrei Nogovski in his mid-twenties. Of course it was. This was his file. But why had it been put there? He was not named in the caption. Rollo and Ike were not likely to have picked it up. It must have been Ivan. Again, Poppy made a note to speak to the man.
So, Andrei Nogovski had been Selena’s bodyguard back in the day. How interesting. He hadn’t mentioned it. But why would he? Their conversation last night had surrounded Delilah and her father, and the possibility that the police would be pursuing that line of enquiry. She wondered for a moment who had set the police looking in that direction. Could it have been Andrei Nogovski himself? She wouldn’t put it past the man.
Poppy slipped a page into her Remington typewriter and typed up the new information she had received on Nogovski that morning from Marjorie Reynolds, initialled it PD and added it to the file. Then she closed it.
Her stomach rumbled. It had been a long time since breakfast and she had missed lunch with all of the drama at Oscar’s. She didn’t really have time to take a break. Then she spotted Vicky walking across the newsroom, carrying a bouquet of flowers.
“Oooh, Vicky, they’re lovely. A secret admirer?”
Vicky blushed. “No, Miss Denby. I found them in Mr Molanov’s bin and thought I’d rescue them. They’ve still got life in them.”
Poppy frowned. “Why were they in Mr Molanov’s bin?”
Vicky shrugged. “I don’t know. I couldn’t ask him. He’s gone out.” She paused, then asked: “You don’t think he’ll mind me taking them, do you?”
Poppy smiled. “Why should he? He’d already thrown them away, hadn’t he? I wonder who they were from. Was there any note?”
“Nothing,” said Vicky and went into the little kitchenette just off the newsroom, where the journalists made their coffee and tea. When she emerged with the flowers she placed them on top of a filing cabinet. “There. That brightens the place up, doesn’t it?”
Poppy agreed that it did, then asked Vicky to pop out and get her a sandwich. Vicky, always eager to please “Miss Denby”, said she’d get right to it.
Poppy’s stomach grumbled again. She set aside the Nogovski file and then picked up Arthur Watts’s. There were only two items in it: a half-page of text with the initials IG, and Daniel’s photograph of the exhibition with Watts serving a line of gentlemen, including, Poppy could now see, Adam Lane. The caption on the back confirmed that it was Watts.
Poppy picked up the file and strolled over to Ike’s desk. The political editor was still pounding the keys.
“Ike, did you write up this Jazz File on Watts?”
Ike nodded, his mind still on the story he was writing.
“Where did you get the information?”
“My contact in the police. All they told me was that he’d been a person of interest for a while and that they suspected him of being a fence. But they had no hard evidence. Sorry there isn’t more.”
“No, that’s fine. There’s enough for me to follow up. Very interesting about his uncle being the props manager at the Old Vic, isn’t it?”
Ike stopped typing. He reached out his hand and took the file from Poppy. “You know, I hadn’t noticed that before. I typed this up a couple of days ago, obviously before he died. I was just trying to get some profiles on those present at the exhibition. Didn’t really take much notice. But now that he’s dead, this fence thing sounds very interesting. That may be why he was killed.”
Poppy nodded in agreement. “I think I’ll have a wander over to the Old Vic and see if I can speak to his uncle.”
Ike frowned. “Don’t go on your own, Poppy. There’s still a killer on the loose. Why don’t you take Daniel with you?”
Poppy pursed her lips and fought the urge to tell Ike that she didn’t need Daniel or anyone else’s protection. She took a calming breath, telling herself that Ike meant well.
“I’ll tell you what: I need to drop by the hospital shortly anyway. If Lilian Baylis is there, I’ll go back to the theatre with her. If not, I’ll wait until tomorrow.”
Appeased, Ike nodded. “I think that’s wise.” He turned back to his typewriter, his mind already moving on.
Poppy thanked him and went back to her desk. A fence, eh? That would explain a lot. That and the fact that she remembered Andrei Nogovski talking to Watts the previous week at Oscar’s, the night he had barged in, flashing his credentials. She’d thought then he had had a very interrogative air about him. No wonder Oscar had been so nervous. Had he known about Watts? Had he turned a blind eye to what was going on at the club? Or was he more involved than that? She struggled to reconcile the image she had of the urbane club owner with his gold-rimmed monocle and some kind of criminal mastermind.
She pulled Oscar’s file towards her. It was as fat as Watts’s was thin. Oscar knew everybody and there were photographs of him with royalty, show business celebrities and politicians. There was so much to wade through, Poppy didn’t know where to begin. Fortunately, Vicky and the sandwich arrived at that moment and Poppy took her time mulling it all over as she munched her cheese and tomato roll.
Five minutes later, Poppy had decided that trying to find evidence in Oscar’s file would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. She already had enough to go on with: Watts and his uncle at the theatre, as well as interesting avenues of enquiry with Nogovski. She needed to speak to Yasmin Reece-Lansdale in that regard, to see if she could get an interview with Prince Felix. Poppy wondered how Yasmin was doing getting her other client – Rollo Rolandson – out of the slammer. Poppy chuckled, remembering Rollo’s cheeky face as he was manhandled into the Black Mariah.
The final file she turned to was Adam Lane’s. It consisted of a few pages of text, mainly dealing with his theatre career and the various famous women he had stepped out with, including Delilah. Poppy learned that he was the son of Sir Walter Lane of Guisborough. She had never heard of him and made a note to look him up in Burke’s Peerage. She also read that Sir Walter and his wife Ethel had been killed on the Titanic. Poor Adam. What a terrible way to lose both parents. In Poppy’s previous big story – the Dorchester case – one of the main players there had also lost a parent in the shipping tragedy. In fact, if she wasn’t mistaken, she had seen a list of the deceased at the time… she made another note to check the Elizabeth Dorchester file for the list. It wasn’t urgent, she had plenty to do, but it might give her a nice little filler. She hoped for Delilah’s sake that was all Adam’s involvement in this was: just a little filler.
She continued paging through his file. Adam, as she already knew, was a travelling actor. In the last three years he had been in plays in London, New York, Venice and… hello, hello, Moscow. It seemed Adam had been in a show that had to close because of the October Revolution. Hmmm, there was the Russian connection again. She really needed to speak to Monsieur Stanislavski. She checked her watch; it was half past four. She’d just finish reviewing Adam’s file and then she’d head over to the hospital. Right, where was she? Ah yes, Adam had been in London, New York, Venice and… hang on… New York, Venice… Where had she heard that before? Aha! Marjorie Reynolds this morning. Marjorie had said Fabergé eggs had been stolen in New York and Venice, as well as London and Moscow. Someone was trying to find the egg with the key and match it with the egg with the information that could damage the royal family. Could that someone be Adam?
Poppy sat back and touched her cheek. Oh, it was too horrible to contemplate. If Adam was the thief, could he also be the murderer? Of that family in Moscow? Of Selena? Of Arthur Watts? He did have a rapier. And he was in the theatre when Selena was killed. He had been talking to the props manager when Poppy saw him. The props manager! The uncle of Arthur Watts. Yes, it was all beginning to fit together into some grotesque puzzle. And he had been in Moscow when the family were killed…
Oh dear God! Delilah! She needed to find her friend soon. Should she go to the police and tell them what she knew? She looked across at Ike’s desk, wondering if she should pass it with him first, but he wasn’t there. He was probably down in the typesetting hall getting his lead story mocked up. She didn’t have time to look for him. If Delilah’s life was in danger she needed to get help now. She shoved four of the Jazz Files into her drawer, and put the fifth – Adam’s – into her satchel. As an afterthought, she retrieved Nogovski’s file from the drawer and slipped that into her bag too. She was not ready to let Comrade Nogovksi off the hook just yet.