Tuesday 23 October 1920, London
“Poppy, ma’am?” Poppy looked down, surprised to hear her name coming from a Fleet Street pavement. She was met by an outstretched hand holding a paper poppy.
“Good morning, Sarge. What have you got there?”
Sergeant “Sarge” Hawkins was one of Fleet Street’s regular beggars. He had lost both legs in the war and, like many returning servicemen, injured or otherwise, had not been able to find work back on Civvy Street. He lived in a home for veterans run by the Salvation Army and made his way to this patch of pavement between the entrance to St Bride’s Church and the Empire Tea Rooms every day. He carved small crosses out of wood and sold them for a handful of pennies. Poppy had at least a dozen of them, being unable to say no to the crippled soldier who reminded her of her brother, who had died during the war.
“Did you make that just for me?” asked Poppy, touched.
Sarge grinned, revealing a new gap in his sparsely toothed mouth. “I would like to say yes, Miss Denby, but that wouldn’t be the truth. And I know how you like the truth. No, it’s a new thing us old Tommies are doing. For the coming Armistice anniversary. Some blokes thought it would be a good idea to make these poppies as a reminder of, well, you know …”
As Poppy’s brother was buried under a field of poppies in Belgium, the young journalist knew exactly what he was talking about.
“How much?” asked Poppy, taking the paper flower and pinning it to her turquoise lapel.
“As much as you’d like to give, miss,” answered Sarge.
Poppy opened her purse and took out some coins, making sure she kept enough back for her breakfast meeting in the Empire. She thanked Sarge, then pushed open the door to find Marjorie Reynolds seated and waiting for her with a pot of tea and a plate of buttered toast. Despite it only being eight o’clock in the morning, Marjorie’s salt and pepper hair was immaculately set with finger waves.
“Snap!” said Marjorie, pointing to the paper poppy on her tweed jacket lapel.
Poppy smiled as she pulled out the vacant seat opposite the Home Office minister and took off her cloche hat, hanging it, with her satchel, on the back of her chair. A waitress arrived and removed the hat to its proper place on the hatstand. Poppy smoothed down her blonde curls, expressed her thanks, then turned to her breakfast companion. “Morning, Mrs Reynolds. It’s a nice idea, this, isn’t it?” she said, fingering the flower on her lapel. “Although the paper won’t last that long.”
“I don’t think it has to. It’s just for the few weeks up to Armistice Day. I hope it will catch on.”
“So do I. But people like Sarge need a lot more than the few pennies they can get from a paper poppy or a wooden cross. Can’t the government do something to help them? If it wasn’t for charities like the Salvation Army and the Royal British Legion they’d be starving to death on the street.”
“A tad melodramatic for this time of the morning, Poppy.”
“Do you think so? I’d say it’s spot on.”
Marjorie looked down her nose at Poppy as she poured the younger woman a cup of tea. “I didn’t know you’d switched beats to politics, Miss Denby. The last time I checked, Ike Garfield still had that job. And don’t forget you’re preaching to the converted here.” She pushed the sugar bowl across the table. “In the last two years I have backed every social reform bill brought to parliament by the Liberals – and even more that were blocked by the Conservatives.” She sniffed and picked up her cup.
Poppy, who hadn’t slept well the night before, realised her rudeness. Marjorie Reynolds was one of the good guys – as Rollo liked to say – and an invaluable source who needed to be kept sweet. And that, after all, was why she was here. Last night, before Marjorie left, she had asked to meet Poppy for breakfast. She said she had some information on Andrei Nogovski. Naturally, Poppy was curious and readily agreed. However, Poppy reminded herself, besides her usefulness as a source, Marjorie was also one of her aunt’s oldest friends, and a veteran of the women’s suffrage movement. Social justice was in her veins. “I’m sorry, Mrs Reynolds; I’ve been living on stale air and coffee since the robbery at the exhibition.”
Marjorie put down her cup and reached across the table and patted the young reporter’s hand.
“I’ll have a word with Rollo. He’s working you too hard.”
Poppy laughed and plopped two sugar cubes into her tea. “But not as hard as he’s working himself.”
Marjorie acknowledged that with a wry “I can believe it”, and then called over the waitress.
“What will you have, Poppy? I’m just having toast. They feed us well at –” she paused – “the office.”
“A bacon sandwich, please.” Poppy smiled to herself. She was beginning to suspect that “minister to the Home Office” was a euphemism for what Marjorie Reynolds actually did, and that pause just added fuel to her suspicions. She’d heard rumours about a Secret Service that had been set up during the war to root out German spies. And as far as she knew, it was still going – but now the focus was on scuppering Bolshevik influence. Just two months earlier, her aunt’s old acquaintance, Sylvia Pankhurst, had helped establish the Communist Party of Great Britain. Aunt Dot had been invited to join; she had declined, and so, apparently, had Marjorie Reynolds. “Sylvia’s gone a little too far this time,” declared her aunt, who, although left-leaning, enjoyed her middle-class comforts too much to be a serious supporter of Bolshevism. Was it a coincidence that Marjorie wanted to speak to her about Comrade Andrei Nogovski? Poppy didn’t think so.
“So,” she said, stirring the sugar into her tea, “Andrei Nogovski …”
Marjorie sipped on her tea, then put down her cup. “Indeed. Andrei Nogovski. You met with him last night.”
“I didn’t meet with him. I bumped into him outside –” she stopped, realising that Marjorie was getting information from her before they had set out the parameters of their engagement. It was one of the cardinal rules of journalism, according to Rollo, and he had drilled it into her. “Information is our currency, Miz Denby. You can buy it or sell it, but don’t give it away.”
“Buy it?” asked Poppy. “Do you pay people to tell you things?”
Rollo had raised a shaggy red eyebrow. “Not under normal circumstances, no. It taints what we’ve been given and limits what we can print. No, we buy the information in other ways. Everyone has a price, everyone has an agenda. It’s your job to figure out what it is. Some people are just lonely and want the attention. Others want revenge on someone and use us to out them. Then there are the crusader types who want us to further their cause, or publicity hounds who need to keep themselves in the public eye – for vanity or profit, it doesn’t really matter.”
“But how do we know what they are telling us is true, Rollo?”
“We don’t, initially, but we can sift it later. At this stage of the interview you need to suss out whether they’ve got something worthwhile to tell you and whether it’s worth the price they’re asking.”
“Will they tell you what they want in return?” asked Poppy.
“Sometimes,” answered Rollo.
Sometimes. Poppy looked at Marjorie and wondered what it was she wanted. Poppy had known her long enough to understand that she valued forthrightness, so she decided to take the direct route.
“Forgive me, Mrs Reynolds, but I thought you were going to give me some information about Comrade Nogovski; not the other way round.”
Marjorie raised her teacup in mock salute. “Ah, I see Rollo’s been training you.”
Poppy raised her cup in return. “You’ve got something to tell us about him, but I doubt the information will come without strings. What is it you want from us, Mrs Reynolds?”
Poppy and Marjorie both leaned back as the waitress arrived with the bacon sandwich and enquired if Mrs Reynolds would like more toast. The older woman declined. Alone again, Poppy busied herself with cutting the sandwich in half, the rashers crunching satisfyingly as she pressed the bread down.
“So, you want to know my motivation in all this?” asked Marjorie.
“I do.”
Marjorie finished her toast and dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “And it isn’t enough that I’m worried about an old friend’s niece?”
Poppy thought about this for a moment as she chewed her first bite of bacon. The juices melted into her mouth. She wished she had more time to savour it. She swallowed. “I appreciate that, Mrs Reynolds, but if this was just personal you would not have arranged to meet me at The Globe.”
“I didn’t. I arranged to meet you here.”
“Not at first. Your first thought was that it was a business meeting. Something to do with the newspaper. Then you changed your mind.”
“Can’t it be both?”
“I’m sure it can, but we won’t know until you tell me.”
Marjorie’s sharply pencilled eyebrows met in the middle. “I do appreciate forthrightness, Miss Denby, but you are bordering on rude.” She folded her napkin and reached for her briefcase. “I think I’d better speak to Rollo about this directly. You’re right, it is business; but you’re also wrong. I do have a personal concern for you. And I’d appreciate some gratitude.”
Again, Poppy pulled herself up for her brusqueness. She was new at this game and struggling to balance her natural, trusting personality with the suspicious stance her profession now demanded of her. No doubt she would err on both sides of the divide many more times before she found a style that was true to herself and not just a facsimile of Rollo. She put down her sandwich. “I’m truly sorry, Mrs Reynolds. Marjorie. Please forgive me. You’ve been friends with my aunt for a long time and I know you would never do anything to hurt her or anyone close to her. It’s just that with my new job …”
Marjorie put her briefcase down and waved back the waitress who was preparing to swoop in. “I know, pet,” she said. “It’s a learning curve. I’ve been on it – as an MP and now in my new job. But we mustn’t lose ourselves. We mustn’t try to do things the same way our male colleagues have always done them. We need to find our own way.”
Poppy gave a tight smile. “Rollo said you’d want something.”
Marjorie matched the smile. “He’s right. I do. Well, not me personally, but the people I represent. That’s how it works. We want certain information in the press and we want other information kept out of it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have something very valuable for you – professionally and personally. And there is a personal dimension, Poppy. I am worried for you.” The bell on the tea-room door rang and a group of men walked in.
Poppy recognised them as journalists from The Courier. “Let’s finish up here and go for a walk around St Bride’s, shall we?”
Marjorie assessed the group of journalists and nodded. “Good idea.”
A cleaning lady was polishing the brass candlesticks on the altar when Marjorie and Poppy slipped into the chancel. They took a seat at the back, near the stone stairs spiralling down to the underfloor crypt. Marjorie opened her briefcase and extracted a manila envelope. She placed it on the pew between her and the young journalist.
“What I’ve got here, Poppy, is some information on Andrei Nogovski.”
Poppy reached her gloved hand out to take the envelope.
Marjorie edged it away from her. “First, though, I need to tell you what I would like in return.”
“Well, Rollo’s really the one to –”
“No. It’s you I need a favour from. It has nothing to do with the newspaper.”
“Then why –”
Marjorie raised her hand. “Well, some of it does, but I’ll get to that later. First I need to get the personal stuff out of the way. It’s about my son, Oscar.”
“Oscar? What about him?”
“I think he might be in trouble.” Marjorie lowered her voice to a whisper as the cleaning lady walked past them carrying her bucket and rags. Poppy nodded to the woman and smiled. She received a warm smile in response.
Marjorie drummed her fingers on the back of the pew in front of her. Poppy had never seen the Member of Parliament and minister to the Home Office so agitated. Aunt Dot always said she had the backbone of Genghis Khan, having withstood personal and public attacks in her rise to power that would have cowed a lesser human being.
“Why do you think he’s in trouble, Mrs Reynolds? Have you spoken to him about it?”
Marjorie flexed her fingers and then folded them softly in her lap. She steadied her breathing and visibly forced herself to appear composed. “I’ve tried, but you know what children can be like with their parents. He thinks just because he’s thirty-five I don’t have a say in his life any more. And he’s right, of course. But I’m his mother. And since his father died, he’s all I have. You understand that, don’t you?”
Poppy did, but perhaps not in the way Marjorie would have hoped. At twenty-two she was trying desperately to break free of her parents’ influence, knowing that they didn’t fully approve of her new career. But she knew that wasn’t what Marjorie wanted to hear. She smiled. “Of course I do, Mrs Reynolds. It’s only natural for a parent to worry about their children – however old they are. But what is it that’s worrying you?”
Marjorie picked up the envelope and slipped out a photograph. Poppy recognised the setting immediately; it was the bar at Oscar’s Jazz Club and three men were in deep discussion: Oscar, the barman and Andrei Nogovski. Poppy had a sense of déjà vu. She had seen this picture before. Or had she?
Oh, hang on, it wasn’t the photograph she’d seen; it was the real-life tableau. This was taken the night she had danced with Prince Felix Yusopov. The night Andrei Nogovski had muscled his way into the club and had gone downstairs with Oscar. She had noticed then that Oscar looked uncomfortable. She had intended asking him about it. And now here was his mother, apparently worried about the same thing.
“Who took this picture, Mrs Reynolds?”
Marjorie shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. But it came to my attention at the Home Office. Some of my colleagues were concerned that Oscar might be involved with Nogovski and Safin in some way. Apparently the interim ambassador arrived soon after this picture was taken. And this, apparently, is not the first meeting they’ve had.”
“But surely it’s just a matter of a host speaking to one of his patrons,” said Poppy.
“Yes, that’s what I told my colleagues. But they’re not entirely convinced. And neither am I.”
Poppy paused again as a man in a clerical robe nodded to them as he passed. “But why do you assume it’s something underhanded or illegal? Nogovski and Safin are legitimate representatives of the Russian embassy. Oscar does catering. Perhaps they were arranging a reception or something.”
Marjorie straightened her tweed skirt with brisk strokes. “You don’t believe that, and neither do I.”
Poppy sighed and told Marjorie what had happened the other night.
Marjorie listened, her mouth in a tight line. “He was scared, you say?”
“That’s how I interpreted it, yes. It appeared as if Nogovski was intimidating him in some way.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Nogovski is not a man to be trifled with.” Her hand quivered slightly as she withdrew another photograph from the envelope. She offered it to Poppy. It was a family portrait. A well-to-do aristocratic family: a powerfully built middle-aged man in Imperial Russian military uniform, a woman in her mid-thirties, two boys of around ten and twelve and a small girl of about two with a halo of black curls and puppy-dog eyes.
“The family of Count Sergei Andreiovich, previously of Moscow, Russia. This was taken in 1912.” Marjorie pointed at each of the family members in turn. “The count, his wife Sofia, their two sons Boris and Jakov, and the baby, Anya.”
“They look like a lovely family,” said Poppy, not knowing what else to say.
“They were. But now at least three of them are dead. The mother and two boys – along with their grandmother, uncle and family butler – were massacred in their home in October 1917.”
“By Bolsheviks?” asked Poppy.
“That’s what we think, yes, but the Russians have put out a rumour that one of our lot did it.”
“Our lot?”
“A Brit. A woman by the name of Ruth Broadwood.” Marjorie slipped another photograph from the file. Poppy looked into the plain, sensible face of a woman of around sixty. She reminded Poppy of her aunt Daphne in Morpeth. Poppy could not imagine for one moment that this Aunt Daphne lookalike was capable of murdering an entire family. But appearances could be deceiving …
“She doesn’t look the type, does she?” said Marjorie, reading her mind.
Poppy shrugged. “Not really. But stranger things have happened.”
“They have,” agreed Marjorie, “but when you consider that two grown men and two strapping teenage boys were among the victims, some of whom had been hacked to death before they were shot, I think it is highly unlikely that a woman of Ruth Broadwood’s age and physical stature could have done it.”
Poppy felt the bacon sandwich in her stomach churn. She imagined the horror of the scene and was grateful that she had not been presented with a photograph of it. “Indeed,” was all she managed. She picked up the photograph of Ruth Broadwood again and looked intently into her eyes, trying to read something of her story. “Who is she?”
“Well, the Bolsheviks are right – she is one of ours. In fact, she’s a friend of your aunt’s new companion, Miss King.”
“Really?” asked Poppy, incredulous.
“Really. They both worked for David Lloyd George when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer at 11 Downing Street. Ruth was a translator, Miss King a nanny.” Marjorie then went on to recount how Ruth had been recruited by Lloyd George for the secret mission to the tsar’s household in St Petersburg and how she had later transferred to the house of the reformer Count Sergei Andreiovich in Moscow.
Poppy looked at the photograph of Ruth Broadwood with renewed respect. A spy? At her age? Good for her! “So do you think the Bolsheviks knew she was a spy?”
Marjorie leaned back her head and stretched her neck from left to right. “Probably. They raided the office of our Moscow attaché around the same time the Andreioviches were murdered. That was the office Ruth used to send us her reports in the diplomatic pouches. Our attaché managed to get out, as did the ambassador in St Petersburg, but a lot of sensitive information was lost in the process.”
“Why would the Bolsheviks raid our offices?” asked Poppy. Marjorie raised one eyebrow at Poppy.
“It’s because of how our royal families are connected. As you know, the Queen Mothers, our Queen Alexandra and Empress Maria Federovna, are sisters; their brother is the king of Denmark. Their sons, our King George and Tsar Nicholas, are – were – cousins.”
Poppy noted the change in tense. So Marjorie and the Home Office also believed the stories that the Russian royal family had been murdered, even if the old Queen Mother – and poor, deluded Princess Selena – did not.
It was now approaching nine o’clock and members of the clergy were beginning to set up for the morning service. On another day, Poppy might have stayed, but today she was far too interested in the story of the dead Russian family, the British spy and how – if at all – it was connected with Andrei Nogovski.
“Perhaps we should go outside,” she suggested.