Poppy didn’t get off the bus at King’s Road but stayed on it – past Aunt Dot’s house, past Delilah’s flat (the windows were dark – still no one home?) and past Oscar’s Jazz Club – and turned right into Edith Road. She rang the bell and got off at the corner of Edith and Fulham with the lights of Fulham Road Hospital a beacon to her right. It was now well after nine o’clock and visiting hours would be over. However, this would not be the first time she had “broken in” to a hospital after hours, avoiding interrogation by staff, and soon she was slipping unnoticed, wearing a white gown and Sister Dora headscarf she had dug out of a laundry hamper, into the room of Constantin Stanislavski.
The theatre director was sleeping. She pulled up a chair and settled down, taking his hand in hers. It was clammy. She whispered his name until he stirred. He mumbled something first in Russian, then in French. Poppy knew enough of the latter to know he thought she was a nurse. “No, I is not nurse; I Poppy Denby,” she answered in her schoolgirl French.
Pale and weak though he was, he managed a smile and said in near-perfect English: “You have an appalling French accent, Miss Denby. Has anyone ever told you that?”
She grinned. They had.
His eyes now fully open, he looked at his visitor. He did not ask why she was dressed as a nurse; he simply went along with the theatricality.
“I’m sorry I haven’t visited earlier, Monsieur Stanislavski, but I’ve been busy trying to find out who did this to you.”
“Have you made any progress?” he asked.
“A little,” admitted Poppy. She wasn’t sure yet how much she was going to tell him, but she needed to tell him something in order to get something in return. “But first, how are you feeling? What do the doctors say?”
Stanislavski coughed hoarsely. Poppy poured him a glass of water and held it as he sipped. He sank back onto his pillow, closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again. Poppy feared he was going to go to sleep, but his eyes were fully awake and holding her gaze.
“Despite appearances, Miss Denby, they think I will make a full recovery. Thanks mainly to you. They all agree that undoubtedly it was your quick thinking to get the chocolate out of me that prevented the toxin from taking hold.”
Despite herself, Poppy flushed with pride. “It’s what anyone would have done under the circumstances.”
“But anyone didn’t – it was you. And for that I am grateful. So if there’s anything I can ever do for you …”
Poppy was going to brush this aside with the usual “Oh, there’s no need for that” when she remembered there was something he could do for her. Or at least for someone she knew. But it could wait. She had urgent business to attend to first.
“So have they identified the poison? Was it cyanide?”
Stanislavski nodded. “It was. Injected, as you suspected, into the chocolates. No doubt meant for poor Selena.”
No doubt. But who had meant it for her? Poppy decided not to tell Stanislavski about Rollo’s and Ivan’s fingerprints. But she would tell him a little. And she hoped he could tell her a little too.
“The question that’s on my mind,” he continued, “is why the two different murder attempts? If there was one killer, why would he – or she – send poisoned chocolates and then stab her with a rapier?”
Poppy screwed up her nose. “I think that’s what we’re all wondering, Monsieur Stanislavski. The police too, no doubt. The best I can come up with is that the killer sent the chocolates – perhaps even watched as they were delivered – and then went in to check that the job had been done. But Selena was on a diet. I’d heard her mention it to my aunt. She was struggling to fit into her costume and was too embarrassed to ask the wardrobe mistress to let it out. So she had resisted the chocolates. So when the killer went in –”
“He saw that Plan A hadn’t worked and resorted to Plan B,” finished Stanislavski.
“Yes, I think so,” agreed Poppy.
A little more colour was coming into Stanislavski’s cheeks. Sorting through this muddle was invigorating him rather than tiring him out. “However,” he added, “stabbing her so brutally and publicly doesn’t seem to fit with the character’s modus operandi. The poisoning was murder by stealth. It must have taken a lot of planning. But stabbing is immediate, passionate even, risking discovery if Selena screamed for help.”
Poppy smiled at Stanislavski’s use of the word “character”. He was slipping into director mode, analysing the script to get to the heart of the writer’s intentions.
“But Selena didn’t scream for help. Or if she did, no one heard her. You were not far away in the rehearsal room and you didn’t hear her,” Poppy observed.
“Ah, but that’s because the rehearsal room is soundproofed.”
Poppy absorbed this for a moment. When she had arrived to speak to Selena she had seen Stanislavski and Delilah in the rehearsal room and Adam and the props manager – Arthur Watts’s uncle – in the Green Room. If there were other people backstage she hadn’t seen them. After she screamed it was those four who came first, joined afterwards by other theatre folk from elsewhere in the building. Yes, the dressing room had definitely filled up. So there were other people around. But who were they? The police no doubt would have got a full list of them. She never thought at the time to do so. When she and Rollo were trying to identify suspects they focused on the people who would have been at the exhibition and the theatre. And the only person, apart from herself, Delilah, Stanislavski and Selena, was Adam. Adam had been in the Green Room – the closest room to Selena’s dressing room. She doubted the Green Room would have been soundproofed, as actors need to hear when they are being called. And Adam, she believed, had a rapier. However, Arthur Watts’s uncle was there too. A relative of a now-known criminal. A props man with access to weaponry. Stage weaponry, but a blunted rapier could easily be sharpened …
“Penny for your thoughts, Miss Denby.”
“I’m sorry. I was just thinking about who was there at the time. When I first arrived at the theatre.”
“Do you think the killer was still there?”
“It’s possible, yes.”
“But it’s also possible that he – or she – slipped out before you arrived. The police told me Selena had been dead for under an hour before we found her. They can’t say how much ‘under an hour’ – it might have been as little as fifteen minutes, apparently. Their science cannot be that accurate. But a quarter of an hour is still ample time for someone to leave the theatre undetected.” Poppy chastised herself: another thing she’d forgotten to check. She didn’t have sources in the police, but Rollo did. Did Rollo have this information?
As if reading her thoughts, Stanislavski picked up a newspaper on the bedside table and placed it on the bedspread. “Your editor’s article says the same.”
Poppy flushed. She hadn’t actually read Rollo’s article this morning. She had been so busy with Marjorie and then the drama at Oscar’s and the meeting at Yasmin Reece-Lansdale’s chambers …
Stanislavski patted her hand. “Don’t worry, Miss Denby; I can see it’s been a long day. I hope you are going home to get some sleep soon.”
Sleep. And supper. Wouldn’t that be nice?
“I will, Monsieur Stanislavski, but I was wondering if you could help me with something first. There is obviously a Russian connection with this and I was hoping you could give me insight.” She smiled wryly. “And you are the only Russian in London who is clearly not the killer.”
Stanislavski smiled too. “Have you ever thought of writing a murder mystery, Miss Denby? I think you’d give your Miss Christie a run for her money.”
Poppy chuckled and at that moment decided Constantin Stanislavski was a man she could trust. She went on to tell him as much as she knew about Selena and the Fabergé eggs, the connection with the royals and the possible involvement of Vasili Safin, Andrei Nogovski and the Yusopovs. The only Russian she didn’t mention was Ivan Molanov. She needed to give Rollo time with him first. But she did mention Count Sergei Andreiovich.
“Sergei Andreiovich,” said Stanislavski. “He and his wife were great fans of the Bolshoi before the war. We all thought he was dead. But now you’re saying he might be here in London?”
“He might,” said Poppy. “But what his motivation might be for stealing the eggs I have no idea. He seems to have been trying to avoid being used by either the Russian or British government. So why he would be interested in the eggs I can’t fathom.”
Stanislavski readjusted his shoulders on the pillow and said, “If I were directing this play I would say that Andreiovich is part of a sub-plot, not the main.”
“What do you mean?” asked Poppy, intrigued.
“You are assuming that the same person who stole the eggs is the killer.”
Poppy nodded her agreement.
“But what if they are two different crimes with two different motives?”
Poppy straightened up. The thought had crossed her mind, but she had not been able to figure it out. “Go on,” she said.
“What if Andreiovich had a vendetta against Selena?”
“Such as?”
“Such as it seems like it was she who got Andreiovich’s wife involved with the eggs in the first place. And ultimately, if what you say is correct – God rest their souls – that is what led to their murder. Andreiovich might have blamed Selena for it and killed her simply out of grief. This man is acting in his own tragedy. He is a Hamlet.”
Poppy thought of Ivan and the sadness he carried. Yes, he was a Hamlet – not a Macbeth. If he killed, he killed out of pain, not to further a cause or ambition. She felt a cold chill run down her spine. But he had killed nonetheless … perhaps.
“It’s strange you should mention the Andreioviches,” Stanislavski continued. “Do you know that I introduced Adam Lane to them back in 1915? Or to the countess, at least. The count was on the Western Front at the time.”
Poppy had not mentioned Adam’s name yet. Her ears pricked up. “Oh?”
“Yes,” continued Stanislavski. “I’d met Adam at the Bolshoi and was very impressed with him – both as an actor and a man. It was his first time in the city, so I invited him with me to the Andreioviches for dinner. He was charming. He took the little girl a puppy. And now it seems the child might still be alive. I wonder if Andreiovich knows?”
Poppy wondered the same. Did Ivan know his little Anya was still alive? Or that she might be? Was the information he’d received last week about his family possibly having got out of Moscow really just information about his daughter? But then, Rollo had said, it turned out to be false. Could this rising of hope and then the dashing of it have pushed Ivan to lash out at the woman he blamed for his family’s death?
“I have no idea,” she answered truthfully. “But,” she took a deep breath, “now that we’re on the subject of Adam, I have something else to tell you.” She went on to recount what she knew – or suspected – of Adam’s activities as a jewel thief, and surmised that he was involved in the theft of the Fabergé eggs.
Stanislavski closed his eyes and listened. When she had finished he opened them again and said, “If you expect me to be surprised, I’m not.”
Sensing that Stanislavski had a story to tell, Poppy leaned in closer.
“I once met a manager at a provincial theatre, here in England, who told me his former props man had raised an orphan lad to be a thief. The manager thought this was highly amusing and told me to keep a look out for the lad, because he was now grown up and on the acting circuit. I don’t know what he expected me to do with the information – the fellow was drunk at the time – but I thought it an interesting tale. He told me the boy’s name was Adam, and that he was blond, but couldn’t remember the surname.”
Poppy gasped. “Adam! Adam Lane!”
Stanislavski nodded sagely. “That’s what I’ve come to believe, yes. I first met him in Paris in 1912 –”
“Selena’s necklace!”
“Indeed. There have been rumours in theatrical circles that jewel thieves often target wealthy theatregoers and hide their loot among the props until it is safe to move it. And although Selena was an actress not an audience member, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happened there. And perhaps what happened here.”
“You mean the egg could be in the props room at the theatre?” asked Poppy incredulously.
“It could be, but it seems in this case the props man – Watts – has taken his fencing activity off-site. His poor nephew at Oscar’s …”
Yes, it was all beginning to make sense. The killer, assuming it was a different person to the thief, had come to the theatre looking for the egg, assuming, like most people did at the beginning, that Selena herself had staged the theft at the exhibition. She wondered if the police were pursuing this line of enquiry too or – what was it Andrei Nogovski said? – were they still considering that Selena passed the egg on to Delilah’s father, Victor Marconi, who in turn took it to Malta? If so, no doubt the authorities would be waiting for Mr Marconi in Valetta when he docked tomorrow. Poor Mr Marconi. She sincerely doubted that he was involved, but who knows what a man might do for a woman he had been infatuated with?
“However, it does seem that whoever killed Arthur Watts believed that he had the egg, or knew where it was,” continued Stanislavski. “Which suggests that the egg was not found at the theatre.”
“But that brings us back to the theft and the murder being connected after all,” observed Poppy.
“Oh, I’m sure they are connected,” clarified Stanislavski, “but I just have the feeling they may have different causes.”
Poppy agreed that they might. But there was something else bothering her. “Monsieur Stanislavski, you said that Adam had impressed you as an actor and as a man. Do you still feel the same now that you’ve heard he might be involved in all this?”
Stanislavski thought about this for a moment and then answered, “Yes, I do still feel the same. If what I’ve heard about him is true – that he was raised by a thief in the theatre – then the boy didn’t really have a choice. He was bred to be a thief. But murder is a very different thing. And the man I know would not choose to willingly kill someone. Would you agree?”
She’d been over this before. And still she had no definitive answer. “I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “I would like to speak to him personally and then I’ll judge.”
Stanislavski nodded. “Yes, I think that would be wise. But assuming that he is the thief, I think it’s pertinent that he hasn’t yet left town. The question is why?”
“Well, as far as I know, he’s currently out looking for Delilah.”
“Exactly. He’s a man with a heart. Could a man like that possibly be a cold-blooded killer?”
Poppy hoped not. She thought of how happy Adam and Delilah were together … and then a shadow passed Stanislavski’s door. It was a nurse, looking in. Poppy turned her head, hoping not to be challenged. She wasn’t, but it was just a matter of time. She needed to wrap this up.
“There’s just one more thing, Monsieur Stanislavski. What do you know about Andrei Nogovski?”
Stanislavski’s eyes flicked to the door and back, then he lowered his voice to a whisper. “A very dangerous man.”
“So I’ve been told,” whispered Poppy in return. “But is there anything else you can tell me about him? Anything that might be useful to this investigation?”
Stanislavski fell silent for a moment, accessing his memories of Nogovski. Then he looked up at Poppy. “He was Selena’s bodyguard. When she was in Paris. It was there that he met Lenin and was turned – so Lenin told me in later years. Nogovski became a communist soon afterwards but kept it a secret. After Paris he was recruited into the Okrana, the secret police. He’d kept his political leanings to himself and we can only assume he worked for the Reds as a double agent. But it must have become too much for him, because sometime in 1915 he resigned from the Okrana and became a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. And as you know, he’s now high up in their intelligence service. He is a trained killer, Miss Denby. But – and this is strange – he always remained devoted to Selena. No one could figure out why. We all thought, initially, that it was because he’d been assigned to be her handler. From what you’ve told me you already know that the royals indulged her dalliance with Bolshevism, and both sides used her to spread misinformation –”
Poppy nodded. Yes, Marjorie had told her the same thing.
“But in my opinion, it was more than that. I saw Nogovski and Selena together. There was something there I could never quite put my finger on. Some kind of sub-text …”
The hairs on the back of Poppy’s neck were beginning to stand up. Was Stanislavski suggesting Nogovski and Selena had – or were having – an affair?
“When he visited her at the theatre last week –”
The door opened and a nurse came in, pushing a medicine trolley. “Time for your nightcap, Mr Stanislavski,” she said. And then, on seeing Poppy: “And who are you?”
Poppy muttered something about being on the way to see another patient and pretended she was straightening the sheets. “Goodnight, Monsieur Stanislavski. I’ll see you tomorrow. Sleep well.”
“Goodnight … nurse,” Stanislavski winked at her.
“I haven’t seen you before. Are you new?” The real nurse stepped from behind her trolley and looked at Poppy full on. “And what is that get-up you’re wearing?”
“I … well …” But before Poppy was compelled to answer, the theatre director started coughing and spluttering, and the real nurse rushed to his aid.
Poppy slipped out.