Poppy arrived at Delilah’s apartment building and went up to the second floor. Her neighbour across the hall was having a party and Poppy went in to see if Delilah was there. She found the neighbour – Giles – dressed as a Greek god and lying on a chaise longue as an assortment of mythical creatures fed him grapes. The Minotaur greeted her by name. She had no idea who it was. She managed to lure Giles away from his cavorting long enough to gather that he had not seen Delilah since yesterday, and that as far as he knew no one had come to her flat – oh, apart from an old duck earlier in the afternoon. She had apparently made a scathing remark about the crates of champagne Giles was having delivered.
That must have been Miss King, thought Poppy.
“Anyone else?”
“Sorry, old thing; didn’t take much notice. Planning a party. And Delilah had said she would come! Tell her she’s a party pooper. But she’s still welcome if you find her.” Then he turned and threw himself head-first onto a pile of cushions already occupied by – good Lord, could that really be? – the ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, dressed as a golden fawn.
Poppy closed the door on the high jinks and hullabaloo and put Delilah’s key in the lock. The door opened without a problem; no one had put the security chain on the latch from the inside, which suggested no one was home. As she stepped across the threshold and switched on the light, she let out a gasp. Something had happened to Delilah. Her fastidiously house-proud friend would never have left the place in this condition.
“Delilah!” she shouted in vain. Where are you? Without a second thought about her own safety, she picked up a hefty brass candlestick and started a frantic search of the flat, desperately hoping she would not find Delilah’s injured body – or, God forbid, worse – among the mess.
A couple of minutes later, she had discerned that the flat was indeed unoccupied. No Delilah; no intruders. She put down the candlestick, her hands shaking, and sank onto a sofa. Where could her friend be? And who had ransacked her home? To her untrained eye it looked as though someone had been searching for something. But what? The egg?
Then the doorbell rang. Rollo. At last! Poppy jumped up and flung open the door. “Thank heavens you’re here! Someone’s wrecked the place. I’ve no idea what’s happened to Delilah, and –” It wasn’t Rollo. It was Andrei Nogovski. Poppy screamed.
Before she could run, his hand slapped over her mouth and he pulled her back into the flat, kicking the door shut behind them. She fought against him with every ounce of her strength, but it was no good.
“Stop fighting and I will let you go,” he whispered into her ear.
For that she stomped on his toes and tried biting his hand.
He winced, but didn’t loosen his grip. Eventually she went limp – not in surrender, but to woo him into thinking she’d given up. He was not to be fooled.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Miss Denby. But if I must, I will. However, if you co-operate, both you and your friend Delilah could come out of this unscathed.”
At the mention of Delilah’s name, Poppy decided to comply. She relaxed against him, and after a few moments he released his hand from her mouth.
“You have Delilah?” asked Poppy.
“I know where she is,” answered Nogovski.
“Where?”
“If I get what I need from you, I will tell you.”
Poppy could feel his heart pounding against her back. “And what is it you think I have?” asked Poppy.
“Information that will lead me to the missing egg.”
“I have no idea where the egg is,” she answered truthfully.
“Ah, but I think you do. You just don’t realise it. By the way, you dropped something earlier today.”
He released her suddenly and she stumbled, taken by surprise. As she steadied herself she noticed Nogovski was twirling something between his thumb and forefinger. It was a red paper poppy.
“You do get around, Miss Denby. You and your little editor. Here, let me put it where it belongs.”
He took a step towards her. She took a step back. He raised his hands. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She stood her ground as he threaded the flower stalk through her button hole.
“So, you were the man in the tunnel. How did you manage to stay hidden while we were in it?”
He cocked his head and smiled. “Oh, you give me too much credit, Miss Denby. I wasn’t in the tunnel at the same time as you. It was afterwards. The fellow at the paper shop was – how should I say? – very accommodating when I offered to double whatever Oscar paid him to keep the place secret.”
Poppy flicked her eyes to the door and then to the window. She could not see an obvious way of escape. She would have to play along. “May I sit?” she asked. “It’s been a long day.”
Nogovski gestured to a sofa, playing the genial host. She sat and smoothed down her skirt.
“Well, you have been busy, Mr Nogovski. But wasn’t it rather silly of you to return to the scene of your crime?”
“And which crime is that, Miss Denby?”
“The murder of Arthur Watts, of course. The reason you went through the tunnel in the first place.”
Nogovski laughed. Poppy was surprised at how full of genuine humour it appeared to be. She had expected something colder, more sinister, from a calculated killer like Nogovski.
“Oh Miss Denby, you are way off the mark. I thought more of you. I did not kill Arthur Watts. But I did go through the tunnel to see if there was something the police had overlooked.”
“A Fabergé egg, for instance?”
“Exactly. I did not trust the police to do a thorough enough job. They were too busy trying to nail the killing on that poor fool Oscar Reynolds and the theft on Victor Marconi. They could have missed something.” He sat down on an armchair, crossing his long legs as if he were about to have a brandy and cigar in a gentlemen’s club.
“The police may yet surprise you. DCI Jasper Martin is a thorough investigator. He has an excellent closure record. I believe it’s just a matter of time until he cuts through the fluff and finds out what’s what.” And discovers that I’ve been abducted. And launches a rescue, thought Poppy ruefully.
Nogovski smiled, but this time it did not reach his dark eyes. “You may be right, Miss Denby, which makes it even more imperative that you do not help them in any way.”
“How could I help the police?” she asked.
“You have been piecing this whole thing together and it won’t be long before it gets splashed all over the morning papers. Let’s just say that it is essential that certain information is not made public. And I’m afraid, as a newspaperwoman, I cannot trust you to do the right thing.”
“The right thing? You cannot trust me to do the right thing? That’s rich coming from someone like you.”
There was that laugh again. Oh, she wanted to slap him!
“My dear Miss Denby, I think you might have the wrong end of the stick at the moment.” His fingers tapped the handle of his cane. She hadn’t noticed it before. But now it was all she could see. She swallowed hard and brought her breathing – and her temper – under control.Despite what he says, this man is still the most likely suspect in the murder of two people. Two people who were killed with a rapier. A rapier that might very well be secreted in that cane.
He stood up suddenly and loomed over her. She pushed herself back as far as she could on the sofa. He reached out his hand. “Give me your satchel.”
Above the sound of the party next door she thought she heard a motor-car engine. Could that be Rollo? Could he actually save her? If she could somehow alert him that she was in danger …
Nogovski slapped her. It was not a hard blow, but it shocked her. Her eyes bored into his, her anger kindled again.
He bent down and leaned both hands on the arm of the sofa. His voice had lost all warmth. “Stop thinking about trying to escape. We don’t have much time. Now, give me your satchel.” She swallowed again, her throat tight, and unslung the shoulder strap from across her chest. He took it and sat down with it on his lap.
If he expects to find the egg in there he’s going to be disappointed, she thought. And if she weren’t so scared she would have laughed at the absurdity of it. Did he really think she’d been carrying a Fabergé egg around on her person?
But that wasn’t what he was looking for. He took out the files, quickly discarding his own without opening it, and then placed Adam Lane’s on the table. He flicked through it quickly until he came to the coloured pencil sketch of the emerald and ruby necklace. The one stolen from Selena in Paris. He took out a lighter from his pocket and burned the picture, tossing it into an ashtray to smoulder away.
“Now if you and your friend Delilah want to live, you must forget you ever saw that necklace.”
Poppy nodded, trying to hide her bemusement. “Have you got what you need now? Can you tell me where Delilah is?”
He flicked some stray ash from his trousers and then stood up. “Better than that, I can take you.” He reached out his hand to help her up, but as he did he brushed against the small stack of files on the coffee table, knocking his own file to the ground. It lay open on the floor, the picture of him, Selena and Lenin topmost – and next to it the picture of the Victorian baby.
Nogovski inhaled sharply and snatched at the baby picture. He pushed it towards Poppy’s face. “Where did you get this?” he hissed.
“In – in – it was in Selena’s room. And there’s another picture on the back.”
He flicked the picture over and glanced at the old woman and child. He grunted – was that in recognition? – then flicked it over again. After a few moments of studying the infant he picked up the photograph from Paris, looked at it for a moment, then put all the pictures in his inside jacket pocket.
He then turned to her, his face inscrutable, and said: “We are running out of time.”