The Jazz Files Read online

  “What a delight to escape into the world of the irrepressible Poppy Denby in this cleverly-plotted debut.”

  Ruth Downie, author of the Medicus series

  “A delightful period romp, neatly sprinkled with the choicest historical detail.”

  D.J. Taylor, author of Bright Young People

  “An intriguing mystery, fizzing with energy.”

  C.F. Dunn, author of Mortal Fire

  THE JAZZ FILES

  POPPY DENBY

  INVESTIGATES

  Fiona Veitch Smith

  Text copyright © 2015 Fiona Veitch Smith

  This edition copyright © 2015 Lion Hudson

  The right of Fiona Veitch Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Lion Fiction

  an imprint of

  Lion Hudson plc

  Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road

  Oxford OX2 8DR, England

  www.lionhudson.com/fiction

  ISBN 978 1 78264 175 9

  e-ISBN 978 1 78264 176 6

  First edition 2015

  Acknowledgments

  Extract pp. 151–152 taken from Wilfred Owen: The War Poems (Chatto & Windus, 1994) ed. Jon Stallworthy, copyright © Wilfred Owen. Used by permission.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Cover image: © Laurence Whiteley

  For my mam, Elizabeth Veitch.

  I miss you.

  Contents

  Map

  Acknowledgments

  Characters

  Coming

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  The World of Poppy Denby: A Historical Note

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Tony Collins, who has believed in me as a writer for over eight years and guided me to write the kind of book I really needed to write. Thank you too to Jess Tinker of Lion Fiction, who caught the spirit of Poppy Denby from very early on – you truly are a flapper at heart.

  Thank you to my fellow Lion Fiction authors, Elizabeth Flynn and Claire (CF) Dunn, who have supported me through the waiting times. As a fellow pride member of the Lioness Club, I can’t wait for our next “hunt”.

  Speaking of all things feline, my thanks go (posthumously) to Denby the cat, much loved and missed moggie of my friends Trevor and Caroline Flint, from whom I took Poppy’s surname. Her first name was suggested by Elizabeth Flynn. Thanks, Fizz!

  I am also grateful for the prayers and support of the un-reverend Aaron Parsons, who – for reasons known only to himself – was desperate that I include a ninja cat in my story. Sorry, there is no cat, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if dear Denby had turned into a ninja at night.

  A hearty big thank you is also due to my editor Julie Frederick, who brought a great deal of spit and polish to the manuscript and somehow knew how to turn those pesky “close quotation marks” the right way round. And while I’m tossing bouquets, can Jess Scott, Simon Cox and Rachel Ashley-Pain line up too?

  Thanks too to CSI Paul Trembling, who advised me on the drying times of blood and ink. Without him I would still be experimenting with pin pricks and a stop watch in the kitchen. And finally, to my wonderful family, Rodney and Megan, who since they first heard the name Poppy Denby in that Rothbury cottage, have made room for her in their hearts and in our home.

  CHARACTERS

  FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

  Poppy Denby – cub reporter on The Daily Globe.

  Dot Denby – Poppy’s aunt. A former West End leading lady and infamous suffragette.

  Grace Wilson – Aunt Dot’s companion. An accountant and former suffragette.

  Frank Wilson – Grace Wilson’s estranged husband. Former women’s suffrage activist.

  Delilah Marconi – nightclub dancer, socialite flapper and up-and-coming actress.

  Gloria Marconi – Delilah’s mother, suffragette and former actress.

  Elizabeth Dorchester – former suffragette.

  Lord Melvyn Dorchester – Elizabeth’s father, Tory peer and leading industrialist.

  Viscount Alfie Dorchester – Elizabeth’s brother, Bright Young Person, recipient of the Victoria Cross.

  Lady Maud Dorchester – Elizabeth’s mother and a suffragette.

  Sophie Blackburn – researcher at the Radium Institute, Paris, former nurse and suffragette.

  Marjorie Reynolds – leading female MP.

  Oscar Reynolds – Marjorie’s son, owner of Oscars’ Jazz Club.

  Mr Thompson – a window cleaner.

  Mrs Thompson – Mr Thompson’s wife.

  Vicky Thompson – Mr Thompson’s daughter.

  Billy Thompson – Mr Thompson’s son.

  DCI Richard Easling – detective chief inspector with Scotland Yard, Metropolitan Police.

  Rollo Rolandson – editor of The Daily Globe, originally from New York.

  Daniel Rokeby – photographer at The Daily Globe.

  Bert Isaacs – political editor at The Daily Globe.

  Lionel Saunders – arts editor at The Daily Globe.

  Mavis Bradshaw – receptionist at The Daily Globe.

  Ivan Molanov – archivist at The Daily Globe.

  Miss Swan – member of Thomas Cook touring party to Paris.

  Henri – receptionist at The Radium Institute, Paris.

  HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

  Marie Curie – head scientist and founder of The Radium Institute, Paris. Joint Nobel laureate for the discovery of radium.

  Lilian Baylis – founder of The Old Vic Theatre, London. Later to found the National Theatre, Opera and Ballet.

  Robert Atkins – leading West End actor and director. Director of Shakespeare at The Old Vic.

  Charlie Chaplin – Hollywood film star, writer, director and producer. Originally from London.

  COMING

  BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

  Because the time is ripe, the age is ready,

  Because the world her woman’s help demands,

  Out of the long subjection and seclusion

  Come to our field of warfare and confusion

  The mother’s heart and hands.

  Long has she stood aside, endured and waited,

  While man swung forward, toiling on alone;

  Now, for the weary man, so long ill-mated,

  Now, for the world for which she was created,

  Comes woman to her own.

  Not for herself! though sweet the air of freedom;

  Not for herse
lf, though dear the new-born power;

  But for the child, who needs a nobler mother,

  For the whole people, needing one another,

  Comes woman to her hour.

  From: Suffrage Songs and Verses by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935). New York: The Charlton Company, 1911.

  CHAPTER 1

  5 NOVEMBER 1913

  A scattering of snow lay across the railway yard, transforming the industrial clutter into a picture postcard: a work of art that could be hung for a night but removed when light and sanity returned. A woman, whose skeletal frame was wrapped in a coat that had once been worn to Royal Ascot and a silk scarf that had graced the owner’s neck at a reception at Windsor Castle, picked her way from sleeper to sleeper. She hoped to reach the commuter station at Slough before the snow soaked through her kidskin shoes and her frozen fingers lost all feeling.

  A whiz, squeal, bang caught her attention and she watched as green, blue, and red flares lit up the sky above the roof of the locomotive sheds. She wondered for a while what it might be, not really caring, but at least it gave her mind something to think about apart from the limb-numbing cold.

  Ah, it’s Guy Fawkes, she concluded, not knowing the exact date, but feeling that it must be early November. She counted back the days, the weeks, and the months to the end of July when she had been arrested and dragged to the Old Bailey to be tried. If she’d known then that she would be kept in the same clothes for the whole of her three-month sentence she would have worn something more appropriate on the day she joined her sisters to firebomb the members’ stand at Lord’s.

  Her stomach growled. It had been days since she’d last had a proper meal – if you could call a porridge of milk and bread pumped through her nose a meal. She’d managed to scavenge some late blackberries from the hedgerow near her family estate in Windsor, and her hands were stained the colour of claret. Her face probably was too, but she had not stopped to check in one of the gilt-framed mirrors when she’d broken into her former home. She had one thing, and one thing only, in mind: to retrieve the cedarwood box from the safe. She had been surprised to see so few servants about – which made her clandestine task easier – and as another barrage of fireworks lit up the night she realized that most of them would have been attending the bonfire party held in the grounds of the manor house every year. So she had snuck in and snuck out without being noticed, with the precious cargo tucked safely away in the canvas satchel she carried slung over one shoulder.

  She had just one more thing to do before she could get on the train to Paddington on the first step of her journey to freedom. She and her friend Gloria – who had also been held at Holloway prison – had agreed to meet between the railway yard and the station at Slough. The cedarwood box would be handed over and in return she would receive a one-way ticket from Southampton to New York. Gloria would then take the box to the sisters in Chelsea, who would turn it over to the authorities.

  The flurry of snow was becoming a steady fall. The woman took her thick auburn plait and tucked it into the collar of her coat. Just around the next bend, she thought and resolutely quickened her pace.

  The tracks running on either side of her began to vibrate. A train was coming. She stepped off the line and continued her journey a safe distance away from the locomotive track. She rounded the bend at the same time as the train on its return journey from Slough. In the spotlight she saw a woman: about ten years older than her with long, wild black hair under a floppy green felt hat. It was Gloria. The auburn-haired woman raised her arm in greeting, but as she did a shadowy figure ran at full pelt and launched itself at her friend. Gloria’s scream was drowned by the howl of the locomotive releasing its steam and all the auburn-haired woman could see until the train chugged past was a cloud as white as the falling snow.

  And then she saw Gloria, a broken rag doll on the tracks. The train screeched to an emergency stop behind her. She stumbled towards her friend, but as she did, the shadow emerged from the cloud, hands outstretched. It called her name. She ran.

  10 JUNE 1920

  Poppy Denby emerged from the steam of the Flying Scotsman onto Platform 1 of King’s Cross station, hauling her trunk behind her. She looked around, hoping someone had come to meet her, and was disheartened to find she was alone. She checked the station clock to confirm that the time of arrival she had telegraphed to the people who were supposed to meet her was correct. Four o’clock in the afternoon – exactly on time. She shuffled a little further down the platform, as quickly as the weight of her trunk would allow her, to see if perhaps someone was waiting beyond the crowd of people and reporters who were gathered around a dais. But there was no one there.

  Poppy, wearing her fawn coat with brown-fur trim, fawn cloche hat and brown T-bar shoes, blended in anonymously with the other commuters. The colours did nothing to enhance her pale, northern complexion, which might have been brightened if she had allowed her honey-blonde curls to escape the tightly wound chignon at the nape of her neck. And her eyes, like two bluebells on a frosty morning, would have lit up the whole platform brighter than the camera flashes, if they could be seen under the low-slung brim of her mother’s choice of sensible hat.

  Poppy skirted the back of the crowd surrounding the dais and heard someone giving a speech: “Untold sacrifice… eternal gratitude… sorrowful loss…” Something to do with the war. She stopped to listen, but the speech was coming to an end and there was nothing to hear but polite applause. She turned around to pick up the strap of her trunk again and bumped into one of the photographers. He was holding one of those new-fangled portable cameras, about the same size as the box that her brother had kept his gas mask in.

  “Excuse me, miss. I think you’ve dropped something.” He held the camera under one arm like the bellows of a bagpipe, while with the other he thrust something in her direction. A book. The one she had been reading on the train.

  “Thank you, sir. I didn’t realize.”

  She took it from him, raising her eyes only enough to see he was in his late twenties and wearing a bowler hat.

  “That’s a nice accent you’ve got there,” he observed in his own London lilt. He sounded educated but not high society.

  “What is it? Scots?”

  “Northumbrian.”

  “North-hummmm-bree-un,” he mimicked.

  Unsure whether or not he was mocking her, she tried not to scowl. She failed.

  “Sorry, miss. Didn’t mean to offend. I think it’s pretty.”

  She doubted that “pretty” was the right word for it, but she appreciated his effort at apology.

  “No offence taken.” She raised the book in his direction like a steward’s flag at a boat race. “Thanks for this.”

  “The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Any good?”

  “Not bad so far. It’s by a new writer. A woman. Agatha Christie’s her name.”

  “A woman mystery writer, eh? Times are a-changing!”

  “Indeed they are, sir.” She picked up her strap, ready to move on.

  “Hold on there, miss; I’ll give you a hand. That looks heavy.”

  “I can get a porter…”

  “They’re on strike.”

  “Really? I was wondering why there was no one around.”

  “And if they’re not on strike, they’re dead.”

  She looked up in surprise. “What an odd thing to say.”

  He nodded to the wall above the dais. As the crowd dispersed she could finally see what all the fuss was about – a memorial listing the names of hundreds of men who had previously been employed by the Great Northern Railway but had died across the sea.

  “Nigh on a thousand,” the photographer commented in a flat voice. “God-awful waste.”

  “I don’t know what God has to do with it,” she said, embarrassed by his blasphemy.

  “Exactly.” He began fussing with his camera and kit. She suddenly noticed the skin of his hands: red, angry, scarred.

  “You were at the front?”

/>   “Yes.”

  “My brother too. He never came back.”

  He finished buckling up his satchel, slung it over his shoulder, and reached out to take the strap of her trunk. “God-awful waste,” he said again, then headed off, dragging her trunk behind him.

  She didn’t know what to do. In just a few moments he had changed from a playful young man teasing her about her accent, to an embittered ex-soldier. Was it safe to follow him? Her mother would have said absolutely not. Her father would have been appalled that he had used the Lord’s name in vain – and in front of a lady too! But neither of her parents was there, and besides, the man had her trunk. She had not hauled it all the way from Morpeth to London for it to be lost in the afternoon commute.

  “Hold on, sir!” she cried and ran after him in what her mother would have declared a most unladylike scamper.

  She caught up with him in the station atrium, a hexagonal concourse with doors leading out onto King’s Cross, Pentonville, and Euston Roads. Shops lined the sides of the hexagon, and commuters, waiting for their various trains on lines which spanned out from central London like threads on a spiderweb, bided their time shopping and browsing. He had stopped in the middle of the atrium, creating a little island of space around him as the sea of travellers parted to accommodate him and the trunk.

  Poppy didn’t seem to have the same effect on the crowd and she had to zig-zag her way through with apologies to left and right. When she reached him she was greeted with: “Is someone coming to meet you?”