The Kill Fee Read online

  “You don’t think, or you know?”

  The rain was easing. Poppy pulled down the umbrella. “I don’t think,” she answered. “I tried ringing her from the office, but there was no answer.”

  Rollo nodded. “She might still be at the police station. And if not there, out and about trying to use her influence to get Oscar free. You should try her again later. Doesn’t she live near your aunt somewhere?”

  Poppy said she did – just a few streets away – and she’d try to drop in to see her at home later. And if not this evening, tomorrow morning. “She’s got to sleep sometime,” she observed. Rollo grunted his agreement.

  “I also want to ask her about this Count Andreiovich.” She reminded Rollo of what Marjorie had told her this morning, the highlights of which she had already outlined in Yasmin’s chambers. She told him about the murdered family in Moscow, the missing count, and the connection with the Fabergé eggs. “And now it seems we have evidence that this Andreiovich is right here in London. Although we have no idea where.”

  Rollo sighed deeply and looked up at his young protégée. “Actually, Miz Denby, we do. Count Sergei Andreiovich is currently in Ye Olde Cock Tavern, having a beer.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Two buses to Chelsea passed while Rollo told Poppy all about Count Sergei Andreiovich and how he became Ivan Molanov, archivist at The Globe. As Poppy already knew, Rollo had met Ivan in a field hospital in Belgium, and after the war Rollo had given him – and Daniel, whom he had also met there – jobs at The Globe. Ivan had been a White Russian reformist and, in 1917, had heard that his family had been killed back in Russia, so there was nothing left for him to return to. He had come to London as a refugee. Over the last three years there had been intermittent rumours that his family might not have died but were caught up with the masses of displaced people trying to get out of the war zone to safety. But there was no evidence of that, and the previous week Ivan had heard that yet another rumour had come to naught.

  All this Poppy knew, but what she didn’t know was that soon after Ivan started working for Rollo he had confessed that his true identity was that of Count Sergei Andreiovich of Moscow, distant cousin and military adviser to Tsar Nicholas II. His story then began to dovetail with what she had heard that morning from Marjorie. He had gone to the Western Front as a military adviser but disappeared in 1916. No one knew whether he had defected to the German side or been killed and his body never found.

  But Rollo apparently knew. “He was shot by some other White Russian generals who had got it into their heads that he was spying for the British. Although Britain was technically Russia’s ally in the war, there was still a lot of mistrust, and many Russians thought Britain was using the war to extend its empire at Russia’s expense. And of course, there might be some truth in that,” Rollo told her, leaning against the bus-stop post. Poppy remembered what Marjorie had told her that morning about the British Home Office trying to recruit Ivan to influence the tsar. But she didn’t want to interrupt Rollo’s flow.

  The editor straightened up, dusting droplets of water from his shoulder. “But Ivan – I’ll continue to call him Ivan, because that’s who he is now – thought the real reason was because he had recently been suggesting that Russia pull out of the war; that he had adjudged the real battle was taking place in Russia itself and that talks needed to start between the Imperial government, the reformers and – and this was the clincher – the Bolshevik leaders. He had sent a report back to the tsar to advise him to consider this course of action. The generals had intercepted the despatch and confronted him with it. When he confessed that this was indeed his opinion, they shot him, leaving him for dead in a ditch.”

  Rollo then went on to tell Poppy that Ivan had been found by British soldiers and brought to the field hospital where his photographer for The New York Times was being treated. “That’s where I met him – and Danny Boy, of course – and the rest –” he splayed his overlarge hands – “is history.”

  Poppy chewed on her lower lip, absorbing the new information. It made sense. Most of it. But she couldn’t quite see how a few loose ends worked into the picture.

  “So why is he pretending to be someone else? Why not just live openly as Count Sergei Andreiovich here in London?”

  Rollo shoved his hands into his overcoat pocket. It was getting cold at the bus stop and Poppy wished they’d taken a table in another public house instead.

  “Because,” answered Rollo, “he felt his life was still in danger from the Russian generals and he didn’t want the British to use him as some kind of diplomatic pawn.”

  That made sense to Poppy: in her mind’s eye she wove one of the threads into the tapestry, then took hold of another. “But why settle in Britain then? It’s like walking straight into the lion’s den. He could have left Belgium and settled anywhere. Why come here and risk being unearthed by the Secret Service?”

  Rollo shrugged, his hands still in his pockets. “I don’t rightly know, Miz Denby. You know what Ivan’s like – keeps his cards close to his chest – so the most I could get out of him was that he felt the best chance he had of keeping his ear to the ground regarding events back in Moscow was here in London. Due to the connections between the two royal families, Britain would have been the likely destination for any Romanov refugees. Paris too, of course, has attracted a lot of them, but the Brits were the best option for getting Nicholas and his family out.”

  “And look how well that went,” observed Poppy wryly.

  “Indeedy,” agreed Rollo. “But in 1917 when Ivan first came here, it was thought that the tsar and his family would be arriving any day. Perhaps Ivan was hopeful that he would be able to get some information about his family. It seems that his wife and the tsarina were quite close as children.”

  Poppy tried to imagine the bear-like Ivan Molanov as a prewar Russian aristocrat. She attempted to picture the photograph Marjorie had shown her that morning. There had been no beard, and the shaggy hair had been cut short. He was eight years younger too. She struggled to see the resemblance. But then she remembered the eyes – the same eyes that had stared at her from the face of his young daughter – and yes, she could see Ivan in them. She would ask Marjorie to show her the picture again when – or if! – she ever managed to get hold of the woman. How much of this should she tell her? She didn’t want to blow Ivan’s cover.

  As if reading her mind, Rollo said: “Best you don’t tell Marjorie any of this for now. We don’t want to get Ivan into trouble.”

  Poppy’s cheek was beginning to hurt again. She touched it gingerly. “I think Ivan’s already in trouble, Rollo. Whether we like it or not, he’s somehow caught up in this whole Selena/ Watts/Fabergé egg thing.”

  Rollo cocked his head and looked up at her. “How d’ya reckon that, Miz Denby?”

  “The chocolates, of course. Somebody poisoned the chocolates – intending them for Selena, and then poor Stanislavski got them instead.”

  “You reckon he did it, then?” asked Rollo, folding his arms over his chest.

  Poppy sighed, and it was her turn to lean wearily on the bus-stop post. “Well, his fingerprints are on the card…”

  “So are mine…”

  Poppy scowled at Rollo. “Are you trying to implicate yourself?”

  Rollo laughed, but there was no humour in it. His demeanour was subdued, worn down. I wonder if he’s beginning to consider that Ivan could really have done it? Poppy thought.

  “Let’s not forget there’s a third set of prints. Someone unknown…”

  Rollo brightened a fraction. “Indeed there is, Miz Denby. And we need to find out who they belong to.”

  “And,” she added, matching his tone, “we need to find out the real reason Ivan replaced the flowers with the chocolates. There’s something about the hay fever story that doesn’t fit. Selena stayed at our house and – I’ve just remembered – there were fresh flowers in her room every day. She asked for them herself. And I didn’t hear so much as a sniff. If
Selena had –” she stopped suddenly, realizing the one thing she had not thought to do “– I haven’t searched her room. The police have, but I haven’t got around to it yet. There might be some evidence in there.”

  Rollo perked up a little more.

  “If the police have left anything…” observed Poppy. “But what if the evidence implicates Ivan?”

  Rollo reached out and patted her shoulder. “Follow your nose, Miz Denby, follow your nose. Just like you did on the Dorchester story, even if it implicates people you know and love.”

  You mean people you know and love, thought Poppy. Poor Rollo. He wanted desperately for his friend to be innocent. She knew exactly how that felt. In all of this she’d forgotten Adam and Delilah. She needed to find them. Her stomach clenched into the familiar knot. The lights of another bus turned the corner into Fleet Street. She reached into her pocket for her purse.

  “I think I’d better get this one, Rollo. I’ve got a few things to do – and people to see – in Chelsea.”

  The editor agreed. “I’ll go back to the pub and see what I can wheedle out of Ivan, and then I’ll try to get Yasmin to set up a meeting with the Yusopovs. Even if they’re not directly involved, they must know something about this.”

  Poppy agreed. Rollo asked her to ring him later at the office so they could compare notes. She said she would, then got on the bus. As she settled down, she wiped condensation from the window and watched as Rollo’s already small figure hunched even lower in the dim streetlight.

  CHAPTER 32

  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 f
or 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.”