The Kill Fee Read online

  “Oh Felix, do stop it!” said Delilah. “Will you and Irina join us for champagne?”

  Felix looked as if he were about to sit when his wife whispered something in his ear. He looked across the room and visibly paled. “Thank you, Delilah, but I think Irina and I should get back to Kensington Palace. The empress, I believe, wants to see me.”

  “Oh, the empress! Will she be at the exhibition on Saturday?” “I believe she will,” said the prince, still casting nervous looks across the room.

  Poppy followed his gaze and saw, just behind the bar – near where she knew there was a private staff staircase to the basement – the dark figure of Andrei Nogovski. Their eyes met and she felt the same discomfort she had earlier in the day at the embassy. She forced herself to pull away as the Yusopovs bid a hasty retreat towards the club doors.

  “What’s put a bee in their bonnet?” asked Adam.

  “Oh, who knows! More champagne for us.” Delilah giggled as a waiter arrived with a bottle and five glasses. “Do you know who that is, Poppy?”

  “I do indeed,” she answered, nodding her thanks to Adam as he passed her a glass of bubbly.

  “So what does it feel like to dance in the arms of an assassin?” Adam nearly choked on his own champagne. “Whatever are you talking about, Delilah?”

  “Don’t you keep up with the news, darling? Felix Yusopov is one of the murderers of that dreadful Rasputin.”

  “Good heavens! Is that true, Poppy?”

  “It is. Apparently he’s never disputed it.”

  “Never,” confirmed Delilah. “Rather proud of it, in fact. Which is one of the reasons why his cousin, Princess Selena, can’t stand the sight of the man. Selena was very close to Tsarina Alexandra, and she was devastated when Rasputin died. At least that’s what she’s told my father…”

  Poppy suddenly remembered what George Bernard Shaw had said earlier in the evening about Selena trying to catch Victor Marconi, and asked Delilah if it were true.

  Delilah pouted. “Unfortunately, yes. She’s been practically throwing herself at him since she and the other Romanov refugees landed in Malta. The top dogs all stayed at the governor’s residence and the rest of them were put up in hotels. My father is still trying to figure out who to send the bill to.”

  “Surely the richest royal family in the world has enough to pay their hotel bill?” commented Adam.

  “You would think so,” Delilah agreed, “but they claim that everything was confiscated by the Bolsheviks.”

  “Everything apart from an entire exhibition hall of jewels and paintings,” added Poppy.

  “What are they hoping to achieve from the exhibition?” asked Adam.

  “Well, there’s a hefty entrance fee. I think they’re trying to raise some cash.”

  “To pay their hotel bill?”

  “To fund their exile. However long that will be…” Poppy looked across at the bar and noticed Andrei Nogovski in close conversation with Oscar. The Russian had an interrogative air; Oscar looked cowed. Then Poppy noticed another man approach the bar and stand beside Nogovski, causing poor Oscar to quake even more. If she were not mistaken, it was Vasili Safin, the trade commissar and interim ambassador. Whatever was going on? Poppy made a mental note to look into it as soon as she could. She turned to her companions and said: “Perhaps it’s just to goad the Bolsheviks. They consider all the art the property of the Russian people.”

  “But isn’t it privately owned by the Romanovs?”

  “They’re nationalizing everything. Don’t you know?”

  “Well, I had heard…”

  “Oh, do stop talking politics, you two. It’s deathly boring. Come, let’s toast.”

  Adam and Poppy raised their glasses.

  Delilah rolled her eyes melodramatically. “To dancing with assassins!”

  Poppy and Adam laughed. “To dancing with assassins!”

  CHAPTER 6

  JULY 1918, YEKATERINBURG, RUSSIA

  Ruth Broadwood had never been as cold in her sixty years on God’s good earth as she had been during the winter of 1917/18. Even her first years back in England after the Boer War, when the change of climate from Africa to Northern Europe had frozen her to the core, were nothing compared to the seven months she had endured after fleeing from the house on Ulitsa Ostozhenka. But thank God it was now summer. Or at least what approximated to summer in the Russian Urals.

  The pot of gruel on the campfire was coming to the boil. She used a stick to lift it off, and called out to her young charge: “Breakfast’s ready!” Little Anya and the dog, Fritzie, were playing a game of tag between the abandoned railway carriages – one of which had been their home for the last week. But, thought Nana Ruthie, if the information she had overheard yesterday was correct, tonight they might finally sleep in a proper bed in a proper house. She shivered in pleasure at the thought.

  She called again to Anya. The scamp pretended to ignore her, although the dog cocked its ears and looked up. Not a day had passed since she and the young aristocratic Russian girl had become refugees that she did not thank God for sparing the little dachshund. He kept the child occupied during the day and warm at night, and his chocolate-coloured fur soaked up her tears as she sobbed for her mama and brothers.

  Nana Ruthie bent low and patted her thighs. “Fritzie! Come here, boy! Fritzie!”

  The dog yapped and ran to her; then Anya, realizing her playmate had abandoned her, reluctantly followed.

  “What’s for breakfast, Nana?”

  “Porridge.”

  The girl wrinkled her nose but didn’t comment any further. In the seven months since she’d been wrenched out of her comfortable life in Moscow she had learned that complaining that she only liked porridge with cream and honey – and sometimes a sprinkle of almonds – did not advance her cause. In the first few weeks they had stayed with sympathetic middle-class friends of Nana Ruthie, and the food was close to what she was used to. But as word spread that a British nanny had murdered a White Russian family, stolen a royal Fabergé egg and kidnapped the heir to the fortune, it became increasingly dangerous to the friends – and the fugitives – for them to stay in Moscow.

  So Nana decided it was best to head east, using the Trans-Siberian railway. Her intention was to get to the end of the line in Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan – which she heard was now held by the Allied navies – and then make her way to England. The western route through Europe was never an option, as the Great War still raged. From what Nana Ruthie had previously read in the papers, central Asia was largely untouched by the conflict and therefore the safer option. But it was months ago that she had read her last newspaper, and for all she knew the Mongols, Afghans and Chinese were now also blasting each other to pieces at the behest of their colonial lords.

  She ladled a serving of watery oats into a tin cup and gave it to Anya, then poured some onto a tin plate and put it down for Fritzie. The little dog gave a yelp of delight, his stumpy tail wagging an accompaniment as he lapped at his food. Anya said a polite “thank you” – in French, as that was today’s lesson – and sipped at the gruel.

  Nana sipped at hers and contemplated the day ahead. Today, as soon as their breakfast and lessons were finished, they would go into town to see if they could find the house she had heard about yesterday. Nana had been lining up in the bread queue at the grain depot on the outskirts of Yekaterinburg – a mining city on the Trans-Siberian railway and as far east as she and Anya had managed to travel – when she overheard two women gossiping about the goings-on at a house at the bottom of their street.

  “But I thought they were in Tobolsk.”

  “Apparently they were brought here in April. It’s been top secret.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “My Yakov saw one of them when he was delivering coal. The youngest girl: Anastasia.”

  “Is he sure it was her?”

  The older woman crossed one finger over another: “He swears by St Katerina.”

  The young
er woman sketched a cross in the air. “Do you think they’re all there?”

  “Yakov said he heard the grand duchess call out to some others and then they came around the corner. All of them. He couldn’t believe his eyes.”

  The women were distracted for a moment by the sound of heavy artillery in the distance, and drew their shawls closer in defence.

  The Czechoslovaks are coming, thought Nana Ruthie. She and Anya had met some of them at their last stop along the railway when their train was halted and searched. The Bolshevik guards on board were outnumbered and removed, then replaced by Czechs, who accompanied the train to within fifteen miles of Yekaterinburg. There they joined another of their battalions and some White Russians moving in on the Red Russian stronghold. The Czechs barely noticed the old woman, child and dog, just two of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the middle of the civil war, and allowed them to alight unmolested. Nana and Anya waited a few days to see if another train would be allowed through – none were, so they decided to walk to Yekaterinburg along the track. It took them two days. Then, footsore and hungry, they slipped through the Bolshevik lines as easily as they had through the Czechs’ and set up camp in the train yard to await the next locomotive east.

  The bread line shuffled forward and Nana and Anya moved with it. The two women resumed their conversation:

  “The Ipatiev House, you say?”

  “Yes, the whole royal family, some servants and supporters – he thinks he saw Princess Selena too. You know, the famous actress?”

  “Under guard?”

  “Of course – just like the rest of them – but probably just for her protection. They’d never hurt them, would they?”

  In the train yard Nana Ruthie slipped a hand under her shawl and into her bodice. She clutched a key hanging from a chain. If what those women had said was correct, and Princess Selena was with the royal family right here in Yekaterinburg, then she and Anya might have a way out of there. But she needed to see for herself.

  “Hurry up and finish your porridge,” she instructed her young charge. “Today we are going on an adventure.”

  CHAPTER 7

  SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 1920, LONDON

  Poppy locked the front door of the Chelsea townhouse and hurried to the waiting taxi. Well, as much as one could hurry in four-inch heels and an ankle-length, figure-hugging white satin evening gown with fox-fur stole. If it weren’t for the knee-high slit, she would have been hopping to the motor car like a white rabbit. Rollo, waiting to greet her, let out a long, slow whistle, took her hand and kissed it. “You look swell, Miz Denby, positively swell.”

  “Why, thank you, Mr Rolandson.” Poppy flushed in pride and embarrassment as she stepped into the cab, ducking to ensure the ostrich feather in her headdress didn’t get bent. The little editor jumped up beside her, closed the door, and instructed the driver: “To the Crystal Palace!”

  Poppy greeted the other passengers, two of whom she knew, one she didn’t: Ike Garfield and his wife Doreen, and a striking woman in her early forties with a black Eton crop and Middle Eastern features.

  “May I introduce Miz Yasmin Reece-Lansdale? Yasmin, this is Poppy Denby, the new reporter I’ve been telling you about.”

  Yasmin reached out a long, elegant, gloved hand to Poppy. “The woman who finally put Melvyn Dorchester in his place. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  “The pleasure’s all mine,” smiled Poppy as she shook the woman’s hand. So this was the infamous Yasmin Reece-Lansdale. Poppy had heard that Rollo had been stepping out with her – or “dating”, as the Americans called it – for the last three months. The daughter of a British major general and an Egyptian socialite, Miss Reece-Lansdale was not just an exquisite face. Behind those striking black eyes was a legal mind second to none. Trained as a solicitor, she was one of a handful of women hoping to be appointed to the Bar in the wake of the recent Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. Having attended the various trials that emerged from her sensational journalistic debut, Poppy thought Yasmin would make an excellent barrister: intelligent, forceful and shrewd; but she would need every ounce of ability – and then some – to make her mark in the all-male Crown Court.

  “Mind you, he should have got more than seven years for attempted murder.”

  “I couldn’t agree more, Miss Reece-Lansdale.”

  “Please, call me Yasmin.”

  “Yasmin. And as for his son…”

  “No surprise though, is it? Alfie Dorchester’s got friends in high places.”

  “Most of them with holiday homes in Monaco,” contributed the American editor.

  “Is that where he’s gone?” asked Ike.

  “Last we heard. He should never have been given bail in the first place.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Yasmin, with a look that said she would never have allowed the defence counsel to get away with it.

  Poppy shivered at the thought of her nemesis roaming freely around Europe, and pulled the fox fur closer around her shoulders.

  “His sister’s in New York now, isn’t she?” asked Yasmin.

  “She is,” agreed Poppy and wished they could change the subject. Her first story had been a raging success, but she did not want to be defined by it.

  “Is Daniel not coming, Poppy?” It was Doreen Garfield, Ike’s wife. Doreen was a short, plump West Indian woman with warm brown eyes and a smile to light up the West End.

  Poppy smiled at her gratefully. “He’s going to meet us there. He wants to be in position to photograph the guests as they arrive.”

  Doreen’s eyebrows furrowed in sympathy. “That young man of yours works too hard. And so do you. How you two manage to find time to see each other, I’ll never know. It’s bad enough with Ike working, but if I did as well…”

  Ike patted her hand.

  “Oh, we manage,” said Poppy.

  “Well, don’t you go giving up on your career for him, Poppy,” said Yasmin with a sideways glance at Doreen. “I’ve seen it too many times: men being attracted to career women when they’re single, but then expecting them to play second fiddle to them when they’re married.”

  Rollo chuckled. “Is that a thinly disguised barb at me, Yazzie?”

  “Of course not, sweetie,” said Yasmin, stroking his cheek. “We’ll never get married.”

  Rollo laughed even louder. Poppy wasn’t sure if she was joking, but wouldn’t have been surprised if she wasn’t. Rollo – a notorious skirt-chaser – had met his match in Miss Reece-Lansdale.

  Ike chuckled politely; Doreen glared at him and he stopped. Then she turned back to Poppy: “Have you met his children yet?”

  “He’s got children? Well, say no more! The word ‘bargepole’ comes to mind, Poppy. Stay well clear.”

  “I think you’re the one who should stay well clear, Miss Lansdale,” said Doreen. “Poppy needs to make her own mind up without your interference.”

  “Interference?” Yasmin spat.

  “Yes, interference,” said Doreen, sitting as straight as she could, but still only coming up to Yasmin’s shoulder.

  “Ladies, ladies!” drawled Rollo. “Let’s not spoil the night before it’s begun. It’s going to be a corker, wouldn’t you agree, Poppy?”

  “It should be,” said Poppy quietly, and looked out of the window as they pulled up to the Crystal Palace. They were met by a bank of camera flashes. And somewhere in that crowd was Daniel.

  Poppy had never seen so many jewels in her life – both on and off the guests. The who’s who of British high society wove their way through the exhibition hall, examining case after case of glittering artefacts, exquisite jewellery and objets d’art. On the walls were Rembrandts, Vermeers, Makovskys and Kramskois – and was that actually a Da Vinci? Poppy would need to check in her aunt’s Encyclopaedia of World Art when she got home.

  But it was the collection of Fabergé eggs on a raised dais in the middle of the hall that attracted the most attention: six of them – of various sizes – gilded and b
ejewelled with the finest craftsmanship the world of jewellery design had ever seen. According to the information card on the dais, they were all owned by members of the Romanov family.

  “Aren’t they just exquisite, darling?”

  Poppy looked down to find her aunt beside her, wearing a violet gown of crushed velvet and taffeta.

  “Almost as exquisite as you, Aunt Dot – you look gorgeous!”

  Aunt Dot’s cheeks flushed a delightful pink and her bluebell eyes nearly outshone the sapphires on her tiara. “It’s a Jacques Doucet! It arrived from Paris just this morning. I almost thought I would have to air one of my old rags again.”

  “You would look spectacular in whatever you wore.” Victor Marconi, with Princess Selena on his arm, joined Aunt Dot and Miss King, who was wearing a surprisingly elegant peach silk gown.

  “Well, thank you, Victor. So which one is yours, Selena?” asked Dot.

  The princess was wearing what looked like a Jean Paquin, but its simple lines were obscured by more jewels than were housed in the Tower of London. The question from Aunt Dot elicited a melodramatic hand to the side of the face and a stifled sob. “It is not mine, Dorothy. I am just a treasure-keeper. I am merely the custodian until dear Nicky and Alix and their children reclaim them.”

  Poppy, who believed reports that the tsar and his family had all been murdered, wondered if Selena really did think she was merely a custodian or was just “playing the pauper”. She knew what Delilah would think.

  “So which one is it?” asked Aunt Dot again.

  “It’s the large purple one in the middle, isn’t it, principessa?” said Delilah’s father.

  Selena nodded her agreement, sniffing back tears. “Alix gave it to me herself, with her dear, sainted hands.” Then she threw herself onto Victor’s chest and sobbed. Victor patted her back gingerly. Poppy, who tried not to think the worst of people, was nevertheless finding it hard not to roll her eyes. Even Miss King, more practised in impassivity, raised an eyebrow at the pantomime.