Chelsea Mansions (34 page)

‘This is going to be difficult, is it?’

‘Well, don’t be too disappointed if you get nothing. I’d buy her some flowers except that she’d know I was trying to butter her up and she’d take offence.’

When Janice opened her front door Kathy saw that he hadn’t been exaggerating. She was dressed in old jeans and a faded T-shirt, and her grey hair was cropped severely short. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of them and her lips pursed tight.

‘Emerson,’ she acknowledged grudgingly.

‘Janice!’ His joviality sounded unconvincing, and Janice flinched as he made to kiss her cheek. ‘Let me introduce the person I spoke about. Detective Inspector Kathy Kolla has been investigating Nancy’s death.’

They shook hands, Janice unsmiling as she scrutinised her visitor. She kept them waiting on the threshold just a fraction too long before inviting them in.

It was a timber house, its plain furnishings set off by clusters of natural objects—pebbles, sea-bleached flotsam, skulls of small animals—and also by framed photographs of blossoms, sea and dunescapes, birds.

‘Beautiful photographs,’ Kathy said.

‘Janice is a very accomplished nature photographer,’ Emerson said. ‘I expect she gets her artistic talent from her mother, eh Janice?’

She ignored him and indicated seats around a scrubbed pine table.

‘You’d better show me your ID,’ she said to Kathy.

‘Oh, I can vouch for Kathy, Janice,’ Emerson protested. ‘I met her in London, and—’

‘All the same.’ Janice examined Kathy’s Metropolitan Police pass and the business card she gave her. ‘I would have thought you’d have been accompanied by an officer of the state or federal police. I suppose they do know you’re here questioning people, do they?’

‘I’m just here in an informal capacity, Mrs Connolly, clearing up a few loose ends so that our coroner can close the case. I’m relying entirely on your cooperation. You don’t have to answer any of my questions if you don’t want to.’

‘I won’t,’ the other woman said decisively, and sat back with arms folded.

‘We want to clear up the possibility that Nancy, or some other member of your family, may have had some previous connection to the place where she was staying in London, or the people who are living there now.’

‘What possible relevance could that have to her death? I understood it was a simple case of street violence.’

‘We’re concerned by the coincidence that another person living in Cunningham Place, where Nancy and Emerson were staying . . .’ Kathy noticed Janice’s hostile glance in Emerson’s direction, ‘. . . was murdered just a few days later. We need to rule out the possibility that there was any connection between the two crimes.’

‘Who was this other person?’

‘His name was Mikhail Moszynski, a wealthy Russian businessman.’

‘Oh yes, you told me, Emerson, didn’t you? I was upset at the funeral, and I don’t think it registered. Well, what of it?’

‘Are you aware of any connection?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I have some photographs here on my laptop that I’d like to show you.’

Kathy pulled out her computer and quickly opened up the file and began to show the pictures to Janice, beginning with individual shots of the Moszynski household, including Vadim Kuzmin, Nigel Hadden-Vane and Freddie Clarke.

‘No, I know none of these people.’

‘Nancy took some family photographs with her to London. Perhaps you could just identify the people for me.’ They opened the pouch and went through the pictures, Kathy taking notes of the names of cousins, uncles, grandparents.

‘I really don’t see the point of this. Most of these are ancient. How can they possibly be relevant?’

‘Nearly finished, Mrs Connolly. Just a few more.’

‘Hang on,’ Emerson said, peering over Kathy’s shoulder at one of the photos. ‘Isn’t that Maisy?’

It was a picture of three adults and a teenage girl grouped together on the steps of a building, their eyes half closed against the bright sunlight on their smiling faces. Emerson was pointing at the woman who was standing between two men.

‘I’m sure that’s your mother, Janice.’

Janice gave it another reluctant glance. ‘Maybe.’

‘And isn’t that your father with her? And the girl—could it be Nancy?’

Janice gave a sigh of annoyance. ‘Very likely. So what?’

‘Well, that looks a lot like Chelsea Mansions in the background, where we stayed.’

Kathy looked more closely at the background, tall sash windows in dark brickwork, a black doorway with white painted surround. It might be Chelsea Mansions, she thought, or a thousand other similar places in London, or Boston come to that. ‘What about the other man?’ Kathy asked. ‘Do you recognise him?’

‘Obviously someone they met somewhere. I’ve never seen him before. And I’m not convinced that’s Nancy. It’s probably the other man’s daughter . . . oh.’

Something had struck Janice. She stared again at the photo. ‘That dress, it was Nancy’s. I remember now, Pop and Mom took Nancy to London for her sixteenth birthday. I was only five. They left me behind with Grandma.’

‘When would that have been?’ Kathy asked, but Janice waved her hand dismissively.

‘This is nonsense,’ she said impatiently. ‘This has no relevance to you.’

Kathy didn’t press the point. She asked Janice to recall later trips made by Nancy to the UK. There had been two that she remembered, both with her husband, staying at the Hilton.

‘And now I must ask you to leave,’ she said. ‘I have another appointment.’

At the front door she added, ‘Your police must have a lot more time and money to spare than ours, if they can afford to send an inspector across the Atlantic just to check a few trivial details like this.’

‘Many thanks for your time,’ Kathy said evenly. ‘I’m sorry to have interrupted your afternoon.’

‘Dadgummed bitch,’ Emerson breathed when they got back into the car. It was such an uncharacteristic outburst from the gentlemanly Emerson, and said with such feeling, that Kathy had to laugh.

‘But that
was
Nancy and her parents,’ he protested, ‘and they
were
standing outside Chelsea Mansions. I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘It’s possible. I could get someone in London to check.’

‘If Janice was right and this was Nancy’s sixteenth birthday, that would make it the twenty-sixth of April, 1956.’

He slowly turned the car and began the long drive back to Boston. On the way Kathy sent a text message to John with the date and asked him to check the background to the photograph, then sat back to admire the well-maintained clapboard houses they passed in picturesque villages or set back among the trees of private acreages.

‘You know what I find so upsetting?’ Emerson said after a long silence. ‘The idea that Nancy might have kept it a secret from me. How could she have gone through that whole charade, choosing the hotel and all, and not told me the real purpose of the trip for her?’ Then he added, ‘Unless it was something shameful. Do you think that could be it? Might she have wanted to revisit the scene of something bad, something embarrassing? Might she have been abused there, perhaps? Was she revisiting the scene of a trauma she couldn’t confess to me?’

‘It needn’t be anything like that, Emerson. She may just have been a bit reticent about telling you that she wanted to revisit a happy memory from her past. Especially when she discovered that Chelsea Mansions wasn’t the splendid hotel she remembered.’

He gave a rueful smile. ‘I guess you’re right. And if she was there in her teens it could have nothing to do with her murder, after all. Those other people in the old pictures are all dead and gone.’

When they got back to Beacon Street he said, ‘Will you be leaving now?’

‘I suppose so, yes. I’ll have to check available flights.’

‘It seems a shame to have come so far and seen so little. Let me at least take you out to dinner at one of Nancy’s favourite haunts. Nothing fancy, just a very friendly little Italian place down in the North End where we often went on a Saturday night. What do you say?’

‘You’ve given me so much of your time already, Emerson, I’d feel guilty about taking more.’

‘Nonsense, it’d cheer me up no end. I’ll phone Maria. I’m sure she’ll squeeze us in when I explain. Shall we say eight o’clock?’

So she agreed, and spent an enjoyable evening with him, talking about all the places she should have seen, and would have to return to one day.

THIRTY

T
he following morning Peter was already setting places in the dining room by the time Kathy came downstairs for her run. Today Tom was offering honeyed yoghurt with fresh berries followed by French toast stuffed with peaches. ‘He’s a star,’ Peter said, seeing the look on Kathy’s face.

This time she headed down through the South End and then east into Chinatown. As she pounded through the empty streets she tried to clear her mind. It felt as if she’d been here for a long time, much more than two days. That’s what happened when you had a change of scene, she told herself, time expanded, became more generous. It had been a blessing to get out of London. It was absurd that she’d never been to America before—never been out of Europe in fact. Her work had constrained her, narrowed her focus. Was that why Guy’s invitation to go to Dubai had seemed so appealing? What a disaster that would have been. No regrets there.

She returned to Beacon Street, skipping up the front steps, blood singing. After a quick shower she went downstairs and opened the dining room door. The smell of Tom’s cooking hit her and she said, ‘Wow,’ then stopped dead, staring at the figure sitting at a corner table. He lifted his head and she said, ‘It
is
you,’ and John Greenslade got to his feet with a cautious smile. There was a suitcase on the floor beside him.

‘Ah, you do know him then, do you, Kathy?’ Peter said from the door behind her. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to let him in. But he looked so forlorn, I thought I’d better give him something to eat.’

She sat down at his table and asked what on earth he was doing there. He looked as if he hadn’t slept, which, as it turned out, was pretty much the case, his flight being a nightmare, through Newark.

‘There was something I needed to show you, Kathy, about the photographs,’ he said.

‘Oh really?’

He registered her doubtful look and was rescued by the arrival of French toast and coffee, with Peter clearly trying to interpret what was going on. ‘Will he be requiring a room?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I think so, Peter,’ Kathy said. ‘Do you have one free?’

‘We do. Next to yours as it happens.’ He arched an eyebrow and strolled off to talk to the couple from Iowa at another table.

‘Well, this is a nice surprise,’ Kathy said.

‘I’m relieved. I thought you’d be mad.’

‘I was talking about the French toast,’ she said, and watched his smile fade. ‘So what do you have to show me?’

‘I’d need to get out my laptop.’

‘I suggest a shower and a shave and change of clothes first,’ Kathy said. ‘And maybe a couple of hours’ sleep?’

‘Not the sleep, but the other things would be wonderful.’

Peter led him away while Kathy had another coffee and caught up on the news in the
Boston Globe
.

Later, in her room, John opened up his laptop and clicked to the image of the group in front of the building.

‘First of all, that is definitely Chelsea Mansions. Each of the doorways is slightly different, and I’m certain they’re standing in front of number eight, the present-day hotel, which in 1956 would have been the home of Toby and his parents. When I showed him the picture he had no idea who the people were, and thought they must have been staying at his great-aunt’s hotel next door, but I’m sure you were right about them being Nancy and her parents. So then I began to look more closely at the unidentified man and I felt I’d seen him somewhere before. I looked through the other photos, and I’m pretty sure that he appears again in this one . . .’

He brought up the image of a couple standing in front of a long reflecting pool, with an Art Deco arch in the background. ‘I was struck by this picture when Emerson showed it to me in London. It’s undated, but it looks very thirties, don’t you think? The style of their clothes and hair, and the architecture. And that’s Maisy, looking twenty years younger than in the Chelsea Mansions picture, and I’d swear that’s the same man again.’