The Firebird's Feather

by Marjorie Eccles

  There were three other men in the room, one leaning against the wall, smoking and paring his nails, another sitting on the floor with his knees up and his back to the wall, strumming on a balalaika, an undersized lad of about seventeen, with a mop of curls and eyes too big for his malnourished face. The nail-parer made up for him: he was fat as a barrel of lard and his breath wheezed as he levered himself from the wall and stood upright. The knife he’d been using on his nails looked sharp but he didn’t even protest as Gaines stepped forward and took it from him. Neither he nor the balalaika player, nor the individual Inskip still had in an arm-lock seemed much of a threat. The big man seated at a large square table did not appear to be armed, either. He had not moved a muscle.

  The attic room was insufficiently lit by a window in the roof and a couple of guttering candles fixed by their own wax to the table; there was an iron bedstead with a thin straw mattress and no bedding, several rickety chairs and a liberal sprinkling of cigarette butts and empty bottles strewing the floor. The air was thick with tobacco and alcohol fumes and an air of ineffectuality emanating from the occupants like ectoplasm. As a band of revolutionaries, they were less than frightening. They swore they were engaged in nothing more culpable than practising for a concert they were to take part in at one of their clubs, and nothing looked more likely. ‘Names then. You first,’ Gaines said to the boy.

  He scrambled to his feet, shaking his head and looking terrified. ‘No English.’

  The man Inskip was still holding found his voice. ‘He is Yuri Petroff, and he’ – indicating the fat nail-parer – ‘is Gregor Mishkin.’

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘My name is Ilya Yacubov. They do not speak English.’

  Perhaps not, but they all appeared to understand it well enough. ‘And your friend here is Aleksandr Lukin,’ Inskip said, addressing the man at the table. ‘We’ve met before, I believe.’

  ‘You are the owner of the newspaper downstairs?’ Gaines asked him.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not Lukin?’

  ‘That is my name, Aleksandr Nikolaivitch Lukin – but I am sorry to disappoint you. I regret I am not the owner. I am merely an émigré from Russia.’ His English was fluent but with a strong Russian accent. He had a wide, Slavic face with high cheekbones, thin lips and a strong jaw. But it was his eyes that dominated, so pale a blue as to be almost colourless.

  ‘Who does own the paper then?’

  Lukin inclined his head and mentioned a name not even Inskip recognised, with all his comprehensive memory for anyone in his area who had ever come remotely under suspicion: Maxim Dimitrov. But these people used so many aliases they themselves often forgot who they were supposed to be at any one time.

  ‘Where can we find him?’

  Lukin shrugged and smiled, revealing strong white teeth. ‘Paris, St Petersburg, Switzerland, who knows? He has not been in London for three months.’

  ‘Don’t admit anything Sasha.’ Yacubov’s command of English seemed as good as Lukin’s.

  Gaines threw him a glance. ‘Take them downstairs, Sergeant. Tell Mr Devenish I’ll be down to talk to them later. You come back here and you, Constable, stay with them.’

  Inskip and Watts hustled the three down the stairs and in a moment or two Inskip returned.

  Gaines drew up one of the chairs to the table, as did Inskip. ‘What do you want with me?’ asked Lukin.

  ‘We are investigating the murder of Mrs Lydia Challoner, and we have reason to believe you may be able to help us.’

  Lukin raised his eyebrows.

  Gaines began with the questions that were routine at the beginning of any interview and it was soon established that Aleksandr Lukin was going to keep up the assertion that he was not the wealthy entrepreneur who had put money into starting up the paper. He was, he said, thirty-seven years old, and had left Russia years ago, after completing his studies at university. Like so many of his contemporaries he had led a footloose existence around Europe, searching for a better life and scraping together what he could to earn a living, until he had met this man, Maxim Dimitrov, who had offered him money to set up the Britannia Voice here in London. He was flattered. He had in his younger days been involved in student politics, and though he didn’t say so Gaines felt that was almost certainly why he had left Russia, that he had been actively involved and thus become persona non grata in his own country. He had leapt at the chance offered to him, he said, because Britain had always been his ultimate goal. He shrugged when asked why. ‘Why not? So tolerant of foreigners, so laissez-faire. And yet … so willing to let them – and your own people – work like slaves and live like animals.’

  Gaines was not insulted. This was standard revolutionary jargon, parroted regularly at every street corner in the East End. In fact, if it came down to it, he wondered where Lukin would stand. He couldn’t see him manning the barricades. And yet – was he the sort of dangerous fanatic to shoot Lydia? Yes, those eyes, cold as a Siberian winter, said he could be merciless if need be, and it needed no stretch of the imagination to believe him capable of using a pistol, aiming to kill – even though from a distance maybe. But still … He had a disconcerting air of having something up his sleeve.

  ‘You were acquainted with Mrs Challoner.’

  ‘Of course. She was the aunt of my editor.’ ‘My editor’ said with a proprietary air. ‘A charming lady.’

  ‘You were having an affair with her.’

  For a moment, Lukin stared, then threw back his head and gave a great laugh. He broke off suddenly. ‘It would suit you to think that, but you would be wrong.’

  ‘You were seen together. You received a packet from her.’

  He was all at once alert. ‘Seen? Where?’ Gaines looked blandly at him. Suddenly he smiled and held up a finger. ‘Aha. The art gallery. I told her it was too public a place to be seen with me.’

  ‘If you weren’t having an affair why didn’t you wish to be seen together?’

  ‘She was a married lady. People get the wrong ideas,’ he answered carelessly. ‘Especially as the packet she gave me was a present.’ He touched the heavy silver cross which he was still wearing around his neck to hold his necktie in place much as a tiepin would have done.

  ‘It wasn’t the only present she gave you. An icon, for instance? Does that ring any bells?’ Lukin didn’t answer. ‘She gave – or sent – an icon to you, to raise money to send back to Russia.’

  After a moment, he said, ‘She promised, but one thing you must know.’ He paused. ‘Promises are one thing. It never reached me.’

  Silence.

  ‘Did you kill her because of that?’

  The reaction was startling, to say the least. ‘Kill her? Why should I do that, policeman? You ask why I wanted to come to England? I came to find her. I loved her, yes. Because Lydia Nikolovna Kasparov was my sister.’

  Twenty-Five

  ‘Ask your father,’ Hester Drax had said – but when the letter had come she hadn’t waited until Louis came home. That had been a mistake, and Kitty had spent most of yesterday and half of the previous night regretting it. She knew she would have to face him now, to confess she’d already shown the letter to the police, though she wouldn’t say that was partly because she was beginning to be a little scared of his unpredictable reactions to any mention of Lydia. She desperately needed some moral support. After a moment, she went again into the little telephone room under the stairs and asked for Marcus’s number, and this time when the operator put her through, the manservant who answered said he was at home and asked her to wait until he was found.

  The two minutes were nearly up when she eventually heard his voice. There wasn’t enough time to explain anything. ‘Please, can you meet me in the square garden?’ she asked urgently. ‘I have to talk to Papa, but first I must see you. Such a lot seems to have happened.’

  ‘I’ll come round immediately.’

  Would Papa be less responsive with Marcus present? Perhaps, but that seemed to matter
less than just knowing he would be there.

  Later, feeling like a delinquent child, she explained to Louis how she’d gone to find Miss Drax, then repeated their conversation and finally told how she’d received the letter. Marcus propped himself on the arm of a chair, arms folded, saying nothing but listening intently. Louis took the letter and scanned it briefly, nodded and then refolded it.

  ‘The police have already been in touch and want to see me.’ He tapped the letter sadly. ‘Did you not feel you could come to me first about this, Kitty?’

  He had every right to be angry. It wasn’t anger, though: he was hurt, deeply. She felt herself shrink. ‘If I’ve done wrong …’ she began hesitantly.

  ‘You’ve done nothing wrong at all, Kitty,’ intervened Marcus. ‘I’m sorry, sir but—’

  Louis looked from one to the other and shook his head. ‘There’s no need for apologies from either of you. You’re not alone in being at fault, Kitty. It should have been I who spoke to you of this, not that woman. And she should not have interfered. I always knew she was trouble.’

  ‘Then it’s true, what she says about … the … the man she calls Grey Wolf.’

  ‘Substantially.’ She couldn’t understand why he didn’t sound more bitter about Mama and this man Miss Drax hated so much. ‘Yes, it’s true, Kitten.’ This time the pet name didn’t irritate her. Something of the Papa she remembered seemed to have returned. He had aged irrevocably since her mother’s death; for too long he’d moved like someone in a trance but now, in some inexplicable way something, perhaps something in that letter, seemed to have shocked him back into some semblance of life. She was encouraged to say, ‘You knew Mama had taken the icon as well, didn’t you, and why? Before you read the letter?’

  He didn’t answer immediately. ‘I suspected she had,’ he said at last, ‘but I was wrong about the reason. There are things about your mother I would have preferred you not to know, Kitty, but since they’re now here in black and white …’ He again tapped the folded pages. ‘Sit down, child. You too, Marcus. The police are on their way so I haven’t much time and I need to explain before they arrive. I suspect they will have contacted Aleksandr Lukin by now.’

  ‘Lukin, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Marcus. Before they come, I need to tell you both about Aleksandr Lukin …’

  Aleksandr Lukin, a murderer? Gaines weighed up the possibility. He’d spent over an hour yesterday with the man, until the questioning reached stalemate. For all that, they were little further forward. Men had been known to kill their sisters, even their half-sisters, as Lukin had claimed she was, and for even less motive – but the mere fact that she hadn’t kept her promise to send him the icon – could that possibly have been compelling enough? And if she hadn’t sent it to him, where was it now?

  Lukin had a history that might well have led him to murder. Gaines had elicited from him that he was the illegitimate son of Nikolai Kasparov and the woman Nikolai had taken up with after the death of his wife, left behind with her when Nikolai had fled Russia with his daughter, Lydia. Lukin’s mother had died and he had spent most of his adult life trying to trace his father, only to discover, at last, that he too was dead. But the daughter – ‘My sister!’ – was very much alive, and living in England.

  ‘Rich, too,’ remarked Inskip sourly. And who knew what other issues there were as well: jealousy, revenge?

  ‘God knows,’ Gaines said. The man had seemed to be genuinely fond of Lydia, genuinely upset that she had been murdered, but of all the killers Gaines had dealt with claiming to be innocent of murdering someone close to them, he couldn’t think of one who hadn’t tried this on.

  There was no clear evidence against him. Another with an unshakeable alibi – if Jon Devenish was to be believed when he said that Lukin had been with him at the time of the shooting. But … nothing simpler than for Lukin to have known where to find a man with a gun to do the shooting for him.

  Questions remained unanswered. How deeply was he committed to the cause of Russian freedom? Or had that been a cover up for his own ends? Was the story of being Nikolai Kasparov’s son credible? More to the point, why had Lydia so easily accepted it?

  Meanwhile, here was Inskip to remind him that they were bound for Egremont Gardens and another meeting with Louis Challoner. He groaned. Having a conversation with Challoner was as unpleasant as squeezing a half-blown-up balloon. It neither burst nor deflated properly. It just stayed limp and sad, like his handshake.

  When they arrived, the young footman showed them into the drawing room at the front of the house; Mr Challoner sent his apologies, he would be with them very shortly. After a few minutes the door opened but it was Bridget Devenish who stepped into the room. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I heard voices and I thought …’ She backed away.

  ‘Don’t go, Miss Devenish. I’d like a word or two with you,’ Gaines said, waving her to a seat.

  She looked a little wary, but sat down. Very composed, very straight in her chair, a good-looking young woman with smooth, dark hair and intelligent eyes.

  ‘What can you tell us about a letter your aunt received from Miss Rina Collingwood?’ Gaines asked, straight to the point. Inskip felt a small jolt of satisfaction that the DCI hadn’t entirely dismissed what Emma Pavell had said after all.

  He wasn’t pressing for an answer and it was some time before she gave it. ‘It was a mistake,’ she said coolly at last, but for all that she was neither as nonchalant nor as much at ease as she tried to appear. Her hands, clasped too tightly together, gave her away. She was still quite young, after all. ‘Rina – Miss Collingwood, is a member of the W.S.P.U. and she works extremely hard for it. Funds are something they’re always looking for and she was under the impression my aunt would be willing to contribute.’

  ‘Really? It doesn’t seem to have been a secret that Mrs Challoner wasn’t in sympathy with the movement.’

  She tucked back a stray tendril of hair and licked her lips. Distinctly uneasy now. Wondering how much to say. ‘I suppose – well, I suppose she thought Aunt Lydia might have second thoughts about it, the appeal coming from Mrs Estrabon’s sister.’

  The silence seemed to go on for a long time.

  ‘Miss Collingwood was Mrs Estrabon’s sister?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why should that make her any more inclined to give money?’

  ‘Well.’ Bridget was beginning to sound a little desperate. ‘I suppose Fanny knew a lot about Aunt Lydia and how she might be persuaded …’

  ‘She knew of something she could hold over her,’ suggested Gaines softly.

  Bridget turned scarlet. At that moment, Louis Challoner came into the room. Bridget, with a muttered excuse, seized the opportunity and fled.

  Gaines had arranged to see Louis Challoner because he felt obliged to discuss Miss Drax’s letter with him, not least because of her doubts as to Louis’s unawareness of Lydia’s activities, which echoed his own. What sort of man was he, not to have known his wife was dabbling in potentially dangerous waters? He’d indulged her in the matter of her supposed novel writing, even so far as keeping it a secret from the outside world, but had he really never asked how she had suddenly found such talent? And had he really not known about Lukin and the relationship to his wife? He’d sounded dumbfounded when Gaines had earlier relayed the information over the telephone, though he’d quickly recovered. These were pressing questions, but now in view of that encounter with Bridget Devenish another, perhaps not unimportant one had cropped up. Deal with that, but first …

  Louis was inviting them into his study.

  When they were seated, he said, ‘Mr Challoner, what do you know about a letter your wife received some time ago? From a Miss Collingwood?’

  His face closed. He hadn’t expected that. For some time he sat with his eyes lowered, but at last he began to speak . Yes, he knew the letter the inspector was referring to …

  It had been good of Mrs Estrabon to call, though in fact she had been the last person anyone at Egremo
nt Gardens wished to see. With her brittle social chatter, she had an ability to amuse by passing on the wicked pieces of gossip she always managed to pick up, though surely even she would have realised that sort of thing would hardly be appropriate at this time. In particular Louis had been disinclined to play the host to a woman he had never liked and now detested. Hearing her voice, he had retreated into the study that had become his refuge, leaving the visitor to Kitty and her aunt.

  She had come oozing kindness and sympathy (and in deepest black) and it would have been churlish of them to refuse to see her. The obligatory half-hour calling time could not have been comfortable for them but Mrs Estrabon had finally refused more tea and drew on her gloves, preparatory to leaving. ‘I must see dear Louis once more for a moment before I go,’ she’d murmured. ‘No, no, please don’t bother. I’m familiar enough with the way to his study.’

  The reminder that she had always been a frequent visitor to this house, that she had been Lydia’s friend, had been enough for Ursula, apologetic afterwards, to allow her to go and find Louis herself.

  He had looked up when the door opened and when he saw who it was drew back like a caged animal. She held up a hand. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t disturb you for long, Louis. Paul told me you were at home today for a meeting with your lawyers.’

  ‘Lydia’s affairs,’ he managed. ‘What do you want, Fanny?’

  ‘Now, why should you think I want anything?’

  ‘I cannot imagine you came here for the pleasure of seeing me.’ She smiled and sat down.

  ‘If it’s money you’re after, the source has gone.’

  There was a small silence while she considered. ‘Ah, yes, I thought that was what had happened. You opened that letter. How very ungentlemanly! Paul would not dream of opening my correspondence. I should like it back, please.’