“Russians, Friend?” Eyre asked.
The club manager turned. His shadowed eyes looked tired, but he was nonetheless a handsome man, the kind any girl would be thrilled to dance some twinkly song with. He had the upright carriage and lean, broad body of a military lineage. Glass wondered what his service record was. He looked just old enough to have been in at the end. Maybe never made it out of training.
The man held out his hand, and Eyre shook it. Eyre nodded at Glass. “This is Lord Walling, Cuddy. Walling, Cuddy Friend. He’s keeping a close eye on the Bolshies when I’m not around.”
“They just came in. Their women were waiting outside, and we’ve just let them into the nightclub. Already on the dance floor.” Friend shrugged. “Can’t see the harm.”
“Not if they are paying,” Eyre said. “This way, we know where they are.”
“Fair enough. Same group of women exactly as before?”
Friend nodded. “Yes. My doorman has a photographic memory.”
“Good. This lot aren’t being beaten then—or at least not badly.”
“So what do you want to do then?” Eyre’s words had begun to slur again.
“A quick look,” Glass said. “Then a night off for both of us.”
Eyre attempted to clap him on the shoulder, missed, and stepped around the bar, grabbing a glass of champagne off the edge as he did. Glass followed but was distracted by the sight of his princess coming into the club. He went toward her, taking her elbow. “I thought you went home?”
“I don’t have keys to your flat,” she said. “I know how to get as far as the door, but—”
Glass frowned. “How stupid of me.” He reached into his pocket but was distracted by the sight of Eyre turning around, an expression of stupefaction on his face.
“What?” Glass mouthed.
He watched Eyre’s half-full glass tip. Following the tilt of Eyre’s hand, he saw who had shocked the hotel manager. He’d recognize that face anywhere. Konstantin.
Chapter 19
Glass shoved his keys at Olga as the Maystone’s band moved into position on their small stage. “Go.”
“What?” she asked. A couple brushed past her, intent on the dance floor. “What’s wrong?”
“Just go,” he said in a low voice, hoping his lowered brows and stern expression would make her obey.
But she wasn’t that sort of woman. She followed the line of Eyre’s lifted chin and stiffened when she saw her cousin. “What on earth is he doing here?”
They all watched as Konstantin weaved his way through the room from the bar, heading toward the dance floor.
“Maybe the Hand of Death bought your cousin a woman for the night,” Eyre said with drunken ire.
Glass attempted to turn Olga around. “You need to leave.”
Eyre spoke. “You need to arrest him.”
“Exactly.” He gritted his teeth in Olga’s direction. Why wasn’t she moving? “I don’t want you here. A man died the last time I tried to capture him.”
She clutched his arm. Her brow furrowed. “It isn’t safe here. I can lure him outside, Douglas.”
“I want you to leave.”
She shook her head and darted forward. He grabbed for her, missed, just as the cornet blared out the opening passage to “Blue Paradise,” a one-step from a decade ago.
With that unfashionable choice by the band, the dancers, who had been shimmying to a gramophone recording, left the floor en masse to seek refills on their drinks and chat. Konstantin paused, suddenly unsure of his destination, it seemed. Was he heading for Mikhail Lashevich or someone else? The crowd surged around him. Glass grabbed for Olga’s hand, trying to keep her close.
As he pulled his princess out of view, he saw Konstantin’s eyes narrow as he caught sight of them.
“Sodding bloody hell,” Eyre muttered. “I really need to start carrying a gun.”
Glass shoved Olga at Eyre and pushed between two flappers in beaded black-and-white gowns, their hems rippling around his trousers as he moved. He smelled the heavy rose perfume on one of them, the sweat under the arms of the man in front of the women.
Konstantin, light on his feet despite his height, drifted to the wall and moved speedily in the opposite direction, toward the bar. Glass turned but was trapped by the women again.
The rose-scented one fingered his dinner jacket. “Buy me a drink, Valentino?”
Glass ignored her and tugged his sleeve away. Konstantin had gained several feet. As Glass followed, he crouched, slipped under the hinged bar counter, and headed into the shadowy recesses behind, ignoring his cousin.
Glass swore. Had Konstantin been getting into the Grand Russe through the nightclub service door this entire time? He lifted the bar counter and went through, followed by Olga and Eyre. He reached under his jacket to unsnap his holster and pull out his pistol.
In the dim light, confused by dots of light shining off silver trays, he saw Konstantin try the door. The knob rattled but didn’t turn. He pulled out a key and shoved it in the lock. It didn’t go all the way in. Must have been an old key. With a growl, the man reached into his own dinner jacket.
“Stop right there,” Glass said, wishing he had Special Branch as backup. “Hands over your head.”
Konstantin didn’t turn, didn’t lift his hands. Glass took a step, raising his weapon.
“Go ahead, don’t lift them,” he taunted. “I want you dead. I’m no bobby. I’ll drill your heart so full of bullets that no one will ever know it was missing in the first place.”
One of Konstantin’s hands lifted. Glass moved in closer. He heard footsteps coming close to him from the nightclub. Glass stayed focused on his target. He couldn’t make the same mistake twice.
Olga screamed. Glass glanced over his shoulder despite his better judgment. What was going on? Then he heard the sound of wood splintering. He glanced in the opposite direction to see Konstantin punch through the door above the handle.
Glass sighted down his pistol. Konstantin shoved his hand through the broken part of the door and pushed it open, separated from the locking mechanism. He broke into a run just as Glass fired his first shot, missed.
Konstantin picked up speed as he ran down the service corridor. Glass heard screaming, realized it was just to his right, a reaction to the gun in his hand not a bullet hitting the wrong target. He took aim and fired again, missing because the Russian was already too far ahead of him.
He made it to the end of the corridor and turned right.
“The lifts!” Eyre called.
Glass picked up speed. He didn’t want a race through the guest floors. But Konstantin didn’t head for the lifts. He went past the back of them and turned left into the Grand Hall.
Glass could still hear the band playing in the Coffee Room. Inside the Reading Room he saw men in evening dress pouring over the day’s papers. Couples sat on the banquettes in the center of the hall. Konstantin ran full tilt into the marble table in the center. The enormous glass vase, full of hothouse blooms in riotous red and yellows, tipped and fell, crashing loudly on the floor. The flowers spread across several feet.
Konstantin turned toward the Coffee Room.
“Is there an exit in there?” Glass called, knowing Eyre was behind him.
“Yes, to the service corridor.”
“He’s doubling back,” Glass growled, checked his gun, and ran in.
Konstantin passed between the tables. Glass followed, gaining speed. He tripped over an outstretched foot and moved into a run to keep from falling.
Then, he saw it. His shot. Konstantin, no one in front of him, in relief against the silver-and-blue far wall. He couldn’t let the man move between the dancers still on the floor, get behind the band through the door into the corridor.
He stopped, spread his stance, and lifted his gun.
As his fiancée screamed behind him, he fired.
At first, nothing. Then, Konstantin’s head turned. Glass pressed his lips between his teeth and fired agai
n. Blood spattered against the silver and blue. Konstantin sank to his knees, his head sliding down the wall.
People screamed and scattered. Glass pushed past the last two tables, ignored the waiter, who stood open-mouthed, still holding a tray just feet from the dead Russian.
“Dead?” Eyre asked, much too close behind him.
Glass reached the body and kicked the gun away from his hand. He stared at the hole in the Russian’s head. “Yes.”
“I’ll call DI Dent,” Eyre said.
Next to Glass, his princess crouched, keening next to her cousin. Poor thing, having to see yet another death at close hand.
Glass waited for the footsteps to tell him Eyre was moving away, but instead, the hotel manager stepped alongside him.
“How dare you,” Eyre said in a strangled voice.
Glass stared at him. What was he blathering about? “What?”
Eyre’s voice rose. “Olga!”
She didn’t turn away. Glass shoved his pistol back into its holster and tried to take Eyre’s arm, but he wrenched it away.
“How can you mourn him?” Eyre yelled, spittle appearing in the corners of his lips. “You brought this into my hotel. You tried to ruin us. After everything we’ve done for you.”
She didn’t even look up, just reached a trembling hand out and held her fingers over Konstantin’s back.
“We’re done,” Eyre said, staring down at her. “I never want to see you again. Any association with my family, with this hotel, is over.”
Slowly, Glass turned his head to look at the man. Their eyes met. Eyre’s eyes were glassy, fixed. He shook his head, shoved his hands into his pockets, and turned around. “Call Dent,” Glass said, more harshly than intended.
At some point, the room had emptied. That door into the service corridor was open. The musicians had fled, followed by the dancers.
But he heard heavy footsteps. Ivan Salter entered the room. Wordless, he reached Glass and surveyed the scene. “What do you want me to do?”
“What I asked you to do before. Take the princess to Knightsbridge.”
Salter said something in Russian, then reached forward, and wrapped his arm around her waist. He pulled her up, still speaking softly in Russian, and turned her around. She put her head against his shoulder and didn’t look at Glass as they left the room.
Glass sighed and pushed Eyre out in front of him, then closed the doors. At least the princess’s precious artwork had been removed before he’d ruined one of the Coffee Room’s fabled walls with bullets and blood.
* * *
Olga had scarcely noticed the Edwardian cast-offs that littered Douglas’s sitting room, the wicker tables and Sheraton side chairs. The matched love seats were a riot of chintz. She doubted Douglas would be able to bring himself to sit on such feminine things. No, she suspected he holed up in his flat’s office, which was a darkly paneled masculine preserve, on those rare occasions he could be home.
This would be her life, pacing the floors until the babies came, unless he let her have an artist’s studio, some light-filled attic in Chelsea. She’d need such a place to be able to breathe.
While she forced herself to have all these commonplace thoughts, she didn’t believe any of them. Behind every moment where she identified a piece of furniture or a tchotchke, had a thought about their married life, she heard Peter’s cold words.
Had she ruined the Grand Russe with yet another murder? It had survived Richard Marvin’s attempt to rape Alecia Loudon Salter earlier in the year. No one had even known about it. The bomb attempt had changed nothing; government officials were having meetings in the hotel.
Perhaps it had been a mere drunken outburst, but Peter Eyre wasn’t a dramatic person, and his words had seemed final.
She found herself on her knees without knowing how she had fallen to them.
No Peter. No Eloise. No Grand Russe. The art she’d created, the art she’d curated, lost to her. Her friends, the Salters, new still but precious nonetheless. Her position. All gone, because of her cousin.
Her fiancé had shot him in Peter’s hotel. After Douglas had promised to keep Konstantin safe.
“Olga.”
She shook her head. Why hadn’t Douglas told her to call the police? Anyone could have done it. He could have cornered Konstantin, overpowered him somehow.
Revenge, she supposed. Such a masculine province. He was repaying Konstantin for killing Bill Vall-Grandly—and betraying her trust.
“Olga.”
She rubbed her temples and glanced up at the huge cottage roses on the sofa to her left. Why not sit there instead of on the floor? She didn’t know.
Feeling a hand under her elbow, she rose unsteadily to her feet but sat gracefully enough, her ankles and knees together.
“Olga.”
Someone was being terribly forward. She glanced up and saw a tall man, with lips that quirked up slightly even though his thick, dark eyebrows were drawn together. Douglas.
Douglas? She stiffened.
“You have been up all night,” he said, “judging from those dark circles.”
“Did you sleep?”
His eyebrows lifted. “No. Too much explaining to do. Difficult to keep a story like that out of the papers. Quex was able to bury it a bit. Page three.”
She forced herself to sound reasonable. “I’d hate to see Peter’s hotel go under over this.”
“It won’t. It seems to stimulate the film people, being involved in such drama. Might see a few less titles around, but then, Peter’s bread and butter seems to be film people and commercial travelers.”
“Just marrieds,” she said.
“Yes, I imagine so.” He cleared his throat. “Difficult to repair the Coffee Room. I understand the wallpaper is one-of-a-kind, hand-drawn, and the artist killed himself shortly after the installation. The understructure can be repaired easily enough, though. It will all be sorted in time.”
She stared at the floor.
“I’m not sorry for any of it, though,” Glass said quickly, “for killing him. I had a clear shot, no one behind him. And I’m a good shot. Did my bit as a sniper when I first joined up. Had an eye injury that put me on courier duty for a while, and I was good enough at that not to go back to the other.”
She didn’t look up. “You shot him in the back.”
He tipped up her chin with a gentle finger. “He was running away from me with a gun out. You think he wouldn’t have killed me? Or innocent bystanders? He made bombs, Olga. He killed Bill and another man in the tube station.”
“He was my family.” Her voice sounded distant. “You promised me.”
His rose. “Bloody hell, Olga. He was a killer. Don’t canonize him now that he’s dead. He was a sodding Rasputin for heaven’s sake. Besides, I promised you nothing.”
“How dare you,” she said coldly.
“Rasputin did his bit to destroy Russia, just like Konstantin was doing his bit to destroy England. So there you go.”
“I hate you,” she said. “You know he considered himself an artist. He was misguided and ill.”
“He terrorized you, Olga.” He tried to take her hand. “Please, I know you’re hysterical. You need sleep. I can get a doctor in here to give you something. You can sleep all day.”
She pulled her hand away. “I am not weak.”
“No, of course not. But I don’t really understand why you would mourn him. He wasn’t a part of your childhood.”
“You also cost me Peter and the Grand Russe.”
He winced. “I admit that’s a situation worthy of an apology. But he was drunk, you know. One says things. I’m sure he’ll see reason when he’s slept, sobered up.”
“You think so?” She kept the hauteur in her voice, but a prick of hope darted up her spine.
“I do.” One of his cheeks lifted, a half smile.
He was so terribly handsome. Even now, she felt the tug of his personality, of his masculinity, but he knew how to use it, too, and that made her a
ngry. She reached for one of the hideous pillows resting against the sofa’s arm and pulled it against her chest.
“You need a bath,” he said. “You have soot on your cheek.” He lifted a finger.
She batted it away. “Don’t touch me.”
He stilled. His gaze searched her face. Then he nodded, some decision being made. “I have some wonderful news to balance the hard night.”
She said nothing as she seated herself gracefully on the ugly chintz. He put his hand on her shoulder, ignoring her tense muscles. “It’s about Fyodora.”
She had been staring straight ahead, but the name made her jump. Her head turned. “What about her?”
“She’ll be in London in about ten days.”
“What?” The word came out of her throat in a croak.
“A British warship has her, like how you came here all those years ago. Princess Fyodora Novikova has been found in Shanghai and is on her way to you.”
Olga’s brain went blank, but then, out of the gray haze, a question came. “How could you have known?”
“I had a search ordered for her.”
“When?” She kept her voice even with difficulty.
He shrugged, his hand dropping from her shoulder. “A little while ago. I wanted her to be a wedding present for you.”
Oh, did he? “She’s a human being.”
“I wanted to know if she was well,” he said with no uncertainty in his voice.
She’d been an utter fool to trust anything about him. Why had she given him another chance after the prison? Because the grand duchess had all but forced her, that was why. And she couldn’t stop loving him, even now. “You’ve played with our lives, hers and mine.”
“Darling, I wanted to help. She might be ill, in body or spirit. I wanted to know it would be a good reunion.”
“Do you think I have no unfamiliarity with illness of body or spirit?” she demanded. “Do you think I would care? I did what I could for my cousin, and the same will apply to Fyodora for all that you’ve cost me my position yet again.”
“We’re to be married next month. If your sister is well enough, you can spend the time shopping for your trousseau, doing what you want to the flat. Or we can rent a house, or move in with my father. So much to do.”
Lady Be Good Page 26