The Kill Fee

by Fiona Veitch Smith

  “Is Oscar here?”

  “No. He’s taken the night off. We’ll have to try and catch up with him tomorrow. Can you handle that? I’ve got a meeting lined up with the Yusopovs and Yazzie. Ike is talking to Marjorie Reynolds at the Home Office and Vasili Safin at the embassy.”

  Poppy agreed that she could. “I’ll try Selena again too. I might go and see her at the theatre. Maybe I can slip into her dressing room before she can lock me out. I’ll speak to Delilah and see what she suggests.”

  “You using my name in vain?” Delilah swanned over to the bar and sat down on a stool, crossing her silk-clad legs.

  Rollo looked at them appreciatively. “Beautiful song, Miz Marconi.”

  “Well, thank you, Mr Rolandson. Written by one of your countrymen.”

  “He was originally Russian, you know, or Lithuanian. Same thing.”

  “I didn’t know that. How fascinating! Did you know that, Poppy?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But they’re everywhere, these days, aren’t they?”

  “They certainly are,” said Poppy, looking over her friend’s shoulder at the man talking to the barman at the other end of the bar. It was Andrei Nogovski, head of security at the Russian embassy and assistant to the interim ambassador, Vasili Safin. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his body language was interrogative. And though the barman was trying to look nonchalant, the set of his shoulders told Poppy he was tense. Then, without touching his drink, Nogovski slipped off his stool and left the dance hall.

  “Excuse me, you two. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To follow a lead.”

  CHAPTER 13

  JULY 1918, YEKATERINBURG, RUSSIA

  Nana Ruthie pushed her carpet bag into the bush and told Anya to share the bread between herself and Fritzie. “Now, what did I say?”

  “That I mustn’t leave here until you come back.”

  “That’s right. I might take a little while, but don’t come looking for me. Promise?”

  “I promise, Nana.”

  “Good girl. You can play patience if you get bored.”

  “And Fritzie?”

  Nana patted the little dachshund on his head and he snuffled her with his wet nose. “Fritzie can have a snooze. Don’t let him leave the hedge though – promise me.”

  “We promise, don’t we, Fritzie?” Fritzie pawed the air.

  Nana chuckled and spruced up the tall grass in front of the blueberry hedge to disguise the child’s whereabouts, before picking her way back through the wood to the perimeter wall of the Ipatiev House. The house backed onto woodland. Guards stood only at the front gate, so after she checked that the coast was clear, she chose a spot covered in ivy and pushed her way through. The six-foot wall had plenty of footholds for her, but it was still a tricky climb for a sixty-year-old woman; for the hundredth time that week she wished she were back in Tower Hamlets. Oh, how she wished she were there now.

  Safely over the wall, she straightened her back, groaning with the effort. Woodland surrounded her and she headed in the direction of where she thought the house should be. She had not fully worked out what she was going to do when she got there; she would reassess when she had a clearer view of the house and gardens.

  The women in the bread queue had said that the royal family and their attendants – including Princess Selena – were free to roam the grounds. If her suspicions were correct, Selena was not really a prisoner, and was still being used by the Bolsheviks to get close to the royals. After overhearing the conversation with Countess Sofia Andreiovich, Nana Ruthie had gone to the embassy to meet her contact. He had told her that a mole inside the Bolshevik inner circle had informed him that Selena had been press-ganged into working as a double agent. She had been promised that no harm would come to anyone in her family as long as she fed them information about what the Romanovs were planning and thinking. Nana Ruthie realized that this line would only work with a stupid person – and fortunately for the Bolsheviks, Selena was just that. So when Selena was imprisoned along with the tsar, tsarina, children and attendants, Nana strongly suspected she was still acting as a mole.

  Nana’s plan was to attract Selena’s attention and to tell her she knew the whereabouts of the key – which she had taken off and hidden under a stone on the other side of the wall. She would tell Selena that the key was in London – taken there in a diplomatic pouch – and if the Russian princess were to arrange safe passage for Nana and Anya, she would hand it over once they reached England. She calculated that Selena would not tell the Bolsheviks that she had the key, as the actress would want it in her hand before she did and would relish the influence it would give her with Lenin. And if she didn’t think like that already, Nana would convince her that that’s what she needed to do. It was imperative though that Nana catch Selena on her own. She could assess, face to face, whether her theory about the woman was right. If it wasn’t, she would be able to outrun the overweight actress, but not any accompanying guards.

  Nana neared the edge of the tree line and the house came into view. Out of nowhere two people ran towards her. She froze, then slipped behind a shrub hoping she hadn’t been spotted. Peering through the foliage she saw it was a man and a woman, their clothes and hands splattered with blood. They stopped a few feet from her. She knew one, but not the other.

  The woman held out her hands like Lady Macbeth. “You promised, Nogovski! You promised! You promised they wouldn’t be hurt.”

  “It wasn’t my doing, Selena, I swear. It was out of my control.”

  “But they’re dead! They’re all dead! Even little Alexei. Oh God, oh dear God!”

  The man, Nogovski, tried to placate her, looking over his shoulder as if checking they weren’t being followed. “It was out of my control,” he said again, his voice hollow.

  Selena’s voice grew shriller and shriller: “They’re dead! You killed them!” She flung herself at Nogovski and clawed at his face. He grabbed her hands and wrestled her to her knees.

  “I did not kill them, woman. If anyone did it was you.”

  Selena threw her head back and glared at him. He was holding her wrists above her head. “Me? What did I do?”

  “If you had told them where the key was they might have spared them. It might have distracted them.”

  “But I didn’t know. I told them it was at the Andreiovich house –”

  “It wasn’t there.”

  “But it was. That was the last place I saw it, I swear. But that’s not the reason they killed them. It’s because they’re royal. They’ll kill me next, they’ll –”

  Selena’s words were knocked out of her mouth as Nogovski struck her hard across the face. She looked at him, still kneeling, like a victim before her executioner.

  “Are you going to kill me too?” she whispered.

  “No,” he said, as he took a handkerchief and held it over her mouth and nose until her body went limp. “No. I’m going to save you.”

  Nana Ruthie smelled the sickly scent of chloroform. She held her hand to her mouth as she watched Nogovski struggle to pick up the body of Princess Selena Romanova Yusopova and carry her back to the house. When they were gone she stumbled back to the wall, leaving behind all hope of salvation at the Ipatiev House.

  SUNDAY 21 OCTOBER 1920, LONDON

  Poppy slipped off her bar stool and as nonchalantly as possible followed Andrei Nogovski as he crossed the dance hall and went into the foyer. To her disappointment he went into the men’s cloakroom. The clerk at the coat-check asked if she would like her coat. Not knowing what else to do, she said “yes”. As she waited for the man to return with her red mackintosh, Nogovski came out of the men’s room. That was quick, she thought. He looked to left and right, and slipped his arm behind the hat stand. When he pulled it out again he looked up and caught Poppy’s eye. Drat, she needed to work on her surveillance technique. Not quite Secret Service material, she thought wryly as she slapped a false s
mile on her face.

  “Have you lost something, Mr Nogovski?”

  He peered at her, as if trying to place her face, then answered: “No.” He put the piece of paper in his pocket and then waited in line for his coat. The clerk soon appeared with Poppy’s mac and then took Nogovski’s chit for his.

  “So, Mr Nogovski, I was wondering if –”

  “I have an appointment with Ike Garfield in the morning.” His coat arrived and he shrugged into it, then plucked his hat from the hatstand.

  “Yes, but –”

  “Good evening, Miss Denby.” And with that he walked out of the club, leaving her smarting.

  CHAPTER 14

  MONDAY 22 OCTOBER 1920, LONDON

  Poppy arrived at The Globe office at 9 a.m. the following morning. After a solid eight hours’ sleep she felt almost human again. She greeted Mavis and took the stairs. On the second floor she cast a glance into the art and photography department and noted that Daniel’s hat was on the stand. Good, she would try to meet up with him later for lunch. On the third floor she bumped into Ivan Molanov as he was coming out of the lift and opening the archive.

  “Good morning, Ivan. How are you today?”

  The Russian man had large bags under his eyes. “I could do with another weekend, Poppy,” he said and put the key into the lock.

  “I know how you feel. I assume you’ve heard all about the drama at the exhibition?”

  Ivan grunted.

  “Actually, I’m glad I caught you. Can you pull out a couple of Jazz Files for me?”

  “Which ones?” asked Ivan as he pushed open the double doors. Poppy followed him in and waited as he took off his black mackintosh and homburg hat.

  “Princess Selena Romanova Yusopova and Felix and Irina Yusopov. They’re all related,” she explained, unnecessarily. Ivan, being Russian, was bound to know that already, she reminded herself.

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I will get them out for you. I will send Vicky up with them later.”

  Poppy expressed her thanks and headed for the door. But then she remembered something. “Oh, and while you’re at it, do you have a file on Andrei Nogovski? He’s the security consultant for the Russian embassy. Not a society type, so it’s a long shot, but I thought you might –”

  Ivan’s brows met in the middle as he growled his response. “Stay away from him, Poppy. That man is dangerous.”

  “Oh,” said Poppy, suddenly interested. “How do you know that?”

  Ivan put down his briefcase on his meticulously organized desk, then turned back to the young reporter.

  “I know him from my life in Russia. You know I was a reformer.”

  Poppy nodded. Rollo had told her as much.

  “Well, the tsar and his police – the Okrana – did not like reformers. Nogovski was Okrana. He is dangerous man. Him and his new boss, Vasili Safin. They are both snakes. Be very careful, Poppy.”

  “But it can’t be the same Nogovski. This man is a Bolshevik.”

  “It is the same,” said Ivan and sat down, pulling his desk diary towards him. “Now you excuse me, I have work to do.”

  Poppy knew that Ivan would not volunteer more information when he was in this mood. She would have to wait for the Jazz Files to come up and then ask Rollo to use his influence to get more out of the archivist on Nogovski. How interesting, she thought, a gamekeeper turned poacher. Or perhaps he was still a gamekeeper… Poppy would definitely be speaking to Comrade Nogovski again.

  Four hours later and Poppy had put in a solid stretch at her desk in the newsroom. There was not much to add to the collection of articles to follow up the robbery at the exhibition, so Poppy typed up her research to date for the proposed interviews with George Bernard Shaw and the theatre director, Constantin Stanislavski. She had just about exhausted that when Vicky brought up the Jazz Files she had requested. She thanked the young woman, got herself another cup of coffee, and opened the files to read.

  She started with Princess Selena. She noted that Selena had starred in Arms and the Man in Paris – and, according to the Jazz File on her, she had met Vladimir Lenin. There was a note in the file, pinned to the back of a grainy photograph of Selena holding a bouquet of flowers that Lenin had sent to her. How odd, thought Poppy, that a Russian aristocrat would be associating with an anti-royal revolutionary. However, the date on the photograph was 1912, and from what Poppy had read, the true extent of the Bolshevik ambitions was not widely understood at the time.

  Another photograph showed Selena with the Chelsea Six (the suffragist cell that Aunt Dot and her friends had belonged to) and Emmeline Pankhurst. The attached note said that when Selena was in London, starring in a West End show, she had become friends with leading suffragist leaders and had even considered setting up her own cell in St Petersburg. What was it that Marjorie Reynolds had said the other night? That Selena might appear silly but it had taken courage to follow a career as an actress and that she was a feminist in her own way? The Jazz File seemed to back this up. But Selena was a contradiction: on the one hand she was part of the richest royal family in the world – and, from her comments about “poor Nicky and Alix” the other night at dinner, fiercely loyal to them – but on the other, she associated with Marxists, socialists, feminists and reformers. Poppy concluded, however, that the two were not mutually exclusive. Aunt Dot was a feminist, socialist and reformer, but she was also comfortably upper-middle class and saw absolutely no contradiction in it.

  In the file Poppy also found a note from a “source in the Home Office” that Selena was considered a “person of interest” and had been under observation by the British embassy in St Petersburg. She wondered if Marjorie Reynolds might be able to shed some more light on this. She would mention it to her.

  She was just about to close the file when a hand-drawn sketch, coloured with pencils, caught her eye. It was of an elaborate pendant necklace of rubies and emeralds. The note on the back informed her that the garish trinket had been stolen from Princess Selena in Paris in 1912 during the Arms and the Man run at the Paris Opera House. It had been on loan to her from the Russian empress Maria Federovna. Selena was reportedly “devastated”. There was no record in the file to suggest that the jewel, or the jewel thief, had ever been found. How interesting, thought Poppy as she leaned back in her chair and nursed her coffee cup. Surely this couldn’t be a coincidence: two separate incidents where two separate jewels, both of them on “loan” to Selena from the Romanov royal family, had been stolen. Hmmm, thought Poppy, we might finally have a lead.

  Just before the editorial planning meeting, Poppy outlined her findings to Rollo. They both agreed that before she could share the information at the staff meeting, she should try to find out more. She said she would go to the theatre after lunch to see if she could speak to Selena. The planning meeting was wrapped up in half an hour, and as the journalists sloped out, she sidled up to Daniel. “Want to go out for lunch?”

  Daniel looked down at her and smiled. “You mean I get you all to myself for a couple of hours?”

  “One hour,” corrected Poppy. “I’ve got a job, you know.”

  He gave a wry grin. “Well, it’s better than nothing. Picnic outside Temple? We can pick something up from the sandwich shop on the corner.”

  Poppy looked out of the window and saw that the sun had come out. Autumn would soon turn to winter, so best they enjoy what was left of it. “It’s a date.”

  An hour later, Poppy reluctantly said goodbye to Daniel with a kiss on the cheek and jumped on the next bus to Waterloo. They had agreed to Sunday lunch at Daniel’s house the following weekend, when she would finally get to meet the formidable Maggie and Daniel’s two children. Poppy had suggested they first meet on neutral territory – perhaps a picnic in Battersea Park – but Maggie would have none of it. No doubt she wanted to have the home advantage. Poppy wished Daniel had sided with her instead of his sister and agreed to the day out.

  She remembered what Yasmin Reece-Lansdale had said the other ni
ght in the cab – that a man with children would mark the end of her career. Golly, what a thought. She was struggling to come to terms with the notion that she even had a career, never mind that it might end. Five months ago she had arrived in London with the simple ambition of being a companion to her aunt. But then… oh my, what a whirlwind! She’d never dreamed that her life could be anywhere near as exciting as it was now. Surely it wasn’t going to come to an end. Was it really impossible for her to get married and have a job at the same time?

  She’d had a friend back in Morpeth, a girl called Mary, who had studied at teacher training college. She had told Poppy that the reason there were so many spinsters in the teaching profession was not that these women did not want to get married, but that there was a marriage bar in place – a practice backed up by law – and they would be forced to resign if they did. It was believed that they would soon be taking time off to have children, and that simply would not do. Would it be the same for her as a journalist? She couldn’t imagine Rollo holding to such outdated notions; but Daniel? She wasn’t so sure about him.

  Daniel loved his children above all else. And that was as it should be. But the bottom line was they weren’t her children. Would she really be expected to take over the role of mother if she and Daniel ever got married? And what if they had children together? Is that what Daniel would expect? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It was probably something she should find out. Daniel respected women and their right to a career if they chose to have one, but he was no feminist. She knew he would never contemplate the notion that perhaps he should stay home to look after his own children – or perhaps work part-time and share the childcare duties so she could also follow her career. However, if she were entirely truthful, the notion was alien to her too. She remembered when she first came to London and listened incredulously to her aunt’s suffragette friends speculating that one day that’s how the world would be. But it wasn’t the world Poppy lived in, and she had to face the reality of what would be expected of her now, not in some utopian feminist future. Would she really be prepared to leave her children – her stepchildren or her own – in the care of another woman (paid or otherwise) while she went out to work? She wasn’t sure, but she was certain of one thing: she didn’t want to lose Daniel.