Chelsea Mansions

TWENTY-EIGHT

A s the plane dropped through the clouds Kathy made out the ragged coastline and islands of Massachusetts Bay and, away to the south, the long crooked arm of Cape Cod reaching into the Atlantic. Soon she could see a harbour dotted with small craft, and wharves with the towers of central Boston behind, and then the plane was dropping into Logan International.

When she was finally clear of immigration she caught a cab into the city, giving the address of the bed and breakfast in Beacon Street. It was a solid brownstone house with a curved bow front to one side of the entrance steps. Two men welcomed her, gay she guessed, probably in their early forties, and showed her to her room upstairs. It was beautifully appointed and had a view out across the Charles River to the north shore beyond, lit up by the afternoon sun. Having assured her that they could help her with anything she needed, her hosts left her sitting by the window, feeling numb from the dawn start, the long flight and sudden immersion in this new city, and for the first time she was glad to have come, to have escaped the claustrophobia of London.

She had phoned Emerson Merckle the previous day to make sure he would be available, and had arranged to contact him as soon as she arrived, which she now did. He sounded pleased to hear from her, and suggested they meet for afternoon tea at a place in Newbury Street, just a few blocks away. She had a shower and changed into lighter clothes and set out through the leafy residential streets, across the broad boulevard of Commonwealth Avenue and on to Newbury Street, lined with fashionable shops, galleries and restaurants. As she approached the cafe she saw Emerson sitting at a window table, half a storey above the street, gazing out at the passers-by, and gave him a wave. He looked a little puzzled at first, not recognising her, then smiled and got to his feet as she climbed the steps and went inside.

They shook hands and made polite conversation about her flight and where she was staying. She could understand him not recognising her out of context, because he too seemed different, more confident and expansive in his own setting.

‘You said you wanted to get to know Nancy,’ he said, ‘so I had to bring you to Newbury Street, her favourite shopping place. Sure, she went out to the malls, of course, but this was really what she loved, the boutiques along here.’

‘She liked clothes?’

‘She liked shopping, the whole experience, for herself, for her children and grandchildren, for her friends. She bought me this shirt at a little place down the street here.’

He paused, remembering. It was a very stylish shirt, Kathy noticed, brilliant white, with gold cufflinks and a dark tie and trousers so that he looked as if he’d come prepared for a formal interview, hair combed, cheeks pink.

‘Afterwards we’d meet somewhere like this and she’d tell me what she’d found. I look out of the window now and expect to see her walk by at any moment, with carrier bags full of her trophies.’

‘And she did the same in London?’

‘Actually, no, not really. We did go to Knightsbridge, but that was about it, and frankly I was a little surprised. I was thinking about this after you called me. There were other things that strike me now, small things, but a little odd.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, we arrived in London on the Saturday, and the following day we took a boat down the river to Greenwich, but by afternoon I was feeling jetlagged and just wanted to lie down for a while before we thought about dinner. But she was more energetic, and said she’d go out for a walk around Chelsea. It was about seven that evening when she tapped on my door to tell me she was back, and when she came in I was aware of a peculiar smell. It took me back to my childhood. It was incense-my family were Catholics-and I asked her where on earth she’d been, and she laughed and said she’d been to vespers. I was astonished, because that just wasn’t like Nancy at all, but she said she’d passed a cathedral and looked in.’

‘A cathedral?’

‘That’s what she said. I didn’t think any more about it, until I got home and saw on the TV news about the funeral in a Russian Orthodox cathedral in London of that Russian who lived next to our hotel. I wondered if it could have been the cathedral Nancy visited, and if it was possible they had met there and that was why he’d come to Nancy’s memorial service.’

Kathy felt a stir of excitement. ‘It’s possible. That cathedral is in Knightsbridge, not far from where you were staying. It’s where he was a regular worshipper. This was one of the things I wanted to ask you, Mr Merckle…’

‘Emerson, please.’

‘… Emerson. You left the day after Mikhail Moszynski was killed in Cunningham Place, and we didn’t have a chance to speak to you again, but I wanted to find out if it was possible that Nancy could have had any contact with him.’

‘She never made any mention of a Russian, and we were together almost all the time, apart from that Sunday evening.’

‘What about the following day, Monday, around lunchtime?’

He pulled out a little appointments diary from his trouser pocket. ‘Monday, Monday… the twenty-fourth. That was the morning we did go shopping, to Harrods first of all. She bought some things in the toy department for her grandchildren. Then Harvey Nichols, then back to the hotel. What then?’ He frowned in thought. ‘I was tired by the end of the morning and still a little disoriented by the time difference, and we decided to have a rest before going out to lunch. Why do you ask about that day?’

‘Someone in the square said they saw Nancy call in next door, that day or maybe Tuesday, at lunchtime.’

‘Next door? To the Russians? She never said a word to me about it. I don’t think I even knew she went out. Let me think… I read in my room for a while, and may have nodded off. Then I noticed the time, getting on for two, and went to see if she was ready to go. She was sorting some things on her bed, I remember-the pouch of photographs you saw. That was the first time I’d seen them. We went up the road to the department store in Sloane Square-Peter Jones-and had a late lunch on the top floor. Great views over London, I remember. She seemed very lively. I told her she had a spring in her step.’

‘But she didn’t mention having gone out?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

‘But if she did, she may have taken the photographs with her?’

‘I suppose it’s possible.’

‘You said other things struck you as odd about your time together in London?’

‘Well, she seemed a little secretive, now I look back, slightly out of character. It was only because she was usually so open that I noticed it as odd. Like the way she quizzed Toby at the hotel about its history, and his family, as if it really mattered. I knew her so well, you see. I knew what interested her-fashion, recipes, gardens, music. But not architecture, history, heritage.’

‘She spoke to Toby about that?’

‘Oh yes. At least, I came in at the end of a conversation. That’s what they were talking about.’

‘How did you come to be staying at Chelsea Mansions?’

‘Oh, that was entirely her doing. When she first suggested the trip to me she had already decided on that hotel, said she’d found this “darling little place” and I just assumed it was on someone’s recommendation. When we got there and I discovered what it was like I asked her about that, and she was a little mysterious, as if it were a game. When I pressed her she said, teasing me, that it was a ghost story, and I assumed that whoever had recommended the place had told her it was haunted, and she wanted me to discover it for myself.’

‘And did she give any indication of knowing about the people next door?’

‘None at all. It was only after I got home and read about the man’s murder that I realised that I had heard about him before, because his marriage to that model had been in the papers a couple of years back. But we never saw them when we were staying in Cunningham Place, and the hotel people never spoke of them, at least not to me.’

When Kathy had called Emerson from London he’d explained that he still hadn’t passed on Nancy’s pouch of photographs to her family, although he intended to send them to her sister Janice. Now he invited her to go back to his apartment to look at them. They finished their tea and stepped out into the street, where Emerson pointed out Nancy’s favourite shops-The Closet, Marc Jacobs, Basiques-and Kathy had a vivid sense of the affront to the ladies of Back Bay that one of their number should be thrown under a London bus.

‘Was there a lot of publicity over here about Nancy’s death?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes, and her funeral was very big, at Trinity Church down the street there. Her husband Martin was a highly respected surgeon here, still very warmly remembered ten years after his passing, and the medical fraternity came out in force. Which I must admit gives me some qualms, talking to you like this.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘It’s one thing for Nancy to be taken from us by a random act of violence by a passing thug. That’s part of the world we live in, shocking, regrettable, but unavoidable. It could happen to any one of us, here in Boston, or London, or anywhere. Why, just a couple of months ago, the old man who lives across the street from me was stabbed at a gas station over at Brookline, of all places. People shake their heads, pay their respects and get on with life.

‘But you seem to be hinting at something else, Kathy, some reason behind Nancy’s death that she might have been a party to. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that idea, and I suspect that a lot of other people won’t be either, especially her family.’

‘You want to know the truth, don’t you, Emerson?’

‘Do I? Will it help Nancy? Will it help her grieving family? Will it help me? Let’s get this straight. You seem to searching for some connection between Nancy and a Russian billionaire she’d never met. What on earth could that be? Had she discovered that her dead husband had been mixed up with the Russian mafia? Or one of her sons? Did they owe this man money? Had she gone to plead with him? You don’t know, do you? You don’t really know what can of worms you want me to help you open up.’

They had crossed Commonwealth Avenue by this time, back into the grid of leafy residential streets beyond, with their brick-paved sidewalks and faux gas-lamp streetlights and dignified rows of red-brick terraces, and Emerson stopped at the foot of a flight of steps up to a porticoed front door. ‘This is where I live,’ he said.

‘Emerson, if you really feel uncomfortable about this, I can walk away right now.’

He shook his head. ‘No, you’ve come all this way. And anyway, I’d already decided to help you. I’m prepared to consider that Nancy went to London with some purpose in mind that she didn’t share with me. But she wanted me along, and I think she would have told me eventually, if our journey hadn’t been interrupted. And so I want to settle the matter, for her as well as myself. But if you’re right, and depending on what you discover, I may ask for your tact and understanding.’

They went inside to Emerson’s apartment, which occupied the main floor of a building very like the bed and breakfast where Kathy was staying, with a similar generous bow front to the street. They sat at a table by the window and examined Nancy’s photographs while Kathy took notes. Emerson was able to identify many of the people-Nancy’s children and grandchildren, her husband and sister-but when it came to the older ones, early Kodak prints with faded colour or shadowy black and whites, he was stumped.

‘Her parents, I suppose; uncles, aunts, who knows? Janice would, of course.’

He said it in a doubtful tone, and Kathy said, ‘Janice?’

‘Janice Connolly, Nancy’s younger sister.’

‘Does she live around here?’

‘Provincetown.’

‘Is that far away?’

‘It’s at the far tip of Cape Cod, a fair distance, an hour and a half by ferry or three hours by road.’

Kathy said, ‘I probably should go. Maybe you could give me her phone number.’

Emerson hesitated, then said, ‘Let me ring her. She can be difficult sometimes.’

He checked the number, picked up the phone and dialled. ‘Janice? It’s Emerson. How are you?’

From his careful tone Kathy guessed they weren’t warm friends, and it didn’t take long before he got to the point.

‘I have a London detective here with me who’s come over to tie up one or two details about Nancy. There’s some questions I can’t answer and I wonder if you can help us… No, the police, Scotland Yard… Just background information, so they can close the case

… Would you like to speak to her?… No?… Tomorrow?’ He raised his eyebrows at Kathy, who nodded. ‘I’ll drive her down. Shall we take you to lunch?… Oh, all right, say two o’clock, at your house… I’m not sure, a couple of hours?… No, all right, one hour. See you then.’

He hung up and took a breath.

‘Awkward?’ Kathy asked.

‘Very different from her sister. They didn’t really get along, and she disapproves of me. Never mind, it’s all arranged. She has some commitment for lunch but will see us afterwards.’

‘You don’t have to come, Emerson. I can hire a car.’

He waved his hand. ‘It’s my pleasure. I haven’t been down there in years. The traffic will be bad this time of year, but we might take the old King’s Highway and avoid much of it. Now you probably want to see in Nancy’s house. I have a key. I think I told you that I’m one of her executors, and I’m keeping an eye on the place for the family-it’s just down the street.’

It was a three-storey freestanding brick house on the corner of the next block, and Emerson waved to a neighbour who peered at them as he pushed open a squeaky gate and they made their way to the front door through beds of flowers whose blooming Nancy would never see. There was an air of stillness inside the house, the air tinged with a faint sweet trace of perfume, and Emerson took in a deep breath of it, as if to capture the fading spirit of Nancy herself. He led Kathy on a brief tour of the rooms, returning to a dining room overlooking the back garden. Here there was a massive piece of mahogany furniture with a glass-fronted china cabinet set above drawers and cupboard doors.

‘This is where she kept her papers and records,’ Emerson said. ‘I’ve been through it myself, looking for legal and tax documents relating to her estate. There are letters and private papers here too.’

‘I’d like to see recent correspondence, if I could. And any more photographs.’

‘There are some albums.’ He lifted out two books containing family pictures, all fairly recent. ‘I thought there were some older ones, but I don’t see them… I’ll have to persuade Janice to come and stay for a couple of days and go through all this stuff.’

Kathy spent an hour reading letters, diaries and appointment books. She found copies of documents relating to the London trip, but nothing out of the ordinary and no references to anyone associated with the Moszynski household.

‘Nothing,’ she said at last.

Emerson was seated opposite her at the dining table, going through a concertina file marked Accounts. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m familiar with all this from handling her tax affairs, and I’m sure there’s nothing here that would interest you.’ He closed the file. ‘I do think you may be wasting your time.’

She was inclined to agree as she returned to Beacon Street. She had borrowed the pouch of Nancy’s photographs and on the way back took them to a business services shop that Emerson had directed her to, where she had them scanned. Later she sent an email to John Greenwood attaching Nancy’s pictures, then checked her watch. The evening sun was shining bright across the Charles River but it was almost midnight in London. She closed the curtains, got into bed and fell fast asleep.