Chelsea Mansions bak-11

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Well, then I tried to work out where the older picture was taken. Emerson told me that Maisy worked for the American sculptor William Gordon Huff, and I looked him up. I wondered if the man in the pictures might be him, only it wasn’t. But I did find out that he did some monumental sculptures for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, held in 1939 and 1940. Here are some pictures of it. And there, look, you can see the arch, and the long pool.’

  ‘Well done. So the man’s probably American, but so what? The important thing is that Nancy and her parents visited Chelsea Mansions in 1956. Surely their friend isn’t relevant?’

  John held up a finger. ‘Take a closer look at this guy. Doesn’t it strike you-the cut of his jacket, the haircut-that he doesn’t quite look American? Or English? Now look at the London picture, that suit he’s wearing. Look at the lapel. There’s something there, a badge or something. I enlarged it and sharpened it with Photoshop, see…’

  ‘A tiny star,’ Kathy said. ‘Five-pointed.’

  ‘What does that make you think of?’

  Kathy felt a pulse of excitement. ‘A Russian?’

  ‘Could be. I wondered if I could discover anything about Russians in San Francisco in 1939 or 1940. No luck. But I did find out that the main archive of material on the Golden Gate International Exposition is held here in Boston, at the Widener Library at Harvard. I thought we should go over there and take a look. So that’s why I’m here.’

  To Kathy it seemed a forlorn hope, but she was intrigued, and so they packed up what they would need-laptops, notebooks, a small camera that John had brought-and set off along Beacon Street towards the centre of the city. On the far side of Boston Common he led them to the entrance of the Park Street station of the T, the city’s subway system, where they caught a train out to Harvard. The other people in their carriage were mostly young-a bearded youth in frayed jeans trying to sleep off a hangover, a cluster of young women with heads down swapping notes, and a couple sitting opposite, pressed together in dreamy contentment, looking as if they’d just got out of bed. Kathy was aware of John watching them.

  The train emptied at Harvard Square and they made their way up into the sunlight, where John took her arm and led her across the street and through a gap in the older buildings on the other side and into Harvard Yard. A lane took them into a campus of treed lawns crisscrossed by paths and framed by simple four-storey brick buildings, some of which John pointed out as they passed-Massachusetts Hall, built in 1720 and the oldest building in Harvard, and Hollis Hall, where George Washington had barracked his troops during the American Revolution. They turned into the central courtyard of Harvard Yard, where the more monumental buildings of Memorial Church and the Widener Library stood facing each other across a green.

  John said, ‘Harry Widener was a Harvard graduate and book collector who died on the Titanic. The library was donated by his mother in his memory, and it’s now the major library in Harvard, which has the largest university collection in the world. It’s particularly strong in the humanities and social sciences, which is why we’re here.’

  They climbed the broad flight of steps to the colonnaded entrance, where John showed his Harvard ID from his research visit the previous year. For Kathy to get access they were directed to the Library Privileges Office, where John managed to have her issued with a day pass as his research assistant.

  The university was now in summer recess, and the library was relatively quiet. They found a couple of computers side by side in the Phillips Reading Room and began searching through the HOLLIS catalogue. Kathy started with online descriptions of the exposition, which had been built on reclaimed land called Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. It had been held to celebrate the recent completion of the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay bridges, and was open to the public for a total of twelve months through 1939 and 1940.

  ‘Millions of people must have visited it,’ she said, peering over at John’s screen.

  ‘Yes… I’m looking for foreign delegations. It was supposed to showcase the culture of Pacific Rim nations, which would include Russia, I guess. They must have sent over an official party, don’t you think?’

  There was plenty of material in the catalogue, and it was hard to be sure from the brief entries what much of it might contain. They divided up the list of catalogue numbers they would have to investigate and set off for the stacks, up to American History which occupied the whole of level two, and began the long, slow task of skimming through every book, every leaflet and newspaper report, every photograph collection, every official document and memoir.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  Kathy looked up, taking a moment to focus. Her writing hand felt as numb as her brain. She had no idea of the time.

  ‘Two o’clock,’ John said. ‘Don’t know about you, but I need a break.’

  ‘Yes.’ She blinked and rubbed her face with a hand that felt grubby with dust from old paper.

  They went out, dazzled by the sunshine, and John took her to a cafe that he knew nearby.

  ‘We’re not getting anywhere, are we?’ he said after they’d ordered sandwiches and coffee. They had found dozens of pictures and references to William Gordon Huff’s statues, and to the Court of Reflections in which Maisy and the man had been photographed, but they’d come across no more images of her, nor glimpses of Russian visitors.

  ‘There’s all those Kodachrome home movies to go through,’ Kathy said. ‘And we haven’t finished the newspaper reports.’

  They returned to the library, slightly refreshed, and went on with their hunt. After another hour without result, John went over to a computer station and began another search through the catalogue. Eventually he returned to Kathy, her head bent over a collection of postcards, and said that he’d found some GGIE references in the Economics stacks in Pusey, an underground extension of the library, and was going down to take a look. Slightly mesmerised by the images in front of her, Kathy nodded and turned to the next page.

  There was a sign on the wall above Kathy’s carrel stating that cell phone and pager use was not permitted in the library except in designated areas, so she jumped and looked around in embarrassment when her mobile emitted a loud tune. She snatched it out of her bag and whispered, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Kathy.’ It was John. It took her a moment to remember that he’d gone some time before.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I may have found something. Come down and see.’ He told her how to find him.

  She took a lift down to the basement of Widener and came to the tunnel that John had described, leading to the Pusey extension, where she descended to its lowest level. He waved her over to his desk and showed her an ancient typewritten report by the GGIE Budget Committee on visitor numbers to the fair. At the back was a series of appendices, one of which listed international delegations.

  ‘There,’ he said, and pointed to a paragraph headed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, official visit of July 16-30 1939 of Deputy People’s Commissar of Culture, Varvara Nikoleavna Zhemchuzhina and 16 delegates.

  ‘So there were Russians there,’ John said. ‘For what it’s worth.’

  Kathy was skimming the list of delegates’ names, then said softly, ‘Oh, I think it’s worth something, John.’ She pointed at one of the names: Gennady Moszynski (Leningrad). ‘Mikhail’s father. That’s who was with Maisy in San Francisco in 1939, and again with Nancy and her parents at Chelsea Mansions in 1956.’

  ‘Mikhail’s father?’ John repeated, looking at Kathy in astonishment. ‘How can that be?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s important, isn’t it? Nancy had a reason not just for revisiting Chelsea Mansions, but for meeting Mikhail Moszynski. Their parents had once been close friends, even in the middle of the Cold War.’

  ‘You think Gennady might have been based in the Russian Embassy in London in 1956?’

  ‘It wasn’t in the biography I was given, but I suppose it’s possible.’

  ‘You have his biography?�
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  ‘It was in a background briefing paper on Mikhail Moszynski that MI5 prepared for us when we were investigating his murder.’

  ‘Do you think his father was a spy?’

  ‘There was no suggestion of it.’

  ‘But anyway, that was over fifty years ago. What difference would it make now? What could any of that have to do with Nancy and Mikhail’s deaths?’

  Kathy didn’t know, but that name on an old report had given her a shiver of revelation, the sudden sense of discovering the truth among all the confusion. ‘I’ve no idea what it means, John, but I think we might have earned our crust today.’

  He smiled at her. ‘This is exciting, isn’t it? It’s like how I felt when I identified a verse by Ariosto.’

  She smiled at his idea of excitement, and yet it was true; she felt as if she had caught a glimpse of a ghost, the ghost that Nancy had teased Emerson with. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and celebrate.’

  He chose the place, the best seafood restaurant in Boston he said, down on the waterfront where she’d come on her first early morning run. From their table by the window they looked out over the harbour as dusk turned the scene from gold to turquoise, and far across the water the lights of the planes dropped like slow-motion meteors onto Logan’s island.

  As they talked, it occurred to Kathy how many things there were to like about John Greenslade. He was attentive, amusing and a good listener. He persuaded her to tell him about her childhood, and as he listened so sympathetically she found herself admiring little things about him, his slender hands, his thoughtful frown, and the wry, self-deprecating crease of his smile that reminded her a little of Brock. He was attracted to her, she could see that, and she liked the caution and restraint that seemed to be attuning itself to her own. He was too young, though; the ten-year gap between them might be refreshing but it was also a barrier. His openness and enthusiasm made her feel cynical and old.

  ‘Your turn,’ she said, wanting to return to safer ground. ‘Tell me about the Greenslades.’

  He looked suddenly serious, almost as if she’d said something to upset or offend him. Then he took a breath, a sip of wine and his face cleared. ‘There aren’t any,’ he said. ‘Just me and my mother.’

  She looked at him, wondering what he meant, and noticed a tension that had gathered in the way he sat.

  ‘The way she tells it, my father was in some kind of high-risk job. When she became pregnant with me she became afraid for her own and my safety, and ran away. She went to her sister in Toronto, and changed her name to Greenslade-“clean slate” was what she meant-and started a new life.’

  ‘Oh. He was abusive to her, your father?’

  ‘No, no, not as I understand it. The danger came from some people he was dealing with, who wanted to get at him through my mother. She reached a point where she couldn’t stand it any more and just took off. He didn’t even know she was pregnant until her sister got in touch with him and told him. Her sister, my aunt, acted as an intermediary for a while, passing on messages and money he sent. But in the end my mother asked for a divorce and broke off all contact.’

  ‘Did she ever remarry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you’ve had no contact with him?’

  ‘My mother always said that my father had died before I was born, but when I turned twenty-one she finally told me the truth, that she had no idea whether he was alive or dead. I felt it didn’t matter. I mean, he’d had no more part in my life than an anonymous sperm donor. Now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘What a sad story. It reminds me a little of my boss, Brock. He lost his wife, from what I gather, in similar circumstances…’ The look on his face stopped her.

  She stared at him. ‘John?’

  He couldn’t meet her eyes, but gave a little nod.

  ‘Brock is your father?’ she whispered.

  ‘Mum told me his name and that he’d been a policeman in London. She said it was up to me. I felt I didn’t want it, this knowledge. For a long time I tried to ignore it. Then the conference in London came up. I tried to avoid that too, but they kept pestering me to give a paper…’ He shrugged helplessly.

  ‘That’s why I got a room at Chelsea Mansions, after I read about Nancy’s murder and how DCI Brock was in charge. I hoped I might get a look at him, get some impression of what he was like.’

  ‘And that night at the Two Chairmen,’ Kathy said, ‘and going to see him in hospital.’

  He nodded, looking miserable now. ‘I just didn’t know what to do, what I felt-how he would feel.’

  Kathy reached out a hand to his. ‘I don’t think you have to worry about that.’

  ‘Really?’ He looked doubtful. ‘And then there was something else. He didn’t come to the hotel, but you did. At first I wanted to find out from you what sort of man he was, but as I got to know you I found that I wanted to know you better… Which made things kind of complicated.’ He stopped, frowning down at the white tablecloth in front of him, and Kathy saw with some alarm that there was what looked like a tear forming in his eye.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He sucked in a deep breath and pulled his hand away to rub across his face. ‘I’m sorry. This isn’t like me, I promise.’

  ‘It must have been very emotional for you.’

  ‘Yes. I was sort of prepared for that. What I wasn’t prepared for was falling for his partner.’

  Kathy felt her face flush.

  ‘You’re an intimate part of his life, his professional life, and from what Mum said, that’s the most important part. I thought… I was damn sure that would kill any chance I might have had with you.’

  ‘Oh, John.’ Kathy gave him an encouraging smile, but at the same time she knew that he was right. He was certainly a different person from the one that she had felt drawn towards just a moment before. Now he was Brock’s son. How did she feel about that?

  He roused himself and reached for the bottle. ‘I should have told you before, but I got cold feet. It was what we discovered this afternoon that made me face it, I think. Like me, Nancy went to London to confront something from her past. If only she’d ignored it, stayed at home in Back Bay, she might still be alive and she and Emerson could have been the ones sharing this meal here tonight. And you and I would never have met.’ He topped up their glasses and sighed. ‘So what should I have done, Kathy? Should I have ignored it too, that presence from the past?’

  ‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that you probably felt you had no choice.’

  He gave a rueful nod.

  A thought struck Kathy. ‘I wonder if Nancy felt the same way. Do you remember the dates of the Russians’ visit to San Francisco?’

  ‘July 1939, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, the sixteenth to the thirtieth of July. And Nancy was born on the twenty-sixth of April in the following year.’ She was thinking of the photograph of Maisy and Gennady in front of the reflecting pool, a strikingly handsome couple, arm in arm, eyes bright.

  ‘Nine months,’ John said. ‘Wow, you could be right. An American romance.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  S he blinked her eyes, hearing the dawn chorus clamouring through the curtained window. Then the previous evening came back to her, and John’s revelation. His confusion had touched her, and she’d wanted to comfort him, but had held back, afraid that he would misinterpret her sympathy. She took a deep breath and sat up, wanting to be outside, running through the cool streets with the birds singing their little lungs out.

  She slid out of bed and pulled on her running gear. Not too far, she thought, just down Beacon to the Common.

  As she ran she replayed their conversation of the previous night, and then her thoughts turned to that other possible revelation, about Maisy and Gennady. It was such a tantalising thought, which would explain so well why Nancy would have wanted to make contact with Mikhail, her half-brother. Perhaps too tantalising, but easy enough to check, she thought. The path lab would have both their DNA. And if it were true, what did that me
an? Why did they have to die?

  She swerved around a couple of joggers coming in the other direction, and circled the Brewer Fountain to begin the run back.

  Peter caught her in the entrance hall. ‘You are a popular girl, aren’t you?’ He nodded his head towards the dining room. ‘Another early morning visitor demanding breakfast. I’ll have to reserve a special table for your men friends.’

  Her heart skipped. Was Brock clairvoyant? She could believe it. ‘What sort of man?’

  ‘Oh, a rather sinister type if you ask me. Irish-from the north, I’d say. Ulster, Belfast, that sort of thing.’

  She swore under her breath. No, it couldn’t be.

  ‘Tell me it isn’t your angry husband, Kathy. I can’t face bloodshed at breakfast time.’

  ‘I don’t have one, Peter.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that. He saw you coming up the front steps, so you’d better go and say hello.’

  She opened the door and saw the lone diner by the window. He looked up and waved his fork at her. ‘Have you tried these chocolate waffles? Bloody brilliant.’

  ‘Hello, Sean.’ Kathy went over and sat down facing the MI5 man. ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘You do, Kathy. You’ve been naughty.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘An American citizen has complained to the authorities about being interrogated on American soil by a British police officer.’

  Janice, Kathy thought. ‘Bit of an exaggeration. Hardly an interrogation. Just a chat.’

  ‘That’s not how she saw it. She reported it to the Massachusetts State Police, who notified the FBI, who contacted us. And you should thank your lucky stars that they did, and that it’s me sitting here rather than a couple of heavy guys from the Met.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘I called Emerson Merckle from London. He was very helpful.’ He wiped his mouth. ‘Mm, I believe I’ll have to have another serving of these. Sadly you won’t have time. You have ten minutes to pack your bags.’ He gave a sniff. ‘And take a shower before we head off to the airport. So run upstairs and get on with it. And don’t try to climb out of the bathroom window-the house is surrounded.’ He glared at her, then broke into a laugh. ‘You should see your face.’