Chelsea Mansions

by Barry Maitland

  ‘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.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Kathy woke with a start, taking a moment to remember where she was. Reaching up to pull the curtain aside, she saw the sky lit by a pearly pink glow of dawn. Cars driving along Memorial Drive on the far side of the river still had their headlights on, and when she opened the window a cool freshness flooded in, along with the chirping of birds.

  She pulled on a T-shirt, track pants and trainers and went quietly down the stairs to the front door. The street was deserted, its lamps forming a chain of glowing points beneath the trees away into the distance. She turned east towards the rising sun and jogged briskly along Beacon Street until it emerged onto the broad green slope of Boston Common, where other runners could be seen among the trees. She passed the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House and continued into the grid of narrow historic streets of Beacon Hill, then down between the towers of the financial district until she reached the wharves of the waterfront. She stopped there for a while at the water’s edge, watching the early morning flights coming into Logan far across the water, before turning and heading back.

  When she opened the front door she was met by a delicious smell of cooking from the dining room. Looking inside she was hailed by Peter, the taller and more extroverted of the two owners, who invited her to sit down for breakfast. This morning his partner Tom, busy in the kitchen, was offering banana maple porridge with buttered apples, followed by sweet corn fritters with roast tomato and bacon. Kathy said that sounded wonderful.

  It seemed like a propitious start to the day, made more so when she opened her laptop and found an email from London with several old photographs that John had discovered among Toby’s documents. Some showed various of his relatives posing with other people Toby hadn’t been able to identify, while a couple of others were of unknown groups standing outside Chelsea Mansions. Kathy put the computer into her backpack with her little Sony IC Recorder and a notebook, and got changed to meet Emerson.

  It was Saturday, and they weren’t the only ones with the idea of driving down to Cape Cod, but Emerson, at the wheel of his Lincoln Zephyr, was unperturbed by the traffic and Kathy felt pleasantly cocooned as they drove sedately southward, past Plymouth and on towards the Cape. After they crossed the Sagamore Bridge onto Cape Cod much of the traffic turned towards the warmer beaches of the south shores of the island, facing Buzzards Bay and Nantucket Sound, while Emerson took the old road along the north side, through a succession of small historic towns overlooking sandy bays and pretty boat harbours.

  ‘Janice was married to a marine biologist based at the Atlantic Research Center up ahead at North Truro,’ Emerson explained. ‘He was drowned in a bad storm back in 2002, and Janice has stayed on in their house in Provincetown. It suits her out here. She loves the place, the white sand dunes and salt marshes, the beech forests, and she’s a great hiker. She hates the city, not at all like her sister.’

  ‘You said they didn’t get on?’

  ‘They tolerated each other, I’d say. Janice is much younger—Nancy would have been eleven or twelve when Janice was born. Their father retired a few years later and he more or less reared the new toddler single-handed. The two were very close, whereas Nancy saw less of her father when she was growing up. There was the war, and then he was working for the State Department and away a lot. She was always more attached to her mother.’

  ‘The artist.’

  ‘Yes, Maisy was really a very fine sculptor. There are several of her pieces in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Her husband was a diplomat. He died some time ago, but Maisy lasted until just last year. She was quite a character. I got to know her well.’

  They came at last to Provincetown, at the end of the road around the long curving reach of the island. They were too early to meet Janice, and Emerson took Kathy on a tour of the town, ending at a seafood restaurant overlooking the beach where they sat down for lunch.

  As they were waiting for their order, Emerson, looking out to the boats in the harbour, pointed to a couple of swimmers with snorkels. ‘Well now, there’s another funny thing. It’s strange how your memory brings things up. When we were flying over to England Nancy asked me if I’d ever gone scuba diving. I thought it was an odd question, out of the blue. I told her no, and she said it would frighten her, diving deep under the water.’

  He shook his head as if to clear the memory. ‘Anyway, Janice lives just a couple of blocks away,’ he said. ‘Not far from where Norman Mailer used to live. Apparently they got on quite well. He probably recognised a fellow grump.’

  ‘This is going to be difficult, is it?’

  ‘Well, don’t be too disappointed if you get nothing. I’d buy her some flowers except that she’d know I was trying to butter her up and she’d take offence.’

  When Janice opened her front door Kathy saw that he hadn’t been exaggerating. She was dressed in old jeans and a faded T-shirt, and her grey hair was cropped severely short. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of them and her lips pursed tight.

  ‘Emerson,’ she acknowledged grudgingly.

  ‘Janice!’ His joviality sounded unconvincing, and Janice flinched as he made to kiss her cheek. ‘Let me introduce the person I spoke about. Detective Inspector Kathy Kolla has been investigating Nancy’s death.’

  They shook hands, Janice unsmiling as she scrutinised her visitor. She kept them waiting on the threshold just a fraction too long before inviting them in.

  It was a timber house, its plain furnishings set off by clusters of natural objects—pebbles, sea-bleached flotsam, skulls of small animals—and also by framed photographs of blossoms, sea and dunescapes, birds.

  ‘Beautiful photographs,’ Kathy said.

  ‘Janice is a very accomplished nature photographer,’ Emerson said. ‘I expect she gets her artistic talent from her mother, eh Janice?’

  She ignored him and indicated seats around a scrubbed pine table.

  ‘You’d better show me your ID,’ she said to Kathy.

  ‘Oh, I can vouch for Kathy, Janice,’ Emerson protested. ‘I met her in London, and—’

  ‘All the same.’ Janice examined Kathy’s Metropolitan Police pass and the business card she gave her. ‘I would have thought you’d have been accompanied by an officer of the state or federal police. I suppose they do know you’re here questioning people, do they?’

  ‘I’m just here in an informal capacity, Mrs Connolly, clearing up a few loose ends so that our coroner can close the case. I’m relying entirely on your cooperation. You don’t have to answer any of my questions if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I won’t,’ the other woman said decisively, and sat back with arms folded.

  ‘We want to clear up the possibility that Nancy, or some other member of your family, may have had some previous connection to the place where she was staying in London, or the people who are living there now.’

  ‘What possible relevance could that have to her death? I understood it was a simple case of street violence.’

  ‘We’re concerned by the coincidence that another person living in Cunningham Place, where Nancy and Emerson were staying . . .’ Kathy noticed Janice’s hostile glance in Emerson’s direction, ‘. . . was murdered just a few days later. We need to rule out the possibility that there was any connection between the two crimes.’

  ‘Who was this other person?’

  ‘His name was Mikhail Moszynski, a wealthy Russian businessman.’

  ‘Oh yes, you told me, Emerson, didn’t you? I was upset at the funeral, and I don’t think it registered. Well, what of it?’

  ‘Are you aware of any connection?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I have some photographs here on my laptop that I’d like to show you.’

  Kathy pulled out her computer and quickly opened up the file and began to show the pic
tures to Janice, beginning with individual shots of the Moszynski household, including Vadim Kuzmin, Nigel Hadden-Vane and Freddie Clarke.

  ‘No, I know none of these people.’

  ‘Nancy took some family photographs with her to London. Perhaps you could just identify the people for me.’ They opened the pouch and went through the pictures, Kathy taking notes of the names of cousins, uncles, grandparents.

  ‘I really don’t see the point of this. Most of these are ancient. How can they possibly be relevant?’

  ‘Nearly finished, Mrs Connolly. Just a few more.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Emerson said, peering over Kathy’s shoulder at one of the photos. ‘Isn’t that Maisy?’

  It was a picture of three adults and a teenage girl grouped together on the steps of a building, their eyes half closed against the bright sunlight on their smiling faces. Emerson was pointing at the woman who was standing between two men.

  ‘I’m sure that’s your mother, Janice.’

  Janice gave it another reluctant glance. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And isn’t that your father with her? And the girl—could it be Nancy?’

  Janice gave a sigh of annoyance. ‘Very likely. So what?’

  ‘Well, that looks a lot like Chelsea Mansions in the background, where we stayed.’

  Kathy looked more closely at the background, tall sash windows in dark brickwork, a black doorway with white painted surround. It might be Chelsea Mansions, she thought, or a thousand other similar places in London, or Boston come to that. ‘What about the other man?’ Kathy asked. ‘Do you recognise him?’

  ‘Obviously someone they met somewhere. I’ve never seen him before. And I’m not convinced that’s Nancy. It’s probably the other man’s daughter . . . oh.’

  Something had struck Janice. She stared again at the photo. ‘That dress, it was Nancy’s. I remember now, Pop and Mom took Nancy to London for her sixteenth birthday. I was only five. They left me behind with Grandma.’

  ‘When would that have been?’ Kathy asked, but Janice waved her hand dismissively.