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
