The muscle escort peeled off as Stanley and Clive led me down the hall, toward the music. The room was flanked at one end by a grand piano and at the other by a well-stocked bar. Between them sat Archie Chapman, looking comfortable in a leather armchair, as coffee was poured into his china cup by a stunningly beautiful woman in a black negligee. At the piano, a dark-haired woman in a red evening gown played with the keys while she smoked a cigarette in a long holder. Topper sat at the bar, and raised a glass in greeting.
“Peaches, my boy,” Archie shouted. He was dressed in a three-piece suit, and his skin glowed as if he’d just stepped from a bath. It was a different look than his subterranean guise. “Good of you to come. Grand to see you again.”
“Archie, the last time we met, you told me to never set foot in Shoreditch. Why the hoodlum-engraved invitation?”
“Ha! Good one, Peaches. I meant to say never return without a proper invite. Welcome to the Eastcheap Gentleman’s Club. It’s where I come after a night underground. Refreshing.”
“Nothing looks cheap. And where are the gentlemen?”
“Billy,” Topper said from his post at the bar. “Have a seat and take the chip off your shoulder, will you? Don’t let that business with the truck get under your skin.”
“Smart advice that,” Archie said. “We had a good go-round with the truck, me takin’ it and you gettin’ it back. Shows you learn fast, and know how to get what’s yours without burning your bridges. And that you have connections, to get the Shoreditch pubs declared off-limits. Impressive that. So listen to Topper and have some coffee. The real thing. American. Gisele, more coffee, s’il vous plait.”
“ Oui, Archie,” she said with a smile that left her eyes dead.
“I own this establishment, Peaches,” Archie continued, pausing to sip his coffee. “And you might be surprised at how many senior American officers partake of the delights here. Maybe some you know. Plenty of high-class toffs as well, military and politico. We even let in enlisted men one night a week. Supply sergeants get a special rate.”
“So business is good?”
“Very good. We did well before, but since the war, with the Americans flooding in and so much talent coming from the Continent, it’s all we can do to keep the place off the map.”
“The Continent?”
“All of our girls are from Europe, Billy,” Topper said. “When the war started, a lot of refugees came over, and many young girls were looking for work. Your average Englishman who uses our club wants something a bit different. He doesn’t want someone who reminds him of his wife or his maid. One of the odd consequences of the class structure. Continental girls are another species altogether. Frees the stodgy old men up, especially the ones with money.”
“Now, your average American, he doesn’t care. Most of ’em couldn’t tell the difference between a countess and a scrubwoman,” Archie said. “Right, Dalenka?”
“I’ve been both,” the woman at the piano said, not turning her head. “I scrubbed floors for the money when I first came to England, and now I tell them I am a countess for the money. Both I’ve done on my knees, and I tell you, scrubbing floors is much harder. And yes, the Americans are a bit naive. Sometimes it is endearing. Usually it is boring.” She blew smoke toward the ceiling.
“Dalenka is from Czechoslovakia,” Archie said. “She runs the place for me. Very smart, she is. Speaks several languages, and has a head for numbers. She is truly a countess in my book.” Archie looked almost smitten, but I knew it was for show, to bolster the morale of the talent.
Dalenka put her cigarette out, sat silently for a minute, and then began playing with both hands. She sat up straight, her long, arched fingers gliding smoothly over the ivories. Gisele put a tray of coffee down and served me, the vacant smile unwavering. The music rose slowly, building and then fading, joyous at moments, but ending on a downward slide of sorrowful deep notes that lingered in the smoky air. Dalenka’s hands remained poised on the keys where the last notes had been played. Even Archie was silent.
“What was that, Dalenka?” Topper asked in a whisper.
“A requiem by Anton Dvorak. A Czech composer. It was written as a funeral mass for soldiers.” She shut the keyboard cover, swiveled around on the stool, and looked at us as if we were dead men. Without a word, she left the room, putting her arm around Gisele, who was still smiling as tears rolled down her cheeks.
Archie nodded solemnly, acknowledging the unspoken truth that lingered where Dalenka had been. Staring at the open door, he spoke, in hushed tones. A Wounded Deer-leaps highest- I’ve heard the Hunter tell- ‘Tis but the Ecstasy of death- And then the Brake is still!
“Emily Dickinson,” I said, stunned that I’d remembered. I wasn’t much for school, or poetry, for that matter, but the sadness of that poem had stayed with me since I’d heard it in senior English class. The wounded dear, leaping for life, finding death.
“So you’re not a complete philistine, Peaches. Yes, your fellow American, Miss Emily Dickinson. ‘A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest,’ she called it, and she must’ve known about wounds, that poor one.”
“What about Dalenka?”
“She and her lover were involved with the Three Kings,” Topper said. “They were leaders of the Czech Resistance. The Nazis got all of them in 1941. Dalenka and her boyfriend were couriers, carrying everything from explosives to messages from London in and out of Prague. One spring day in 1940, the Gestapo was waiting; someone had betrayed them. The boyfriend was killed in a gunfight, but Dalenka escaped. Lucky for her that he was killed, otherwise they would have made him talk. She had false papers that got her out through Yugoslavia, then on to Portugal and finally here.”
“They all have stories,” Archie said. “Not all of them are heroic, either. But you don’t start off in Nazi-occupied Europe and end up in an East End bordello without a tale worth telling. Or not telling, as the case may be.”
“What story am I here to be told?”
“We both now seem to be looking for Russians, Peaches. Topper told me you want to know who killed that Egorov fellow. Fair enough. It had nothing to do with us. You know about the business with the delivery trucks, you’ve seen the map. Again, you’re smart enough to leave well enough alone there. Tells me you’re focused on the killer, not on farm produce. Right?”
“Right.”
“Just to get it out in the open. We’re not at cross-purposes here. There’s a certain Russian we want to find. Seeing as how you are thick with them, I figured you might be able to point us in the right direction.”
“Does this have anything to do with Osip Nikolaevich Blotski?”
“Who the hell is that?” Archie demanded.
“No one,” Topper said. “A message. One that was apparently not received.”
“Oh, that,” Archie said, scoffing. “Told you, boy, that wouldn’t smoke him out.”
“A Russian from the embassy owes you something, and you can’t find him. You crippled an associate of his, and probably gave him a message to pass on. That didn’t work, and you remembered my questions about Egorov, and thought I might be able to ferret him out?”
“See, Topper, I told you he had half a brain in his head! Yes, Peaches, that’s it in a nutshell. Will you help us?”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Well, there’s the other half of that brain. Good for you, Peaches. What do we have for him, Topper?”
“Gisele? Perhaps her and a friend?”
“No thanks, my dance card is full. Who is it you’re looking for?”