Part 27 (1/2)

He gave a rueful smile. 'I guess you're right. And if she was there in her teens it could have nothing to do with her murder, after all. Those other people in the old pictures are all dead and gone.'

When they got back to Beacon Street he said, 'Will you be leaving now?'

'I suppose so, yes. I'll have to check available flights.'

'It seems a shame to have come so far and seen so little. Let me at least take you out to dinner at one of Nancy's favourite haunts. Nothing fancy, just a very friendly little Italian place down in the North End where we often went on a Sat.u.r.day night. What do you say?'

'You've given me so much of your time already, Emerson, I'd feel guilty about taking more.'

'Nonsense, it'd cheer me up no end. I'll phone Maria. I'm sure she'll squeeze us in when I explain. Shall we say eight o'clock?'

So she agreed, and spent an enjoyable evening with him, talking about all the places she should have seen, and would have to return to one day.

THIRTY.

The following morning Peter was already setting places in the dining room by the time Kathy came downstairs for her run. Today Tom was offering honeyed yoghurt with fresh berries followed by French toast stuffed with peaches. 'He's a star,' Peter said, seeing the look on Kathy's face.

This time she headed down through the South End and then east into Chinatown. As she pounded through the empty streets she tried to clear her mind. It felt as if she'd been here for a long time, much more than two days. That's what happened when you had a change of scene, she told herself, time expanded, became more generous. It had been a blessing to get out of London. It was absurd that she'd never been to America before-never been out of Europe in fact. Her work had constrained her, narrowed her focus. Was that why Guy's invitation to go to Dubai had seemed so appealing? What a disaster that would have been. No regrets there.

She returned to Beacon Street, skipping up the front steps, blood singing. After a quick shower she went downstairs and opened the dining room door. The smell of Tom's cooking hit her and she said, 'Wow,' then stopped dead, staring at the figure sitting at a corner table. He lifted his head and she said, 'It is you,' and John Greenslade got to his feet with a cautious smile. There was a suitcase on the floor beside him.

'Ah, you do know him then, do you, Kathy?' Peter said from the door behind her. 'I wasn't sure whether to let him in. But he looked so forlorn, I thought I'd better give him something to eat.'

She sat down at his table and asked what on earth he was doing there. He looked as if he hadn't slept, which, as it turned out, was pretty much the case, his flight being a nightmare, through Newark.

'There was something I needed to show you, Kathy, about the photographs,' he said.

'Oh really?'

He registered her doubtful look and was rescued by the arrival of French toast and coffee, with Peter clearly trying to interpret what was going on. 'Will he be requiring a room?' he asked.

'Oh, I think so, Peter,' Kathy said. 'Do you have one free?'

'We do. Next to yours as it happens.' He arched an eyebrow and strolled off to talk to the couple from Iowa at another table.

'Well, this is a nice surprise,' Kathy said.

'I'm relieved. I thought you'd be mad.'

'I was talking about the French toast,' she said, and watched his smile fade. 'So what do you have to show me?'

'I'd need to get out my laptop.'

'I suggest a shower and a shave and change of clothes first,' Kathy said. 'And maybe a couple of hours' sleep?'

'Not the sleep, but the other things would be wonderful.'

Peter led him away while Kathy had another coffee and caught up on the news in the Boston Globe.

Later, in her room, John opened up his laptop and clicked to the image of the group in front of the building.

'First of all, that is definitely Chelsea Mansions. Each of the doorways is slightly different, and I'm certain they're standing in front of number eight, the present-day hotel, which in 1956 would have been the home of Toby and his parents. When I showed him the picture he had no idea who the people were, and thought they must have been staying at his great-aunt's hotel next door, but I'm sure you were right about them being Nancy and her parents. So then I began to look more closely at the unidentified man and I felt I'd seen him somewhere before. I looked through the other photos, and I'm pretty sure that he appears again in this one . . .'

He brought up the image of a couple standing in front of a long reflecting pool, with an Art Deco arch in the background. 'I was struck by this picture when Emerson showed it to me in London. It's undated, but it looks very thirties, don't you think? The style of their clothes and hair, and the architecture. And that's Maisy, looking twenty years younger than in the Chelsea Mansions picture, and I'd swear that's the same man again.'

Kathy stared at the two photographs, and at enlargements John had made of the two male faces. 'I think you could be right,' she said at last. 'So, a long-time friend of Maisy and her husband Ronald.' She shrugged. 'Is it significant?'

'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 cl.u.s.ter 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 pa.s.sed-Ma.s.sachusetts Hall, built in 1720 and the oldest building in Harvard, and Hollis Hall, where George Was.h.i.+ngton 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 t.i.tanic. 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 pa.s.s as his research a.s.sistant.

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 Francis...o...b..y. 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 doc.u.ment 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 suns.h.i.+ne, and John took her to a cafe that he knew nearby.