Read Chelsea Mansions for Free Online Page A

while. The BBC had a clip of the police press conference on Thursday night, and he downloaded this. After a while he got up and stood by the window overlooking the square. The Maybach had gone, its place taken by a red sports car. He peered down at it, trying to figure out what it was. A Ferrari Spider, perhaps.
    Across the road he saw a figure sitting beneath the trees in the central gardens, and recognised Emerson’s thatch of grey hair. He closed his laptop, picked up his keys and went out. At the front desk he asked Deb about the gardens and she explained that they were available for the use of guests by means of a key for the gate that the hotel could provide.
    ‘Emerson’s got it at the moment, John,’ she said.
    ‘Oh, fine. I might go and say hello. It looks pretty nice over there.’
    As he went down the front steps he took a close look at the sports car. He was right, an F430 Spider, a beauty. He looked back up at the windows of the property next door, and saw an old woman glowering down at him from behind a curtain. John turned, crossed the street and pushed open the gate in the cast-iron railings.
    Emerson didn’t appear to have moved, hunched over something on his knees. As he got closer John saw that it was a pouch of photographs.
    ‘Hi, Emerson,’ he called out, and the other man looked up, blinking to focus. ‘Am I interrupting?’
    ‘What? Oh, no, John. Hello.’
    ‘It looked so pleasant in here. Private and secluded.’
    ‘Yes, it is.’
    ‘Are you sure I’m not intruding?’
    ‘Not at all. Come and sit down.’
    John nodded at the photographs. ‘Nancy’s?’
    ‘Yes. She brought these with her. I was just . . . well, you know. I guess I’ll have to give these back to her family, but I wanted to remember them.’
    ‘Is that her? She was an attractive woman, Emerson.’
    ‘Very.’ He said it with some feeling. ‘When she was younger she turned a few heads, I can tell you.’
    ‘Including yours, eh?’
    Emerson smiled. ‘Well, we were both married then, to other people. But yes, I did admire her. And she was talented, very artistic. She painted in watercolours—New England landscapes mainly. They were much sought after. She sold them through a local gallery. Look.’
    He showed John a photo of people at a fancy-dress party. ‘That’s Nancy as a bird of paradise. She made the costume herself, and the mask. Isn’t it beautiful?’
    ‘Oh yes. And that’s you as the pirate chief, eh?’
    ‘That’s right.’ Emerson gave another wistful smile. ‘She made the parrot on my shoulder. We had a good laugh about that. She had a great sense of humour.’ He frowned suddenly.
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘Not at all, it’s important to remember. She got her artistic talent from her mother. There’s one of them together . . .  here.’
    He drew out one of the older black and white pictures.
    ‘Her mother was a professional sculptor, using her maiden name, Maisy McKellar. Nancy had been hoping to make contact with the McKellars in Scotland on this trip. Before Maisy married Nancy’s father, Ronald, she worked with William Gordon Huff in California. Have you heard of him?’
    John shook his head.
    ‘He’s mainly known for his statues of characters from the Old West—Indians and pioneers, that kind of stuff. There’s a picture of Maisy somewhere . . . here.’
    A couple, their hair and clothes obviously in the style of the 1930s, stood arm in arm in front of a long reflecting pool, with a monumental arch in the background.
    ‘Art Deco,’ John said. ‘It looks very Hollywood, don’t you think? And that’s Maisy with Huff?’
    ‘I’m not sure. I guess it could be.’
    ‘They look a glamorous couple.’ John pointed to another photo. ‘And those are Nancy’s grandchildren?’
    ‘Yes, seven at the last count. I wonder what their parents have told them. Your grandmother was thrown under a bus. It’s obscene, isn’t it?’
    ‘It is.’
    ‘The police have no idea why he did it. I