The Jazz Files (Poppy Denby Investigates) by Fiona Veitch Smith

Author:Fiona Veitch Smith [Smith, Fiona Veitch]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Lion Fiction
Published: 2015-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

An hour later and Poppy was carrying her satchel and little suitcase up Fleet Street. Her whole body was beginning to ache, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to rest until she had had another look at Bert’s files.

According to the clock outside Barclay’s Bank, it was after six o’clock, so she wasn’t surprised that the front door to The Globe was locked. She went around the back in the hope that the service doors from the alleyway were still open. She wasn’t disappointed. Printers worked in shifts at The Globe, and the new crew were setting up the presses for the next day’s edition. They looked surprised to see Poppy, but didn’t question her as she walked through the basement to the stairwell. But before she left them, she turned and asked, “Were any of you on day shift when Bert Isaacs died?”

Two men – one approaching retirement age and another, a young apprentice – indicated they had been. She questioned them as to whether or not they had seen anyone come in or out of the basement shortly before or after his fall. They said they hadn’t, but that one of the printing presses had jammed and all hands were needed on deck to fix it. They admitted that someone could have slipped in or out without anyone noticing as they were all distracted by the broken printer at the time.

“Why are you asking, miss?” asked the older man. “Do you think Bert’s death wasn’t an accident?”

“Well, the coroner hasn’t given his report yet, so Mr Rolandson and I are just considering the options.”

She used Rollo’s name to give herself some authority, in case the men questioned her right to ask – or even to be there. They didn’t. She thanked them and went up the stairs. She stopped on the ground floor and went and stood in the middle of the deserted foyer, where she had been when Bert fell to his death. She looked up into the high-ceilinged atrium and noted that the balustrade on the second floor had finally been fixed. Could Bert simply have leaned on it, exhausted after his efforts to climb the stairs, and fallen through? Or was he pushed?

She mentally recapped the layout of the building. In the basement, the printing presses. On the ground floor, reception and the typesetting hall. On the first floor, the finance and advertising departments. The second floor was art and photography. The third floor was the morgue archive, and finally the fourth, editorial. But it was the second floor that interested Poppy. She went up there in the lift.

The art and photography department was the only part of the building she had not yet visited. She stepped out of the lift and went over to the balustrade, noting where it had been repaired. She looked over and down onto the black and white mosaic two floors below. The swirling Egyptian patterns made her feel dizzy. She stepped back. Poor Bert, she thought again. There

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