City of Silence (City of Mystery) (12 page)

In
the silence that followed as the Queen flipped through the papers, Emma was
aware they were all holding their breath.

“Will
you read this aloud for the group, Detective?” the Queen asked, handing what
appeared to be a telegram to Rayley.  “It arrived two days ago from Cynthia Kirby,
the British woman serving as lady-in-waiting to my granddaughter Ella.”

Although
startled to have been singled out, Rayley adjusted his own glasses and unfolded
the thin yellow paper.   

Two
ballet dancers from royal troupe found dead this morning in theater of Winter
Palace.  Stop.  Playing Romeo and Juliet. Stop.  Throats cut.  Stop.  Royal
police treating as double suicide.  Stop.  Boy is Yulian Krupin, brother of
Gregor.  Stop.

“And
what do you think of that?” asked the Queen.  “Please speak without inhibition,
and Detective Welles, we wish you to lead the discussion.”

“It’s
odd,” said Davy, surprising everyone by going first.

“What’s
odd about it?” Trevor asked.

“It’s
more than twenty words.”

Laughter
ran around the table.  “Our young officer Mabrey has a mania for holding his
telegrams to twenty words,” Trevor explained to the Queen.  “If the crown is
ever bankrupted, I can assure you it won’t be because Scotland Yard is sending overly
long messages.”

“May
I ask if you know who this Gregor Krupin is, Ma’am?” said Rayley. “That’s
obviously the key part of the telegram.”

“Of
course I know who he is,” the Queen said, folding her arms across her ample
stomach, “as I suspect Miss Kelly does as well.”  She looked directly at Emma.
“Would you illuminate the gentlemen?”

“Indeed,
Ma’am,” Emma said, her mind racing as she attempted to collect her thoughts. 
Much of her study over the last few days had come from the extensive notes of
Britain’s foremost expert on Russia, a professor at Cambridge who often served
as a consultant to the Yard.  He had produced two files at Trevor’s request,
one marked “The Official History” and the other “The Real History.”  Both had
been bulging, full of long Russian names, and Emma had struggled to digest the
information within.  But the lines about Krupin leapt up from her subconscious
mind, like trout from a stream.

“As
we’ve suggested, Alexander II was right to be concerned that the same
revolutionaries who murdered his father might take aim at him as well,” she
said calmly, her eyes flitting around the table at the kind and familiar faces
of her friends before at last settling on Trevor, who was nodding with a small
encouraging smile.  “Gregor Krupin was one of several revolutionaries who were
arrested two years ago in an assassination attempt on the present tsar.  It was
a band of university students and very badly planned, so much so it is doubtful
the tsar was ever in significant danger.  Five of the plotters were hanged,
convicted on testimony provided by Krupin.”

“So
he’s a turncoat to his own cause,” Trevor said.  “Was he jailed?”

“No,”
the Queen said shortly. “They do things differently there.  Our understanding
is that he is still free in the streets and still involved in radical causes. 
His surviving comrades do not appear to know that he is the one who – what is
the phrase, Detective?”

“Sold
them out?” Trevor guessed.

The
Queen sat back.  “Indeed.”

“So
the dead ballet dancer is the brother of a known revolutionary,” Rayley mused. 
“No one in the tsar’s guard was aware of that fact before he was allowed inside
the gates of the Winter Palace?”

“From
what I gather from Ella’s letters, the guards are shockingly inept,” the Queen
said, with a slight quaver in her voice.  “They seem to arrive just after a
crime has occurred but never before.  And the Russian authorities do not keep
the sort of records that are kept by the London police.”

Trevor
nodded.  “This is part of the problem we shall face in St. Petersburg.  Your
Majesty, everyone at this table knows the frustration I felt during our time in
Paris last April, when our efforts to apprehend an escaped British criminal
were thwarted by the lack of continuity between Scotland Yard and the French
police.  Shared intelligence and records among all nations is absolutely
essential to the future of investigative police work.”

“Truly,
Welles?  I’ve never heard you mention such,” Tom said drily.  Laughter went
around the group and even Victoria smiled.  Trevor’s obsession with the idea of
an international police intelligence agency rivaled the Queen’s obsession with
assassinations.  

“Very
well,” Trevor said, holding up his hands.  “I shall save the sermon for
Sunday.  But the point is that the situation in Russia is even worse. The police
forces in various cities do not communicate with each other and even the
districts of a single large city like St. Petersburg act each as an independent
unit.  Which means that if a criminal escapes capture in one district he could
simply walk a few blocks and begin his nefarious activities anew.  I’m
surprised the entire country isn’t in chaos.”

The
Queen slightly lifted one eyebrow but remained silent.

Rayley
leaned in.  “May I ask, Ma’am, if the tsar’s own guard was unaware of this
young ballet dancer’s suspicious family background, how a lady-in-waiting would
come to gain this information?”

She
nodded.  “As you have undoubtedly guessed, Mrs. Kirby is more than simply a
lady-in-waiting.  Because of our concerns for our granddaughter’s safety there
are a certain number of people in St. Petersburg who have been sent by the
crown to guarantee –“  Here she broke off, as if suddenly struggling with
emotion.   “No one can guarantee the safety of anyone else,” she said,
correcting herself.  “But we have taken steps to lessen the degree of risk.” 

“And
may I ask if your granddaughter is aware of the true purpose of Mrs. Kirby’s
presence?” Trevor said.

‘She
is not,” said the Queen, her composure swiftly restored.  “Ella believes Mrs. Kirby
to be nothing more than a British widow, traveling to escape the sadness of her
husband’s death.  In fact in her letters she complains that the woman is
tedious and ordinary.  She would be surprised to learn that Mrs. Kirby is…what
did you call her, Detective?”

“A
crack shot with a pistol,” Trevor said.

“A
crack shot,” the Queen repeated slowly.  “We have learned so many marvelous new
phrases during our consultations with Detective Welles.  At times one almost
feels like an American.”

“Is
there any chance that the fact Gregor and Yulian were brothers is
coincidental?”  Tom asked.  “It’s possible that the ballet dancer wanted
nothing to do  with the revolutionary’s sordid past as evidenced by the fact he
assumed a quite different line or work.”

The
Queen’s eyes flickered.  “The Crown does not believe in coincidence.”

“Nor
does Scotland Yard,” Trevor hastened to assure her.  “Especially now that the
boy has been found dead.  I wonder that the guard, even if they are as inept as
Your Majesty suggests, was so quick to deem the deaths as suicide.”

“The
fact they were playing Romeo and Juliet does suggest it,” Tom said, seemingly
unembarrassed even after being refuted so thoroughly in his last theory.  “I’d
be very curious to hear how the bodies were found, what sort of knife was used,
which of them appeared to have died first.”

“You
shall have the chance,” said the Queen.  “For this is why we have asked you all
to travel with us.”  She looked steadily at each person in turn as she spoke. 
“When we arrive in St. Petersburg you must appear to be our personal guards,
our doctor and messenger, and Alix’s governess.  We must observe perfect
protocol and do nothing to contradict the theories and beliefs of our hosts.” 
She grimaced.  “When the time comes for it, I shall even curtsy to the tsar and
his wife.  But our true mission is to learn how a violent revolutionary group
managed to get one of their members within the gates of the Winter Palace and living
in the midst of the imperial family.  We must uncover what Yulian Krupin’s
hidden purpose was inside the palace, why he was killed, how, and by whom.”

A
stunned silence fell on the group.  Trevor and Rayley looked at each other and Rayley
shook his head.  They had spent the last three days speculating on Her
Majesty’s true reason for insisting the entire forensics team accompany her to St.
Petersburg.  The crown had dozens of trained bodyguards she might have more
logically brought along if her only aim was self-protection, so obviously
Victoria anticipated a different role for the men from Scotland Yard. They had
imagined it to be something along the lines of digging up dirt on the Romanovs,
giving the Queen more ammunition to shoot down Alix’s desire to marry Nicky.  But
to now hear that they were expected to solve a double murder in a land not
their own, one where they had no authority and no logical reason to be asking
the kinds of questions a murder investigation would require…

“What
of the bodies?” Trevor ventured.

“By
now they have mostly likely been claimed and buried,” the Queen said with a
quick nod.  “Which we appreciate is a disadvantage from a forensic standpoint.”

“It’s
the ultimate disadvantage,” Tom said bluntly.  “We’re starting with no physical
evidence at all.”

“And
since they deemed them as suicides, any police reports we should manage to lay
claim to would be cursory and incomplete,” said Trevor.  He was obliged to
serve the Queen, but this seemed like an impossible request.

“Then
you shall have to be very clever indeed,” the Queen said.  She looked around
the table with understanding, even compassion.  “I know the task sounds
daunting, but it is not required that you build the sort of case which would be
strong enough to bring a killer to justice in a British court.  These deaths
are a Russian matter and not our concern.  Instead we are asking you to make an
evaluation.  Russia is a dangerous place, but just how dangerous?   If the
revolutionaries managed to place one man within the palace could they do it
again?” 

“You
want to know if it’s safe for Alix to marry Nicky and live there,” Emma
confirmed.

The
Queen looked at her with such intensity that Emma blinked and dropped her own
eyes.  “Alix is most certainly not going to marry Nicky and live there,” she
said.   “Upon my life, she shall never be Tsarina Alexandra of Russia with the insupportable
burdens such a title implies.  The question is whether or if will prove
necessary to extricate Ella as well.”

“We
shall devote ourselves to finding the answer,” Trevor said.  For once he felt
he was reassuring a grandmother, and not a Queen.

“You
must,” Victoria said, and her enormous blue eyes drooped nearly closed, as if
she no longer had the heart to look at the world around her.  “For my blood
runs cold when I think of what could happen to my girls in Russia.”      

Chapter
Seven

St.
Petersburg, the Winter Palace

June
18, 1889

2:27
PM

It
is not a difficult thing to be an imperial spy.  If one wishes to gain details
of the intimate lives of powerful people, all one really must do is befriend
their servants.  Cynthia Kirby had not been in St. Petersburg for a week before
she knew that the Grand Duchess Ella’s personal maid liked apricot jam, and was
furthermore vulnerable to the charms of French cologne and American tobacco.  In
the afternoons, when Ella napped, her British lady in waiting and her Russian
maid would sit in one of the courtyards located adjacent to her suite of rooms,
sometimes sharing a cigarette, sometimes just talking.  By the time April had
gone to May and then to June, they had swapped all the stories of their
girlhoods and of their long departed husbands, and moved on to the gossip of
the present.  Gossip which primarily circled around the lady they both served
and, most specifically, the sad state of her marriage.

The
halls and rooms of the Winter Palace were so numerous and labyrinthine that
when she had first arrived, Cynthia had despaired that she would ever learn her
way around them.  So it had been a shock to realize that there was an
additional unseen structure within the visible one, an entire second layer of
halls, tunnels, and staircases, vital passageways concealed like veins beneath
the skin.  Sometimes these passageways served a utilitarian function, such as allowing
food to be transferred swiftly from the great kitchen to the private suites, or
to permit soiled laundry and other refuse to be carted away without its foul
presence assaulting the sensibilities of the people who had created it.  Sometimes
these halls served as conduits of intrigue, the means by which a man might
visit his mistress or his wife slip her own lover from her apartments upon his
return.  They also provided an extra buffer of protection, being the primary
means by which the imperial guard came and went, keeping them unobtrusive and
yet close to the tsar and his family.

In
fact, one could argue that this network of tunnels, halls, and stairways – which
the servants collectively called “the web” - was where the true drama of the palace
was played out.  It was the route by which Katya and Yulian had been carried away
on the morning their bodies had been found, transferred from the theater to the
icehouse where they were now entombed.   It was how Tatiana Orlov had first found
a way to meet Konstantin Antonovich, how the young grand dukes were routinely
escorted back to their rooms by their attendants after an especially raucous
night of gambling and drink. 

And
it was the way that Ella’s husband Serge left her bedroom every night.

The
three acts of their evening theatrical followed as such:  First, Serge would
approach the door of Ella’s apartments through the public areas, often taking
some special pains to announce to anyone within earshot that he was off to bed
with his wife.  His twenty-four year old wife with the red gold hair and large
blue eyes, a woman both beautiful and imminently suitable for a man of his exalted
rank, herself being descended from royal blood on both sides.  The sort of
woman any man would be proud to escort by day and eager to claim by night.  Once
within Ella’s private apartments – which were also blue, very nearly the exact
shade of her eyes – he would continue to walk, sometimes exchanging a word with
his wife but more often not, until he had crossed through all three chambers
and stood before a large panel upon which hung a seascape.  The picture had
been chosen prior to Ella’s wedding by some well meaning relative who had thought
that a painting of the sea might remind the young bride of the British coastline,
and thus serve as a comfort to her undoubtedly homesick heart.

But
alas, the sandy gray shores of the Crimean’ Sea look very little like the rocky
cliffs of Dover and it was thus behind a flat and foreign sea that Ella watched
her husband retreat every evening.  He would push aside the curtain of the
wall, his fingers groping for the familiar lever, and then throw it, causing
the sea to slide from view and a great void to open in his place.  Serge would
step into that darkness and, within a few seconds, the panel with the painting
would return.

“But
where does he go?” Cynthia asked the maid.  She was named Alina, and her
darting, gleaming eyes indicated that she was the sort who would always take
joy in recounting the troubles of others.

“To
the gentlemen’s enclave,” Alina said.

Well,
that didn’t sound so bad.  Cynthia had heard that the imperial men had an
entire wing set aside for their private use, where they played billiards and
cards and displayed their gap-mouthed trophies of sport - including, it was
rumored, a stuffed bear posed for eternity in the most vulgar of all possible postures. 
Guns on the walls, brandy in the glasses, pipe tobacco in the air.  Cynthia’s
British heart had not disapproved of such an arrangement, even though it was
mysterious that Serge would leave his pretty young wife for so many nights merely
to indulge in these gunmetal-and-leather sort of masculine pleasures. 

“It
is a long series of rooms,” Alina said, then added, “with halls which lead on
one side to an exit through the stables, and on the other side to a dock.  They
have their own bathhouse there and a steamroom and sauna.  Where the gentlemen
sweat out their poisons and beat each other with rushes.”

“Two
exits, do you say?” Cynthia inquired, her ears perking up at the most relevant
part of the description.  This was scarcely good news for the wives. “So the
men can travel unseen by either boat or horse to visit their mistresses, I
presume?  Or are the pleasure women brought into the palace instead?”

Alina
laughed, blowing out a great puff of smoke.

“The
pleasure women,” she said.  “I’ve never heard them called anything quite like
that.  If they’re the pleasure women, I wonder what that means for the rest of
us.”

Cynthia
waited for more, but it was not forthcoming.

There
was a great deal of speculation within the palace as to why after four years of
marriage, Ella and Serge had yet to produce an heir.  She was of the perfect
age and constitution.  He was older, past forty but still a fit figure of a
man, capable of riding and shooting with the best of them, or so it was said. 
Therefore, wagged the tongues, where was the baby?

If
there was to be one, the servants would have known before the royals.  The
maids were aware of which bedsheets had dried smears on them in the mornings
and which did not, and they certainly knew which ladies produced monthly pads for
disposal and which did not, and thus could generally predict the impending
arrival of heirs long before their fathers were privy to the happy news.  In
fact, there was protocol around even this aspect of imperial life.  The cloth
pads were placed in a special container once they were bloodied, then carried
away not to be washed and returned but burned, since palace etiquette dictated
they were never to be used again.  The other discarded items from the Romanov
women – the dresses and gloves and shoes and even their lingerie - were passed
on to their personal maids, but not these.  The Russians were too superstitious
about blood, especially aristocratic blood, no matter how it had been rendered. 
The pads collected from the elite apartments were merely burned, but those from
the chambers occupied by the family were furthermore burned by a priest, in a ceremony
not unlike that of a funeral, a ritual of mourning for a child who was not to
be.  Cynthia was too accustomed to Anglican logic to accept the folkloric roots
of Russian Orthodoxy or to understand how these people who looked so elegant on
the surface could indulge in such primitive rites without batting an eye.  She
could only speculate on the thoughts of the low-ranking cleric assigned to this
thankless task, who was required to solemnly pray for the souls of even nonexistent
Romanovs.  

“The
Grand Duchess Ella remains incorrupt,” Alina said, leaning back against a stone
wall and exhaling another great puff of smoke. 

“Incorrupt?” 
Cynthia asked in some confusion.  Her Russian was adequate but there were still
times when she was unsure she had full understanding, and this was a word she
had only heard in connection to the church.  The body of Christ had never
decomposed, and thus was incorrupt, but a human?   And then, with a sick thud
to the chest, it occurred to her what Alina was truly saying.  “You mean that she
is still a virgin?”

The
woman nodded.

“You’re
quite sure?”

“We
see him come, and we see quickly him go,” Alina said, with a shrug so
exaggerated that it bordered on being French.  “On their wedding night and each
one after, without fail.  He goes to the men’s enclave, just as I said.”  And
it was this time, the pointed way she said “men’s,” that Cynthia fully grasped
her meaning, and her horror grew.

“If
this is true, then why would he marry her?”

“Men
such as him need a wife.”  Alina gave a wicked grin.  “More than the other
kind, wouldn’t you say?”

“But
he was in the army,” Cynthia said, aware that such a remark was foolish but still
struggling to understand.   “A military man during his youth.”

The
woman rolled her eyes.  “Ah, yes. The army.” 

Cynthia
sat back too, the stone wall behind her striking her shoulder blades, knocking
the breath from her lungs.  “How many people know this?”

Alina
paused to consider.  “A dozen servants, but we don’t add to the count.  Within
the imperial family, perhaps only the two of them can say for sure, but many
more suspect.  And the more time passes without a child, the worse it shall
look.”

“The
worse it shall look for him, you mean,” Cynthia said.

“It
is hard to say who they might blame.”

And
in that remark, so benign on the surface but with so much implied, Cynthia at
last saw the full of Ella’s situation.  It was quite clear which of the two was
dispensable.  Not the brother of the tsar, but a princess from a minor German
principality.  If the marriage were to fail, all blame would fall to the
blameless Ella.  The real question was whether or not Cynthia should share this
tale with the Queen.  She had been sent to collect a very specific type of
information, only relevant to whether or not Ella was in danger.  Would an
unconsummated imperial marriage count as danger?  How long would the
dynastically-obsessed Romanovs continue to tolerate a barren bride?

Alina
ground out her cigarette on the sole of her shoe and then tossed the stubby
remains over her shoulder, into a nearby rose bush.  They had dallied for some
time already and should return.  Ella loved her naps but no woman, not even a
royal one, could sleep forever.

Cynthia
wanted to ask Alina why she thought Ella would stay in this sham of a
marriage.  Ella who’d had so many options, who had been courted by so many men,
who could run home to her grandmother at any time.  But perhaps that was the very
reason she stayed.  How humiliating would it be to return from her marriage childless,
rejected, a virgin?  After she had defied Victoria, refused so many suitable
suitors to marry this man, to cross this great distance, to insist upon this cold
and empty bed over every other one in Europe? 

She
will never admit her mistake, Cynthia thought.   She would rather live out her
life without love than without dignity.  This information went a great way
toward explaining the woman’s personality – the cool reserve with everyone
around her, punctuated only by her inexplicable fondness for that dancing master,
the handsome one with the dark ponytail and the Asian slant to his eyes.  The
excessive gaiety expressed in her letters back to London.  Why she did not
flirt at the balls and grand dinners but sat instead with the sort of vague,
far-away stare that one generally only sees on the face of saints in church
paintings. 

Cynthia
tossed her own cigarette and the two women stood.  Alina was still smiling,
proud of the potency of her gossip and the effect it had had on the obviously
shaken Cynthia.   News of this weight was worth another pot of jam at least, for
this was surely the most interesting story being swapped in all the back rooms and
courtyards of all the elite chambers in the Winter Palace that day.

But
she was wrong.  For down another hall and in another courtyard, this one
smaller and less carefully tended, two more maids had also brought their heads
together.  One of them was whispering to the other that it had now been nine
weeks since she had last burned the pads of Tatiana Orlov. 

The
Streets of St. Petersburg

3:14
PM

In
the meeting room of the Naronaya Volya they were beginning the funeral of
Yulian Krupin.  It was not a simple matter to plan a funeral for a young
atheist, especially one with parents who remained profoundly faithful to the orthodox
church.  But fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how one chose to look
at it.  the members of the Volya were quite experienced with such diplomatic
delicacy; this was the eleventh funeral they had planned in the last two
years.  At a stage in life when most young people were attending weddings and christenings,
the comrades of the Volya were far better versed in the ceremonies of death.