City of Silence (City of Mystery) (19 page)

“Oh
I assure you, he has a most perfect alibi for those twelve minutes as well,”
said Tom, matter-of-factly pulling the tablecloth over Mrs. Kirby’s face. 

“Is
there really any need to go into that?” Emma asked.

“But
don’t you see, my dear? What began as your teacher’s condemnation has now
become his defense.”  Tom removed his apron and wiped his hands on it before
turning to Trevor.  “Because while Emma and I were exploring the costume and prop
rooms we happened to come across–“

“Dear
God,” said Rayley.

“What
is it?” said Trevor.

“The
very last book in the stack,” Rayley said.  “I shook it and this flew out.”  He
advanced toward Trevor, holding an object very lightly between his fingertips. 
It was a photograph of the dead ballet dancers.

Chapter
Twelve

The
Winter Palace – The Gentleman’s Enclave

June
20, 1889

1:20
PM

“Would
you like me to beat you with rushes?”

“I
beg your pardon?”

“Bulrushes
brought up from the river,” Filip said. “Once the sweat begins to flow, a
steady tapping helps to bring the blood to the surface of the skin and aid in
the purification process.  The blows are very light, of course,” he added,
noting Rayley’s skeptical expression. “But the raising of the blood is an
important part of the sauna ritual.”

“Seeing
as how this is my first sauna,” Rayley said, “perhaps I should content myself with
only the most basic sort of purification.”

“Truly? 
Your first sauna?”

“I’m
English.”

“Yes,
I know who you are,” said Filip, holding out a beefy hand which Rayley clasped
and shook in an ineffectual manner, their sweat-slicked palms sliding from each
other at the first touch.  “One of the queen’s bodyguards, which means that you
and I are in the same line of work.  I similarly serve the tsar.”

Rayley
nodded slowly.  When the invitation had come this morning suggesting that
Trevor and Rayley might enjoy the services of the gentlemen’s enclave, they had
been temporarily flummoxed.  It was undeniably an opportunity to observe a new
part of palace life and also undeniably some sort of trap.  The cream colored
piece of paper sitting on a heavy silver tray bore no clue as to who might have
sent it.  A brief conference between the two men had led to the conclusion that
Rayley, whose time in Paris had left him with a greater proclivity for foreign
cultures, should accept the invitation while Trevor, along with Tom and Davy, explored
the theater balcony where they believed Mrs. Kirby’s body must have been hidden. 

At
the appointed hour there had been a knock at the door of their apartments and a
silent servant had arrived.  Rayley had followed him down a series of hallways
until he had arrived in a large dressing room where the man had handed him a
red silk robe and simply disappeared.  It had been a strange matter indeed to
strip off his gray suit and don the robe, quite uncertain what, if any,
garments were meant to be left on beneath, and to venture across the broad
stone floor toward the cave-like entrance of the adjoining room.  A blast of
hot damp air had engulfed him before he was fully over the threshold, filling
the room with hisses and fogging Rayley’s small round eyeglasses so thoroughly
that he had been forced back into the dressing area where he pulled his
spectacles off and peered nervously in the direction from which he had just
come. 

This
was surely what the gates of hell must be like.  Minus the silk robe, perhaps.

It
was just then that the servant had reappeared and surprised Rayley by
addressing him in English. “Steam or sauna?” he had asked. 

“What
is the difference?”

“Steam
wet, sauna dry.”

Ah,
so that moist and hissing cave must have been the steam room.  Anything would
be better than that, and at least in the dry room he would be able to see his
hand before his face. 

“Take
me to the sauna,” Rayley said decisively, wiping his spectacles on the robe. 
“And would you be so kind as to tell me who sent the invitation you delivered? 
I am uncertain as to how I might thank my host.”

But
the man’s English appeared to be limited to the distinction of “Steam wet,
sauna dry,” for he had looked at Rayley blankly, then turned and walked toward
a second hallway.  Rayley had little choice but to follow, which had resulted
in his arrival in this place, a long and thin wooden room, the walls of which
smelled quite pleasant in the manner of a cedar forest and were lined with
benches.  Seven or eight men were already seated, all of them alarmingly nude,
causing Rayley to wonder if the ability to see detail was really an advantage.

But
when in Rome, he’d supposed, and unknotted the red robe.  Due to the slick
texture and elegant weight of the garment, it had fallen to the floor
decisively, leaving Rayley as naked as the others and announcing his Judaism
and thus his outsider status in one fell swoop.  And so he had sat, trying
desperately to look nonchalant, and noting that while the heat of a sauna did
not rush at one all at once in that sort of breath-snatching, skin-flushing
assault of the steam room, it was still a formidable enemy.  A film of
perspiration was slowly growing across his chest and the wire rims of his
glasses were beginning to burn against his temples and the bridge of his nose. 
Just as Rayley had been about to flee the sauna and return to the relative
sanity of the dressing room, he had been approached in conversation by Filip
Orlov.

“Your
English is very good,” Rayley said.

“It
is one of the languages of the court,” Filip answered with such notable modesty
that it was evidently a point of great pride.

“The
court appears to have many languages.”

“We
are not so uncivilized as the westerners think.”

Just
then the definitive sound of a slap filled the sauna and one of the naked men
let fly with a muffled moan.  He was bent over one of the wooden benches and two
of his fellows were merrily pounding away at his buttocks and back with
bullrushes.  By now there were a dozen men in the room, most of them sitting
sedately on the benches with towels folded beneath them, staring straight ahead
in the disinterested manner of passengers on a train.  One of them looked a
good deal like the photographs of the Grand Duke Serge, which Rayley had seen
scattered around Ella’s apartments on the day they had arrived in Russia.  Yes,
the more Rayley observed his handsome but haughty face, the more convinced he
was that this was Ella’s husband and, judging by the mottled quality of his
skin and the sheen of sweat across his chest, the Grand Duke had been sitting
in the sauna for some time.  Personally, Rayley wondered how much longer he would
be able to endure this bizarre environment.  The heat was oppressive, but the growing
claustrophobia even more so, and Rayley had struggled to maintain his composure
in small spaces ever since the time of his captivity in Paris.

“Yes,
we are in the same line of work,” Rayley said, reaching to adjust the tangled
robe which he had thrust under his buttocks as protection from the slowly
advancing warmth of the benches.  “Is this why I was invited to the gentlemen’s
enclave?  As a professional courtesy?”

“We
are comrades, are we not?”

“I
suppose we are,” Rayley said, thinking that a more unlikely pair of comrades
would be hard to find.  He was pale and thin, his ribs slightly sunken, while
Filip’s torso was broad and hairy with a scar which ran diagonally across his
side like a military sash.

“Wounded
in duty,” Filip said, noting that Rayley’s eyes had settled on the scar. “I
took a bullet for the tsar two years ago.”

Rayley’s
eyebrows shot up.  “In the famous assassination attempt?”

“It
is famous?  As far away as London?  That is surprising.  As assassination
attempts go, I assure you this was a very feeble one.”  Filip looked down
reflectively.  “The bullet did not strike anything vital, which was fortunate. 
I tell people that it hit me in my fat.”

Rayley
smiled.  It sounded like something Trevor would say. “Then you were fortunate
indeed.”

“It
was my lucky bullet,” Filip said, “for it won me the tsar’s unfailing trust.  See,
I keep it close to me like a saint,” and he leaned toward Rayley abruptly,
startling him as their chests almost touched.  Filip turned a thin silver chain
that had been hanging down his back, revealing the crushed shape of a bullet. 
By the way he dangled it before Rayley, he was expecting some sort of reaction,
so Rayley extended a fingertip and recoiled immediately.  The metal of the
bullet was nearly sizzling to the touch, explaining why Filip had turned it
from his chest.  Filip smiled, pleased at the intensity of Rayley’s reaction. 
“I was one of many before this bullet, and now I am head of the private guard.”

“Such
a post must be deeply gratifying.”

Filip
considered Rayley through narrow eyes.  “You also have suffered wounds in your
work?”

“I
fear that my scars lie deeper inside.”

The
heavy man sat back with such a definitive gesture that the bench they were both
sitting on trembled.  “Yes,” he said quietly.  “I have this kind too.”

A
surprising degree of subtlety coming from someone who looked like such a brute
on the surface and Rayley inclined his head to study the man more closely.  If
Filip, who had been suspiciously quick to deem the British bodyguard a “comrade,”
had truly been the source of this invitation, he must have had a reason.  A
reason beyond showing off his bullet and his English.

“My
partner Welles would have found all this most invigorating,” Rayley said, as one
of the men tossed a ladle of water on the coals and the room was shrouded in a
subtle but most welcome mist.  “But since that business yesterday with Mrs.
Kirby, the Queen refuses to be without one of us constantly at her side.”

A
bit clumsily stated, but at least the door was open.  Would the Russian walk
through?

As
it turned out, he was more than ready.  Filip leaned back toward Rayley in his
confidential manner and said “Our suspicious lie with a dance master from
Siberia, a man by the name of Konstantin Antonovich.  He was already our most
likely suspect for a previous double murder of two young ballet dancers.  We
believe the Kirby woman may have also suspected him of this crime.”

“Any
what if she did?  An aging lady in waiting would hardly confront a strong young
killer, would she?  If she had any information linking this Antonovich to the
first murder surely she would have taken her suspicion to the authorities.”

“She
was British as well, you know.”

“Yes,
of course I know.”

“In
service to the Queen’s granddaughter.”

“All
of which goes without saying.  What are you really getting at, Orlov?”

In
true police fashion, the man answered the question with a question.  “So does
the Queen wish for you and Welles to investigate this second crime, this
killing of a British woman on Russian soil?”

Rayley
paused and took a deep breath of the dry, punishing air.  It is hard to measure
a man’s degree of anxiety in a sauna, he thought, and hard to gauge the degree
of hostility which might be lying beneath the surface of seemingly civil
discourse.  If everyone is flushed and sweating, with a pounding heart and
shallowness of breath, how is a detective to gauge the level of anger or fear? 
Rayley glanced around them, but none of the other men appeared to be taking
even the slightest degree of interest in his conversation with Filip.

“The
Queen is concerned about the murder, just as I mentioned,” Rayley finally said.
“It would be unnatural if she were not, given that Mrs. Kirby was British, a
respectable widow, and in service to the royal family.”

“The
woman was a rash,” Filip said bluntly, but with no apparent rancor. 
“Everywhere at once and she liked to talk to servants.”

Servants
often talk to other servants and gossip is the currency of life within any
palace, but Rayley did not wish to contradict Filip or make him question the
wisdom of such extraordinary candor.  So Rayley merely nodded and said “Private
citizens who take it upon themselves to snoop about and ask questions are the
bane of lawmen around the world, are they not?”

Filip
nodded back with great enthusiasm.  “The Kirby woman was seen in the ballroom
on the morning the bodies were discovered.  Perhaps she was there earlier too. 
If she happened to know something - or even if Konstantin Antonovich thought
she did - he may have felt the need to…the phrase escapes me.”

“Hush
her up.”

Filip
smiled, his eyes glittering with pleasure.  “Yes.  Hush her up.”

“The
costume she was found in–“

“It
is his.  Which makes the matter easy to understand, does it not?”

Actually,
no, it did not.  Unless Filip was implying that Antonovich was foolish enough
to kill a woman and then dress her in his own clothes, his theory made no sense
at all.  Surely even the palace guard would have to realize that the use of
Antonovich’s costume served to exonerate him. Glancing at Filip’s
self-satisfied face, Rayley tried another tack.

“What
would this dance master’s motive be?  Not for killing Mrs. Kirby, I mean, but why
would he have wished the two dancers dead?”

“They
were going to Paris, part of a grand tour.”  A groan rang through the sauna as
another man bent forward to take the beating of the rushes and Filip observed
the scene with a placid expression.  “You are quite certain that you do not wish
to give our small custom a try?  I assure you that the rushes will not hurt you
very much, at least not once you get used to them, and the results are quite
invigorating.”

But
Rayley was frowning, too intent on the Russian’s last words to be distracted by
the scene before him. “You cannot be suggesting that Antonovich killed the
ballet dancers through professional jealousy.  No sane man would cut the
throats of two children simply because he was envious of the fact that they
were going to perform in Paris.”