City of Silence (City of Mystery) (7 page)

And
meanwhile, Tatiana had troubles of her own.  Konstantin had not come and they
were running out of time.  On how many more occasions might they tryst – two or
three?  No summer could be held back forever.  Soon she and Filip would on
their way to the coast and she would likely not see Konstantin again until autumn.  
During the last two summers, her annual exile had proven a burden, leaving her
with entirely too much time on her hands and entirely too much proximity to her
husband, but she suspected that this year it would prove especially tedious.   For
there is nothing like a glimpse of joy to make the previously tolerable intolerable. 
Over time, she had learned how to forgive Filip for being Filip. She had not
yet learned how to forgive him for not being Konstantin.

Tatiana
once again studied each of the three main doors leading into the theater but
her lover was standing in none of them.  Even the guard had departed – the men
bearing the stretchers, the bald and arrogant one in the lead.  She was left in
this brightly lit and enormous room totally alone. 

She
closed her eyes and said a quick prayer for the dead.  Her lips moved
automatically through the Russian Orthodox blessing, leaving her mind free to wonder
again if and why and how someone might have killed them.  Innocents.  Ballet
dancers.  A fabricated Romeo, a substitute Juliet.  Tatiana opened her eyes and
shivered slightly.  A smear of blood remained on the stage beneath her, still
in the shape of a heart. 

Chapter
Four

London
– Scotland Yard

June
14, 1889

10:10 
AM

Trevor
waited until the two men were alone in his makeshift office to break the news. 
As he suspected, Rayley was not at all pleased to hear that Trevor would be
accompanying the Queen and her granddaughter on an overseas trip and thereby leaving
him in charge of the forensics unit for an unspecified span of time.

“Do
you honestly feel I’m up to the task?” Rayley asked, and then, as if to
illustrate his personal doubt of the issue, he blew his nose loudly into a
handkerchief.  Trevor patiently waited through the extended sniveling and
wiping process that followed, making it sound as if a flock of geese had
descended on Scotland Yard.   On many levels Rayley seemed fully recovered from
his period of captivity in Paris – the sharpness of his mind, at least, had
returned to normal and he even was regaining his sardonic sense of humor. But
the man seemed to have suffered from one small ailment after another since
leaving Paris, the latest being a summer cold which resulted in an impressive
variety of coughs, sniffles, and sneezes.  The big solemn eyes behind his spectacles
were rimmed in red and Trevor wondered if Rayley were sleeping properly.  Exhaustion
seemed to hover around him like mist. Granted, it was probably not the sort that
could be dispensed with a single night of rest, but one had to start somewhere,
and it had always been Trevor’s opinion that there were few problems in life which
could not be greatly mitigated by a generous slab of beef and a good night’s sleep.

“Of
course you’re up to the task,” Trevor said heartily, thinking that the
heightened responsibility might be precisely what Rayley needed.   As long as
Trevor was overseeing the unit, Rayley could float in this warm sea of ennui
indefinitely, but if he was in charge he would have no choice but to rally.  “Besides,”
Trevor added, more to the point.  “No matter how either of us feels about it, I
must go.  Her Majesty commands it, and our unit dangles in her hands like a toy. 
We can’t depend totally on the funds we raise from periodically arresting
Gerry.”

Rayley
chuckled them almost immediately grew somber. “That story of Miss Bainbridge and
her friends being mistreated during their transit to the station…Do you think
her version of events was accurate?”

“Certainly. 
Gerry may be dramatic, but I’ve never known her to be dishonest.”

“That’s
what I thought.  And do you have any guess as to who the officer in question
might be?”

“Hard
to say,” Trevor answered.  “It could have been any man on the force, even one
you’d never suspect of such crudity.  The suffragettes seem to bring out the
very worst in our gender.”

“True,
but for an officer to set upon a group of women like that, women who were clearly
middle class or better…To muffle them with their own scarves…”  Rayley broke
off from that train of thought and abruptly changed the subject.  “Where will you
be traveling with the Queen?”

“Russia.”

“Russia?”

“That’s
what I said.”

“Good
God, man, you might never come back.  Why would she want to go there?”

“She
doesn’t.  But it seems the Grandmother of Europe is now focused on the fate of
a particular granddaughter.  One of the girls from the German branch.  Alix of
Hesse, the youngest surviving child of the Queen’s dead daughter Alice, and
thus a bit of a pet, or so I take it.  And the girl has her heart set on marrying
the tsar’s oldest son.”

Rayley
snorted.  “English girls, even those come by way of Germany, have no business
marrying Russian boys.”

“Precisely
as the Queen sees it.”

“The
solution seems simple enough.  The Queen orders the girl to find someone else.”

Trevor
shrugged.  “I can only assume the situation is more complex than it appears on
the surface.  Another granddaughter is already over there, remember.  Alix’s sister
Ella.”

“Indeed. 
That’s probably what set the whole plan in motion, the older sister playing
matchmaker for the younger.  And can I assume that the tsesarevich is equally
smitten with the idea of Alix?”

Trevor
raised a questioning eyebrow at the unfamiliar word.

“Tsesarevich,”
Rayley repeated.  “It means the oldest son of the ruler, the boy next in line
for the throne.  Like our Prince of Wales.”

Trevor
puffed out his cheeks and sighed.  “The affection is almost undoubtedly mutual
to have caused Her Majesty this much consternation.  Of course she didn’t
summarize the totality of the family drama for my benefit, she just told me to
pack my bags. And I bowed and backed from the room.”

There
was a knock on the doorframe even though the door stood open.  The two men
looked up to see Davy leaning in.

“Another
summons to the Palace, Sir,” he said.

“Again?”
 Trevor frowned.  “I was just there yesterday.”

“Perhaps
this foolish trip has been cancelled,” Rayley said.

“Don’t
think so, Sir,” Davy said, so quickly that Rayley realized Trevor must have
confided in Davy before he’d said anything to him. “Because this time the
request is for both of you.”

London
- Windsor Palace

10:33
AM

The
Queen looked dourly down upon the two documents on her desk.  The first was
Ella’s letter, the one begging her to send Alix to Russia and offering
enthusiastic but vague assurances that all within St. Petersburg was well. 
You
may have heard that the people in the streets grumble,
the letter insisted,
but the serfs are like children.   When any member of the royal family
appears in public a cheer goes up so loud that seems it would rattle the
carriage off its wheels.  They love us just that much, you see.

The
Queen didn’t believe such mawkish prattle for a minute and the only real question
was whether or not Ella did.  Her brother-in-law’s formidable personality may
have swayed the girl somewhat, but the Queen still had trouble believing any
grandchild of hers could truly be so foolish. Tsar Alexander III ruled his
citizens with the proverbial iron fist, bringing it down upon them at intervals
which seemed to be dictated more by his personal moods than the demand of circumstances. 
And no people – even an impoverished and illiterate one – would bear this sort
of casual disregard forever. 

And
then, on top of Ella’s overwrought and ridiculous letter, lay a terse telegram
which had arrived this morning, and the contents of which had nudged the Queen
from merely concerned to openly alarmed.  When she had sent Ella a British lady
in waiting, she had chosen a very specific woman, one ideally suited for her
task:  persistent but discreet, experienced in the ways of the word, yet
British to the very bone.  Cynthia Kirby‘s sole function within the Winter
Palace was to observe and report. The Queen did not think in terms of intelligence
or surveillance.  She certainly would not have used the ugly word “spy” to
describe the tasks which the respectably widowed Mrs. Kirby had been sent to
perform.  After all, this was her own flesh and blood she was speaking of, the
beautiful and much-loved Ella.  But if Ella had ceased to tell her grandmother
the truth about circumstances in St. Petersburg, someone had to, and this
latest telegram had only confirmed what Victoria had long suspected.  That her
granddaughter was sitting atop a very ornate powder keg.  Royal carriages were
on the verge of being rattled, it seemed, but not by the cheers of the people.

And
finally, on the other side of the desk lay a much larger stack of papers, her
notes for the meeting with the Prime Minister.  The Queen did not personally care
for Gladstone, whom she considered a pompous prig, prone to lectures so
far-reaching that they were even sometimes insinuated toward her royal person.  But
you do not have to like a man in order to use him, and in her absence, whether
it was the three weeks she hoped for or the six weeks she feared, Gladstone’s
already sizable base of power would broaden, so they must consult on any number
of issues before she set sail.  It was exhausting to even contemplate.  Most
pilgrims must only pack their bags to travel, but when one is the Queen of
England, one must pack up an entire country.

The
Queen pondered the slow tick of the clock on the desk.  Gladstone at eleven,
the two detectives from Scotland Yard at noon.  For she now knew that merely
taking Trevor Welles would not be enough.  Mrs. Kirby’s telegram had informed
her that two dead bodies had been discovered in the Winter Palace that very
morning.  Not in the streets of St. Petersburg, where one could only assume
that corpses were piled in every gutter, but within the palace itself.  And the
mindless brutes surrounding the tsar had called their deaths a double suicide.

Victoria
knew better.  The tsar had his people and she had hers. The dead boy was not
merely a dancer, but also the brother of Gregor Krupin.  How someone with his
family connections had ever been allowed within the walls of the Winter Palace
at all was a troubling question, followed by the even more troubling one of why
he had been killed there.  And since this one young radical had gone undetected
for so long, what others might likewise have penetrated the gates, might be,
even now, within striking distance of the imperial family?  The family which
included Ella.  If she were to find the answer to these questions, Victoria
knew she would have to travel to Russia with reinforcements.   

St. 
Petersburg – Nevsky Prospekt

1:47
PM

Nevsky
Prospekt was by far the longest, widest, and busiest street in St. Petersburg
and the word that citizens most often used to describe it was ”fashionable.”  
This was an arguable point, especially for anyone accustomed to the more
consistently elegant shopping districts of London and Paris, but it was
undeniable that Nevsky Prospekt served as a perfect microcosm of the city.  Wealth
and poverty squared off like duelists in the broad white street.  Outside a
butcher shop, blood seeped onto the sidewalk, forming wide puddles which the
customers of the jeweler next door must wade through in their quest for
diamonds and pearls.  Furs in one window, guns in the next, then a shop of
honey and one of soap.  Western fashions and eastern cures for unspeakable ailments,
a patisserie and dentist back to back, so that the diners could hear the
muffled wails that accompanied extraction as they savored their tarts and rolls. 
Ladies extending a silk-gloved hand to be helped from a carriage, men extending
a grimy palm in a plea for spare coins. 

But
Vlad Ulyanov saw none of this as he stomped down the boulevard, his hands
thrust in his pockets, his head tucked down as if he were heading into a
windstorm whose power only he could feel.

Yulian
was dead.  His body was being held in the Winter Palace this very minute but
none of them dared approach to request it.  Not yet. The presumption must be
maintained that Yulian had arrived in the capital friendless and unknown.  That
his family was now traveling from the remote village of Simbirks, a journey of
two days under the best of circumstances and more likely three.  So Yulian
would lie alone in his frozen chamber until enough time had passed that Gregor
and the others could finally venture through the gates of the palace, their workingman’s
caps in hand, bowing and scraping and weeping that they had come from a great
distance to claim the body of their little brother. 

Well,
on deeper thought, Vlad conceded that Yulian was probably not totally alone. 
Presumably that unlucky little ballerina was packed in ice beside him.

Here
was the joke of it.  One of them, at least.  When Vlad had heard that it was
Yulian and not him who had been tapped to infiltrate the Winter Palace, he had
been jealous.  Granted, Yulian had a rare gift for dance, a talent which Vlad most
certainly did not share, and thus a logical vehicle which would carry him
beyond the massive gates and to the heart of the imperial enclave within.  But
Vlad could have been hired as a footman, could he not?  Someone who helped in
the kitchen, who built the fires or rubbed down the horses?  At the time it
seemed that Yulian’s selection was nothing but the rawest form of nepotism.  For
Yulian’s older brother Gregor held a high rank within the Naronaya Volya, while
Vlad’s older brother Sasha held no rank at all.

And
why did Sasha hold no rank?

Because
two years earlier he had been martyred in the same cause which had carried
Yulian into oblivion.  Yulian had been taken by the knife and Sasha by the rope,
but both of them now stood comrades in mankind’s only truly egalitarian empire,
that of death, and all the while that goddamn bastard of a tsar still lived.

When
he learned that Yulian had been murdered, Vlad was immediately sorry for the
way he had treated him, all those things he’d said about Yulian being girlish
and weak.  The two boys had joined the Naronaya Volya the same month, both part
of the appropriately-named “little brothers,” that segment of the revolutionary
group not yet at the university and thus considered too young and inexperienced
to participate in any of the truly vital work.  They ran errands, fetched
coffee and bread and vodka, absorbed the opinions of the older boys without
question.  They were kept in the dark about anything that mattered, which is
why Vlad had been one of the last to learn that Sasha was involved in a plot to
assassinate the tsar.  The idea had been to kill Alexander III on the precise
anniversary of the date his father Alexander II had been killed.  Even the notoriously
stupid imperial family could not fail to grasp the meaning of that.