Death in St. Petersburg

by Tasha Alexander

  After traversing an exhibit devoted to more arms and armor, he mounted a narrow marble staircase that took us to the first floor. He strode past magnificent paintings by Rembrandt and Rubens without so much as pausing and all but sprinted through at least two galleries filled with Dutch and Flemish masterpieces to a corridor that connected the building of the New Hermitage to that of the Small Hermitage, the first gallery space built for Catherine the Great.

  This area of the museum was considerably less crowded than those through which we had just passed. As a result, we had to take more care to avoid his seeing us. Cécile accomplished this by walking more slowly and allowing herself to fall far behind me, confident she could easily enough keep me in her sights. I, however, had to employ a different strategy. How I wished depositing one’s outwear at the museum’s extremely convenient cloakrooms was not compulsory! My fur hat would have gone a long way in helping me disguise myself.

  Having no ready method of changing my appearance, I had to rely only on my wits. I pulled a slim Baedeker guide, Russland—no English edition was yet available—from my handbag and held it so that it partially blocked my face. We were in a long, narrow gallery full of paintings featuring views of St. Petersburg. I did my best to look rapt with attention, so that if Lev spotted me, it would appear that I was nothing more than an ordinary tourist.

  When he reached the end of the room, he paused before continuing into the next. His manner was casual and indifferent as he looked up and down the space. There were only two other parties in the gallery: a mother and daughter and a group of German students. I did not count Cécile, who was hovering on the far side of the entranceway. I gave every appearance of studying a large canvas, moving my eyes back and forth between the painting and my raised guidebook.

  Lev gave no sign of having recognized me and continued to move toward a door on the western wall. Then—I peeked over my book to watch—he nimbly opened it—it looked as if he used a key to unlock it—and passed through, closing it behind him. I waited a few beats and then motioned for Cécile to come to me. We tried to follow, but, as I suspected, the door through which he had exited was locked.

  Knowing that pulling out my lock-picking tools would most likely be frowned upon by the museum staff, I left them in my bag and crossed to one of the room’s windows.

  “He has gone into the Winter Palace,” I said, frustrated. The buildings of the palace and the museum were connected.

  “You are looking for the Winter Palace?” One of the German students had wandered near enough to hear us talking. “You may enter through there.” He pointed to the adjacent room, a gallery lined with portraits of the members of the house of Romanov. “It is accessible when the imperial family is not in residence.”

  I thanked him, and Cécile and I followed his directions. Near the passageway that led to the palace, we saw Catherine the Great’s instructions for all those viewing her galleries, admonishing that everyone “has on entering to leave his title, hat, and sword outside.”

  “Would it not have made better sense to post that at the museum entrance rather than here?” Cécile asked.

  “In Catherine’s day, the Hermitage was not open to the public,” I said. “Those she admitted would have entered through here, having come from the palace.”

  We emerged from a beautifully decorated little room into the spectacular and vast Hall of St. George, the emperor’s throne room. This would impress even the most cynical foreign ambassador. Its Carrara marble Corinthian columns supported a long gallery, and the sun flooded in through two tiers of windows, scattering light over an exquisitely detailed parquet floor fashioned from sixteen different kinds of wood. At the far end stood the imperial throne on a dais, above which St. George, in marble bas-relief, victorious and mounted on his horse, looked ready to defend the tsar.

  The doors on either side of the throne opened into the Military Gallery, where hung portraits of all the generals who fought Napoleon in 1812. We turned left, heading in the direction of Palace Square, as that would put us nearer to where Lev had exited the Hermitage, and soon we found ourselves in the midst of a series of rooms that looked like living quarters.

  “Excuse me, mesdames,” a liveried servant said, seeming to have appeared out of nowhere. “I am afraid this is a private area. You ought to have turned into the Armorial Hall. I shall show you.” He bowed and motioned for us to follow him.

  “We’re quite lost,” I said. “We hadn’t intended to leave the Hermitage.” I, of course, was not lost, but saw no sense in winding through the imperial state rooms, as I doubted very much that we would find Lev in them. “Could you tell us the way back?”

  His directions were difficult to follow, partly because the building was so immense. Rumor had it that earlier in the century, a peasant had moved his entire family into the top floor of the palace without anyone noticing until the smell of his cow, which he had also brought, gave them away. My feet felt like lead by the time we had made our way back through the Hermitage. Having both lost Lev and run out of time to explore the museum, we returned to the coat check to collect our belongings and found Colin there, sitting for us on a bench. When he saw us, he closed the slim volume of Pushkin’s poetry he had been reading.

  “I found myself nearby and thought you would want to know without delay what I’ve learned about Lev, particularly as you are planning to interview some of the dancers this afternoon. I knew I should never find you in the vast expanse of the galleries, so thought I would wait for you here.”

  “It is the most delightful surprise to see you, Monsieur Hargreaves, reading verse and looking very much like a poet yourself,” Cécile said. “Byron was not nearly so attractive as you.”

  “Don’t distract him with flattery,” I said. “Let him tell us what he knows.”

  Colin smiled and his eyes danced. “We can discuss Byron another time, Cécile. I shall look forward to it. For now, though, we will restrict ourselves to a more mundane subject. Katenka’s brother is affiliated with the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class—as is the man who confessed to killing the Yusupovs’ maid. Several of their members, including their leader, were arrested and exiled five years ago. They were publishing an illegal newspaper and organized a strike that resulted in the working day being limited to eleven and a half hours.”

  “That doesn’t sound particularly alarming,” I said. Cécile murmured agreement.

  “In and of itself, it isn’t,” Colin said. “But the league believe that workers will never be treated fairly so long as the tsar is ruling Russia.”

  “And that, obviously, could lead to far more radical action,” I said.

  “Precisely,” Colin replied. “As I have mentioned before, it appears one faction within the group is first seeking change without resorting to violence. Should that fail, however, I do not doubt they will become more extreme.”

  “And this, no doubt, is why Katenka hesitates to tell us anything about her brother?” I asked.

  “I believe so,” Colin said. “It would be dangerous for him, and for her as well. Her position in the theatre could be threatened by her association with someone like him.”

  “What legitimate business, Monsieur Hargreaves, can a man with such views have in the Winter Palace?”

  “None, Cécile. None.”

  Perhaps Katenka was right to worry about her brother. Perhaps she was right to try to protect him, even if it meant lying to me. Regardless, I could no longer entertain the notion that what was best for her, and by extension for him, would help solve Nemetseva’s murder.

  Ekaterina Petrovna

  June 1898

  How quickly things changed in those next weeks! It was as if Mitya’s return had heralded a new era, one ruled by confidence and hope rather than insecurity and despair. Katenka’s dancing now reliably reflected her talent, and she could feel a shift in the way her colleagues looked at her. She would not be trapped in the corps de ballet much longer. At least that was what Sofya s
aid; Katenka could not bring herself to voice the thought aloud, fearing the possibility might vanish the moment she spoke it. But in her heart she knew her friend was correct, especially after Petipa cast her as the fairy Candide in Sleeping Beauty, which would be performed during the summer season at Krasnoye Selo.

  Her good fortune was in part due to the fact that Mathilde Kschessinska was engaged to perform in Warsaw and would not be dancing at Krasnoye Selo that summer. With her gone, Irusya, who had established herself in the prior season when Pierina Legnani was ill, had a second chance to distinguish herself in leading roles. At last, she would play Aurora.

  While warming up at the barre before class one morning, Sofya was complaining to Katenka and Irusya about a count who had been trying, unsuccessfully, to flirt with her for weeks. “As if I could be interested in anyone so stuffy,” she said. “I’d prefer someone more like Katenka’s Mitya. Or her brother.”

  “You know Lev?” Irusya stopped mid-plié.

  Sofya placed her hands on the barre, turned her feet out in first position, and started to bend backward. “He’s Mitya’s best friend, so of course I do. It’s impossible to miss him.”

  “He’s back in Petersburg?” Irusya asked and then lowered her voice, staring at the ground. “I know I have no right to inquire.”

  “He is for now,” Katenka said. “He’s abandoned bookselling for politics.”

  Irusya smiled and returned to her pliés. “He always was an idealist. I suppose that will never change.”

  “I wouldn’t dismiss him as an idealist,” Sofya said. “His beliefs are quite profound.” Finished with her backbend, she lifted one leg in front of her and rested it on the barre before stretching over it.

  “I never suggested they weren’t,” Irusya said. “But no doubt you are better acquainted with him and his ideas now than I.”

  “Forgive me,” Sofya said. “I forgot that you—”

  “It is of no consequence,” Irusya said. “He has every reason to despise me now.”

  “Lev could never despise you,” Katenka said, lowering herself into the splits.

  “Can you mean that, Katenka?” Irusya asked.

  “Of course,” Katenka said. “I know it for a fact. You may have broken his heart, Irusya, but he is incapable of thinking ill of you.”

  January 1900

  19

  I took my leave from Colin and Cécile in front of the museum. He would escort her back to Masha’s while I walked to the Mariinsky, burying my hands in my thick fur muff and delighting in the crunch of snow beneath my boots. Mr. Chernov, the theatre manager, greeted me warmly. Without directly mentioning the pamphlets Sebastian had seen in Nemetseva’s dressing room, I asked him about the company and politics. He emphatically, if nervously, denied any knowledge of the dancers dabbling in politics, insisting that they wouldn’t have time for such things. I thought it unlikely anyone would willingly admit to holding radical positions, but that would not necessarily prevent me from detecting undertones of political leanings. Mr. Chernov, I was confident, held no views to which the government would object. I also asked him who shared Nemetseva’s dressing room. He looked relieved at the question, as if happy to have something that could be answered with ease, and told me that Nemetseva had invited Katenka and Sofya Guryevna Pashkova into her private space.

  Finally, I asked him if he had any inkling as to the identity of the ghostly dancer who had captured the city’s attention. He frowned, and told me in no uncertain terms that he could not imagine any member of the company stooping to such a thing. I thanked him, and he offered his office so that I might conduct the rest of my interviews in private. Once again, I met with each of the dancers in turn. None of them gave away even the slightest hint as to their political beliefs.

  Yuri Melnikov, Nemetseva’s partner, was the last person I saw in Mr. Chernov’s office. He had proved not to have any useful information when I spoke to him before, but now I had specific questions for him. He admitted that one’s relationship with one’s partner was quite intimate. Not romantically, but emotionally. He and Nemetseva had been close since their school days. I asked him about Lev, and he smirked.

  “I’m the only one in the company who ever noticed him,” he said. “Apart from Katenka, of course. He came around a lot in our early days. I remember him from our first summer season. I kept an eye on him because I worried that if the relationship ended badly, it could impact Nemetseva’s dancing, but it didn’t. She threw him over and then fell in love with someone else and someone else again after him. No one broke her heart until that last one.”

  “The prince?” I asked. “Nikolai Danilovich Ukhov?”

  “She always called him Kolya. He nearly destroyed her, but I needn’t have worried about her dancing. Heartbreak only improved her artistry.”

  “Was there anyone after him?”

  “She never mentioned anyone else, but I always suspected her of being in love. She was too happy. There was no other explanation for it.”

  “She never told you who it was?” I asked.

  “No, and no one else either. I badgered Katenka about it more than once. Irusya became a master of discretion. No one in the company, Katenka and me excepted, even suspected she was in love.”

  I had waited to speak with Katenka until I’d finished with the others and went to her dressing room rather than summoning her to me. She smiled wanly when she saw me, barely looking up from the ribbons she was sewing onto a pair of pointe shoes.

  “More questions?” she asked.

  I had debated again and again the merits of asking her about the pamphlets, but in the end resolved not to. I couldn’t believe anything she told me about them and was more likely to see her inadvertently reveal something in her reaction to something else: the knife.

  “Just a single one, about an item that belonged to your father. A dagger—a naval dirk, to be precise. Have you any idea what happened to it after his death?”

  “Not at all. I was very young when he died.”

  “I imagine your brother took possession of it. If not immediately, then perhaps after your mother died.”

  She flushed, slightly. “I can’t recall ever seeing such a thing,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Someone left a blood-covered knife of just this sort at my hotel, and subsequent investigation suggests it is the murder weapon. I recall you telling me that you and your brother were forced to sell most of your family’s possessions after your grandfather’s death, but surely you would not have parted with a memento of your father? Particularly as you were able to keep a significant amount of furniture.”

  She sat very still, the needle and thread frozen in her hand, and all the color drained from her face. “As I said, I don’t remember seeing any knife.”

  “That’s not altogether surprising,” I said. “It’s the sort of thing more likely to be given to a son than a daughter. As I suggested before, your brother probably has it.”

  “Lev has no connection to any of this,” she said. “What do you mean to imply with these questions?”

  “Nothing at all. Of course, should he still have the dagger, it would prove once and for all that it wasn’t the one used to kill Nemetseva. You might want to ask him about it.” I was exaggerating. Him being in possession of the dagger did not preclude it from being the murder weapon. The one I had received could, theoretically, be a fraud, but Katenka did not know that, and I was hoping to goad her into giving something away. I took my leave from her without giving her any reassurance, hoping that any unease she now felt would, eventually, lead her to be more open with me, at least so far as her brother was concerned.

  * * *

  Colin and I had ordered dinner to be sent up to our suite that evening, not wanting to risk another interruption by our eager and verbose German friend. When we finished eating, we moved from the dining table to a sofa in the sitting room, where Colin poured port, my preferred after-dinner drink, for us both.

  “Your day was productive,
” he said. “Do we have any other matters of business to which we must attend?”

  “I think we have covered everything,” I said.

  “With our usual efficiency. Whatever shall we do to occupy ourselves for the rest of the evening? It’s too late to go to the opera.”

  “Chess?” I asked, raising an eyebrow as I recognized both the tone that had crept into his voice and the heat in his eyes. “I know how you love the game.”

  “An excellent suggestion,” he said removing from my hand the glass of port I had been holding and putting it on a table. “But I don’t recall seeing a board here.”

  “We could call down to the desk. I’m sure they could locate one for us.”

  “If you’d like,” he said, kissing the side of my neck. “If, on the other hand—”

  Once again we were interrupted by a knock.

  “If that is Capet, I swear I will—”

  “Don’t say something you’ll regret,” I said, and went to answer the door before he did, just in case. I found not Sebastian but, instead, a very tall, very grand-looking man in an officer’s uniform.

  “Hargreaves,” he said, walking past without so much as acknowledging my existence. “I apologize for disturbing you but felt I should come at once.”

  “Think nothing of it. I understand urgency all too well,” Colin said. “May I present my wife, Lady Emily Hargreaves? Emily, this is an old colleague of mine, Ilya Tabokov.”

  I smiled politely at our guest and offered him a drink, which he refused.

  “Might we speak privately, Hargreaves?”

  I excused myself, but I did not like it. Something about Mr. Tabokov irritated me; most likely the way he dismissed me as if I were a child. I went into the bedroom but did not close the door all the way, leaving it cracked open enough that I could hear the gentlemen’s conversation. Colin’s colleague may have wanted privacy, but not enough to bother keeping his voice low. He had come to discuss Lev Petrovich Sokolov, Katenka’s brother.