Death in St. Petersburg

by Tasha Alexander

“No,” she said. “I was too far away. I would have preferred to see her later that day in Palace Square, where she’s said to have danced in the snow, but then I’ve already told you no one could do that well.”

  “Not even Nemetseva?” I asked.

  “She would never have wasted a pair of shoes trying.”

  Ekaterina Petrovna

  December 1898

  Kolya had not been especially attentive to Irusya when he returned from his foreign travels. There was no official break between them, but they were not so close as they had been. Irusya showed no outward signs of this causing her grief, but Katenka knew her friend was unhappy. So when, one Sunday morning, Katenka’s landlady brought her a message from Lev, saying he would not be able to make their weekly “pilgrimage”—his choice of word made Katenka smile—she decided she would forgo services and visit her friend instead.

  She knew that Irusya, who despised mornings, tried to force herself to wake up early on Sundays, as it was the only day she had entirely to herself. Katenka, stopping first at a bakery to buy sweet, cheese-filled vatrushkas, which Irusya adored, arrived at her friend’s door before nine o’clock. Not wanting to risk waking her in case she had decided to stay in bed, Katenka used the key Irusya had given to her when she first took the apartment. Katenka had protested, saying she didn’t need it, but Irusya had insisted. It was closer to the theatre than Katenka’s, and she might on occasion find it convenient to come there instead of going all the way home. Katenka had taken it but had never used it until now.

  She opened the door and closed it quietly behind her, hearing no sounds as she stepped into the flat. Irusya was still asleep. Katenka lit the coals in the samovar and started to prepare tea, arranging the vatrushkas on a plate while she waited for the water to heat. Once the tea was ready, she filled two cups and put them, along with a bowl of sugar cubes and the pastry, on a tray, which she carried to the bedroom. Realizing she could not open the door while holding it, she placed it on the soft carpet in the corridor and then hesitated. Should she knock?

  Of course not. So far as she knew, Kolya had never spent the night, and, regardless, they hadn’t been together for weeks. She cracked the door and retrieved the tray, pushing gently against the door with her shoulder as she made her way into the dark bedroom. She paused, waiting for her eyes to adjust, and when they did she walked toward the bed, stopping almost as soon as she had started.

  Irusya was not alone, but it was not the prince sleeping beside her; it was Lev.

  Swallowing a whoop of mingled horror and delight, Katenka retraced her steps and exited the room. Quietly, so quietly, she retreated. She closed the draft of the samovar and dumped the tea she had made into the kitchen sink. She washed out the cups and the plate on which she had put the vatrushkas and returned the pastries to the bakery box. Confident that she had left no trace of her presence, she tiptoed out of the apartment, locking the door behind her.

  The sun had not yet started to rise, but rosy hints of dawn colored the sky. Filled with an all-consuming happiness, Katenka ran back to her own flat, completely unaware of the bitterly cold air. The snow squeaked beneath her boots as she raced along the streets, her heart ready to burst. Now, at last, they could all be happy again.

  January 1900

  21

  By the end of our conversation, I was certain the pamphlets in the dressing room belonged to Sofya. After leaving her, I spoke to the two other dancers I had arranged to meet in their homes. Larisa, whose scorn at Irusya’s aristocratic lovers had concerned me, lived in a modest apartment. Her salary in the corps de ballet would not allow her to afford more, but she was unquestionably living better than Sofya. (Sofya, I decided, had selected her domicile as much to make a point as to provide shelter.) I spent half an hour with Larisa before determining that her ire was motivated by petty jealousy, not the sort that leads to murder.

  My final appointment was with Nina, a soloist. All ballerinas are slim, but Nina was so lithe she seemed more like a spirit than a person. She wore her dark hair pulled back in a bun and was dressed in a simple gown devoid of ornamentation. She did not need it, or jewelry, for that matter, as she possessed a pair of impossibly large eyes, a bewitching shade of emerald with which the most brilliant gems could not compete. She greeted me warmly, led me into her modest but elegantly furnished sitting room, and reminded me that she had entered the Imperial Theatre School at the same time as Katenka and Nemetseva. She had been on extremely friendly terms with the latter.

  “Our parents were close,” she said, passing me a slab of gingerbread cake filled with jam. “We used to play when we were little and went together the day we auditioned. I thought we would be best friends, but Irusya and I never really confided in each other; we were too young to have anything to confide.”

  “And as you got older?” I asked.

  “She took Katenka under her wing from almost the first week of school,” she said. “Katenka was so shy and had difficulty getting to know the other students. Irusya liked playing mother.”

  “Did she always look after Katenka?”

  “In her way, yes,” Nina said. “Not that Katenka required it much once we had graduated. She was disappointed by her graduation performance, as I’m sure you have already heard, and was brought into the company in the corps de ballet. Everyone had expected she would be at least a coryphée, but she remained in the corps for more than a year. I can’t remember how long exactly.”

  “Was that why Nemetseva felt she had to continue looking after her friend?” I asked.

  “Katenka was despondent for quite a while. There was nothing anyone, including Irusya, could do to improve her mood. To be honest, most of the rest of us found it rather irritating. Lots of us start in the corps. It isn’t a death sentence. But it was not all bad, for Irusya, anyway. She was distracted by falling in love.”

  “With whom? Nikolai Danilovich?”

  “The prince? Kolya? No, not he,” Nina said. “This was her first love, before she took grand lovers. He was a very sweet boy, older than us. I remember we used to watch him out the windows at school every Sunday.”

  “He is a dancer?”

  “No, no, he’s Katenka’s brother,” she said. “Her grandfather had got permission for her to go to church with her family instead of suffering through services—we had a very long-winded priest in the chapel at school. Lev Petrovich used to collect her every week and walk her to … I don’t remember which church. He was a very handsome boy with the most marvelously unruly honey-colored curls. The older girls were all madly in love with him, but then we didn’t have many options. We weren’t allowed even to socialize with the boys at school. They kept them on a separate floor.”

  This was an unexpected development. The romance would have changed the dynamic between Nemetseva and Katenka and could have had a profound effect on their friendship, especially after the relationship ended. “So they were childhood sweethearts?” I asked.

  “No, no, I was not clear,” Nina said. “Irusya did not meet Lev Petrovich until perhaps the summer before our final year as students. I cannot be exactly sure, but Katenka could tell you. Irusya’s parents invited them both to join the family at their dacha. I don’t know when they became more than friends, but I can assure you that by the time we had graduated and were dancing our first summer season at Krasnoye Selo, Irusya was madly in love.”

  “Do you know how the affair ended?”

  “I wasn’t close to Irusya when it happened. After a certain point, Lev no longer came backstage. Irusya never spoke of it, to me at least, and then she fell in love with Kolya.”

  I thanked her for her assistance and set off on my way as quickly as possible without seeming rude, ordering the driver of my hired troika to take me directly to Katenka’s apartment. She was not home. I gave myself a minute to catch my breath after having climbed the five flights of steps and, with only the slightest hesitation, used my lock-picking tools to let myself into the dancer’s flat.

  I
felt very little guilt as I searched through her belongings; she had told me too many lies. The armoire in her bedroom contained a modest wardrobe, and the chest of drawers on the opposite wall was crammed full of dance wear: cotton chemises and batiste bodices, short knickers, long pink stockings, and carefully folded practice dresses. Two boxes, one stacked on the other, stood against the wall. The bottom contained several pairs of thick cotton ballet slippers; the top, six pairs of pristine satin pointe shoes. Six more pairs of the latter hung from a row of hooks on the back of the door. They were all well used, and when I inspected them I found each contained a slip of paper with the name and date of a performance. Souvenirs. One solitary pair had not been hung, but its ribbons were wrapped around the shanks, holding the dainty shoes together. I wondered if that was the pair Katenka had worn in Swan Lake.

  I found nothing of note in the rest of the apartment, save a framed photo of her, Nemetseva, Mitya, and Lev, standing in front of a lake. She had a few books, a stack of newspapers—unread, by the look of them—and no letters at all. I was about to leave the apartment when I heard someone at the door. I waited for the sound of a key, but it did not come. After a firm rattling of the knob, knocking started.

  “Katenka, let me in,” came the voice. “It’s Lev! You told me you would be home.” He knocked harder.

  My heart pounding, I went to the door and opened it. “Mr. Sokolov, how convenient to find you here,” I said. “I’ve been hoping to have a word with you so that you might enlighten me as to your relationship with Nemetseva. Your sister neglected to mention your romantic involvement with her, and I suspect the omission was deliberate. What is she trying to hide?”

  “What are you doing here when Katenka is not home?” he asked. “Leave at once. My sister would never have failed to lock her door, so unless you can show me a key, you have broken in, and I shall summon the police.”

  He had me on shaky ground there, and although I did not doubt I could avert any problems that might arise, I preferred to avoid them altogether, particularly as the man standing in front of me shared his line of work with my husband.

  “I am investigating Nemetseva’s murder and came to inquire about your relationship with her.”

  “My relationship with her is irrelevant,” he said. “It ended long before her death.”

  His piercing eyes, icy and intense, unnerved me, but I was not dissuaded from my pursuit of the truth. “Did it end badly? Badly enough that you are not mourning her death?”

  “That is a despicable accusation,” he said.

  “I mean no offense,” I said, “although I do find it awfully strange that Katenka never mentioned your connection to her friend. Why was she hiding it?”

  “Only she can enlighten you on that point. As for me, I have always held Irusya dear in my heart. We were young when we were in love—too young, and too different. Our lives never meshed. Did she break my heart? Is that your question?” He took a step toward me, forcing me to back up against the wall. “She did, but I have never despised her for it, and I certainly did not kill her as a result.”

  “She was your sister’s professional rival.”

  “Neither of them ever viewed it that way and I will thank you for not looking for trouble where there isn’t any. This has all been difficult enough for my sister. Can’t you understand that? Her heart is broken because she has lost her dearest friend.”

  “She is trying to protect you,” I said. “That is the only reason I can conjure to explain her behavior. Why does she feel that is necessary? Could it be, perhaps, that she knows you kept your father’s naval dirk—a knife identical to the murder weapon? Or is it, in fact, the murder weapon?”

  He recoiled. “You ought not make accusations you cannot prove.”

  “Did you receive the knife after your father’s death?”

  “Of course I did. Who else would inherit it? But I haven’t seen or thought about it in years. We sold nearly everything after my grandfather died. His debts were not inconsiderable.” He drew his eyebrows together. “I assume that you searched the flat after breaking in. Have you found anything that suggests where my sister may be? She was expecting me and it is not like her to miss an appointment. Perhaps your presence scared her off. It’s clear what you think of me, but I wonder what, exactly, have you been accusing her of?”

  He did not wait for my reply, instead turning sharply on his heel and slamming the door behind him as he left. I could hear his boots on the stairs. I leaned against the wall, considering his words. Katenka may never have chosen this outcome, but could her brother have orchestrated it on her behalf without her knowledge? Or had she asked him to eliminate her rival without realizing how profoundly the crime would affect her emotionally. In such a case, one could say that she had not chosen this outcome in particular. I gave little credence to his claim that he bore no ill will to his former love. What else would he say when being confronted? Still, I doubted that he would have acted alone so many years after the relationship ended. Something else would have had to catalyze his action—if he took any—and what better impetus than to invigorate his sister’s languishing career? If he avenged an old hurt in the process, so much the better.

  I went down to my waiting troika, bracing myself against the cold wind that nearly ripped my hat off my head, and instructed the driver to return me to the hotel. Nothing I’d discovered about Nemetseva’s personal life provided in and of itself an adequate motive for murder. And as for the professional, I kept recalling Agrippina Aleksandrovna’s words: Irusya did everything she could to forward her friend’s career. Even die. I was still musing them when I arrived at the hotel and hardly heard the concierge call out to me when I entered the hotel lobby.

  “Lady Emily! There is a gentleman waiting to see you. He is in the lounge across from the restaurant. Would you like to meet him there, or should I send him up to your suite? Of course, if you would prefer I send him away, I will do that without delay.”

  Sebastian! He was the last person I wanted to see right now, although a small—very small—part of me was tempted to ask him what he would have done had he encountered Katenka’s brother at her apartment. No doubt he would tell me he would never have got caught.

  “Forgive me, madame, I did not tell you the gentleman’s name,” the concierge continued. “It is Prince Vasilii Ruslanovich Guryanov.”

  “Oh! Is it?” This was a surprise. “I’ll go to him in the lounge. Could you send my coat up to my room?” He helped me out of it and then took my hat, gloves, and muff. I thanked him and went to the lounge, where Vasilii was sitting alone at a table, drinking a cup of coffee, an open newspaper in front of him. He leapt to his feet when he saw me and stepped forward as if he meant to embrace me. I moved out of the line of fire, so to speak, and took the seat across from the one he had occupied.

  “You know why I am here, of course. I came the instant I heard the news. You cannot imagine what joy it brings me to have this matter settled so well and so quickly.” He frowned, but his expression did not dim the shine in his eyes. I had never seen them look so alive. “Well, perhaps settled well is not quite correct. It is not the outcome for which any of us would have hoped, Irusya in particular.”

  I had not the slightest idea what he could possibly mean. “I’m afraid I’m quite at sea. You’ll have to explain.”

  “Yes, I see your point. I suppose Irusya wouldn’t have known, and I am grateful that in her final moments she was not faced with the knowledge of her friend’s heinous betrayal.”

  “Vasilii, I had no point,” I said. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Can it be that you’ve not heard? Katenka presented herself at the office of the judicial investigator and confessed to Irusya’s murder.”

  “She did?” I reeled with confusion, although it did explain why she had not kept her appointment with her brother. “But she couldn’t have killed—”

  “She did not strike the fatal blows herself,” he said. “She hired someone else to do
that, a ruffian who was passing through her neighborhood.”

  “I had considered that possibility but did not think … this is quite a shock.” She had so little money; there was only one person whom she could have turned to for assistance in the crime.

  “None of us would have suspected her,” he said. He seized both my hands across the table. “I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your assistance. She may not have confessed to you, but there can be no doubt that your work is what drove her to turn herself in. You did what I asked with more expertise than I could ever have hoped for. Thank you, Lady Emily. I cannot get my Irusya back, but at least now I shall see justice served.”

  “I’m afraid I cannot take the credit, Vasilii, I—”

  “You must call me Vasik, and there is no need for such modesty, not among friends. And I do hope you consider me your friend now.”

  “You’re very kind,” I said, still unconvinced that it was all over so suddenly. “But I assure you I am not being modest. I am glad, though, that you will have your justice. I can see in your eyes the peace it brings you.” Truly, I could. He looked much improved: his eyes brighter, his complexion less sallow.

  “If there is ever any service, small or otherwise, I can provide for you, promise me you will not hesitate to ask. I owe you everything and shall never forget that. May I order you some tea? Or perhaps the occasion calls for champagne?”

  “No, thank you, I—”

  “But I am being an absolute beast,” he said. “I all but accosted you on your way to your rooms. You’re probably in the midst of something. I shan’t trouble you any longer, but please do accept my deepest thanks. I hope you will save a dance for me at the imperial ball.” He bowed neatly and smiled after me as I left the lounge.

  Our suite was empty. Colin had left a note saying he was embroiled in something complicated and would be back late. Still confounded by Vasilii’s news, I rang Cécile at Masha’s and asked her to come to me. They had already heard about Katenka’s confession and arrest and wanted me to go to them so that I might regale them with further details, but I declined. Cécile, knowing me as she did, recognized something not quite right in my voice. She was at my side within half an hour.