City of Silence (City of Mystery)

by Kim Wright

  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.

  The symmetry of the plan had been perfect; the execution, less so. Fifteen university students were caught within minutes of leaving the grounds of the school. Ten of them had talked, and lived. Five of them, including Sasha, had refused to divulge particulars or name comrades, and thus had swung from the gallows.

  Sasha’s death was the first horrible thing – perhaps also the first significant thing - which had ever happened in Vlad’s life. He had adored his brother, so much so that their mother loved to tell the story of how when Vlad was merely four she had asked him if he would prefer to take his oatmeal with butter or milk and he had replied “Like Sasha.” No matter what the question, throughout the subsequent years this had always been Vlad’s answer. He would do it like Sasha.

  Having approached the perimeters of the palace some blocks back, Vlad paused at one of the gates and considered the iron bars. The bottoms were thick and utilitarian while each top was sculpted into the shape of a Romanov eagle and dipped in gold. He peered within, pushing his face against the fence like a child. In the summer the copse of trees surrounding the palace created a thick green curtain that was nearly impossible to see through, and yet he knew well enough the size and shape of the building beyond. The guard posted to this particular entrance glanced at him without interest.

  The executions had been carried out so swiftly that Sasha had probably never known the lengths his mother had gone to in her efforts to save his life. Vlad hoped he did not know. To plead for mercy in a worthwhile cause is a failure of principle. To plead for mercy unsuccessfully is the ultimate humiliation. But Vlad did not blame his parents. They were bourgeois. French was a disgusting sounding language in general, but he had always considered that word, bourgeois, to b
e the ugliest of then all, and the revolution had taught him that families of the middle class are susceptible to a very specific type of fantasy: the belief in gradual progress. His parents had been delighted when Sasha was accepted at St. Petersburg University. A move upward, a step in the right direction, a path that Vlad might someday follow. They could not have imagined that the young intelligentsia of Russia had become a fiercely malcontented lot, more concerned with dismantling the world than prospering in it, or that Sasha, more through kindness than in sham, would be careful to hide his evolving political beliefs from his affectionate mama and papa. So when the police had come knocking at the door on that spring morning two years ago, shouting that their oldest son had been arrested in a botched assassination attempt, this unexpected news was more than Vlad’s parents could grasp. His father had gone into his study and shut the door. His mother had sat down at the kitchen table and begun writing a letter to the tsar.

  A letter to the tsar. Only the most innocent of women would believe such a missive would ever be delivered or read and besides, what would it have said? Yes, my son tried to shoot you, but he’s a good boy, really. He just fell in with the wrong sort of crowd at school.

  Fifteen year old Vlad had silently stood among the weeping, and for the first time had seen his own life clearly. His parents believed that history was linear, that events moved at a steady pace, much like a military parade. They believed that those who ruled deserved to rule and thus that the world they created was understandable and fair. They may has well have believed in fairy tales. After her letter to the tsar had been posted, Vlad’s mother had wrapped a loaf of the dark rye bread that had been Sasha’s favorite in a cloth and gone straight to the jail, begging to see her son, pleading for an interview with the panel which had condemned him.