by Kim Wright
A silence fell on the table. Trevor noticed that the Queen’s lips had grown thin and her jaw was tense. She had certainly been aware of the events Emma described but revisiting the details seemed to have stirred up a variety of emotions. Victoria had been fortunate enough to escape an assassination attempt early in her own reign and had from that time nursed an unhealthy interest – some might say obsession –with the subject of murdered politicians.
“Is there any way of knowing where young Nicholas stands on these matters?” Trevor asked the Queen. “His grandfather was a reformer, his father a traditionalist. It seems the boy would have to lean one way or the other.”
Tom reached to splash a bit more sherry into his glass. Very bad form in front of the Queen, but the servants had all been banished from the room and she did not appear to notice. She was frowning at the tablecloth before her, evidently deep in thought.
“There is no way of knowing what, if anything, Nicky thinks,” Victoria finally said. “I gather he is rather sheltered, young for his age, and that his father has done a remarkably ineffective job of preparing his eldest son to rule according to any political philosophy at all.”
A slight but awkward pause fell across the table and Rayley’s eyes briefly met those of Trevor. The precise same charge had been laid against Victoria herself, that she had allowed the fiftyish Prince of Wales to remain a gadabout schoolboy, not to mention his son, the even more wretched Eddy. There’s something about these monarchs with all their power, Trevor thought. This power that they are reluctant to release even to their own children. Perhaps they believe that if they never acknowledge their mortality, it shall never come to pass.
“They call the tsar “The Bear,” do they not?” Tom asked, knowing that sometimes an awkward silence is best smoothed by asking a question to which everyone already knows the answer.
“They do indeed,” Emma said promptly, “and the assassination of his father has stamped the entire reign of Alexander III. He is the proverbial iron-fisted ruler - suspicious of outsiders, preoccupied with the idea that his father’s cruel fate might await him or other members of his family. His fears are undoubtedly warranted, for social unrest in Russia is extraordinarily high and the poverty of the serfs is more profound than ever.”
“Yet in her letters my granddaughter Ella assures me that all is safe and calm in St. Petersburg,” the Queen said. “I know this to be untrue, both from an awareness of the facts Miss Kelly has so neatly summarized and from my own intelligence sources around the city.” The Queen gave a bark of laughter, a sound with more anger than humor. “And sometimes Ella herself slips up in her letters, providing details which clearly show the excessive precautions which are undertaken in an effort to protect them all. Guards in such number that I sometimes suspect the entire imperial family lives under a type of very well-appointed siege, all but hostages within the walls of the Winter Palace. Then, as if I needed any more proof of my suspicions, this came.” She reached for a pile of papers on the table beside her, evidently placed there by a servant before departing, and slowly brought her eyeglasses to her face, carefully tucking the wires around her plump ears.
In the silence that followed as the Queen flipped through the papers, Emma was aware they were all holding their breath.
“Will you read this aloud for the group, Detective?” the Queen asked, handing what appeared to be a telegram to Rayley. “It arrived two days ago from Cynthia Kirby, the British woman serving as lady-in-waiting to my granddaughter Ella.”
Although startled to have been singled out, Rayley adjusted his own glasses and unfolded the thin yellow paper.
Two ballet dancers from royal troupe found dead this morning in theater of Winter Palace. Stop. Playing Romeo and Juliet. Stop. Throats cut. Stop. Royal police treating as double suicide. Stop. Boy is Yulian Krupin, brother of Gregor. Stop.
“And what do you think of that?” asked the Queen. “Please speak without inhibition, and Detective Welles, we wish you to lead the discussion.”
“It’s odd,” said Davy, surprising everyone by going first.
“What’s odd about it?” Trevor asked.
“It’s more than twenty words.”
Laughter ran around the table. “Our young officer Mabrey has a mania for holding his telegrams to twenty words,” Trevor explained to the Queen. “If the crown is ever bankrupted, I can assure you it won’t be because Scotland Yard is sending overly long messages.”
“May I ask if you know who this Gregor Krupin is, Ma’am?” said Rayley. “That’s obviously the key part of the telegram.”
“Of course I know who he is,” the Queen said, folding her arms across her ample stomach, “as I suspect Miss Kelly does as well.” She looked directly at Emma. “Would you illuminate the gentlemen?”
“Indeed, Ma’am,” Emma said, her mind racing as she attempted to collect her thoughts. Much of her study over the last few days had come from the extensive notes of Britain’s foremost expert on Russia, a professor at Cambridge who often served as a consultant to the Yard. He had produced two files at Trevor’s request, one marked “The Official History” and the other “The Real History.” Both had been bulging, full of long Russian names, and Emma had struggled to digest the information within. But the lines about Krupin leapt up from her subconscious mind, like trout from a stream.
“As we’ve suggested, Alexander II was right to be concerned that the same revolutionaries who murdered his father might take aim at him as well,” she said calmly, her eyes flitting around the table at the kind and familiar faces of her friends before at last settling on Trevor, who was nodding with a small encouraging smile. “Gregor Krupin was one of several revolutionaries who were arrested two years ago in an assassination attempt on the present tsar. It was a band of university students and very badly planned, so much so it is doubtful the tsar was ever in significant danger. Five of the plotters were hanged, convicted on testimony provided by Krupin.”
“So he’s a turncoat to his own cause,” Trevor said. “Was he jailed?”
“No,” the Queen said shortly. “They do things differently there. Our understanding is that he is still free in the streets and still involved in radical causes. His surviving comrades do not appear to know that he is the one who – what is the phrase, Detective?”
“Sold them out?” Trevor guessed.
The Queen sat back. “Indeed.”
“So the dead ballet dancer is the brother of a known revolutionary,” Rayley mused. “No one in the tsar’s guard was aware of that fact before he was allowed inside the gates of the Winter Palace?”
“From what I gather from Ella’s letters, the guards are shockingly inept,” the Queen said, with a slight quaver in her voice. “They seem to arrive just after a crime has occurred but never before. And the Russian authorities do not keep the sort of records that are kept by the London police.”
Trevor nodded. “This is part of the problem we shall face in St. Petersburg. Your Majesty, everyone at this table knows the frustration I felt during our time in Paris last April, when our efforts to apprehend an escaped British criminal were thwarted by the lack of continuity between Scotland Yard and the French police. Shared intelligence and records among all nations is absolutely essential to the future of investigative police work.”
“Truly, Welles? I’ve never heard you mention such,” Tom said drily. Laughter went around the group and even Victoria smiled. Trevor’s obsession with the idea of an international police intelligence agency rivaled the Queen’s obsession with assassinations.
“Very well,” Trevor said, holding up his hands. “I shall save the sermon for Sunday. But the point is that the situation in Russia is even worse. The police forces in various cities do not communicate with each other and even the districts of a single large city like St. Petersburg act each as an independent unit. Which means that if a criminal escapes capture in one district he could simply walk a few blocks and begin his nefarious activities anew. I’m surprised the entire
country isn’t in chaos.”
The Queen slightly lifted one eyebrow but remained silent.
Rayley leaned in. “May I ask, Ma’am, if the tsar’s own guard was unaware of this young ballet dancer’s suspicious family background, how a lady-in-waiting would come to gain this information?”
She nodded. “As you have undoubtedly guessed, Mrs. Kirby is more than simply a lady-in-waiting. Because of our concerns for our granddaughter’s safety there are a certain number of people in St. Petersburg who have been sent by the crown to guarantee –“ Here she broke off, as if suddenly struggling with emotion. “No one can guarantee the safety of anyone else,” she said, correcting herself. “But we have taken steps to lessen the degree of risk.”
“And may I ask if your granddaughter is aware of the true purpose of Mrs. Kirby’s presence?” Trevor said.
‘She is not,” said the Queen, her composure swiftly restored. “Ella believes Mrs. Kirby to be nothing more than a British widow, traveling to escape the sadness of her husband’s death. In fact in her letters she complains that the woman is tedious and ordinary. She would be surprised to learn that Mrs. Kirby is…what did you call her, Detective?”
“A crack shot with a pistol,” Trevor said.
“A crack shot,” the Queen repeated slowly. “We have learned so many marvelous new phrases during our consultations with Detective Welles. At times one almost feels like an American.”
“Is there any chance that the fact Gregor and Yulian were brothers is coincidental?” Tom asked. “It’s possible that the ballet dancer wanted nothing to do with the revolutionary’s sordid past as evidenced by the fact he assumed a quite different line or work.”
The Queen’s eyes flickered. “The Crown does not believe in coincidence.”
“Nor does Scotland Yard,” Trevor hastened to assure her. “Especially now that the boy has been found dead. I wonder that the guard, even if they are as inept as Your Majesty suggests, was so quick to deem the deaths as suicide.”
“The fact they were playing Romeo and Juliet does suggest it,” Tom said, seemingly unembarrassed even after being refuted so thoroughly in his last theory. “I’d be very curious to hear how the bodies were found, what sort of knife was used, which of them appeared to have died first.”
“You shall have the chance,” said the Queen. “For this is why we have asked you all to travel with us.” She looked steadily at each person in turn as she spoke. “When we arrive in St. Petersburg you must appear to be our personal guards, our doctor and messenger, and Alix’s governess. We must observe perfect protocol and do nothing to contradict the theories and beliefs of our hosts.” She grimaced. “When the time comes for it, I shall even curtsy to the tsar and his wife. But our true mission is to learn how a violent revolutionary group managed to get one of their members within the gates of the Winter Palace and living in the midst of the imperial family. We must uncover what Yulian Krupin’s hidden purpose was inside the palace, why he was killed, how, and by whom.”
A stunned silence fell on the group. Trevor and Rayley looked at each other and Rayley shook his head. They had spent the last three days speculating on Her Majesty’s true reason for insisting the entire forensics team accompany her to St. Petersburg. The crown had dozens of trained bodyguards she might have more logically brought along if her only aim was self-protection, so obviously Victoria anticipated a different role for the men from Scotland Yard. They had imagined it to be something along the lines of digging up dirt on the Romanovs, giving the Queen more ammunition to shoot down Alix’s desire to marry Nicky. But to now hear that they were expected to solve a double murder in a land not their own, one where they had no authority and no logical reason to be asking the kinds of questions a murder investigation would require…
“What of the bodies?” Trevor ventured.
“By now they have mostly likely been claimed and buried,” the Queen said with a quick nod. “Which we appreciate is a disadvantage from a forensic standpoint.”
“It’s the ultimate disadvantage,” Tom said bluntly. “We’re starting with no physical evidence at all.”
“And since they deemed them as suicides, any police reports we should manage to lay claim to would be cursory and incomplete,” said Trevor. He was obliged to serve the Queen, but this seemed like an impossible request.
“Then you shall have to be very clever indeed,” the Queen said. She looked around the table with understanding, even compassion. “I know the task sounds daunting, but it is not required that you build the sort of case which would be strong enough to bring a killer to justice in a British court. These deaths are a Russian matter and not our concern. Instead we are asking you to make an evaluation. Russia is a dangerous place, but just how dangerous? If the revolutionaries managed to place one man within the palace could they do it again?”
“You want to know if it’s safe for Alix to marry Nicky and live there,” Emma confirmed.
The Queen looked at her with such intensity that Emma blinked and dropped her own eyes. “Alix is most certainly not going to marry Nicky and live there,” she said. “Upon my life, she shall never be Tsarina Alexandra of Russia with the insupportable burdens such a title implies. The question is whether or if will prove necessary to extricate Ella as well.”
“We shall devote ourselves to finding the answer,” Trevor said. For once he felt he was reassuring a grandmother, and not a Queen.
“You must,” Victoria said, and her enormous blue eyes drooped nearly closed, as if she no longer had the heart to look at the world around her. “For my blood runs cold when I think of what could happen to my girls in Russia.”
Chapter Seven
St. Petersburg, the Winter Palace
June 18, 1889
2:27 PM
It is not a difficult thing to be an imperial spy. If one wishes to gain details of the intimate lives of powerful people, all one really must do is befriend their servants. Cynthia Kirby had not been in St. Petersburg for a week before she knew that the Grand Duchess Ella’s personal maid liked apricot jam, and was furthermore vulnerable to the charms of French cologne and American tobacco. In the afternoons, when Ella napped, her British lady in waiting and her Russian maid would sit in one of the courtyards located adjacent to her suite of rooms, sometimes sharing a cigarette, sometimes just talking. By the time April had gone to May and then to June, they had swapped all the stories of their girlhoods and of their long departed husbands, and moved on to the gossip of the present. Gossip which primarily circled around the lady they both served and, most specifically, the sad state of her marriage.
The halls and rooms of the Winter Palace were so numerous and labyrinthine that when she had first arrived, Cynthia had despaired that she would ever learn her way around them. So it had been a shock to realize that there was an additional unseen structure within the visible one, an entire second layer of halls, tunnels, and staircases, vital passageways concealed like veins beneath the skin. Sometimes these passageways served a utilitarian function, such as allowing food to be transferred swiftly from the great kitchen to the private suites, or to permit soiled laundry and other refuse to be carted away without its foul presence assaulting the sensibilities of the people who had created it. Sometimes these halls served as conduits of intrigue, the means by which a man might visit his mistress or his wife slip her own lover from her apartments upon his return. They also provided an extra buffer of protection, being the primary means by which the imperial guard came and went, keeping them unobtrusive and yet close to the tsar and his family.
In fact, one could argue that this network of tunnels, halls, and stairways – which the servants collectively called “the web” - was where the true drama of the palace was played out. It was the route by which Katya and Yulian had been carried away on the morning their bodies had been found, transferred from the theater to the icehouse where they were now entombed. It was how Tatiana Orlov had first found a way to meet Konstantin Antonovich, how the young grand dukes w
ere routinely escorted back to their rooms by their attendants after an especially raucous night of gambling and drink.
And it was the way that Ella’s husband Serge left her bedroom every night.
The three acts of their evening theatrical followed as such: First, Serge would approach the door of Ella’s apartments through the public areas, often taking some special pains to announce to anyone within earshot that he was off to bed with his wife. His twenty-four year old wife with the red gold hair and large blue eyes, a woman both beautiful and imminently suitable for a man of his exalted rank, herself being descended from royal blood on both sides. The sort of woman any man would be proud to escort by day and eager to claim by night. Once within Ella’s private apartments – which were also blue, very nearly the exact shade of her eyes – he would continue to walk, sometimes exchanging a word with his wife but more often not, until he had crossed through all three chambers and stood before a large panel upon which hung a seascape. The picture had been chosen prior to Ella’s wedding by some well meaning relative who had thought that a painting of the sea might remind the young bride of the British coastline, and thus serve as a comfort to her undoubtedly homesick heart.
But alas, the sandy gray shores of the Crimean’ Sea look very little like the rocky cliffs of Dover and it was thus behind a flat and foreign sea that Ella watched her husband retreat every evening. He would push aside the curtain of the wall, his fingers groping for the familiar lever, and then throw it, causing the sea to slide from view and a great void to open in his place. Serge would step into that darkness and, within a few seconds, the panel with the painting would return.