City of Silence (City of Mystery)

by Kim Wright

  Until now.

  Tatiana leaned against the wall of her bathroom, pressing a towel to her mouth and staring at her splotched face in the mirror as if it were the image of a stranger. This could not be. There were ways to end the process, dangerous and bloody ways, but to find them she would need help. Help that would most likely come in the form of a servant, a servant who would have to be bribed into cooperation, and who might still talk when the deed was done. She would have to find a way to put her hands on money and then she must select someone who was utterly discreet, for if such a thing was ever –

  A knock at the door.

  The face in the mirror frowned at her. Whoever could that be? No one ever came to her apartments save for servants and Filip, and they certainly would not bother to knock.

  Tatiana hastily splashed water from the basin on her face and smoothed her hair. She crossed through the bedroom and sitting room and into the small foyer, tossing the soiled towel in a refuse basket as she walked, and finally pulled open the door to find the Grand Duchess Ella Feodorovna standing in the hallway, her hand raised as if to knock a second time.

  Stunned, Tatiana bobbed a curtsy. “Your Imperial Highness.”

  “You are surprised.”

  “Yes. I was made to understand that your family had recently arrived.”

  “And that is why you are surprised to find me here?” Ella inquired with a twist of her mouth. “Because you expected me to be with my British family? I assure you that no one has noticed my absence. Granny is locked away with her papers - she works every day, you know. Being a monarch, and not a consort, must be a terribly tedious role for a woman to play. And Alix is out for a carriage ride with Nicky.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Are my motives that obvious?”

  Tatiana gripped the doorframe, suddenly hit with another wave of queasiness, but through sheer force of will she managed to quell it. “I meant no disrespect, Your Imperial Highness. I can only imagine it would bring you great pleasure to have a sister living in the palace.”

  “Indeed it shall. Might I be allowed to enter your rooms?”

  “Oh yes,” Tatiana said, jerking back. What was wrong with her? How could she leave the Grand Duchess standing in the hall while she weaved on her feet like a drunkard, clutching both sides of the doorframe? “Please do enter. And please, would you like to sit?”

  The smile still playing around her full lips, Ella circled the small sitting room before electing to perch herself on the tallest chair. Tatiana frantically glanced about, seeing her cast off robe tossed across another seat, a pair of Filip’s boots in the corner, the remnants of breakfast still on the tray.

  “I would of course welcome a match between my sister and my nephew,” Ella said smoothly, as if she had not noticed the disarray of the room. “And I have hopes that any opposition to their union will melt away when the Russian side of the family finally manages to throw their welcoming dinner for the British side. As of now, the plans are for Friday evening. The summer solstice. The longest day of the year. It is shockingly late, waiting three days after their arrival to formally welcome guests, but you know how they are.”

  The use of the term “they” was telling. Tatiana felt like a perpetual outsider within the Winter Palace, but it was a surprise to hear that the Grand Duchess felt equally disenfranchised. Surprising too that she would confide anything at all suggesting a riff between the British and Russian factions of her family. But surely none of this was what had brought Ella to Tatiana’s doorstep, to a part of the palace so removed from her own apartments.

  As if reading her thoughts, Ella reached into a satchel she had wedged beside her on the chair and said. “We are alone, I presume.”

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent. There is something I wish you to see.” Her graceful white hands withdrew a file from the satchel and then a square paper from the file. Moving to accept it, Tatiana saw it was a photograph.

  “What do you make of it?”

  Just as expected, it was the photograph Ella had taken on the morning the bodies had been found. Tatiana studied it. Considering the distance from the balcony to the floor, the images were quite clear.

  “The knife,” Ella prompted impatiently.

  “Clamped in the girl’s hand, just as we noticed and commented upon.”

  “Indeed. And does the shape of the blade look familiar?”

  “Curved and long. The handle is not–“

  Tatiana broke off, horrified. How could she have failed to notice this earlier, on the morning she had gone to the ballroom? It seemed she was failing to notice any number of things of late, as if her famously clever mind had deserted her just when she needed it most. But from the angle the camera had taken, it was obvious that the knife in the dead girl’s hand was most unusual, a weapon which was in fact designed to draw notice to itself, to attract the attention of someone sitting even in the highest tiers of the theater.

  “It is his, is it not?” Ella asked, her tone indicating she well knew the answer.

  Tatiana looked down into Ella’s face. The photograph in her hand was trembling. “Anyone in the theater could have gained access to that knife.”

  It was true. The props used in the theatricals were not locked away. Konstantin had even remarked upon it their last time together, that he couldn’t find his gypsy costume, that it was likely lost somewhere in the laundry. If the costume had been taken, then the knife certainly might have gone missing too. And while most of the knives and swords and pistols used in the entertainments were fakes, the long curved dagger of Konstantin’s gypsy costume was the real thing. At the climactic moment of one especially vigorous scene, he was expected to climb a rigging of an improvised ship and use it to release a flag. Everyone involved with the performances for the Tchaikovsky ball knew this – knew that the curved knife carried by the gypsy king was both dangerous and commissioned to Konstantin Antonovich.

  “Marriage is very difficult, is it not?” Ella suddenly said, fiddling carelessly with the edge of her glove.

  Tatiana only could look at her mutely.

  “When one is a girl, just on the brink, you hear the older women talk of the necessity of compromise, but of course at that time you have no way of understanding what they mean,” Ella continued with a low, soft voice. “And by the time one understands the true nature of these compromises, it is too late. You are trapped and must seek solace wherever you can, even in the most improbable places. I believe it was Alexandre Dumas who said that the chains of wedlock are so heavy that it takes two to carry them, and sometime three.”

  Was this meant as a joke? As a threat? Tatiana forced a weak smile. Ella did not smile back, but rather pulled off her glove and considered the pale gold ring on her left hand. “You care for him. That much is obvious.”

  “Yes, Your Imperial Highness.”

  “As do I, which is why no one must know this picture exists. The man who developed it is disinterested. He develops many pictures for me, roses from the gardens, the family at ease, that sort of thing. It is unlikely he will remember this one.”

  Tatiana blinked but said nothing. She thought it was quite likely the man would remember this particular picture, murdered bodies being intrinsically more interesting than roses and photographs of families at ease.

  “And Cynthia Kirby is sworn to secrecy on the matter,” Ella continued. “Other than that, you and I are the only ones who know it exists, so as of this moment, it does not.” With a theatrical flourish of her own, Ella tore the picture once, then again, and stood to toss the pieces into in the same woven basket which held the cloth Tatiana had used to clean away the traces of her nausea.

  So this is how the powerful dispose of inconvenient facts, Tatiana thought. They rip them, place them in a basket, and believe that this act alone is enough to make the truth disappear. Perhaps they are right. Suddenly weak again, she pressed her fingers to her lips and weaved slightly on her feet.

  “Why are you so pale?�
�� Ella asked, turning toward her. The question was accusatory in tone, as if Tatiana’s continued obvious distress was a challenge to Ella’s ability to manage the situation.

  “Begging your pardon, Your Imperial Highness, but there were many members of the guard present when you took that photograph. Any one of those men might remember the event and inquire after the resultant image.”

  “The guard was more than willing to dismiss the murders as a double suicide,” Ella said with a shrug. “I don’t anticipate trouble from them.”

  “But the person who did this…who used Konstantin’s knife and then left it in the dead girl’s hand. It was a very direct effort to draw attention to him, is it not?”

  “Indeed, the most obvious of clues, which the men cleaning up the crime nonetheless managed to ignore.”

  “This person must be furious that his plan has failed. That he left, as you say, the most obvious of clues, and they still were not noticed.”

  For the first time Ella hesitated. “Do you have any idea how our boy might have made an enemy such as this?”

  “No,” Tatiana said.

  “For you know what we are on the verge of suggesting, do you not?”

  Tatiana shook her head. She desperately wished to sit before her legs gave way, but it was impossible to do so with Ella still on her feet.

  “What we are suggesting,” Ella continued, “is that there is someone within this palace who is so cruel that he will kill two innocent dancers simply to pin the crime on his true enemy, which is Konstantin. But it appears this person has failed. The bodies have been carted away with only the most perfunctory of examinations and the weapon, while presumably being stored somewhere, has to date attracted no attention at all. No one within the guard has cared enough to notice that the knife in question was part of Konstantin’s gypsy costume and not the plaster cast knife used in the Romeo and Juliet scene. So it would appear that this elaborate message, this switching of the props, has gone undetected and thus our villain’s plans to incriminate Konstantin have fallen to ruin.” Ella frowns. “But one thing does bother me.”

  “That whoever is determined to destroy Konstantin might try again?”

  Ella responded to this rather obvious suggestion with surprise. “Yes, I suppose there is that chance. But I was about to say that my grandmother has traveled from London with two bodyguards, and that the British police are quite different from the Russians. Bulldogs, every last one of them. I would imagine that if Granny’s Detective Welles and her Detective Abrams gained possession of that picture their eyes would go to the knife at once. But of course…they won’t.”

  “Mrs. Kirby might not tell them that the photograph exists?”

  “Why ever should she do such a thing? Or talk to them at all? She works for me.”

  “And she is loyal to you?”

  “Of course she is loyal to me. All my servants are loyal to me,” Ella said, her head jerking with exasperation. “And whatever is wrong now? I have offered you every assurance and yet you remain so pale.”

  “I am unwell, Your Imperial Highness.”

  Ella tilted her chin. “What sort of unwell?”

  Chapter Ten

  The Winter Palace – The Premiere Ballroom

  June 19, 1889

  3:45 PM

  “You fight me.”

  “I promise you that I do not.”

  The dance instructor dropped his hands from Emma’s waist and stepped back so that they stood for a moment in silence, each considering the other. She had never met a man quite like him. Eurasian, the term was. His straight black hair, pulled taut and knotted at the nape of his neck, certainly gave him an Oriental look, as did his high cheekbones and deep set brown eyes. But his height and pale skin were undeniably Russian. He told her he came from Siberia, that part of the map which lay between the finely-detailed countries of Europe and the blank empty expanse of Mongolia. His features, like the land, were a bit of a compromise.

  He frightened her. Or perhaps it was the waltz itself. When Emma told Trevor she knew how to waltz, she had anticipated a dance quite different from this. The English version of a waltz involved standing straight up, with the man bracing the woman at arm’s length, the two of them moving at a slow and measured pace through the shape of a box. She had not been in the ballroom of the Winter Palace for ten minutes before she realized that what Konstantin expected of her was something else indeed. Something swift, whirling, unpredictable in form and powerful in execution. The Russians claimed their women like they claimed everything else – hips thrust forward and in the pace of a gallop.

  “The imperial family,” Konstantin said, pointing to the balcony level, “sits there. Everything we do is to entertain them, so your face must be tilted upward. You know what this means?”

  “I must lean backwards.”

  A displeased toss of the head. “This is a myth, you know. The myth of the waltz. The woman does not actually lean back. It is a trick of the eye. I will show you. Come here.”

  Emma stepped toward Konstantin, wondering why she was so nervous. No one was there to witness her clumsiness. They were the only two people in the theater.

  He took her hand in his and pulled her close. “Flex your knees,” he said, “and push your hips into me. No, not straight in, not like that. You stand a little to the left of me. It is so we will not knock knees or step each on the other one’s feet.” Emma bent her knees and pushed her hips toward him. It was a most extraordinary position to be in and they were having an even more extraordinary conversation.

  “Now,” he said, “the woman remains to the left of the man during the entire dance to accommodate his sword, which hangs on his own left hip. I do not have a sword, but try to imagine.” He looked down at her, his eyes narrowing a bit over the bridge of his substantial nose. “If it is done correctly, there’s a bit of a hollow there, just right for you to slip into. No. Closer. You must not be so afraid. It is all very natural, is it not?”

  Was this natural? If so, why had she never felt it before?

  “So you see,” he said, when she had finally edged herself close enough for his satisfaction. “We are not bending the tops of our bodies away from each other, we are pushing the lower bodies closer to create that illusion. Keep your arms high, if you please. I do not want a drooping flower.” He turned her slightly to the left and then to the right but did not move his legs, which was a relief. Their four feet were so close that she was afraid if she moved even one of hers, she would topple.

  “I don’t think you understand. I have just arrived here. I am a stranger in your country and entered into this pageant at the last minute, as some sort of courtesy to the Queen. No one expects me to be good.”

  “Will you be dancing with me?”

  “Evidently.”

  “Then I expect you to be good. If you have finished talking, we shall now attempt to waltz.”

  We are all but fused, Emma thought. It is impossible to clang against each other when we start out so close, and I won’t lose him in the turn, and there’s some comfort in that, I suppose. They had only been working together for a few minutes and already she could tell her back would be sore when she climbed into bed tonight, and her legs exhausted from keeping her knees so unnaturally forward, wedged between his.

  But when Konstantin began to move, Emma could see at once the wisdom of this strange position he had bullied her into, for their turns felt simultaneously easier and more dramatic. Was he pleased that she had managed to hold on, to stay with him through these initial revolutions?

  Three turns in, he stopped. “Don’t drop your chin.”

  “I did not drop my chin.”

  “You looked at me,” he said. “You must not. Not to me or to the other couples on the floor or those in the audience. Look to the ceiling.”

  “The ceiling? How will I know where I am going?”

  “You are a woman. You do not need to know where you are going. I will take you there.” His narrow eyes narrowed more. �
�You do not trust me?”

  Trust him? She did not know him. The women who trust strange men, she thought, those who close their eyes and lean back…they are carried away on any number of dark waves, some of them never to be seen again. Her sister Mary’s face flashed through her mind, unbidden as it always was.

  But he had already accused her of fighting him, so it would be pointless to argue further. Not in the grand ballroom of the Winter Palace in Russia of all places, when she was so very out of her element and so far from home. She was here to protect the Queen and her granddaughters, after all, not to argue with some strange man about how to waltz. With a sigh that Emma hoped Konstantin would take as evidence of compliance, not exasperation, she lifted her arms as wide as they would reach, tilted her hips towards him, and raised her chin.

  As if satisfied by her surrender, he began again, the turns wider and more vigorous. For a moment she was dizzied, but quickly realized that it helped if she directed her gaze toward something specific with every turn. Fortunately, the top of the theater had no end of things to attract the eye. Each corner of the room held a stage set, presumably for the upcoming ball. A peasant cottage in one, looking like something from a child’s fairy tale book and nearly complete. A balcony in the next, presumably for the lost scenes from Romeo and Juliet, and then a half-finished ship with a mast and riggings, and in the final corner there was a canopy of green branches that were evidently the beginning of some sort of forest. These four environments, each so strange to behold, gave Emma something to spot as she turned, a way to orient where she was on the enormous floor. Cottage, balcony, ship, and forest.