by Kim Wright
For a few minutes, it worked. And then he began to take her into a series of reverses which scrambled the sequence she had come to expect, and she began to lose her form. He stopped.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Why do you not trust men?”
“What do you mean? Of course I trust men.”
“Close your eyes.”
“What?”
“You look around the room with your head swinging back and forth, trying to guess where we are going next. If you close your eyes, you will trust me.” He smiled as they began to move again and Emma allowed her eyes to flutter closed, just as he had asked.
“For I know something about women, you see,” he whispered, bringing his mouth close to her ear. “They only trust men when they find they have no other choice.”
The Streets of St. Petersburg
4:35 PM
Davy and Vlad were sitting at the precise same café where he had braved coffee with Elliott Cooper that morning, although this time the drink at hand was even more potent. They should call this place the Café of the Revolution, he mused, but perhaps it was really not so strange that the members of the Volya would choose to congregate there both before and after their meetings. Humans were habituated and self-limiting creatures, Davy had noted. Even in a large city with innumerable options, they tended to return to the same places over and over.
“Do you have brothers?” Vlad inquired.
“Three.”
“You are lucky. A couple of spares.”
“You’ll forgive me if I do not see it that way.”
“My brother Sasha was killed in the revolution,” Vlad said without emotion. “But I suppose Cooper told you that.”
“He did.”
“I am not surprised. This is the first thing that anyone ever knows about me. That I am the brother of a martyr.”
Davy sat back as a serving girl approached and plopped, without comment or ceremony, two squat glasses of what was apparently vodka before them. Vlad had not ordered them, at least not in any manner Davy could identify, so he could only assume that promptly delivered glasses of unornamented vodka were standard procedure at the Café of the Revolution, along with the sort of short harsh cigarettes that Vlad was now lighting.
“A man needs brothers,” Vlad said.
“I noticed the members of the Volya use the term ‘brother’ as often as ‘comrade,’” Davy said. “At least you have Gregor and the others there.”
“I meant real brothers,” Vlad said, cutting his eyes at Davy as he took the first draw on the cigarette. “Gregor…trivializes me.”
“He told me that since you had lost Sasha and he had lost Yulian, that he considered the two of you to be-“
“Shit. Pure horse shit. You saw the way it was as well as anyone. I raise my hand to make a suggestion and he sends me to check the lock, or bring him cigarettes, or on whatever other senseless errand has struck his fancy. Speaking of which, will you join me in this smoke?” He sent the paper package of cigarettes, with a match tucked inside, spinning across the table and Davy deftly, if somewhat reluctantly, caught it.
“Older men often play that game with younger men,” Davy said, striking the match against the heel of his boot. In the nine months he had been with Scotland Yard, Davy had developed his own brand of interrogation and had found that the best way to get someone to confess to something was to first make a confession of your own. “There are two men ranked above me where I work and there are times when I think they see me as comedy, the way the actors bring a dog or donkey on stage during a play.” He brought the match to his cigarette and puffed, pulling in a wave of smoke so dark and acrid that he coughed and grabbed for the vodka, which only turned his cough into a strangled sputter.
Vlad watched this scene with the slightest hint of amusement. “You are not accustomed to smoking? Or drinking?”
“Not accustomed to smoking these or drinking that,” Davy gasped when he caught his breath.
“Nothing in Russia ever goes down quite as smooth as one expects,” Vlad said. He had a thin face, with a pointed chin. A look of hunger played about his features, and Davy suspected that his brother’s death had not turned him into the malcontent creature he now was, but had rather merely accentuated his inborn nature. Vlad Ulyanov had most likely been unhappy even back in the sand pile, a sniveling disgruntled toddler who always wanted whatever toy lay in the hands of another.
Nonetheless, Davy’s story seemed to have earned him some ground, for Vlad was now looking at him with sharpened interest. “These men who trivialize you, they also work for the Queen?”
Davy nodded, glancing at an earthenware pot to his left which held a clump of geraniums. The next time the man was distracted, he would have to toss his vodka into it, for if he consumed too much he suspected he would find it impossible to keep his senses. “They found me doing a nothing job in the streets,” he said. “A less than nothing job. Trained me, gave me my first promotion. Are good to me, by all measures.”
“And they never quite let you forget it.”
The tone of voice was sardonic, but Davy recognized the genuine emotion behind it. This shaming sense of having been the last one invited to the party, allowed in as an afterthought, and expected to be perennially grateful for the chance. Yes, he too understood well enough how it felt to be the least among men but loyalty would not allow him to demonize Rayley or Trevor, not even to further gain Vlad’s confidence.
“They do not always seem to welcome my ideas,” he conceded. “But they have given me some chances. At times I feel they have even placed me in situations that are somewhat out of my depth.”
“Out of your depth? As a messenger boy?”
Well, that was a bit of a error, was it not? Davy had never totally believed Mrs. Kirby and Elliott Cooper when they had blithely claimed that the Volya would accept the notion that a lad who was wealthy enough to have attended boarding school would then accept the paltry job of being a messenger boy. Not to mention the other incongruity, that he was expected to pass as a political revolutionary in service to the Queen. He would have to divert the conversation at once or risk making an even greater error. Someone – was it Rayley? – had once told Davy that the secret of a successful lie was to keep it as close as possible to the truth.
With a short, shallow puff of the cigarette, Davy leaned back in his chair, consciously mimicking Vlad’s own pose, and said, “Messenger boys see many things in the course of a routine day. My work has taken me from the homes of the most wealthy and privileged into the most desperate parts of the city.”
“And witnessing this divide is what has turned you into a revolutionary?”
“You might say that,” Davy said. “I remember one afternoon I saw a woman, maybe just a girl, digging around in the muck for the core of a fallen apple and then the next place I was sent was a kitchen so large and fine that there was a cook going through a great sack of apples, tossing aside any with the slightest mark. You know, any flaw which meant they were not good enough for milady’s daily tart. I asked if I could take the ones she threw away and she laughed at me and said yes. So I went back to the street where I had started, but the girl was gone.”
Vlad’s face revealed nothing. “What did you do with the apples?”
“Gave them to the next person who passed. Everyone in that particular street is likely hungry.”
“You never saw the girl in the mud again?”
“No.”
Vlad shrugged. “Such is revolution. The fruits, if you will pardon my pun, never seem to fall to those whose needs prompted the fight in the first place, only to the strangers who come behind.” He glanced down at the empty glasses. “So shall we drink again? To the girl in the mud, wherever she may be?”
“Indeed,” said Davy, raising his glass. “To the girl in the mud.”
The Winter Palace – The Grand Ballroom
5:02 PM
When Emma emerged into the hall after her dance lesson, she fo
und Tom approaching from the other direction. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“Sleuthing, of course,” he said, whispering too, but loudly, as if for the stage, and he finished off the pantomime with a bit of an exaggerated tiptoe toward her. “The laudable Mrs. Kirby agreed to meet me in the theater at five and describe exactly how the crime scene was situated, although at this point I imagine it will be more of a history lesson than anything forensically useful. And apparently there is some confidence she must share as well, something so dark and dreadful it’s meant for my ears only. How was your first lesson?”
“Most unusual,” she said. She hesitated a second, but it was Tom, after all. They kept no secrets, at least none of this sort. “He asked me to close my eyes.”
“While you were dancing?”
“Of course while I was dancing. He said I was struggling against him when I should be following. And you know, it did help.”
“Did you like it? This sense of being overpowered by a faceless stranger?”
“Oh, stop looking at me like that, and stop smirking. You turn everything into a joke and I really want to do well in this waltz. Not disgrace England and the Queen and that sort of rot.”
“So you liked it.”
“I didn’t dislike it.”
“It reminds one of the Scottish rapes, you know.”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“The crime we were discussing at the last meeting of the Murder Games Club. You truly don’t remember? Of course that assailant used a scarf to disorient his victims and you seem to have been an enthusiastic participant in your own self-blinding.”
“The rapes in Scotland,” Emma said, tilting her head. “That seems a year ago doesn’t it, and not just last week? But I was hardly Konstantin’s victim and it didn’t make me disoriented. In fact, if anything I was uniquely oriented, more so than I’ve felt for some time.” She cut her eyes to his. “When did you say you were supposed to meet Mrs. Kirby?”
“Five,” said Tom, looking over his shoulder. “And I’m rather surprised not to find her here already. She struck me as the punctual type. But perhaps she is inside.” He pulled against the heavy door. “Come along, I wish to be introduced to this Siberian with his mysterious methods of instruction.”
“I’m sure he’s gone,” Emma said, hoping that this was true as she walked through the door. For some reason she was not eager for Tom and Konstantin to meet. “He said I was his last lesson of the day. Here’s the ballroom,” she added, with a half-hearted sort of gesture.
“I never would have deduced as much.”
“But it is huge, is it not?”
“Everything in this country is huge.” Tom walked to the middle of the dance floor and made a slow circle, taking in the series of balconies, the imperial boxes, the half-finished sets in the corners of the performance level, the orchestra pit, the marble staircase leading from the wardrobe rooms to the ballroom floor. “There are so many points from which people can enter and exit.”
“My guess would be that the two victims came down the stairs,” Emma said. “The performers are perhaps accustomed to entering from the second level, where the costume and props and dressing rooms are located. Konstantin both arrived and departed by that level today. They most likely do not use these lower doors, on the audience level, at all.”
“I agree,” said Tom. “Although Trevor would be in despair if he could hear you use so many words like ‘guess’ and ‘perhaps’ and ‘most likely’ all in sequence. Let us look upstairs.”
“And what is our explanation if we’re caught snooping around the performers’ area?”
“That you forgot something after your lesson, you silly girl.”
“I wouldn’t have left it up here,” she muttered, as they climbed the broad staircase which led to a changing room for the dancers. Adjacent to it was a prop room, larger in itself than many theaters, and then a small sitting room with any number of settees and even a small daybed.
“Not a bad situation,” Tom said. “A little home away from home for the performers.”
“Given what most of them have come from,” Emma mused, “it’s hard to imagine they’d be inclined to risk losing their position within the tsar’s troupe.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. Even though they had left the ballroom, they were still whispering. “But the young ballet dancers who were killed, they were meeting here at night, were they not? Which implies a forbidden sort of liaison.”
“Or just a desire for more privacy than their own rooms provided,” Tom said, pushing aside a set of curtains and considering the walls of boxes behind it. “Heaven knows, this place is full of enough nooks and crannies to accommodate an army of forbidden lovers. But it makes me wonder – had they decided in advance to meet and if so, how would their killer have known their agreed-upon time and place? Or was the tryst a last minute decision, with the man perhaps luring each of them here with a note that each believed was written by the other?”
“More likely their killer overheard them planning to meet,” Emma said. “It is easy to eavesdrop in this theater. The acoustics are extraordinary.”
“Which implies that our murderer is part of the dance troupe,” Tom said. “Or perhaps even someone in their confidence. Their own Friar Lawrence, so to speak.”
“Rayley and Trevor got the pages from the police report after luncheon, did they not?”
Tom rolled his eyes. “No plural needed, darling. The report was a single page. And the police had collected no weapon, no samples of clothing, nothing at all. That is why I need to talk to the Kirby woman. At least she was at the scene before they moved the bodies and, who knows, those eagle eyes may have noticed something. Odd she still isn’t here. Perhaps I should go back down and check the hall again.”
“Saying you would meet her in the theater was a rather imprecise location,” Emma said. “But wait a second, there’s only this one last room. It appears to be costumes too, or some sort place where they do the mending and sewing…”
She had walked three steps in when she saw them. For a moment she thought they were unreal – dummies used in a play, perhaps, or dressmaker’s models. And then, judging by their prone position, cast among the garments on the floor, she thought that perhaps they were dead. It was this last thought that prompted her scream and the fact that she spun on her heel, crashing directly into Tom, who had entered the room no more than a few beats behind her. But the sound roused the lovers from their distraction and they leapt apart, thus proving, even in the shadowy darkness, that they were both quite real and very much alive. Konstantin sprang to his feet instinctively, causing Emma to give another small exclamation, this one more of a yelp. Tatiana, prompted by another sort of instinct, went scrambling beneath a nearby pile of clothes, but not before catching a glimpse of the expression on Tom’s face.
“We beg your pardon,” he said smoothly, backing out, pulling Emma with him. She had once again closed her eyes, offering further proof of Konstantin’s theories, for she followed Tom’s lead without question back into the lighted prop room where they stood for a moment before bursting into a sort of muffled laughter.
“That was Konstantin,” Emma said at last, wiping the nervous tears from her face.
“Truly? Your dance master? He seems uniquely qualified for his post.”
“Don’t you dare make a joke of this,” she said. Her heart was pounding and her face was hot. She had never had cause to study a man, fully naked, except perhaps in statuary, and somehow none of it was arranged quite as she had imagined. “How will I ever be able to dance with him again after witnessing such a thing?”
“And who was the lovely lady?”
“I have no idea. Was she lovely?”
“Oh, I assure you.”
“At least Mrs. Kirby wasn’t with us, which would have been the only thing that could have made the situation more appalling.” Emma shuddered at the thought. �
�She has already declared that Konstantin is up to no good. Come, we must find her and waylay her long enough to let them escape, for if she even suspects-”
“She will what?” Tom said, taking Emma’s arm and leading her from the performance rooms back toward the staircase. “Mrs. Kirby has no authority over the dancers or indeed anything that happens in the palace. We must not let her haughty manner bamboozle us all into thinking she holds more sway than she does.” But as they moved closer to the well-lit staircase, the look on Emma’s face softened his tone. “I suppose you’re right. There’s no reason to give her aging eyes this particular shock, so we will intercept her, at least long enough to allow our lovers to escape.”
They hurried down the staircase, Emma still flushed and Tom still chuckling, then across the broad ballroom floor to the door where they had entered. But Mrs. Kirby was not in the hallway beyond, nor in the next one they tried, nor the next. Finally they returned to the ballroom and stood in the center of the floor, slowly circling, looking at all the entrances.
“Strange,” said Tom. “She was insistent that we talk in private.”
“See that rope,” Emma suddenly said. “Was it there before?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “But it’s some sort of prop. Meant to look like part of the ship’s rigging, is it not? See, they have the shape of a hull beneath it.”
“It wasn’t like that when I was dancing,” Emma said.
“How would you know? Your eyes were closed.”
“Not the whole time,” she said irritably, starting toward the rope. “I was looking up at the performance level for most of the lesson. I know what was in every corner.”
“Leave it be,” Tom said. “You might bring a full model of a ship crashing down upon your head.”
But Emma was already in the corner, looking up, frowning at a wad of fabric wedged near the top of the stage set. It appeared to be a rolled flag, evidently meant to be unfurled when the rope was cut, but there was more there too, something else crammed beneath the shape of the hull. “Do you have a knife?”