City of Silence (City of Mystery)

by Kim Wright

  “Nor would I, and now I better appreciate your tolerance with him yesterday. But despite any youthful scruples, he will do his sworn duty to Queen and country when the time comes, I imagine.”

  “Oh, I haven’t any doubt.”

  They drifted a few more minutes in silence and then Trevor ventured, “Is there any chance you hallucinated the whole affair? The bit with the women in the boat, I mean.”

  “Perhaps. It was a very long afternoon. I have the impression that I slept at one point and awakened and then perhaps slept again. The light, you know, it’s so disorienting. But I don’t believe I dreamed that part.”

  “You say they call them lilies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sheer barbarism.”

  “I agree. But Filip Orlov told me that all pleasure is bought at the cost of another being’s pain.”

  “And you believed him?”

  Rayley shrugged. “It wasn’t my job to believe or disbelieve, it was simply my job to listen to whatever he had to say.”

  “The Queen is quite right. This whole nation is corrupt.”

  “Perhaps. But the irony is that my time in that dark little smoking room gave me a better sense of the scope of Russian empire than the grandest halls of the Palace had yet managed to do,” Rayley said. “It showed me the variety one can find in a nation that reaches from Europe to the Pacific Ocean, a mix of the familiar and the exotic. Their sense of what is possible stretches, I believe, with the vastness of their land.”

  His cigar had been out for several minutes, but Trevor still chewed on it. “And who told you this, that great philosopher and whoremonger Filip Orlov?”

  “I’ve never seen you so agitated about a matter completely not related to the case,” Rayley observed wryly. “Besides, we’re scarcely in a position to judge the Romanovs and their attendants. Most men in London, and I daresay all over the world, have had their share of similar encounters. You have, I have. It may not have been our most shining moment, but it hardly makes us monsters.”

  “We were with British whores, Abrams. British whores with flat feet and we went to them alone, ashamed, and cloaked in the darkness of night. It’s an entirely different matter altogether.”

  “From a moral standpoint, I’m not sure I follow,” Rayley said.

  “I just don’t understand what’s wrong with the old way.”

  “Good heavens, Welles, stop rolling back and forth like that or you shall pitch us both headlong into this river of contagion. I didn’t mean to distress you. Of course there’s nothing wrong with the old way. But the salient point of my afternoon is just this: secret halls run the length of the Palace, and empty out at the stable and boathouse. This is how they got the women in… and back out when the debaucheries were concluded, I suppose. You can’t imagine the darkness of that maze of halls, the length, the numerous turns and twists along the way. It is a building designed for intrigue. So the question now becomes ‘How much of this, if any, do we tell the Queen?’”

  Another dock was in view. Unmanned, but Trevor supposed they could simply pull up and abandon their rowboat there. It would be easier to walk back across the broad lawns than to row upstream along the river, and besides, it would give them the chance to enter through another door and explore a different part of the palace. Trevor doubted that, even among the five members of the team, they had seen a fraction of the building whose security they had been charged to analyze.

  “We tell the Queen nothing,” Trevor said, “at least not now. The welcoming banquet is to be held tonight, bringing with it our first chance to observe the key players in this intrigue. It has occurred to me as we’ve drifted along that three couples are at the heart of this story. Konstantin and Tatiana, Serge and Ella, Nicky and Alix. Oh and the first ones. Our poor little Katya and Yulian, frozen forever in the posture of Romeo and Juliet. You see, I had already forgotten them.”

  “The star-crossed lovers,” Rayley said mildly, as Trevor began to steer them toward the dock.

  “Yes, just that.” said Trevor. “Star-crossed. But the more I think of this case, the more I am convinced they all are.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Winter Palace - Ella’s Apartments

  5:20 PM

  They were being insulted on at least two levels, perhaps more.

  The first slight came in the fact that their “welcoming dinner” was in fact an annual event whose true intent was to celebrate the summer solstice. The details had been planned long before they arrived, and the presence of the Queen of England and Alix would be but one small facet of the celebration.

  The second insult came in the form of a gown which had been delivered to Ella’s apartments on the morning of the dinner, with a note attached saying it was for Alix to wear. The dress was silver brocade and encrusted with great stones – pearls and rubies, even the occasional diamond – and it was so heavy that Alix’s knees had buckled when she had lifted it from its box. Fortunately her excitement over the grandeur of the outfit, coupled with the fact that Nicky would be publically escorting her to the dinner, had kept her from noticing the implications of the gift. Her grandmother and sister had not been so deluded. Alix may have made no formal appearance before the imperial family, but evidently at some time during her singular outing with Nicky or her days confined to her sister’s apartments, her wardrobe had been judged and found wanting. This dress was a none-too-subtle indication that, in order to save face, the Romanovs had taken it upon themselves to attire her suitably for her first state occasion.

  “Don’t get too proud,” Victoria said when Alix, with the assistance of Emma, had finally managed to struggle into the dress and emerge from the dressing room to parade before the others.

  “I’m breathless,” Alix confessed. “Both by the value and the heaviness of the stones. I feel as if I am all but pinned to the ground.”

  “This is the weight that comes with being an empress,” Ella said. “If you truly want Nicky, you may as well get used to it.”

  “Precisely who sent this gift to you?” the Queen asked.

  “The tsarina,” Alix said, staring at herself in the mirror in a rather abstracted manner. “It is an extraordinarily kind gesture, is it not?”

  “Extraordinary indeed,” the Queen said, raising her eyebrows to Trevor. He and Emma were the only members of the team currently in Ella’s quarters, but they were all expected to attend the solstice dinner, save for Davy who had seemed relieved rather than offended that the invitation had not included his name. The Queen’s look had been pointed, but precisely what she meant by it was a bit of a muddle. The family trees of Europe had always confounded Trevor, but he knew that Nicky’s mother was sister to the wife of the Queen’s eldest son. These dark-eyed Danish sisters, who had risen through marriage to become Tsarina of Russia and the Princess of Wales, were both rumored to have sharp tongues. The Queen’s limited enthusiasm for her daughter-in-law was well known throughout England and now it was clear that Her Majesty was accumulating reasons to dislike the tsarina as well.

  “The note says we are to be received at the German Staircase,” Alix said, tearing her eyes from the glitter of her own torso and looking upon her sister. “Is that where the most important visitors enter the banquet floor?”

  Ella hesitated, just long enough for everyone in the room save Alix to guess the answer. Trevor looked at Emma for guidance. She was frowning.

  “The German Staircase,” Ella finally said. “It’s a very thoughtful acknowledgement of our heritage, is it not?”

  Alix was satisfied with this vague response. No one else was.

  “My understanding is that the Jordan Staircase is the means by which the imperial family enters the public areas of the palace,” the Queen said and Ella’s immediate flush was confirmation that this was so. So not only were they to be feted at a party which was not really planned in their honor, but they were to enter via a back staircase wearing other people’s clothes. The slap in the face could not have been more de
finitive.

  “Does any of it truly matter?” Ella asked. “As long as we all come to the same table in the end?”

  But of course it mattered. Even Trevor, who was struggling to assimilate the implications of a borrowed dress and an inferior staircase, could see that the Russians were heaping one humiliation after another upon the heads of their English guests.

  “We shall all come to the same table,” the Queen said faintly. “And then we shall see what will happen.” Alix nodded and disappeared back into her dressing room, with Emma following close behind, her face already grim with anticipation about the degree of effort it would take to wrest that ponderous gown over Alix’s head. Only the Queen, Ella, and Trevor were left in the lounge and the Queen turned to her granddaughter.

  “You cannot pretend that this is anything other than what it is,” she said. “The Danish Tsarina sends us down the German staircase, when you know as well as anyone how the Danes view the Germans. She sends this grand gown, with each jewel a boulder around your sister’s neck. Your family through marriage has chosen to mock your family of birth.”

  Ella flinched. “Granny, please do not put me in this position.”

  “You situation is cruel, I realize, but I was not the one who placed you there,” Victoria said, looking down into her lap where her small plump hands were twisting a handkerchief with sharp, measured moves. “Someday soon you will be forced to make your choice.”

  The Winter Palace – St. George’s Hall

  9:17 PM

  They may have entered by means of a minor staircase, but their introduction into the festivities of the imperial dinner was still dazzling. Trevor doubted that anyone other than himself and Emma, who had witnessed the awkward discussion in Ella’s apartment, was aware that the British visitors were being in any way marginalized. For in the presence of such splendor, who could find the subtle lines of demarcation? Who could remember that rubies are inferior to sapphires, that the music of Mozart soars higher that of Chopin, or that white caviar is a more valuable tidbit to place upon a cracker than black?

  They had descended the German staircase – which seemed perfectly broad and grand to Trevor’s eyes - then processed through a series of gigantic galleries, each as humbling as a cathedral, treading on carpets thick enough to make the feet trip and passing beneath a series of brilliant chandeliers, before finally arriving at the banquet hall. As a person entered, he or she was escorted to the appropriate seat by a Cossack guard, each of them clad in scarlet and as stern faced as if a dinner in honor of the summer solstice was the equivalent of a military assault. Trevor, who had been seated relatively early in the procession of guests, watched the others enter the ballroom in their turn: the generals, their chests sagging with medals, most of them likely won in conflict with the Turks. The women, their breasts equally challenged, but this time with the weight of their jewels. Medals of their own kind, no doubt, evidence that they had managed to parlay their youth, beauty, sexuality, or family connection into an alliance with one of the aforementioned generals or perhaps – even better – with some minor relative of the ruling family. For if there was anything that the Romanovs valued more than military strength, it was imperial blood.

  Trevor was positioned about halfway down an astoundingly long table and there were a variety of other smaller ones, flanking to either side. How many people would ultimately dine in this room, he wondered, trying to do a quick count in his head of the still-empty seats. Two hundred? Perhaps more? Trevor cast a glance around to ascertain the location of his teammates: Tom a bit forward, Rayley a bit back. Emma approaching one of the side tables on the arm of a Cossack, and looking especially lovely in an amethyst gown with a border of gold. He couldn’t imagine her owning such a thing, so perhaps she too had been subjected to the stinging courtesy of a borrowed gown.

  The Tsar and Tsarina – he, ridiculously large and she, ridiculously tiny – were seated at the elevated table at the far end of the room with the Queen to the left of the Tsar. Her Majesty wore black, the only woman in the room to do so, making her a solitary raven among so many peacocks. She appeared ill at ease to find herself perched on a raised platform, which did give the effect that the hosts and their most honored guests were actors on a stage. State dinners at Buckingham, Trevor surmised, must be nothing like this.

  Ella and a man who was presumably her husband Serge sat at the end of the table, each of them staring straight ahead like faces on a postal stamp. Since there was no one in front of you, a seat at the head table effectively halved one’s chances for lively dinner conversation, and it was quite clear that Ella and Serge had exhausted all potential topics for discussion long ago. Trevor wondered once again what Ella might have seen in such a man. Handsome enough, but cold, his eyes focused on some distant horizon, his mouth pressed into a straight and unyielding line.

  The rest of the imperial family had been meted out around the room, presumably so that no guest would feel as if he had been exiled to a social Siberia. Trevor was a bit surprised that Nicky and Alix had not earned a spot at the head table, him being next in line for the throne and she a stated guest of honor. But the two young people seemed more than happy to be wedged in close congress at a small table at the base of the raised platform, a situation which gave the suggestion that their parents and grandparents were literally looking down upon them. If Ella and Serge were keeping their decorous distance, Nicky and Alix were the opposite, with every gesture illustrating their mutual affection. They leaned ever-so-slightly toward each other, even when politely chatting with others seated around them, and young Alix was flushed with happiness. Nicky glanced at her frequently, his own pleasure in her company equally evident, and the sight of them made Trevor somewhat ashamed. His function during this entire trip was to collect proof that the country was unsuitable for the Queen’s favorite granddaughter and the Russians were making his task very easy indeed. Three murders in a week was scarcely a ringing endorsement for life within the Winter Palace. And the Queen was right, of course, to wish a different future for Alix than the dreary fate which had trapped Ella, and yet the sight of Alix and Nicky sharing shy smiles troubled Trevor. Only a fool would doubt that they were most sincerely in love.

  Trevor’s own table boasted the presence of the tsar’s elder daughter, Xenia, who looked to be barely in her teens. He tried to remember what Emma had said on the ship during her lecture on protocol, and could only recall that a princess, the daughter of a king, must curtsy to a grand duchess, the daughter of a tsar. He wondered how many times Ella had supplicated before this pudgy, nondescript child, and how far she was required to stand behind her husband’s niece on state occasions. He suspected that her life was full of such small indignities and was only glad that the obscurity of the German staircase had meant that very few foreign eyes had been treated to the sight of the mighty Victoria inclining her own head - barely an inch, but still - to the Tsar.

  Next to pick out the infamous Konstantin, which was simple enough. Emma had described him as “Oriental, but not at all as you’d think,” and Trevor’s eyes were almost immediately pulled toward a tall, elegant man at a seat a good deal more far-flung than his own. The only Asians Trevor had ever seen were the chaps who ran the tailoring houses of London, and they were small, darting people who seemed to be perpetually looking at the ground. This man’s height gave him presence, and the absence of ornamentation on his clothing further distinguished him. And yet it was his strange stillness which Trevor found the most compelling. Nothing in his manner betrayed even the slightest anxiety, which was noteworthy in this room of incessant chattering and high, manic laughter, and Trevor was forced to admit that it was easy to imagine all sorts of women being drawn to him. If Serge seemed perfectly cast as the unfeeling villain in the piece, then Konstantin Antonovich was equally well suited to play the role of exotic lover.

  Tatiana was harder to find. Small and blonde and pretty was all he had to go on, and that description could have been applied to a dozen women wit
hin his sites. The odds were she would be sitting near her husband, but Trevor did not see anyone fitting Rayley’s description of Orlov at all. Trevor turned in his seat to more clearly face in the direction of Rayley, whose eye he quickly caught, since the other detective was also systematically scanning the room. Trevor mouthed the word “Orlov?” and Rayley shrugged and shook his head, then turned his attention back to the woman on his right, a frail and elderly creature wearing some sort of turban.

  Trevor’s own dining partner was a woman so bejeweled that she looked as if a drawerful of emeralds and rubies had been overturned on top of her. My God, he thought. These people make the French seem understated. The woman glittered. She simpered. She chortled with amusement at jokes she made herself. She even heaven forbid, flirted with him and he knew that politeness required him to meet her thrust to thrust.

  “Tell me, Sir,” she was saying. “From what you have seen so far, do you prefer the ladies of St. Petersburg to those of London?” It was obvious what answer she expected.

  “The ladies here tonight are dazzling,” Trevor assured her, which was true enough in its way. The light bouncing from some of them was enough to make a man avert his eyes in fear of blindness. “Tell me, who among us is considered to be the greatest beauty of the court?” Her plump lips immediately pushed into a pout and he hastened to add “Besides you, of course. I realize I have been most fortunately seated.”