City of Silence (City of Mystery) (18 page)

A
single yank was enough.  With the sound of an exhalation, an enormous Russian
flag was released.  It unfurled towards Tom and Emma’s upturned faces and,
halfway through the process, released the dead body of Cynthia Kirby.  She
dropped past them and then began to roll down the steps, her head bouncing
cruelly with every increment of her descent until she at last came to rest on
the edge of the dance floor, sprawled with comic gusto beneath the great
lights.  She was dressed as the king of the gypsies.

Chapter
Eleven

The
Winter Palace – the Kitchens

June
19, 1889

10:20
PM

“The
cause of death is a broken neck,” Tom said. 

“And
there is no chance it was broken during the fall to the ballroom floor?” Trevor
confirmed.

“Absolutely
none.  For one thing, it’s a clean snap right at vertebrae C2, known as the
hangman’s fracture, since it generally brings about instantaneous death.”  Tom
looked up from the body of Cynthia Kirby, which was lying swaddled on a long wooden
table.  “Someone knew what he was doing.  Also, there’s bruising around the
front of the throat.  She was likely grabbed from behind, choked into
unconsciousness, and then the neck was broken.”

“Which
would indicate that the killer was a man of strength,” Trevor said, bent
forward on his wooden stool and steadily scribbling in his notebook.

“That’s
one way to look at it.  But it’s just as important to know where to break as it
is to use great force.  My guess would be we’re looking for someone who knows how
to most efficiently dispose of a life – a former military man, a member of the
guard, or a doctor, of course.”

“Possibly
a dancer?”  Rayley ventured, from the other side of the room. “They make study
of the human body too, do they not?”

“There’s
a thought,” Tom said. 

They
were in a room off from the kitchen, although not in the same meat locker where
the ballet dancers had been stored.  Presumably Mrs. Kirby would be moved there
after the autopsy, but that was a cold, dark, and airless place.  For now, they
were conducting their examination in a brighter room which, from the profusion
of white flour around, evidently was used each morning for the making of the
palace bread and pastries.

It
was hardly a sterile environment for an autopsy, but under the circumstances,
Trevor supposed they must take what they could get.  When Rayley had asked Viktor
Prakov, the bald man who headed the palace police, if they could examine Mrs. Kirby
before his unit, the man had readily agreed.  “Since the woman was English…”
Rayley had said vaguely, which was all it had taken for Prakov to nod.  Examine
anything you want, seemed to be his unspoken response, just so in the end you
turn her body back to us.  And so they had been escorted to this distant part
of the kitchen and left alone.  In the larger rooms, the staff was finishing
the final cleaning from the evening meal and a young maid had most
considerately brought them a tray of pork sandwiches as they worked.

“Funny
that a place this size doesn’t have a proper morgue, isn’t it, Sir?” Davy
asked.

“Very
odd,” Trevor agreed.  The Palace may function like a city, but it was a city
which strained to maintain the illusion that no one within it ever died.  His
request to do the autopsy within the Palace infirmary had met with an abrupt
refusal, as had his next suggestion, that they might conduct their exam within
the woman’s own bedroom.  So instead Mrs. Kirby had been carried here, stripped
bare among the rolling pins and ladles, then wrapped in a tablecloth.  None of
them had particularly liked the woman, but Trevor doubted anyone present would
have wished her this ignoble end.

At
least they had plenty of room.  Tom was examining the body with Davy’s help, as
they systematically lifted each limb and section, going over it with a
magnifying glass.  Tom called his observations out to Trevor, who served as
secretary, while Emma and Rayley stood at another table going through the
woman’s clothes and the boxes of her possessions, which they had snatched from
her room in an effort to take possession of any potential evidence before the
palace police.  Emma had draped the gypsy costume over a chair and was studying
it dubiously.

“This
loop of cloth on the hip,” she said.  “What purpose would you guess it to
serve?”

“It
appears to have been designed to hold some sort of weapon,” Rayley said,
glancing up from a box of books and papers. 

“So
I thought,” Emma said.  “It’s on the left hip where an officer wears his
sword.”

“The
loop isn’t large enough to support a sword,” Rayley said.  “More likely a
dagger of some sort.  Was there one with her when she was found?”

“I
don’t see anything of the sort,” Emma said.  “This costume is quite elaborate.   Look
at the way this vest ties and all the buckles on the britches.  How on earth
would a woman begin to know how to get into such outlandish clothing?”

“How
on earth would her killer have gotten her into it so quickly is a better
question,” said Tom, peering into the hollows of Mrs. Kirby’s left ear.  “I
keep thinking of the time frame.”

“Spell
it out for me,” said Trevor, pencil in hand.

“You
start, Emma,” Tom said, absently, turning the corpse’s head to inspect her
other ear.

“My
lesson with Konstantin concluded at precisely five,” Emma said, folding the
pants of the costume as she spoke.  “I know, because we heard the chapel bells
strike.  He told me I was his last private lesson of the day but that I should
get some rest and have something to eat, for the group rehearsals would begin
at seven.  At the time he and I parted company, there was no body wrapped up in
the flag hanging above the pirate ship.  I am certain because he was scolding
me to look upward as we waltzed, so I was paying particular attention to the
top of the room.  There are sets located on the second level of the stage, what
they call the performers’ level, and one of them was this ship.  I assure you
that during the time I was dancing, the flag at the top of the mast was furled
neatly.”

“But
then you closed your eyes,” Tom said.

“Closed
your eyes?” Rayley inquired, looking at Emma over his glasses.  Judging by the
number of books in the box, Mrs. Kirby had evidently been a great reader. 
Rayley was shaking them, one volume at a time, but so far nothing had fluttered
out onto the floor.

How
like Tom to say something both so embarrassing and so off the point, Emma thought,
and she hastened to explain.  “It hardly matters, but my dance instructor
suggested that I close my eyes while we were waltzing so that I might be better
able to follow.  But they remained so for only a minute or two.  Certainly if
someone had hauled a dead body by rope to the top of the ceiling I would have
heard the commotion and opened my eyes.”

“I
doubt the body was pulled up from the floor,” Rayley said, mercifully not
becoming distracted by the idea of Emma waltzing with her eyes closed.  “More
likely lowered from the balcony, I would guess.”

“Either
way, Konstantin and I would have heard it.”

“You
waltzed without music?” Trevor asked.

“Yes,
he counted the beat.  That’s the way practicing often is,” Emma said with
authority, as if she had been taking formal dance instruction all her life. 
“But the point is that when I stepped out of the ballroom at a few minutes
after five there was no dead body in that flag.  Once I exited into the hall, I
promptly met Tom, who was waiting there for Mrs. Kirby and wondering why she
might be running late for their appointment.”

“And
from there,” said Tom, who was now bending to look into the dead woman’s
bloodshot eyes, “we went together back into the ballroom and did a slow circle
of observation.  So I can confirm Emma’s claim that the body was not in its
cruel position dangling from the ship’s mast at just after five o’clock.”

“If
you could confirm my timeline, why did you make me start?” Emma said in
exasperation.

“I
just wanted to hear you tell everyone about how that Siberian got you to close
your eyes,” Tom said cheerfully, gently pushing Mrs. Kirby’s left eyelid
closed.  “He told her she’d be more submissive to his burly masculine will if
she couldn’t see, and, against all odds, our girl agreed.”

“Moving
on,” Trevor said.

“We
went up the grand staircase that connects the ballroom floor to the performance
level and spent just at twelve minutes poking around the costume and prop rooms
behind the curtain,” Tom said.  “Like Emma, I am quite certain of the time, for
I looked at my pocket watch just after we found the body.  Thus it seems that
whoever placed Mrs. Kirby in the flag did it with an amazing rapidity, almost
as if he knew that we would be coming back into the ballroom within minutes.”

“Was
she killed there in the theater, do you think,” Davy asked.  “Or killed and
moved?”

“What
would your guess be?” Trevor asked mildly.

“Killed
and moved,” Davy said promptly. “Obviously Mrs. Kirby was not going to her
meeting with Tom dressed in a gypsy costume.  So while he was in the hall
waiting for her, she was late because she was either already dead or was being
murdered at that very moment.  Then the murderer dressed her as a gypsy and
took her to the theater.”

“Quite
right,” Trevor said.  “Although it’s nearly impossible to imagine that anyone
could murder a woman, strip her of the clothes she was wearing, and then dress
her in this rather complex and outlandish outfit, and still have the time to
hide her body all within twelve minutes.  So most likely she was already dead
and dressed when Emma and Tom went up the stairs to explore the costume and
prop rooms.”

“The
choice of the costume is bewildering,” said Rayley.  “It’s meant as a message,
obviously, the sort that would be impossible to ignore, at least if you were
the person to whom it was being sent.  The killer garbs the poor woman as a
gypsy and rolls her in a flag, for God’s sake.  A flag placed in a position
that is guaranteed to not only be found, but be found and released in a most
spectacular fashion.  What we have is the opposite of trying to conceal a
murder.  Our killer wished to show off his work, to turn the unveiling of a
dead body into a theatrical flourish, staged for maximum dramatic impact.”

“Much
like the Romeo and Juliet we began with,” Trevor agreed, still scribbling. 
“But at least there the message was clearer.  Why the deuce was the Kirby woman
dressed up as a man?  Or a gypsy?”

“Whose
costume is it?” Davy asked.  “Who wears it in the show, I mean?”

“An
excellent question to start with,” Trevor said. “Although the answer is more
likely to tell us who the message is intended to frighten rather than who sent
it.”

“The
killer was in the room the whole time Konstantin and I were waltzing, wasn’t
he?” Emma said dully, still holding the shirt in her hands.   She had left
Rayley to contend alone with the task of going through Cynthia Kirby’s worldly
possessions, which was unlike her, and seemed instead singularly preoccupied
with the gypsy costume, which she had now folded and refolded several times.  “Hiding
in the balcony just above the pirate scene with this poor woman’s dead body. 
Waiting for us to leave.  Waiting for his chance.”

“Perhaps
not,” Rayley said, for she seemed genuinely distressed at the thought.  “It is possible,
of course, but it seems to me far more likely that most of the people connected
to the theatricals, perhaps even many more people from all sorts of walks
within the palace, knew that the dance lessons ended at five and that there was
generally a lull before the group practices began.  So he might have entered
the ballroom from the top floor with the body, which had already been killed
and dressed just as Davy and Trevor say, and believing himself to have a
leisurely two hours in which to stage his grand unveiling.  The idea was most
likely that when any number of people were assembled for rehearsal that someone
would notice the alteration in the pirate scene and pull the rope. And thus the
shock of finding Mrs. Kirby’s dead body would be witnessed not merely by two
inconvenient foreigners poking about, but rather by the entire dance troupe,
including a coterie of the imperial women and their attendants.”

“Excellent,”
said Trevor, writing with increased fervor.  “Whatever message implied in the
choice of costume was meant to be delivered to someone the killer expected to
be in that room during the group rehearsals at seven.  Our man believes he has
two hours to do his work but then is startled when Emma and Tom, without
warning, enter the room and begin to explore.  When they disappeared into the
dressing rooms, he seized the chance to finish his task, no doubt more clumsily
than he intended, and escape.”

“We
must examine the balcony above the ship scene,” Rayley said.  “If the killer
waited there, whether it was for the full hour of Emma’s practice or merely the
few minutes she and Tom were exploring the theater, he may have left some
evidence of his presence.”

“That’s
it,” Tom said, standing back.  “I doubt the body has much more to tell us, at
least not at this point.” 

“And
we must talk to your Konstantin,” Trevor said to Emma.  “He and everyone else
that was in the theater this afternoon or who might have been expected to be at
the group rehearsals at seven.”

“Why
Konstantin?” said Emma with surprise.  “I am his most perfect alibi, am I not?”

“Only
if your time line is correct and the killer was hiding in the balcony between
four and five,” said Trevor.  “I’m more inclined towards Rayley’s theory that
whoever intended to hang the body waited for you to leave the ballroom before
beginning the task.  And who knew the precise time you left the ballroom better
than Konstantin?  If the Kirby woman was already dead and dressed, then during
those twelve minutes he could have –“