City of Silence (City of Mystery) (23 page)

“We
can talk of personal matters, you know, Welles,” Rayley finally said.  “I’d
like to think that if my misadventures in Paris served any purpose, it’s that
the door to greater conversational intimacy now stands open between us.”

“Then
you must share with me the details of your evening in the men’s enclave, even
those too bizarre for our young teammates.  All I can gather is that you smoked
opium, frolicked with women from the orient, and let men oil you up and beat
you with bulrushes.”

“I
assure you no man has ever beaten me with a bulrush and I find ‘frolick’ a
rather imprecise verb.”

The
two men chuckled, Rayley also digging in his vest pocket for a cigar.  All
right, so Trevor was as disinclined as ever to speak of his true affections for
Emma, an attraction which Rayley feared might be the eventual undoing of their
unity as a team.  He had tried to bring it up several times in an indirect way,
but Trevor always evaded the issue with some sort of joke or conversational
redirection.

“Perhaps
not in terms of the case, but in general it was a most informative afternoon,”
Rayley finally said.

“I
have no doubt.”

“Go
ahead and laugh at me. I fear I am on the verge of becoming the fool of the
force, but I assure you that whatever degree to which I entered into any
alleged frolicking, it was only so Orlov and his men would accept me as a
fellow.”

“What
tremendous sacrifices you make in the name of Queen and country,” Trevor said,
his hand cupped around his cigar to keep it from extinguishing in the breeze. 
“Were you able to keep your wits about you well enough to observe the design of
the place?”

“Observe,
yes.  Comprehend, no.  The long halls end in a snarl of passageways and small
individual rooms which I would deem nearly impossible for any private guard to
monitor, no matter how many men they employ.”

“I
suppose Orlov and his squad would tell us that the numerous halls work to the
advantage of the protectors, not any invading force.  After all, they
presumably understand the design of the maze rather well whereas an outsider would
become immediately confused.”

“That’s
what they would most certainly say, but damn it all, Welles, you didn’t see the
place.  Dark and labyrinthine, with business of every conceivable sort being
conducted in every corner.”

“I
suppose you felt the need to brag of your own exploits,” Trevor said
indulgently, digging for another match.

Rayley
had already tamped out his own cigar, for the steady wind over the water had almost
immediately proven that smoking would be impossible.  He supposed that was one of
the key differences between Trevor and himself – Rayley conceded to the
inevitable quickly, devising alternative plans within seconds of an initial
failure, while Trevor charged on in the face of all obstacles, as if his very will
was a battering ram which would eventually shatter any reality he found
displeasing.  Rayley was not at all sure which of them was the closest to right,
but he did know one thing.  It was their differences, not their similarities, which
made them such a formidable team.  

“Yes,
I told them of my American whore,” Rayley said.  “But they were hardly impressed. 
I take it that what you and I would consider unspeakably exotic entertainments
are a daily occurrence in the gentleman’s enclave.  It was first with the sauna
and steam, then on to a lounge for brandies and opium-treated cigars and at one
point in the afternoon a gong sounded and we all stood up.  An accomplishment in
itself under the circumstances.  We went to the dock outside the boathouse and
saw a profusion of women approaching in a sort of gondola, each dressed in a
different hue.  The most poetic of colors - deep pinks and purples and golds
and that shade which is neither blue nor green, what do they call it?”

“A
boatload of Asian women actually sailed right up to the dock?”

“And
they then had to be carried out by these big hulking men who were rowing them.  I
would scarcely have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”

“The
Grand Duke Serge was in your party?  Did you observe him with any of the
women?”

“No,
but nor did I notice him showing interest to any of the men.  He is a distant
fellow.  More of the type who stands and watches, you know.”

Trevor
frowned and shook his head as if he was having trouble taking it all in.  “The
women had to be carried from the boat?”

“Their
feet were bound as children, you know. I saw a few of them taking these little
hobbled steps but for the most part they were carried.”

“A
dreadful business.” 

“Indeed,
“Rayley said.  “And I never understood the reason for it, at least not fully, until
that afternoon.  They call their feet their lilies, you know, because the bones
have been broken and reformed to curve in the most extraordinary way, rebuilt in
such a manner as to emulate…”

“Emulate
what?  Flowers?”

“Well,
you know, Welles.”

“I’m
quite certain I do not.”

“Shaped
as they are, it creates a…a secondary sort of ingress.”

“Ingress?”
Trevor said blankly, gazing toward the shore.  Then suddenly the meaning of
Rayley’s words struck him and he startled.  “Good God man, are you serious? 
You saw this?”

“I
believe so.”

“And
did you participate?”

“Of
course not.  Despite what you may think, I am still Scotland Yard.  Now, look
up the riverbank, will you?  That must be some sort of chapel.”

They
had drifted some distance from the original dock, far enough that Rayley had
already begun to dread the lengthy row back upriver, and were now passing a chapel
and graveyard.  It was a lovely little situation designed to a human scale –
the only part of the Winter Palace Rayley had yet seen which did not seem to be
an overblown and oversized architectural brag.

“Perhaps
we should not have left the Queen unguarded,” Trevor said, the thought perhaps prompted
by the resemblance of the free-growing chapel gardens to those in England.

“Tom
is near her rooms if assistance is needed.  He planned to spend the morning in
study.”  Rayley watched clouds of dragonflies hovering over the still water, the
sun reflecting in brilliant shards off of their doubled wings.  “Whatever was
driving our young Mr. Mabrey last night?   I’ve never known him to be so
contrary.”

“A
bit of sympathy for the devil, I’d imagine,” Trevor said.  When Rayley raised a
questioning eyebrow, he elaborated.  “How long had you been in service when you
first found yourself reluctant to arrest a particular criminal?  Because you
recognized that if you had been in his position you might have done the exact
same thing?”

“Oh,
I see where you’re going.  Not long.  Some desperately poor man and a bit of
petty theft, as I recall.  The temptation to look the other way can be quite
strong in certain cases.  So you think Davy feels an affinity with the students
he met at the Volya?”

“I
would imagine that he does.  And so might you and I if we had met them.  In a
country which flaunts the appalling inequities between its classes and is ruled
by a tsar who shows no heart for his people, it seems any man of conscience
might be drawn to the idea of revolution.  Especially university students who have
means to understand that things are done differently elsewhere.”  Trevor
continued to study the chapel, thinking how different it seemed from the other
chapel they had seen, an ornate gilded hall within the palace where weddings
and coronations were held.  This humble little structure would have been more
in place in a rural town, overseen by a kindly pastor, filled with flowers
brought from the women of the village.  “I am actually quite pleased that Davy
felt free to speak as he did in our presence.  I would never have been so frank
with a superior at his age.”

“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 definitive.

“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 within 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.