The White Russian (10 page)

He closed his eyes. Train journeys always transported him back to his youth and those moments when the family would leave Petersburg and set off for what had been his father’s favorite country estate at Petrovo. Sometimes, still, Ruzsky revisited every detail of that journey in his mind: the packing of the household, the excitement that flooded through everyone, even the servants, for days beforehand; the hampers, the first-class compartment, the soporific rattle of the train as it moved slowly south; the horse-drawn troikas that would be waiting at the station two days later and the thrill of that last journey when he, Ilya, and Dmitri would climb down and run through the woods to the house. He could see, even now, the village sparkling through the pine trees as they crested the last hill, the house ablaze with light.

He wondered if he would ever go back.

The train rattled past a frozen lake upon which a boy of six or seven was skating with halting, uncoordinated movements. Ruzsky watched him as he fell and sat suddenly upright, craning his neck to see if he had gone through the ice.

But the boy stood. He dusted the snow from his clothes and began to skate again.

Ruzsky kept his eyes upon him until the train had rattled around the corner of the wood and out of sight.

He picked up his newspaper. There was a long article on the front page that contained the usual fantastic assertions about the progress of the war and a claim that the radical political changes demanded by some would shatter the foundations of Russian society.

This was the newspaper Ruzsky’s father had always treated as a conservative bible. He flicked through it. A group of criminals had robbed a million rubles from the Mutual Credit Bank in Kharkov, drilling through a wall from a neighboring house.

He put the paper down. Perhaps it was a sign of the times. When a ship hit bad weather, it was every rat for himself.

When he reached the station in the town of Tsarskoe Selo itself, Ruzsky climbed into the back of a droshky and a few moments later the wind was cutting into his cheeks as he was hurried along Sadovaya Ulitsa, past the formal gardens of the Catherine Palace. The weather was much clearer out here, and the magnificent blue, white, and gold baroque facade of the palace sparkled in the sunlight. Above it, the Imperial Standard of the Romanovs crackled in the breeze.

Ruzsky watched a green ambulance with a red cross on its side slide through the gates of the palace. Since the start of the war, a section of the grandest of all the Romanovs’ homes had been turned into a hospital for officers.

Not that it had done the ruling dynasty any favors.

Ruzsky smoked a cigarette to hide his nerves. He had been here as a child, when his father had been summoned to a meeting with the present tsar’s father, Alexander III, in the Catherine Palace-a rare event since Alexander had preferred his home at Gatchina-but this time Ruzsky doubted he would get past the gate.

Even as the son of privilege, Ruzsky had found the opulence awe-inspiring. So many servants, he had told his mother. Nor could he forget the look of rapture in her eyes.

The droshky slowed as they approached the Alexander Palace and the driver stopped short of the gate. Ruzsky paid and sent him on his way.

He waited for a moment as he pushed the bundle of his own rubles back into his pocket. Two guards stood by the gate. There was a sense of calm within. The emperors did not like to see servants arriving and leaving, he had once been told, so an entrance to the palace complex had been built underground. He was surprised by how ordinary it all seemed. Somehow, given the climate in the capital, he had expected to find hundreds of guards and thick barbed wire fencing.

“Ruzsky, Alexander Nikolaevich, investigator of the Petrograd police,” he told the guards, producing his identification papers.

The men were soldiers from the Cossack Escort Regiment, but as he handed over his papers, Ruzsky noticed another man-an officer of the Police of the Imperial Court -watching him from inside the gate. After a few moments, the man, dressed in a long, elegant gray overcoat, slipped out and walked toward him.

“An investigator from the city police,” one of the guards explained as the policeman took Ruzsky’s identification papers and examined them.

He looked carefully at the photograph, then up at Ruzsky. “It says here you’re the chief investigator.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know you.”

“I’ve been away.”

“To the front?”

“No.”

The man frowned. “You are still the chief investigator?”

“I suppose so.”

“You suppose so?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Your papers are out of date.”

Ruzsky looked at him, not sure if he was joking. “I apologize,” he said, realizing that the officers charged with the Tsar’s personal protection had nothing to smile about. “You’re quite correct, they are out of date, but I’m conducting a murder investigation.”

“Not Rasputin?”

“No.” Ruzsky shook his head.

“Who have you come to see?”

“Madame Vyrubova.”

“Vyrubova?”

“Yes.”

“You have made an appointment?”

“No. I’m afraid not.”

The officer looked suspicious. “I’ll have to ask you to wait while I telephone.”

“Of course.”

The policeman retreated to the small wooden box beside the gate, the guards alongside him. Ruzsky walked forward to the railings and looked through to the yellow and white colonnades. It was infinitely more modest than the Catherine Palace, its neighbor.

He turned around, took out his case, and lit a cigarette. It was almost warm now that the sun was out, though his feet were still numb with cold. He bashed them together.

He noticed two faces in an upstairs window of the house closest to the gate. He assumed they were also officers of the palace police, watching the entrance.

The aura of calm was deceptive.

He faced the gate again and watched a gardener chipping ice from outside the steps to the nearest wing of the palace.

Ruzsky thought about the faces of those waiting in the bread queue. Were they really talking about revolution? Now that people discussed it openly, he found himself recoiling from his earlier insistence that change was inevitable and desirable in whatever form. He realized now that it frightened him. He no longer believed that change always made things better.

He thought of the arguments with his father.

If only they had spent less time being so certain they were right… but then, the same could be said for the country as a whole.

“All right, Chief Investigator. I’ll get someone to accompany you.”

Ruzsky was so surprised that he did not answer. The man returned to his box and Ruzsky waited, his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets.

There was a sudden burst of activity as three soldiers ran down from the near wing to open the gate. A long, low black saloon car followed them, the yellow and black imperial flag fluttering over its hood.

It skidded on the ice as it swung out onto the road, affording Ruzsky a brief glimpse of the man inside. The Tsar of all the Russias glanced at him, before settling back into his seat.

One of the soldiers walked over. “I will take you.”

Ruzsky heard himself say: “I thought the Emperor was at the front.”

The guard gave him a sour look, but did not deign to reply.

They began walking, stepping onto the side of the road, into the snow, where the footing was surer. “How is Petrograd?” the man asked.

“Cold.”

“We hear only bad things.”

“It will be better when there is more bread.”

They rounded the corner of the Alexander Palace and saw a group of children playing beneath the terrace. They were making something from the snow-from here it looked like a house-helped by two men and a woman. As they moved closer, Ruzsky recognized two of the grand duchesses, the Tsar’s daughters, and the Tsarevich, his only son.

Ruzsky could not take his eyes from them. Just as with the car a moment ago, it was almost like seeing an apparition. If he’d told Pavel he’d witnessed the Tsar’s children playing in the snow-just like any in Russia -the big detective would never have believed him.

It reminded Ruzsky of his own conviction as a child that the Tsar was not in fact a mere man, but a being from another world. It was an impression that he could still not entirely dispel, even though he had once exchanged a few words with the young Nicholas Romanov at a New Year’s Day reception at the Winter Palace.

The Tsarevich laughed. He was a pale child, with a thin white face, but there was no sign of the hemophilia with which rumor said he was inflicted. As the guard led him toward the group, Ruzsky tried to tear his eyes away from the boy, but could not.

“Madam Vyrubova,” the guard said.

A round-faced woman looked over toward them. She was dressed in a long white coat with a fur collar.

“This gentleman has come to see you. He is the chief investigator for the Petrograd police.”

The woman frowned. The two grand duchesses looked at Ruzsky with frank curiosity. They were strikingly beautiful. The men-tutors, he assumed-stopped what they were doing and appraised him also. Both were dressed in long overcoats and suits.

Ruzsky realized he was staring at them as he would at caged animals. He had to force himself to look away.

“I’ve not seen him before,” Vyrubova said.

The Tsarevich looked like his own son. They shared the same gentle solemnity. As he watched, the woman drew the boy to her, but the gesture was proprietorial rather than affectionate.

“I’m new,” Ruzsky said, realizing he was required to offer an explanation.

“You’re too late.”

Alexei slipped his other arm through that of the older of his two sisters. This must be Olga, Ruzsky thought, or perhaps Tatiana. It was many years since he’d seen either of them. They were pretty girls. They projected a luminous innocence. Ruzsky thought of the caricature he had seen on the wall of the office earlier depicting their half-naked mother dancing with Rasputin.

“Take him to my house. I will see him there,” Vyrubova said. Her manner was imperious and dismissive. He turned reluctantly and the guard led him away down the central path.

Ruzsky glanced back. The group still watched him.

He was chivied on by the guard. The icy path had been scattered with small stones to give them a measure of grip, but his footing was still uncertain.

The path ran through a long line of trees which stood out starkly against the snowy landscape around them. Ruzsky could see the Catherine Palace to his left and he stopped as he reached the point where the paths leading to both palaces met. He could still see the children playing beneath the curved terrace behind him. The guard chivied him again.

They passed a chapel. “Is that where they buried him?” Ruzsky asked. “Rasputin, I mean.”

The guard stopped suddenly, his face severe. “You have no power or jurisdiction here, is that understood?” Ruzsky noticed how red the man’s cheeks were from the cold, the capillaries so pronounced that they reminded him of the painted wooden maps they’d studied at school. “This is the home of the Tsar of all the Russias. You will confine yourself to addressing Madam Vyrubova, and no one else.”

Ruzsky concealed his irritation at this unnecessarily heavy-handed approach and the man turned around and marched him swiftly down to a small house in the far corner of the park. It was a pavilion that had been transformed into a comfortable, solid residence, with a white wooden fence around its garden and roses curling over the sloping roof of the veranda.

Inside it was neatly, but not lavishly, furnished. The guard left him at the door in the hands of a young housekeeper with pretty dark eyes. She smiled and led him through to a drawing room. He accepted her offer of tea.

The room was bright, sunlight spilling in through large windows. Ruzsky stood with his back to a fire that crackled on the hearth. There was a framed photograph of Rasputin on the far wall with a collection of icons beneath it. Next to it was a picture of Anna Vyrubova sitting alongside the Tsar himself on a thin strip of sand in what looked like the Crimea. The last picture-next to a bookcase-was of Anna surrounded by the Tsar’s five children.

Ruzsky took a step toward her desk. It was arranged neatly, a pen and inkwell placed next to a pile of writing paper. On the right-hand side, alongside a small carriage clock, the Tsarina stared out at him severely from an ornate silver frame.

He heard someone coming through the front door and returned to his position in the center of the room.

Vyrubova looked at him for a moment as she entered. “What do you want?”

“I-”

“You didn’t come and see us about Father Grigory. If you are indeed the chief investigator, we should have seen you then.”

“I have just returned to Petrograd.” He shook his head. “And I believe such an important case was always likely to be treated as a political and not simply criminal matter, for reasons that will be obvious to you.”

She stared at him. “It has brought shame on our country, and our class.”

Ruzsky didn’t answer. He wondered exactly what relationship this woman enjoyed with the Empress. Technically, as he recalled, she was a lady-in-waiting, but clearly also much more. This was the woman much of Russia believed to be a lesbian lover of the Empress, and participant in orgies that were variously said to involve both the Tsar and Rasputin.

“If your business is not important,” she went on, “then why do you trouble me with it?”

Vyrubova’s small eyes were still fixed upon his. He sensed her suspicion, and her cunning.

“The body of a woman was found on the Neva this morning. She was wearing a dress made by Madame Renaud.” He paused. “A dress made for you.”