Vienna Waltz (40 page)

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Authors: Teresa Grant

Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Historical, #Romance, #Historical Romance, #Mystery & Suspense

BOOK: Vienna Waltz
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“Here.” Schubert directed Malcolm through a side door and up a narrow flight of stairs. For today’s concert, a stage had been set up at one end of the large hall. The crash of the symphony’s opening notes echoed down the stairs.
“If we see him, try to draw his attention,” Malcolm told Schubert as they pounded up the stairs.
A blaze of candlelight bouncing off chandelier crystals greeted them as they reached the top of the stairs. In the shock of light, the musicians were a dark-coated blur. Brass and cymbals sounded, answered by strings. Malcolm paused at the head of the stairs, trying to make out shapes.
There. As the man moved he was caught against the light, a rifle in his hands. At the same moment Malcolm saw him, Schubert let out a whistle in a break in the music. Malcolm hurled himself forward and tackled the man from behind. The shot went wide, pinged off a chandelier, and buried itself in the white and gold plasterwork, the report drowned out by a crescendo.
40
T
sar Alexander took a half step toward Czartoryski and Otronsky. “What the devil—”
“Lisa,” Czartoryski said, gripping Otronsky’s shoulders, “I suggest you go into the anteroom. Alexander, I advise you to accompany your wife.”
“In God’s name—”
“Your Majesty.” Wilhelmine’s lilac-kid-gloved fingers closed round the tsar’s arm with a command few would have dared.
They moved into the anteroom, Czartoryski gripping Otronsky. Otronsky made no effort to escape, but he fixed the prince with a hard gaze. “Czartoryski, have you taken leave of your senses?”
The door to the corridor opened to admit a footman with a bucket of champagne.
“Not now,” the tsar said. “Leave it and go.”
The footman set down the champagne bucket. The tsarina twitched her amber silk skirts out of the way. The footman straightened up. Then he collapsed to the floor as Suzanne pulled the trigger on the pistol she’d taken from her reticule.
Dorothée screamed. For a moment after, it seemed no one moved or even breathed. Music spilled through the curtains, a riot of quickening, insistent melody. Blood dribbled from the footman’s mouth. His eyes already had the fixed glassiness of death.
“In God’s name—” The tsar broke off, his gaze on the lethal knife clutched in the dead waiter’s hand.
The tsarina put her hand to her throat. “It seems I owe you my life, Madame Rannoch.” The knots of cinnamon-colored ribbon on her gown trembled as she drew a breath. “Might we prevail upon you to explain?”
Czartoryski, still holding tight to Otronsky, had his gaze on Elisabeth. Wilhelmine had put her arm round her sister. Tsar Alexander stared in stupefaction from the dead man to his wife. Count Nesselrode stood silently by the curtains.
“Count Otronsky hired an assassin to kill the tsarina,” Suzanne said, lowering the pistol. Acrid smoke lingered in the air.
Otronsky pulled away from Czartoryski’s grip. “I won’t even dignify that with a response. We all know your husband very likely murdered Princess Tatiana. And with this man conveniently dead, you can’t possibly have any proof.”
The door opened. Malcolm stepped into the anteroom, propelling a slight, nondescript man in a dusty coat. He had a pistol pressed to the man’s side. “Your Majesties.” Malcolm inclined his head to the tsar and tsarina. “I caught this man—” He broke off, staring down at the dead footman.
“You were right about not trusting the footmen,” Suzanne said.
His gaze went from her face to the smoking pistol in her hand. The nondescript man stared down at the dead man, eyes gone wide.
“He wasn’t acting alone,” Malcolm said. “I caught this man taking aim at your box from the wings, Your Majesty.” He tightened his grip on the nondescript man’s shoulder. “Do you see the person who engaged your services?”
The man hesitated, gaze still on his dead confederate.
Malcolm pressed the pistol closer to the man’s side.
“Him.” The nondescript man jerked his head at Otronsky.
Otronsky stared at the man for a fraction of a second, then gave a shout of incredulous laughter. “How much did Rannoch pay you to say that? Or is the pistol pressed to your side sufficient incentive?”
The nondescript man glanced down at the blood spilling from his dead confederate onto the gold swirls of the rug. “I’ve kept every communication you sent to us.”
The candlelight from the wall sconces jumped in Otronsky’s eyes. “Any proof you claim to have must be a fabrication.”
“Oh, you didn’t put any details in writing, I’ll grant you that. But the communications prove you were in contact with us. And I think His Majesty there will recognize your hand.”
“That’s preposterous—”
The door was jerked open on his words. Gregory Lindorff stepped into the room. His gaze went to the tsarina, then froze on the dead footman. “I’m sorry I wasn’t sooner.”
“What do you know about this, Lindorff?” Tsar Alexander demanded.
“Enough to tell you Malcolm Rannoch is speaking the truth.”
Otronsky jerked toward Lindorff. “You damned liar—”
Tsar Alexander’s arm shot out, cutting Otronsky off mid-sentence. “How can you be sure?” he asked Lindorff.
Lindorff kept his gaze steady on his sovereign. “Because I was his confederate.”
Violins from the hall cut into the stunned silence that followed. Otronsky lurched at Lindorff. “You can’t drag me into your plots.”
“Silence.” Alexander grabbed Otronsky by the back of his coat. “We will go somewhere better suited to talk.”
“I believe there is a salon across the corridor,” Malcolm said.
They progressed across the corridor to the larger chamber, Malcolm keeping the pistol pressed to the nondescript man. Alexander held Otronsky’s arm. Czartoryski walked close to the tsarina. Suzanne, Dorothée, and Wilhelmine clustered close together. Count Nesselrode brought up the rear, closed the door and set his slight shoulders against it.
Alexander fixed Lindorff with a hard stare. “You claim you and Otronsky were involved in a plot to assassinate me?”
“To assassinate the tsarina.”
Alexander’s gaze jerked to his wife. “Why—”
“Otronsky seemed to feel she represented a danger. I was never able to determine precisely why.”
“And you went along with it—”
“To uncover proof.” Lindorff was very pale but his gaze remained unwavering. “I never felt I had enough to bring the matter to Your Majesty. I knew I would get just the questions I’m getting now. I was hoping for some tangible evidence. I thought I had time. Then Otronsky moved up the date of the attack and urgent action was required.”
“That’s a tissue of arrant lies.” Otronsky stepped toward the tsar.
“Your word against mine,” Lindorff said.
“You were the one who came to me—”
Lindorff folded his arms and surveyed Otronsky. “Yes?”
“You were at the Palm Palace the night of the murder, Otronsky,” Malcolm said. “You went to search for papers you thought Princess Tatiana had in her possession. The only thing I’m not sure about is whether or not you killed her.”
“For God’s sake, she was dead when I got there.”
The silence was deafening. Otronsky seemed to be the last person in the room to realize what he’d said.
“Nesselrode,” the tsar commanded in clipped tones, “you will escort Count Otronsky back to the Hofburg. He is to remain in his rooms until further notice. Place a guard outside the doors.”
“Your Majesty—” Otronsky’s voice was hoarse.
The tsar turned his back to his former favorite. “I have nothing further to say to you for the present. Lindorff, I will speak with you in private.” He glanced at the would-be assassin. “Rannoch, you will deal with this person?”
“I still can’t believe it.” Dorothée looked from her sister to Suzanne and Malcolm. They were in a side salon at Count Stackelberg’s. The afternoon’s near tragedy had gone unnoticed by the majority of those at the concert and had not put an end to Stackelberg’s evening reception. “Even after everything else we’ve been through, I never thought to find myself in the midst of such a fantastical scene.”
“Nor did Talleyrand,” Wilhelmine said.
Talleyrand had met them in the corridor when they left the salon at the Redoutensaal. He’d obviously heard rumors of something being amiss. He’d moved with a quickness that belied his clubfoot, and his gaze had fastened on Dorothée with the sort of heartfelt relief that comes only after bone-crunching fear. Shock had washed through Malcolm and an unexpected welling of kinship.
“Good God,” Wilhelmine said, staring across the salon, “there’s Gregory Lindorff. I was certain he was about to be clapped in irons.”
Malcolm excused himself and crossed to meet Lindorff. Once again, Lindorff made no effort to evade him.
“We need to talk,” Malcolm said without preamble.
“By all means. I believe there’s quite a cozy anteroom through that door that’s stocked with cognac.”
Malcolm closed the door to the anteroom behind them. “You’re a man of great ingenuity, Lindorff.”
“You thought I’d be under guard like Otronsky?” Lindorff splashed cognac into two glasses. “I’d have given even odds on it as well. The tsar grilled me for over an hour. I gave him the names of the other conspirators. He dispatched men to round them up. He seems to have decided I’m an ally.”
“Baron Hager seems to have decided the same about me. I turned the surviving assassin over to him. He thanked me and had the decency to admit he’d been mistaken.”
Lindorff crossed the room to give Malcolm the other glass. “What’s the title of that play of your Shakespeare’s?
All’s Well That Ends Well
?”
Malcolm’s fingers closed round the crystal. “The tsarina could have been killed.”
“Otronsky was caught.”
“It was a damn near run thing.”
Lindorff tossed down a swallow of cognac. “You must believe I never thought Otronsky would change the date of the attack or—”
Malcolm scanned the other man’s face. The guilt was plain and seemingly genuine. So was the fear that lurked in the back of Lindorff’s usually ironic gaze. “Or what?”
“It doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say I’m not proud of many of the choices I’ve made.”
Malcolm turned his glass in his hand. The candlelight bounced off the crystal and turned the amber liquid to gold. “You faced up to what you’d done. I acknowledge that, at least.”
Lindorff moved to the red-tiled stove. “I didn’t have much choice.”
“You could have let the attack go forward instead of risking exposing yourself.”
Lindorff’s gaze snapped to Malcolm’s face. “If you think I’d have let the tsarina be killed—”
“Quite. And once the attack had been foiled you could have run. There was only my word to connect you to it.”
“You have a way of making your word listened to, Rannoch.” Lindorff stared down at the burning coals. “Besides, I couldn’t risk Otronsky getting away with it. That would have made it all for naught.”
Malcolm studied Lindorff’s thin, intent face. “What game are you playing?”
Lindorff looked up with a crooked grin, but his eyes remained bleak. “The same game we’re all playing in Vienna. Survival. And redrawing the map to our liking.”
“You can’t convince me you decided to entrap Otronsky entirely on your own.”
“You don’t think I’m so brave? So clever? So ruthless? I wouldn’t argue with you on any of those counts. But there’s no proof otherwise.”
“How did Tatiana get the tsarina’s letters?”
“Tatiana was a very enterprising woman.”
“With an ex-lover in the Russian delegation.”
“Rannoch—” Lindorff studied him for a moment, as though weighing trust in the scales against an incalculable weight of risk. “I haven’t been my own master for so long I’ve forgot how it feels. And I’ve seen the risks of trying to go one’s own way.”
“In Tatiana’s example.”
“Yes.”
“And you think your master—”
“Oh no, Rannoch. I’ve given you a great deal already. Far more than I should, I suspect. But you can be dangerously persuasive. Tatiana warned me about that.”
“You may face more questions from the tsar.”
“That’s my lookout. I’ll manage. I’m more worried about Czartoryski deciding to wring my neck.”
Malcolm swallowed the last of his cognac. “Czartoryski may be a romantic, but he’s also a pragmatist. And ultimately he knows who stopped the attack on the tsarina.”
“And who instigated it. But I take your point.”
Malcolm turned to the door. “As you said, you’ve told me a great deal. What’s left for me now is to confront your master.”
41
I
n the gray morning light, the lines in Talleyrand’s face appeared harsher and more deeply scored than usual. The habitual sangfroid was still there, but something else was visible beneath. Emotions unexpectedly stirred and not quite under control. The man showing through the mask. “I understand we all have to thank you and your charming wife for your heroics last night,” he said, waving Malcolm to a chair. “While I didn’t entirely understand what was happening at the time, I confess to feeling a certain degree of alarm on Dorothée’s account.”
“Your nephew’s wife is an intrepid young woman. As is her sister.”
“Dorothée has blossomed in Vienna. But I would never forgive myself if she came to harm.”
“Particularly as this particular harm was at your instigation.”
Talleyrand’s brows shot up. “I’m accustomed to making leaps of thought with you, Malcolm, but this is beyond even me.”
“I should have seen it sooner. I forget sometimes how ruthless a strategist you can be. You think Tsar Alexander is the greatest threat to stability on the Continent at present.”
Talleyrand smoothed a lace ruffle over his fingertips. “You disagree?”
“On the contrary. You also saw Count Otronsky as the most dangerous influence on the tsar, pushing him toward extreme views that would lead down the road to violent confrontation with the other Continental powers.”
“I suspect many at the Congress would agree with that analysis.”
“But you were willing to take action.”
“By helping Otronsky assassinate the tsarina?” Talleyrand eased his clubfoot straight and regarded the diamond buckle on his shoe. “My dear Malcolm. Your grasp of chess strategy used to be better than that.”
“By entrapping Otronsky into a plot that would expose the extent of his propensity to violence and lose him the tsar’s favor.”
Talleyrand’s eyes narrowed. His face was admirably under control. “Interesting. Do, pray, continue.”
“You knew the tsarina had papers in her possession that Otronsky would kill to keep secret. Letters she’d written to Alexis Okhotnikov in which she confided her suspicions about her husband’s role in his father’s assassination. You had Tatiana steal the papers with the help of another of your minions. And then you had the minion tell Otronsky Tatiana had taken them and suggest that the tsarina had become too dangerous a liability. How long has Gregory Lindorff been in your employ?”
Talleyrand gave a low laugh. “You overestimate my reach, my dear boy.”
“I think not.”
“My dear Malcolm, you’re suggesting I would risk the tsarina’s life—”
“Oh, the attack was never meant to succeed. The whole idea was for the plot to be uncovered.”
“How?”
“By me.” Malcolm leaned back in his chair. “Tatiana was supposed to feed me information. I’m an outsider whom Alexander would be far more likely to believe than Lindorff if he denounced Otronsky directly. It was quite clever, really. Lindorff acted as
agent provocateur
with Otronsky. He kept Tatiana advised of the plot. Tatiana fed me information. I’m flattered that you placed such faith in my deductive abilities. Tania even wrote a note to be given to me at the Carrousel in the event something happened to her. At the time she wouldn’t have thought anything
would
happen to her, but she must have planned to use the note in case she needed further evidence that she’d been investigating the plot. Only, as it happened, harm did befall Tania. With her out of the picture, I wasn’t quick enough, so Lindorff had to start feeding me information himself.”
Talleyrand crossed one leg over the other. “Ingenious.”
“But you reckoned without Tatiana’s determination to claim her heritage. Once Tania saw what the tsarina’s letters contained, she decided she could make use of them for her own ends. And you realized you’d unwittingly given her the power to take part of Dorothée’s heritage away from her.”
“You’ve lost me again.”
Malcolm slapped his hand down on the marquetry tabletop. “For God’s sake, sir. I suspect you knew Peter of Courland was Tatiana’s father from the moment you learned of my mother’s pregnancy.”
Talleyrand drew a breath. “No. But your mother did tell me. When I was in Britain.”
The admission caught Malcolm off guard. Which perhaps was why Talleyrand had made it. “So you always knew Tania could pose a threat to Dorothée.”
“If every sibling born on the wrong side of the blanket posed a threat, no one in the aristocracy would be safe.”
“But Tatiana had the ear of Metternich and Tsar Alexander and leverage over them.” Malcolm pushed himself to his feet. “If she’d been compensated with Courland lands, they’d have had to come from Peter of Courland’s legitimate children. I can’t imagine you wouldn’t have been distressed. And then there’s the fact that you knew Tatiana could no longer be relied upon.”
“My dear boy, Tatiana couldn’t be relied upon at the age of five.”
“But she could do incalculably more damage now. Especially if she became financially independent and no longer needed you.”
Talleyrand flicked a bit of lint from the lapel of his frock coat. “We could dance round this for hours, or you could ask me straight out.”
Malcolm leaned over Talleyrand, gripping the arms of his chair. “Damn it, sir, did you order my sister killed?”
“To protect myself?”
“And Dorothée.”
He expected a blanket denial, but as so often, Talleyrand surprised him. “I won’t deny Tatiana had become a liability. I sent Lindorff to deal with her that night.”
“Deal with her?”
Malcolm’s fingers bit into the damask of the chair.
“His orders were to get her out of Vienna.”
“Alive?”
“For God’s sake, Malcolm, I’ve known her since she was a baby.”
“And that would stop you?”
“It would certainly have an influence upon me.” A smile played about Talleyrand’s lips. “When I saw you talk with Lindorff last night at Count Stackelberg’s, I suspected you’d have reasoned things through this far. But I’m not the one who can give you details of what happened that night.”
“Don’t think you can fob me off—”
“On the contrary. As Tatiana was your sister, I agree you have the right to as much of the truth as may be uncovered. It’s the least I owe to your mother. A woman of whom I was very fond.” Talleyrand hesitated a moment. When he looked at Malcolm, his eyes were more hooded than usual. “I don’t expect you to believe this, but I will regret what happened to Tatiana until the day I die. Now if you will permit me to reach for my walking stick, I will summon someone who can give you answers.”
Malcolm straightened up and stood, arms crossed, before Talleyrand’s chair. Talleyrand lifted his walking stick and pounded three times on the floor.
A few moments later, Gregory Lindorff stepped into the room. He glanced at Talleyrand, who inclined his head. “As predicted, Malcolm has worked most of it out. I think it’s time you told him what you saw the night of Princess Tatiana’s murder.”
Lindorff met Malcolm’s gaze directly. “I got there after you did. I could see people in Tatiana’s salon through the bay window. I questioned a servant and heard she’d been murdered. What I didn’t realize at the time is that Otronsky had had the bright idea of trying to force Tatiana to give up the papers that night.”
Malcolm’s pulse quickened. “He said as much yesterday. Do you know when?”
“He arrived just before two o’clock, as near as I can tell. He told me Tatiana was dead when he arrived. As he confessed yesterday, he searched the rooms but couldn’t find the tsarina’s letters.”
“And he suspected I had them.”
“He thought you were the likeliest person for Tatiana to have given them to. Especially after he had one of his agents break into Tatiana’s rooms and search again the following night, without success. His agents got wind of the fact that Metternich’s agents were trying to buy Tatiana’s papers from you.”
“So Otronsky tried to take the papers at gunpoint that night at the opera. That was Otronsky himself who put a knife to Suzanne’s throat, wasn’t it?” Malcolm regretted not planting Otronsky a facer the previous night when he’d had a chance.
Lindorff nodded. “He wouldn’t have trusted something so delicate to anyone else.”
“And when Metternich’s agent jumped out the window with the papers, Otronsky followed. Did he catch him?”
Lindorff gave a wry smile. “Otronsky is nothing if not efficient. He recovered the papers from Metternich’s agent, and saw they were fakes.”
“So he realized I didn’t have the letters and turned his attention elsewhere.”
“He had his agents searching other places he thought Tatiana might have hid them. Meanwhile, he was preoccupied with fresh concerns. I’m sorry about Vaughn.”
“Fitz?” Malcolm cast a glance between Lindorff and Talleyrand, who was looking on with the detached interest of a spectator at a fencing match. “What about him?”
“The accident at the Carrousel,” Lindorff said. “I didn’t know what Otronsky had planned.”
“Otronsky was behind Fitz’s accident—” A pulse pounded in Malcolm’s head. “Why, in God’s name?”
“Otronsky saw Vaughn leaving Tatiana’s rooms the night of the murder. Otronsky was afraid Tatiana might have told Vaughn about the tsarina’s letters and what they contained. He wondered if she could have given Vaughn the letters, but he couldn’t manage to infiltrate the British delegation’s lodgings to search, and he suspected Tatiana wouldn’t have entrusted them to a lover who wasn’t an agent. His real fear was that Vaughn had seen him going into the Palm Palace the night of the murder. He was worried about what Vaughn might let slip, particularly because Vaughn is a friend of yours, and you were poking your nose into things. When he heard Vaughn was to compete in the Carrousel, he seized on the chance to remove him from the field of play.”
“But—” Malcolm stared at Lindorff, while in his mind he saw Fitz smiling at Eithne in the antechamber of Redoutensaal the night before. Every drop of blood in his body seemed to turn to ice. “Thank you, Lindorff. That explains a number of things.”
Suzanne stared at her husband. His fingers were pressed to his temples and there was a look in his eyes she had never seen before. “But why—”
Malcolm shook his head. Unanswered questions clustered behind his gaze, each one a potential killing blow. “There’s no sense in speculating until we confront him.”
“We?” Despite the circumstances, his words warmed her. And yet—“Malcolm, are you sure—”
“I need you with me. I need your judgment and your cool head.” He drew a breath that scraped like granite against granite. “And I need you to make sure I don’t murder Fitz.” He held out his hand. When she put her own into it, his fingers closed tight on hers. “The truth is, I need
you,
sweetheart.”
“Malcolm. Suzanne.” Fitz looked up from the paper-littered surface of the writing desk in the attachés’ sitting room. “No rest at the Congress. Castlereagh thanked me for my efforts at the Beethoven concert and gave me a mountain of dispatches to draft before dinner.” He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Have you recovered from yesterday, Suzanne? I still can’t believe—” He shook his head.
Suzanne advanced into the room where she had a good view of Fitz’s face. His gaze was as seemingly open, his smile as quick and warm as they had always been. “Unfortunately it isn’t the first time I’ve shot someone. We all lived through the war.”
His eyes clouded with the memories. “We just never expected it to follow us here.”
Malcolm pushed the door of the sitting room to. The panels rattled against the frame. “Being surrounded by killing changes one. Even when one isn’t a soldier.”
Outside the windows, rain dripped from the plaster moldings and ran in rivulets down the sash windows. The sound echoed through the room.
Fitz stared at Malcolm. “What is it?”
Malcolm walked forward and faced his friend across the desk. “Count Otronsky saw you leaving Tatiana’s rooms the night of the murder.”
“Good God. Otronsky was there, too?”
“At two in the morning. Nearly an hour after you claim to have left.”
For a moment, Fitz simply stared at Malcolm with numb, vacant eyes. “I—”
“Damn you.” Malcolm slammed his hands down on the desk, sending a hail of papers fluttering to the floor. “Were you so desperate to keep your sordid little affair a secret?”
“You think that’s why—” Fitz turned away. “Oh God, what does it matter now?” He sounded unutterably weary.
“She tried to blackmail you, didn’t she? She demanded you use your influence on Castlereagh, as she demanded of me and of Radley.”
“No.” Fitz looked back over his shoulder. “That is—Revealing the affair wasn’t what she threatened. I could have withstood that. God, I hope I could have withstood that.”
“What, then?” Malcolm said, hands taut on the edge of the desk.

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