A Razor Wrapped in Silk (35 page)
There was another avenue open to Porfiry: Verkhotsev. Porfiry assumed that his new friend in the Third Section had access to the Tsar. Of course, it had to be borne in mind that Verkhotsev might prove reluctant to share his privilege with another. If Porfiry were to disclose the full extent of his suspicions to Verkhotsev, the danger was that the Third Section would take over the investigation, or, more probably, bury it. What were the lives of a few factory children compared to the honour of the House of Romanov? However, Porfiry had to remind himself that Verkhotsev was Maria Petrovna’s father. He had declared himself to be on the side of the truth. At the same time, he had admitted the existence of elements within the Third Section who, it was to be presumed, were less concerned with the provision of that elusive commodity.
What Porfiry least expected as he chain-smoked his way through one side of his cigarette case, while struggling over the wording of his note to Verkhotsev, was to achieve his goal without doing anything. It seemed that his own desire to see the Tsar was matched by a reciprocal desire on the part of the Tsar. A middle-aged
Kammerjunker
wearing the order of St Stanislav visited Porfiry’s chambers to present him with a folded paper sealed with the Romanov seal. Porfiry’s heart raced as he studied the familiar double-headed eagle
imprinted in the shiny red wax. The precise and sharp-edged image bore little resemblance to the vague blurs that they had seen on the necks of the children. He wondered now if they had been mistaken. True, there did seem to be a certain consistency in the shape and size of the repeated bruise. However, its definition was compromised by the leeching of ruptured capillaries under the skin, a spidery halo disrupting the line. Was it indisputably the impression of the Romanov signet ring, as the imprint before him now so clearly was? Or had he succumbed to the influence of Virginsky and fallen into the old trap?
What you go looking for, you will find
, as the saying had it.
‘Will you not open it? Your instructions are on the inside, you know.’
Porfiry looked up at the
Kammerjunker
, whose aristocratic features were set in an expression of indulgent good humour. ‘Come now, the Tsar doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’
Porfiry peeled the brittle encrustation of wax off the paper taking care not to break it.
‘You are like me,’ said the
Kammerjunker
. ‘Frugal. Why buy sealing wax when you can re-use the Tsar’s?’
‘Indeed,’ said Porfiry, as he opened the document. He read that he was commanded to return forthwith with Prince Shchegolskoy – evidently the gentleman who had delivered the summons – to the Winter Palace for a private audience with Tsar Alexander II.
‘I have a carriage for us outside,’ advised Prince Shchegolskoy. Porfiry slid the detached imperial seal into a drawer, then rose to his feet with a nod of obedience. He would finish the note to Verkhotsev when he returned.
*
Inevitably, the black-lacquered carriage bore the Romanov crest on its doors. The insistence of the design was beginning to haunt Porfiry.
The liveried footmen must have had to cling on for dear life as the carriage thundered beneath the arch of the General Staff Building into Palace Square. Whether it was the ruddy hue of the low October sun, or the sanguinary cast of his own thoughts, Porfiry could not help but see the great red-painted palace as stained in blood. He shook his head to dispel the fanciful idea, recognising once more Pavel Pavlovich’s influence.
Prince Shchegolskoy had kept up an affable patter throughout the journey, playing the part of the professional courtier, at ease with any individual into whose company his emperor’s command thrust him. Possibly not a very bright man, thought Porfiry as he listened to his prattle, he was without doubt happy with his lot, which was little more than that of a glorified messenger boy.
Steering a course through the centre of the square, and thereby almost skimming the Alexander Column, the driver urged his team to a final burst of speed. The horses’ hooves clattered over the swirls of paving stones; Porfiry saw the sparks in his mind’s eye. He noted with alarm that they were galloping towards a closed wrought iron gate in the central arch of three. Prince Shchegolskoy was surely also aware of this circumstance but seemed unperturbed. At the last moment, the gates swung open, operated by unseen hands. Porfiry found himself inside the courtyard of the Winter Palace.
‘I thought it was usual for members of the public to enter the palace from the Neva side,’ Porfiry observed to his companion, as the carriage decelerated sharply to the restraining shouts of the driver.
‘That is only in the case of state ceremonials. You are here on private business. The Tsar’s private apartments are best approached by this entrance.’ Prince Shchegolskoy smiled and added an afterthought: ‘There are over one thousand and fifty rooms in the Winter Palace. One can waste a lot of time if one does not choose one’s entrance advisedly.’
The carriage came to a halt. The door was opened and the steps pulled down by a footman. Prince Shchegolskoy gestured for Porfiry to lead the way.
As he climbed down, Porfiry glanced about to take in his surroundings. A cluster of denuded trees in the centre gave the courtyard a desolate air, although unusually for a St Petersburg building the inner walls maintained the columned and corbelled grandeur of the façade. In the great Winter Palace, it seemed, there was to be no discrepancy between outer and inner glory.
Prince Shchegolskoy steered him towards a high arched doorway in the nearest wall. A rifle-bearing Cossack stood to one side at the prince’s nod.
They crossed the threshold into a grand entrance hall, littered with marble and emblazoned with gilt mouldings on white. Porfiry looked up, his gaze drawn by towering columns, and saw a magnificent frescoed ceiling. Celestial beings peeped out through pink clouds fixed to a sky of Mediterranean azure.
‘One thousand and fifty rooms?’ whispered Porfiry, though the echo of his voice cascaded back to him louder than the original. ‘Are they all on this scale?’
The prince merely smiled in reply.
A massive double staircase ahead of them folded itself around a triple arched passageway. The prince led Porfiry up the left arm of the stairs. Porfiry was cowed by the echoes of
their footfalls. It seemed that the palace was a giant sounding box, amplifying everything that happened within it.
The landing at the top led on to a long hall. A river of ultramarine carpet flowed over the parquet floor, until it was dammed by a closed door in the far distance.
As they walked along the gallery, Porfiry’s eye was drawn by one or other of the paintings, which seemed to provide glimpses into other worlds, worlds of strange, classically attired heroes in highly charged poses, or of mysterious landscapes, or lifeless still lives. The surfaces glowed with intense colour. They both seduced and repelled him. What had these scenes to do with the Russia that began outside the palace walls?
They reached the door at the end of the blue carpet, which opened on to a second identical gallery.
‘Are you sure we chose the most convenient entrance?’ asked Porfiry.
‘Oh yes!’ replied the prince delightedly.
Beyond that gallery was a staircase that led down to a vast circular room over which an immense rotunda ceiling floated. Light filtered in through a central round window of frosted glass. A colonnade ran around the periphery of the room. Here Porfiry got his first sight of other people: two men in military uniform, generals, were engaged in a hushed, bowed conference by one of the blood red columns. They broke off and watched in silence as Porfiry and the prince crossed the great marble-tiled floor.
There were doors all the way around the circumference. Porfiry heard one close somewhere to his left with a reverberating click. The door the prince selected led to a shorter enfilade gallery, at the end of which was a brass-lined door guarded by two Cossacks.
‘His Imperial Majesty’s private apartments begin here,’ said Prince Shchegolskoy.
*
The man whom Porfiry knew as Svyatoslav Andreevich Tushin, or Slava, stooped to press his ear to the connecting door between the magistrate’s private apartment and his chambers. He heard no sound. It was possible that the magistrate was working alone, in silence. Slava tapped gently on the door. When no response came, he tentatively pushed the door open and stepped through.
The room was empty but still he would have to act quickly. The magistrate might return at any moment, or the self-important clerk Zamyotov might come in with correspondence.
He dashed across to the desk and tried the drawers. Locked. As they had been the last time he had tried them. It really did seem that the magistrate was wise to him.
The green desk leather was clear of all clutter, apart from a writing set and a single sheet of official paper, placed at an angle to the edge, as if abandoned in a hurry. Slava picked it up and read:
To my esteemed colleague, Major Pyotr Afanasevich
Verkhotsev,
I am writing to inform you of a further tragic development
in the case that concerns us both. The body of another
child was discovered this morning at the Baird Shipbuilding
Plant in the Kolomenskaya District of St Petersburg. The
child in question was a worker at the factory, a boy,
aged approximately 13 years, by the name of Innokenty
Zimoveykin. The distinctive mark which we discussed at
our last meeting was in evidence on his neck. Clearly, Yelena
Filippovna cannot be his murderer. Moreover, it is my belief
that this new circumstance further calls into question her
involvement in the earlier murders
.
The draft ended there but Slava had read enough. He placed the sheet back on the desk and tiptoed back towards the door that led to Porfiry Petrovich’s private apartment.
The accommodation on the other side of the brass-lined door was on an altogether more human, and even intimate, scale. Porfiry had the real sense of entering living quarters, that is to say, within which memories accumulated, ordinary human complications were created and tidied away; a place where fires were lit against the cold, meals eaten, naps stolen, where arguments stormed and doors were slammed. It could have been the St Petersburg apartment of any well-to-do gentleman, although perhaps the floors were polished, the dust chased away, the carpets beaten more frequently than in most.
Prince Shchegolskoy’s fist was poised inches from the surface of a door panelled in two colours of wood. What seemed to give him pause was the sound of raised voices – or rather, one raised voice – from within. A moment later the door flew open and Porfiry was surprised to see a man he recognised as the elder Prince Naryskin flee the room, his face flushed and drawn. Prince Naryskin seemed equally surprised to see Porfiry there. He met the magistrate’s questioning gaze with a look of startled outrage, and then brushed past without a word of greeting.
Prince Shchegolskoy’s knuckles now fell superfluously against the open door. ‘Your Majesty, I have the magistrate Porfiry Petrovich to see you.’
That sense of intimacy was even more in force in the room
Porfiry now entered. The Tsar’s study was crammed with a very particular kind of clutter: the photographs and portraits of the people who made up his life. A multitude of faces looked out from every square inch of the wall, frames butting against frames. There were even portraits hung on the back of the door, which Prince Shchegolskoy now pulled behind him as he left. Heavy green drapes were suspended above a pair of alcoves; Porfiry noticed paintings of battle scenes hung within them, as well as a sideboard piled high with folders and official papers: the glories and burdens of state stashed together.
The Tsar sat behind the furthest of the desks, his uniform dripping with braid and medals. Enormous epaulettes squatted on his shoulders. A broad sash of lustrous turquoise silk ran diagonally across his chest. Despite these trimmings of power, the face that looked up at Porfiry was remarkably human. This was just a man, a man like any other, struggling to comprehend and control the world around him. To bolster his confidence he had surrounded himself with images of his family and friends. To inspire the awe of others, he had dressed himself in an imposing costume. But Porfiry was struck most by the thought that his head was slightly small for his body, although not to the extent that Peter the Great’s had been. He also found himself unduly fascinated by the Tsar’s moustaches, which were kept long. They curled away from his face with a kind of unruly waywardness, as if – for all the things this man could bend to his will – his own facial hair refused to do his bidding. Porfiry was reminded of Gogol’s tale of the nose.
‘What are you smirking at?’ The Tsar asked the question uncertainly, looking down at himself to check that every detail of his personal appearance was perfectly in order.
‘I beg your pardon, Your Majesty. I was not aware of …’
‘You were undeniably smirking at something.’
‘I am sorry. I cannot explain it. Except to say that for some reason I found myself thinking of one of Gogol’s stories.’
‘They tell me you are the most brilliant investigator in St Petersburg. You seem to me to be something of an imbecile.’
‘The truth, I dare say, lies somewhere in between, Your Majesty.’
The Tsar’s face remained fixedly blank for a moment, then opened up into abrupt laughter. The laughter somehow failed to touch his eyes, which seemed infected with a perpetual wariness. ‘Well, we will have to make do with that, I suppose. Do you smoke?’
The Tsar opened a jewel-encrusted box on his desk. Porfiry breathed in the heady waft of dormant tobacco suddenly released.
‘Yes, thank you, Your Majesty.’
‘Good man.’ The Tsar sat back as he breathed in the first draught of his own cigarette. ‘You may sit down.’
