City of Silence (City of Mystery) by Kim Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

to be righting some great wrong, as avenging either their
own suffering or that of someone they love, as merely setting the tipped scales
of justice on balance once again.  It is easy for us to sit here with our
brandy and declare them animals, but I suspect that in most cases there is an
interior logic to their motives, a logic we must understand if we hope to
thwart the actions which result from it.  Otherwise, we will spend our lives
solving crimes instead of preventing them.  The science of forensics will become
nothing more than mopping up bloodstains.”
    Davy
quickly nodded.  Emma bit her lip.  Rayley murmured “Here, here” and Geraldine,
who had dozed off some minutes before, gave a little snort as her chin bobbed
lower toward her chest.  Tom, his feet still propped on the table, his chair
tilted precariously back, pulled a cigarette from the silver case in his pocket
and slowly smiled.
    “Quite
a speech, Welles,” he said.  “I’m surprised the clock doesn’t chime again, just
for emphasis.”   

Chapter
Three
    The
Winter Palace, St. Petersburg - The Private Rooms of the Orlovs
    June
14, 1889
    9:20
AM
     
     
    “There
was a disturbance in the theater last night,” Filip said, without looking up
from his plate.
    Her
pulse quickened, just has he had undoubtedly intended for it to do. 
    “What
sort of disturbance?” Tatiana said, her voice carefully pitched to sound calm,
even slightly disinterested.  She had trained herself how to do this throughout
the twenty-seven months she had been married to Filip Orlov.  Anxiety made the
voice rise, especially on the final syllable of the last spoken word.  It had
the effect of turning any statement into an implied question, of indicating
uncertainty, even in the most everyday of matters. Tatiana now automatically
lowered her voice as she finished each sentence and the irony was that this
soft growl, which had begun as a survival technique, was largely cited among
her acquaintances as evidence of a flirtatious nature.
    Tatiana
and Filip were sitting at their breakfast table just as they had for each
morning of their married life.  Which would make it – let’s see, what was twenty-seven
times thirty?  Dear God, over 800 consecutive mornings that the two of them had
spent precisely as this one:  Filip already in uniform, already wearing his
boots.  She in her peignoir, imported at considerable expense and bother from
one of the better ladies’ boutiques of Paris, idly grazing over a bowl of fruit
and grain, all the while sipping her favorite morning concoction.  It was pink
froth in a wine glass, a mixture of pomegranate juice and flat champagne,
whatever dregs happened to remain from the night before.  Filip ate eggs, but
exclusively the yolks, an idiosyncrasy that resulted each morning in a plate of
abandoned egg whites, lying lacy and flat on his blue plate like the dried foam
which was left behind on the beaches of the Crimean Sea. Tatiana and Filip
summered there and would be departing for their villa soon, just after the Tchaikovsky
ball.  Half their trunks were already packed.
    Tatiana
did not anticipate the trip.
    Filip
did not answer her at once.  Perhaps this hesitation was a type of calculated
torture, perhaps merely the result of his preoccupation with his breakfast.  He
pierced another yolk and yellow spilled across his plate.  He requested them
barely done, these eggs, liked them as runny as possible, and if he was not in the
tsar’s own guard, Tatiana had little doubt that her husband  would truly prefer
to swill the yolks raw from a glass.  The social nuances of the imperial court
were a perpetual mystery to Filip.  He enjoyed the benefits of being within the
circle of the tsar’s most trusted staff – Tatiana herself was one of those
benefits – but was still ill-at-ease with the constant ceremonies of life
within the Winter Palace.
    “Two
dancers killed themselves,” he finally said. “They were to play Romeo