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“No,” Tatiana said.<br />
“For you know what we are on the verge of suggesting, do you not?”<br />
Tatiana shook her head. She desperately wished to sit before her legs gave way, but it was<br />
impossible to do so with Ella still on her feet.<br />
“What we are suggesting,” Ella continued, “is that there is someone within this palace who is<br />
so cruel that he will kill two innocent dancers simply to pin the crime on his true enemy, which is<br />
Konstantin. But it appears this person has failed. The bodies have been carted away with only the<br />
most perfunctory of examinations and the weapon, while presumably being stored somewhere, has to<br />
date attracted no attention at all. No one within the guard has cared enough to notice that the knife in<br />
question was part of Konstantin’s gypsy costume and not the plaster cast knife used in the Romeo and<br />
Juliet scene. So it would appear that this elaborate message, this switching of the props, has gone<br />
undetected and thus our villain’s plans to incriminate Konstantin have fallen to ruin.” Ella frowns.<br />
“But one thing does bother me.”<br />
“That whoever is determined to destroy Konstantin might try again?”<br />
Ella responded to this rather obvious suggestion with surprise. “Yes, I suppose there is that<br />
chance. But I was about to say that my grandmother has traveled from London with two bodyguards,<br />
and that the British police are quite different from the Russians. Bulldogs, every last one of them. I<br />
would imagine that if Granny’s Detective Welles and her Detective Abrams gained possession of that<br />
picture their eyes would go to the knife at once. But of course…they won’t.”<br />
“Mrs. Kirby might not tell them that the photograph exists?”<br />
“Why ever should she do such a thing? Or talk to them at all? She works for me.”<br />
“And she is loyal to you?”<br />
“Of course she is loyal to me. All my servants are loyal to me,” Ella said, her head jerking with<br />
exasperation. “And whatever is wrong now? I have offered you every assurance and yet you remain<br />
so pale.”<br />
“I am unwell, Your Imperial Highness.”<br />
Ella tilted her chin. “What sort of unwell?”
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