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“Any what if she did? An aging lady in waiting would hardly confront a strong young killer,
would she? If she had any information linking this Antonovich to the first murder surely she would
have taken her suspicion to the authorities.”
“She was British as well, you know.”
“Yes, of course I know.”
“In service to the Queen’s granddaughter.”
“All of which goes without saying. What are you really getting at, Orlov?”
In true police fashion, the man answered the question with a question. “So does the Queen wish
for you and Welles to investigate this second crime, this killing of a British woman on Russian soil?”
Rayley paused and took a deep breath of the dry, punishing air. It is hard to measure a man’s
degree of anxiety in a sauna, he thought, and hard to gauge the degree of hostility which might be lying
beneath the surface of seemingly civil discourse. If everyone is flushed and sweating, with a
pounding heart and shallowness of breath, how is a detective to gauge the level of anger or fear?
Rayley glanced around them, but none of the other men appeared to be taking even the slightest degree
of interest in his conversation with Filip.
“The Queen is concerned about the murder, just as I mentioned,” Rayley finally said. “It would
be unnatural if she were not, given that Mrs. Kirby was British, a respectable widow, and in service
to the royal family.”
“The woman was a rash,” Filip said bluntly, but with no apparent rancor. “Everywhere at once
and she liked to talk to servants.”
Servants often talk to other servants and gossip is the currency of life within any palace, but
Rayley did not wish to contradict Filip or make him question the wisdom of such extraordinary
candor. So Rayley merely nodded and said “Private citizens who take it upon themselves to snoop
about and ask questions are the bane of lawmen around the world, are they not?”
Filip nodded back with great enthusiasm. “The Kirby woman was seen in the ballroom on the
morning the bodies were discovered. Perhaps she was there earlier too. If she happened to know
something - or even if Konstantin Antonovich thought she did - he may have felt the need to…the
phrase escapes me.”
“Hush her up.”