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clearer,” Emma said. “Konstantin and Tatiana are lovers. Ask Tom if you don’t believe me.”
“Well, that indeed is quite the coincidence,” Rayley said. “The wife of a member of the private
guard, in a tryst with the private guard’s chief suspect in the murders.”
“How on earth did the two of you discover this?” Trevor asked Emma. “And why did you not
mention it earlier?”
“We learned that they are lovers in precisely the manner you are now imagining,” Emma said.
“Although it seemed inconsequential in comparison to our discovery of Mrs. Kirby’s body a few
minutes later. But if Konstantin and Tatiana were indiscreet enough to have been caught by Tom and
myself backstage at the theater in the worse possible moment, it’s possible that they have given other
people reason to speculate along the way. Mrs. Kirby perhaps, or Tatiana’s husband.”
“This explains a great deal,” said Rayley. “For now Filip Orlov has every incentive to frame
Konstantin. It provides him with a neat and elegant solution to all his problems. Konstantin hangs,
guilty or not, while Filip retains his wife and earns another commission for service to the tsar.”
“Hangs?” Emma asked sharply. “He may be guilty of a romantic indiscretion but hardly
murder. In fact, between me and Tatiana Orlov, his every moment is accounted for during the time the
body must have moved.” She looked from Trevor to Rayley. “I don’t know about the ballet dancers,
but he certainly had nothing to do with the Kirby affair, and whatever evidence they’ve collected
against him is unlikely to be enough to convict him in a court of law.”
“If we were in London, I would agree with you,” Trevor said. “Here, who can say?”
This gave her pause. She chewed her lower lip as she looked down at the carpet.
“We’ve only begun our investigation, Emma,” Rayley said with sympathy. “Until we get our
answers and thus the Queen gets hers, we won’t be leaving St. Petersburg anytime soon.”
“True, true, true,” Trevor agreed. “All quite true. But even if Konstantin is a somewhat unlikely
suspect, we must exhibit caution around the man and indeed everyone else until this matter is sorted
out. The one thing I’m inclined to agree with Filip Orlov about is that Cynthia Kirby was most likely
slain because of something that she saw or knew. Which means that we have a killer who won’t
hesitate to kill again in order to cover his tracks. A killer who may well be in possession of both
Konstantin’s knife and Cynthia’s pistol.”
The door opened again, this time without even a perfunctory knock, and Davy and Tom burst in,
a file in Tom’s hand.