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“I know you will keep my secret,” he said. “You are my friend.”
The word “friend” stunned her. It was true, of course, that in their short time together they had
formed a type of bond, that she indeed trusted him in any number of strange, wordless ways that she
had never shared with anyone else. But it was still the last word she ever expected him to use. They
slowed to a stop as the song ended and she glanced at the pianist. He was ruffling through sheets of
music, preparing to begin again, and without thinking Emma stretched on tiptoe. Came as close as she
could to the elegant length of Konstantin’s neck, the shine of his hair, the curve of his ear.
“You must leave the palace,” she whispered. “The tsar’s private guard believes you are a
killer.”
The Winter Palace – The Guest Quarters
5:28 PM
The Queen not only received daily updates from London via telegram but also received British
newspapers. Granted, the issues were generally three or four days out of date by the time they
arrived in St Petersburg by train, but Trevor still enjoyed flipping through them as he took his tea. He
was a bit homesick, a condition that was soothed by the familiar pages of the London Star. Even the
advertisements for soap and tea and digestive tonics suddenly held a certain charm.
He was on his second read through in the empty parlor of their rooms when his eye fell upon an
article about a series of rapes in rural Scotland. He read it, squinting at the small smeared print, and
then sat back in his chair with a frown. The story was written, of course, for your average newspaper
reader and thus emphasized the more lurid details over the basic facts, but it had still given him a
sizable serving of the proverbial food for thought.
“Do you remember the last meeting we held of the Tuesday Night Murder Games?” Trevor
asked, looking up as Tom and Rayley shuffled into the room for their own tea. “We discussed criminal
profiling and what personality type was most likely to commit certain crimes?”