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“What’s odd about it?” Trevor asked.
“It’s more than twenty words.”
Laughter ran around the table. “Our young officer Mabrey has a mania for holding his
telegrams to twenty words,” Trevor explained to the Queen. “If the crown is ever bankrupted, I can
assure you it won’t be because Scotland Yard is sending overly long messages.”
“May I ask if you know who this Gregor Krupin is, Ma’am?” said Rayley. “That’s obviously
the key part of the telegram.”
“Of course I know who he is,” the Queen said, folding her arms across her ample stomach, “as I
suspect Miss Kelly does as well.” She looked directly at Emma. “Would you illuminate the
gentlemen?”
“Indeed, Ma’am,” Emma said, her mind racing as she attempted to collect her thoughts. Much
of her study over the last few days had come from the extensive notes of Britain’s foremost expert on
Russia, a professor at Cambridge who often served as a consultant to the Yard. He had produced two
files at Trevor’s request, one marked “The Official History” and the other “The Real History.” Both
had been bulging, full of long Russian names, and Emma had struggled to digest the information
within. But the lines about Krupin leapt up from her subconscious mind, like trout from a stream.
“As we’ve suggested, Alexander II was right to be concerned that the same revolutionaries who
murdered his father might take aim at him as well,” she said calmly, her eyes flitting around the table
at the kind and familiar faces of her friends before at last settling on Trevor, who was nodding with a
small encouraging smile. “Gregor Krupin was one of several revolutionaries who were arrested two
years ago in an assassination attempt on the present tsar. It was a band of university students and very
badly planned, so much so it is doubtful the tsar was ever in significant danger. Five of the plotters
were hanged, convicted on testimony provided by Krupin.”
“So he’s a turncoat to his own cause,” Trevor said. “Was he jailed?”
“No,” the Queen said shortly. “They do things differently there. Our understanding is that he is
still free in the streets and still involved in radical causes. His surviving comrades do not appear to
know that he is the one who – what is the phrase, Detective?”
“Sold them out?” Trevor guessed.
The Queen sat back. “Indeed.”