City of Shadows

by Ariana Franklin

  Natalya was unconvinced. “Seems to me she don’t speak anything much. The Romanov girls talked all languages—German like their ma, French, English. Where do you reckon she’s from if it ain’t Russia?”

  “I’m wondering if she’s Polish. She called me a damn Z˚ ydach this morning, and that’s Polish.”

  “Well, that’d account for why she’s such a pain in the ass.” Like most Russians, Natalya had no opinion of the country that her own had held in thrall for much of its history.

  On Nick’s instructions Esther had begun to give Anna English conversation lessons. His own researches had revealed that the Romanovs spoke English to one another in private. “She’ll latch on quick when she remembers. It’ll impress the customers. And open up the American market.”

  Anna was capable of surprising them both. She learned English quickly, and she could recount faultlessly the genealogy of both the czar and the czarina as well as practically every other crowned head in Europe. She knew the progress of the young czarevitch’s hemophilia and the names of the two sailors who were set to guard him from the falls and knocks that brought on the agony of his condition. More than that, presented with photographs in the album that the czarina had published before her death, she could identify without prompting not only individual members of the immediate family but uncles, aunts, cousins, governesses, friends, personal maids, even pets, embellishing each picture with personal detail.

  Natalya was once more spurred into reconsidering. “How’s she know these things?”

  Esther held up a book that Nick had just sent over that morning with Big Theo. “It’s in here.” It was Peter Gilliard’s Thirteen Years at the Russian Court. Gilliard, a Swiss, had been the Romanovs’ tutor and had married Anastasia’s nursemaid.

  Natalya was still doubtful. “Looks kind of heavy for her to read. When did that come out?”

  “In 1921. Last year.”

  That was the trouble: Anna had been in Dalldorf for the book’s publication. Either she’d got hold of a copy, which argued considerable dedication for an asylum patient, or she knew someone who had. “Or,” as Natalya said, doubtfully, “she was there.”

  Natalya’s recollections of the imperial children were painful. “Lovely girls, the four of them, dressed in white mostly. Olga was the scholar. Tatiana—she was really elegant. Marie was the prettiest. Anastasia was the sassiest—she got into more trouble than the others. Never cried when she was slapped, never. And so polite—you didn’t hear them saying, ‘Do this, do that.’ It was always, ‘If you don’t mind . . .’ But it was the czarevitch who was everybody’s favorite—we all loved little Alexei.”

  It was late. The summer was extending a blazing sun into September, and the heat of the day had soaked into the apartment, making its stuffy furniture seem stuffier. Esther switched on the light to dispel the memory of the darkness that had lain in wait for the royal children outside their bright, innocent arena of snowball fights, toboggan rides, toys, pets, and all-encompassing affection.

  “He wasn’t allowed to ride a bicycle,” Natalya said of Czarevitch Alexei, “case he fell and set off his condition, but he was all boy, and I remember the day he sniped one of the gardener’s bikes and wobbled across the parade ground—”

  I can’t listen to this. Natalya was resurrecting a child who was going to die, as thousands and thousands had died under the Romanov regime.

  Esther got up and went into the kitchen, taking the day’s newspaper with her. She sat down to try to read it, then pushed it away. Its headlines were of the rioting and strikes, crime and poverty, the spreading tuberculosis, the malnourished children, that lay outside the cocoon of this apartment where the three of them led what seemed to her as peculiar and unworthy a life as had the unheeding Romanovs in their enchanted palace.

  The air was so still that she could hear the rushing rattle of trains on their way to and from the Anhalter, sounding to her like the shriek of a wind building up—the same red wind that had whirled her Russia into dust.

  Oh, God, don’t let it happen here. Not like that.

  The telephone rang. She went into the living room to answer it. “That you, Esther?” “What’s the matter, Boris?” “It’s Olga. Somebody beat her to death in her flat. Can you come?”

  OLGA’S BODY HAD lain undiscovered for three days, possibly four. It wasn’t until Monday and then Tuesday had gone by without her making an appearance at the Green Hat that Boris went around to inquire at her flat in Polenstrasse.

  “Not until then?” Esther asked. She’d have checked earlier had she known about it; for Olga to take a day off, let alone two, was unheard of.

  Boris was stung. “Look, Esther, I don’t know what you’re up to because Nick won’t tell me, but we’re busy. Nobody’s going abroad for a holiday what with the mark at rock bottom—cheaper to stay in Berlin for your nightlife.” He added, “Except His bloody Highness Prince Nick, mind you—he’s sunning himself in the South of France, so I’ve got three clubs to run, and the new secretary’s useless.”

  Boris could sound harassed even when he wasn’t, but this time, Esther had to admit, he had cause.

  He’d been waiting for her outside Olga’s place with its key in his hand, a thin, gloomy, bowler-hatted figure, more like an accountant than deputy manager of one of Germany’s most lavish and raciest clubs.

  So far they hadn’t gone in. Boris was bringing Esther up to date in the street rather than revisiting the scene that had met him on Wednesday.

  It was quiet enough. They were within walking distance of the Green Hat—Boris had come on foot, Esther by tram as far as Potsdamer Platz—but here most of what was once an area of light industry had been torn down to make way for the advance of the new West End. Like everything else in Berlin, the project had run out of money, and Polenstrasse was now part of an empty, rubble-strewn plot of land with unexpected views. All that was left standing of the busy street Olga must have once known was a furniture repository and, next door, a square box of a building, its downstairs housing a printing works from which issued the clack of compositors at their keyboards.

  “Where’s the flat?” Esther asked.

  Boris pointed to an open wooden flight of steps leading up the side of the printing works. “Up there.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “The bastard left the door open when he’d finished with her. Seems he didn’t break in—the police reckon either he was waiting for her or he followed her home.”

  “And nobody noticed?”

  Boris inclined his head toward the printing works. “Police questioned the boys in there, but seems they come to work, go home, so it’s deserted around here at nights. They rent the place off the owner— Olga did the same, never had much to do with them. Police gave me her key. They’ve finished up there, done the fingerprinting.”

  He looked down, twiddling the key—the police had given it to him, having found it in the flat. It was attached to a ring sporting a leather tab with a green top hat embossed into it—Nick had dozens displayed in a large brass pot on the reception desk for his customers to take.

  Esther put a hand on his arm. “Bad, was it, Boris?”

  “They’ve got to get this bastard, Esther.” He was still looking at the key. “Really, they got to. She ...he tied her to a chair. What he did... I didn’t recognize her....And her hair. You know how tidy she kept her hair....”

  Always. Plastered back into a tight bun.

  “He’d torn bits of it out,” Boris said. His protuberant Adam’s apple jerked as he swallowed. “Why didn’t she tell him right away where she kept her savings? That’s what I can’t understand. Why didn’t she just let the fucker take it?”

  “Did she have savings?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe she had jewelry. He must’ve thought so. Broke her neck to top it off. I tell you, Esther, I’ve seen some things but ...I don’t know what’s happening to this bloody country, I don’t.”

  She took the key out of his hand. “What do
you want me to do?”

  He was relieved. “Nick’s telegram said for you to make the funeral arrangements. See when the police are releasing the body.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if she had relatives.”

  “Did she ever mention any?”

  “Not as far as I know. There was a husband died in the war, but she never talked about him either. You’ll find an address book up there, maybe.”

  “I’ll go up, then,” Esther said, not moving.

  “That’s my girl.” Boris put up a thumb to her. “I’ve got to get back.” He raised his hat and walked off. Then he turned. “Nick says to give her a good send-off but don’t overdo it.”

  The sun was turning even this devastation into a vista; she could see the cathedral in the distance. Buddleia had colonized areas of rubble, and butterflies were hovering on its purple spikes. Sparrows made a kerfuffle taking baths in the dust. The clatter from the open windows of the printing works sounded like not unfriendly, automated gossip.

  She dallied, wondered what was it like when the butterflies and the sparrows and the compositors had all gone home and darkness turned the piles of bricks into gravestones.

  Just get up those stairs, Esther.

  The wooden balustrade was warm under her hand as she climbed. A net curtain covered the glass in the upper half of Olga’s front door. Esther fitted the key into the lock, turned it, and went in.

  Heat slammed into her. Heat and the smell of corruption. She stood for a moment, then forced herself inside, leaving the door open behind her.

  It was a bed-sitter and must have been a nice one—a large, wooden-floored space with metal-framed windows that now presented spacious views. And neat.

  Or would have been neat, if it hadn’t been for a wooden chair that lay on its side with ropes still attached to it. Dark brown splashes on the floorboards around it. There were scattered tufts of black hair....

  She walked briskly past it to get to the windows, trying to be furious. The police, Boris, somebody should have cleaned the place. There was something indecent in having left evidence of the woman’s agony exposed.

  It wasn’t rope on the chair—stockings. He’d tied Olga up with her own black woolen stockings.

  Esther pushed open the window with the cathedral view and leaned out, taking in summer air. This was more than the poor battening on the poor. He, they—perhaps there’d been more than one—had tortured at leisure. A woman had screamed for her life, and nobody’d heard her.

  Esther jerked more windows open, then set about doing her job.

  Olga had made it easy for her. A nonhoarder, Olga. The suitcase on top of the wardrobe was empty. The wardrobe itself contained few clothes, all smelling of the mothballs that lay scattered around them. On a rail with legs next to the wardrobe hung some of the Green Hat’s costumes.

  Here and there was gray dust with which, she supposed, the police had tried to find fingerprints; there seemed to be very few—a regular polisher, was Olga—and all of them small enough to be a woman’s.

  A stout pine table, also dusted, held a sewing machine with a swath of white linen still on the needle plate—Olga had been making herself a new nightdress. Esther pulled the material aside to reveal a drawer. Pins, needles, cotton, silk, some paper patterns, and, on one side, two stapled bundles, one of bills, the other of wage slips. Jesus, Olga, was that all Nick paid you?

  In the kitchen area, a larder contained a small piece of cheese and half a rye loaf. Small wonder she’d spent every hour she could at the Green Hat; staff could eat free.

  Everything tidy and neat, everything spotless. The bath in the tiny bathroom lacked patches of enamel but was scrubbed clean. A cupboard above the washbasin contained basic toiletries and a bottle of black hair dye. Esther shut the door on it quickly—Olga would have hated her knowing that. Olga would have hated her being here at all.

  No photographs, no letters, no mementos of children—probably didn’t have any—no war medals belonging to the dead husband, no address book.

  She looked around. Come on, woman, there must have been more to your life than this.

  She drew back the curtain separating the alcove containing Olga’s bed from the rest of the room—and found Olga’s life.

  Prince Nick’s face looked back at her. And looked back at her. And back at her. Dozens—perhaps a hundred—of photos and press clippings had been pinned up on the alcove ceiling and walls, all of Nick. Around and about the severely made bed was Nick bowing to the king of Albania, Nick saluting the Italian ambassador, Nick in fancy dress, Nick’s portrait in profile, in full face, Nick with some comedian—both of them sporting a fez—with Gigli, with Nellie Melba. Nick in half a photograph that cut one of his arms off, presumably because it had lain around the shoulders of a pretty woman—Melba was the only female represented in the gallery; maybe her size disqualified her as a rival. Prince Nick winning a Grand Prix ...Nick presenting a check to charity (a rare one, that, but Olga had noted and kept it).

  The strips of newspaper had stirred as Esther opened the curtain— the untidy flapping of a prayer wheel. To a god who’d never noticed.

  It was like being a Peeping Tom. Quickly, Esther closed the curtain. Then opened it again to begin tearing the pictures down.

  I’m so sorry, Olga. Sorry I saw this. I’ll never tell.

  Keeping Olga’s secret was the one thing Esther could do for her.

  Before she left, she slipped one of the portraits in her handbag. It would go into the coffin.

  SHE’D HOPED THAT perhaps the policeman in charge of the case would be the one who’d attended the Green Hat. It wasn’t. An Inspector Bolle assured her, “We’ll catch him, Fräulein, don’t you worry,” but he sounded dispirited and echoed Boris’s despair at what was happening to Germany, citing cases of old men and women being attacked for their pensions, housewives robbed on their way home from market, a milkman kicked to death by the man who stole his horse.

  “Too many foreigners coming in,” he said, oblivious of whom he was talking to. “It was never like this in the old days.”

  Were those the old days when there’d been a world war? Esther wondered. When you were fighting England? France?

  Apparently Nick had been able to exert influence, even from the South of France, and both autopsy and inquest were to be expedited. The body would be released ready for burial the following Wednesday.

  At the undertaker’s, Esther ordered the most expensive casket available, to be drawn by black-plumed horses—the bill to be sent to Prince Nikolai Potrovskov personally. Still vengeful, she went on to the florist’s and arranged for enough late roses to cover the entire coffin lid.

  “That’ll teach him to pay her peanuts,” she told Natalya when she got home. “I’m going to see he walks behind that cortege with his bloody hat in his hand.”

  “Bit late to do Olga much good,” Natalya pointed out.

  “It’ll do him good,” Esther said. “And me.” She went to her desk to put the date and time in her diary in order to make sure Nick kept to them.

  Natalya heard her whimper. “What’s up?”

  “It was him.” Esther was looking at the diary as into the face of the gorgon. “He killed her.”

  “Nick killed her?”

  “It was him. It was the sixth weekend. Oh, God, oh, Jesus, it was him.”

  Natalya led her to the sofa. “Put your head between your knees. I’ll get you a drink. We got any brandy?”

  Esther didn’t hear her. That’s when he comes, every six weeks. Jostling for notice behind Clara’s voice, other statements, other disregarded facts, were accumulating and joining up.

  Boris: The police reckon either he was waiting for her or he followed her home.

  Waiting for her. Followed her home. Déjà vu.

  Natalya came back with a glass of schnapps. Esther clutched at her. “Where’s Anna?”

  “In bed. As usual.”

  “He was after her. That’s who he wanted.”

  “Who did? I
s this the Cheka we’re talking about?”

  “He waits and follows, that’s what he does. It wasn’t money he wanted from Olga. She didn’t have any; he didn’t even look for it. Her suitcase—it wasn’t opened, not a drawer out, nothing disturbed. He didn’t want money, he wanted Anna’s address—that’s why he tortured Olga.” She took a breath. “I’ve got to tell the police.”

  Natalya was still holding the schnapps, concentrating politely. “Why would Olga have this address?”

  “She didn’t.”

  “Well, why would he think she did?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.” She rubbed her forehead. “Yes I do.” She was back at the Green Hat. Anna was upstairs in Nick’s office, asleep. The lights were out. Olga was in the doorway of the club room, scolding, coming up the stairs after her. Young woman, I arrange accommodation for the girls.

  “He heard her say so. He thought she knew where we were taking Anna. But she didn’t. He tortured her for information she didn’t have.” Esther stood up. “I’ve got to tell the police.”

  “Nick’ll love that.” Natalya pulled her back down and forced the schnapps into her hand. She went into the kitchen, returning with the bottle and another glass. “Let’s go through it again, shall we? I ain’t grasped exactly who you think done what.”

  Esther went through it again, this time from the beginning and with more clarity.

  Natalya nodded carefully. “So this assassin, Cheka or whatever he is—”

  “Not Cheka,” Esther said irritably. “Anna was afraid of him before she got grand-duchess ideas.”

  “This guy with a grudge and a long memory wants to do Anna in— and after the day I’ve had alone with that cow, I don’t blame him. Anyway, he’s lurking around Dalldorf, sees you and Theo take her to the Hat, follows, gets into the club with the idea of knifing Her Imperial Whatsit, but you shove him downstairs with a broom instead.”

  Esther sipped her schnapps; she knew where this was going. She could see her own logic—it was making her hands shake—but this was a matter where logic compounded the apparent absurdity.