City of Shadows

by Ariana Franklin

  “We haven’t any. Can von Kleist protect her?”

  “Sure.” He patted his pockets, brought out a hip flask, and took a deep swig from it. “Who was it, Esther? Who killed her?”

  “The man at the Hat. He’s grown.” She’d thought of him as elemental, some vicious, primary thing from nature that had pincered itself to them. But he’d enlarged, as if a single organism had multiplied, becoming complex, sophisticated. And patient.

  God, the patience. Losing them, finding them again, finding out. He’d learned everything, written the note knowing it would tempt. Luring Anna. Always Anna. Come and be authenticated. Come into my parlor, come into the snow. But Natalya had read it first and had been lured in Anna’s stead.

  The scene returned to Esther, like a clip of film being replayed—her-self on the landing, Natalya down in the hall having returned from the Purple Parrot, reading something. The delay before she came upstairs and, when she did come upstairs, the paper she’d put in her pocket.

  Damn you, Nasha. Why didn’t you show it to me? Why did you believe it? I could have told you it wasn’t Yusupov—real princes don’t sign themselves “Prince.”

  But Natalya, the state she was in, had believed it. Seen her chance to usurp Anna. Gone to answer it.

  Why did he kill her? Why did he have to kill her?

  She realized she’d spoken out loud because, Nick said, “I don’t know, do I? And I’m not getting involved. If it’s Anna he’s after, he can get her at von Kleist’s, not here.”

  “Goddamn you, Nick. I want her protected.”

  “She will be, she will be.”

  She took the flask out of his hand, went with it to the kitchen, and poured them both a drink. As she handed him his, she said, “Tomorrow I’m going to tell the inspector the truth about Anna. Every single thing I know.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I have to. The killer knows. He’s found it out bit by bit.” Every six weeks, she thought. The patience. The persistence. The terrifying intelligence. She told Nick about the note. “It was meant for Anna. ‘I will authenticate you.’ Somebody talked. He worked it out. He knew where to come, what to write. Somebody told him about Anastasia. The police

  have got to be informed; they can trace him.” “Couldn’t have been Yusupov, could it?” “Of course it wasn’t.” She sipped the brandy, watching him figure

  the odds.

  “After all,” he said eventually, “what can you tell him? What have I done wrong? I hear Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov is in a loony bin, and I rescue her. I’ve supported her cause—in which I most completely believe, by the way. Fed the woman, clothed her, provided her with companions.”

  She nodded. “You’ve done all that.” “I come well out of it, don’t I?” “You do.” “A fact you’ll point out to the inspector?” “Yes.” He began tapping his teeth. “Is she word-perfect yet?” “As much as she’ll ever be.” “I do believe in her, you know. And others will. The good baron’s lap

  ping it up already. By God, she’ll owe me when she claims her fortune.” The tooth tapping increased. “Trouble is, she might forget. ...I need insurance. We don’t want the lady overlooking my contribution when she comes into her own.”

  Esther thought, He’s still going to go on with it. The brandy was making her head swim; she realized she hadn’t eaten all day, and neither had Anna. “You promise she’ll be safe with the von Kleists?”

  “Sure, they got money, servants, bodyguards. Important people. Friends with the Grand Duke of Hesse. I’ll tell them she’s a Cheka target—they’ll be thrilled.” He wiped his hands on his handkerchief. “She couldn’t be safer in Fort Knox.”

  As long as they believe she’s Anastasia, Esther thought. Nick said, “Maybe I should get her to sign a contract before I hand her over. What d’you think?”

  Esther hauled herself to her feet. “I think she should have something to eat before she goes.” She turned around. “Did you get her a dog?”

  “Sure, I got her a dog. It’s in the car.” He went downstairs to fetch it.

  Esther put potato soup on to warm, then went to Anna’s room and told her about the von Kleists.

  “Good family,” Anna said calmly. “They are in the Almanack.”

  “Yes. Listen, Anna, they know the Grand Duke of Hesse.”

  “My uncle Ernest Ludwig,” Anna said obediently.

  “Yes. There’s something you can say about Uncle Ernest. ...Anna, if you feel safe with the Kleists, you must stay with them. Try not to be awkward.”

  It had come to this. Until the maniac was caught, it was imperative that Anna should prove her credentials as the grand duchess. She could retain the interest and therefore the protection of those dazzled by royalty only while they believed her to be Anastasia. If they didn’t, difficult as she was, they’d drop her—and leave her vulnerable to the killer. Providing her with special information to help her imposture, what Nick called “a clincher,” might be dubious morally, but it would keep her alive.

  “During the war Uncle Ernest of Hesse— Are you listening to me, Anna?”

  “Yes.”

  “In 1916 he made a secret visit to Russia, to try to get his sister and the czar to leave Russia or at least negotiate a separate peace with the kaiser.”

  “In 1916?” Anna frowned. “Russia and Germany at war with each other.”

  “Exactly. It’s not something he would want known, but he did it—and the imperial family met him. It’ll make him believe you are Anastasia.”

  “You know this?”

  Esther patted her head. “Jews are international. They know a lot of things.”

  Nick was in the doorway. “Look what Uncle Nicky’s brought his Anastasia.” He had something in his arms.

  “Good God,” Esther said. “Is that the best you can do?” It was a Pekingese, one of the smallest she’d ever seen.

  “The town’s out of wolfhounds,” he said. “It was short notice.”

  “It’s a short dog.”

  “Costs like a wolfhound,” Nick said. “Pisses like one. All over my upholstery.”

  Anna was transported. She opened her arms to take the dog, and for the first time Esther saw her happy.

  When they’d packed for her, she was driven away into the night, too absorbed to lift her face from the dog’s fur to wave.

  “God bless you, Anna.” Esther stood on the steps, watching until the car’s taillight had disappeared.

  Turning back into the hallway, she thought of the words with which she’d seen the police inspector off the premises. She knew why she’d said them; he was the man she’d dreaded meeting all her life, the intruder, the sweet last straw under which she’d sink. Get away from me. I can’t afford to love you, and you most certainly can’t afford to love me.

  At the Green Hat, even in those terrible minutes at Charlottenburg, she’d been aware of being warmed, cared for, tucked in, as she hadn’t for many cold years.

  But...Schmidt the married man, she thought. It was all over him, in the neat darn on the back of his sock, the home-knitted pullover.

  In the hallway the bridge between them could have been measured in inches and the chasm below it in miles; him with his bloody niceness, her with her scars and disrepute. And pride. So she’d kicked the bridge in there and then—better for both of them.

  She went upstairs to grieve for Natalya. There was time now.

  12

  IT WAS DARK by the time they reached number 42 Pariser Platz,

  and they kept making mistakes.

  “Felix Yusupov?”

  A man wearing a top hat and standing on a pair of steps outside the house stopped trimming the ivy decorating its frontage by torchlight. “I am Count Rutkowski. Ring damn bell.”

  They rang it. “Felix Yusupov?”

  “What you want?”

  “Police.”

  The youth who’d opened the door staggered. “No, no. No, no.” He pressed the back of one hand to his forehead and used th
e other to prop himself up against the doorpost. “You cannot have him. Take me, take me in his place.” He began to cry.

  He was pushed out of the way by an oak of a man wearing cavalry boots and an apron, balancing a tray of tea on one enormous hand.

  “Felix Yusupov?”

  The man snorted. “Do I look like? I am bastard cook.”

  Willi pointed at the weeping figure still clinging to the doorpost. “Who’s that?”

  “Bastard majordomo.” He kicked open a door to the left of the entrance hall. “Get in.”

  They got in. The room was full of the elephantine furniture typical of rented nineteenth-century houses, but somebody had touched it with grace. A lighted candelabrum picked out the richness of Persian rugs and Indian shawls thrown with apparent carelessness over chairs. From an enormous birdcage of white wood fretted like lace, a gaudily colored parrot stared at them and said hello in English. The smell of good cigars mingled with incense.

  For a man who, if Potrovskov were to be believed, was down on his luck, this prince lived in style. The mild, painted eyes of the late czar looked down from a massive carved and gilded frame that alone, Schmidt reckoned, would fetch enough on the international antique market to keep himself and Hannelore in comfort for months.

  He touched the latch of a jeweled egg standing on the mantel shelf. Immediately its top flew up, there was a click, and a tiny train began running round the lines of a miniature golden track.

  A voice from the doorway said, “Pretty, isn’t it? Fabergé made it for me. One of the baubles one managed to save when one left. Alas, one fears it will have to go.”

  Schmidt shut the lid. “Felix Yusupov? We’re the police. I’m Inspector Schmidt, this is Sergeant Ritte.” He was tired of strange and beautiful Russians—one of whom at Bismarck Allee had just given him a metaphorical kick in the balls.

  This man was the most beautiful of them all, if not the strangest. He was wearing lipstick and a skirt and blouse under a quilted dressing gown.

  Willi, who’d heard the rumor, positioned himself with his back firmly against a painted cupboard.

  “My dears,” Yusupov said, “why does nobody tell me these things? I thought you were here for the meeting. Never mind, let’s make ourselves comfy. And you must have a drink. What would you like? We’ve run out of champagne, I fear, but one always feels a Bloody Mary starts the day well, and I’m sure you do, too.” His large eyes rested on Willi standing like a guardsman against the cupboard, his thumbs in regimental line with his trousers. “You, my darling, look like a beer man.”

  He went to the door and shouted, “Beer and bloody vodkas, Dmitri! He turned back to Willi, who was now pressing so hard against the cupboard it was tilting backward, and smiled at his discomfiture. “Big, isn’t he?”

  “Very big,” Schmidt said, cheered; there’d be weeks of mileage to be got out of this. Himself, he found this declaration of effeminacy inoffensive because the man was so obviously at ease with it. Unlike Potrovskov, Yusupov was not straining after effect; outrageousness was his environment, and though the world that had pampered him in it was gone, he carried it with him, instilling it into this ordinary Berlin house and making Inspector Schmidt and Sergeant Ritte the oddities.

  Lipstick apart, he was naturally and pleasantly good-looking, fine skin over fine bones, with a set to his jaw and mouth that suggested intelligence. His German was almost accentless, and he spoke it with the soft g of the Berliner. Only the eyes showed that he was mad.

  Could he cut somebody’s throat?

  He’d cut Rasputin’s. Stabbed him anyway. But that had been in the fantastically colored, highly charged, onion-roofed court of a fairy-tale empire where an insane and mystical Russian peasant had acquired too much power over the czar and czarina, alienating them from their people, and where this equally insane prince had, according to Schmidt’s researches, assassinated him in the hope of nullifying said influence and bringing said czar and czarina to their senses.

  Killing a little nightclub stripper with no political pretensions was hardly in that league. However, it couldn’t be ruled out.

  He began his questions.

  Yusupov fielded them all, sitting on the arm of a sofa, swinging his feet in their turned-up Turkish slippers, alternately addressing his replies to the parrot and Willi, whom he teased by flickering his fingers at him every now and again in flirtatious hellos.

  “My darling, but I was at a party. At the Green Hat. You must know the Hat, it’s run by a perfectly piggy parvenu called Potrovskov—I say, that’s rather good, isn’t it? All those p’s. Oh, you’ve met him. Well, just ask him. I didn’t move all night. Oh, yes, I did. Some pals and I went on to a truly awful dive called the Pink Parasol—another one of the parvenu’s, I believe. Got a teeny bit tiddly, between you and me, and feel perfectly awful this morning.”

  “It’s evening,” Schmidt said.

  “Is it? How time flies. Where’s Dmitri with those drinks?”

  Dmitri didn’t appear; neither did the drinks. “He never does a thing I tell him.” At one point a woman almost as beautiful as Yusupov, and similarly dressed, floated in, picked up the parrot cage, and carried it out. No introductions were made, and Schmidt was left to assume that she was Yusupov’s wife, which, again if his researches were correct, made her the late czar’s niece. He must tell Willi that they had a child.

  Did he know a Natalya Tchichagova? Or an Anna Anderson? An Esther Solomonova?

  One knew so many people, but no, one couldn’t recollect those names.

  Did he recognize this? Schmidt gave him the note that had been delivered to 29 Bismarck Allee to let him read it. He’d fetched it from Alexanderplatz; the paper had been examined for fingerprints and was now acquiring Yusupov’s.

  “Not my writing, dear,” he said, handing it back. “Far too neat.”

  Schmidt tucked it away and produced a photograph of Natalya’s face taken by the Forensics Department. “Do you recognize this young woman?”

  “I don’t . . . oh, oh, she’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “She was murdered on Saturday night. We believe she responded to that note.”

  “Well, I didn’t write it, dear. Didn’t kill her either. Who is she?”

  “Natalya Tchichagova. She’s Russian.”

  Yusupov tutted. “Sometimes I think they’re trying to wipe us all out.” He looked at the photo more closely. “Poor little soul. No, I don’t know her.” He gave it back. “No, I can’t help you.”

  “What do you think the note means by ‘authenticate you’? Who or what would you be in a position to authenticate?”

  “One authenticates things all the time, darling. I’m a positive guru among our poor scattered community. The big auction houses are constantly onto me to tell them whether this necklace or that was the same one I last saw on a bosom being whisked about the czar’s ballroom. Some poor devil’s having to sell it to stay alive, you see, and my word adds to its provenance, which in turn puts up the price. I do know my jewels.”

  “And people? Do you have to authenticate people?”

  “Oh indeed. The nouveaux riches love employing impoverished aristocrats, and I’m always being asked is my chauffeur really the grand duke this or is my maid really the countess that. Hideously embarrassing, and so banal, so offensive. Only the other day in Paris, somebody actually turned up with a spotty youth they insisted was the czarevitch.” He sighed at Schmidt’s incomprehension. “The czar’s son, Alexei? This acned wonder, my dear, was supposed to be the heir to all the Russias. Sacrilegious little bastard even had the impertinence to address me as ‘Uncle Felix.’ All the authentication he got from me was the toe of my boot up his carbuncled young ass, I can tell you.”

  “And he wasn’t? The heir to all the Russias, I mean?”

  “Of course he wasn’t.” The playfulness dropped away. “Nobody got out of that cellar.”

  “Cellar?” Keep asking questions.

  “They were slaughtered in a cellar in Eka
terinburg.” Yusupov got up and turned his back to them. “All of them—the czar, the czarina, the grand duchesses, little Alexei.” He was silent for a minute, drumming his fingers on the mantel shelf. When he faced them again, he’d got himself under control. “Eleven souls—three servants were with them. Butchered like cattle by the fucking Bolsheviks, my dear. But for some reason the myth persists that one or the other of them got away—hence our adolescent impostor hoping to get his dirty little hands on the remains of the royal fortune. Really, the things people will sink to. Necrophilia gone mad.”

  “Is there one?”

  “Fortune?” Yusupov shrugged. “There are rumors of money in England, but I doubt if dear King George will let it out of his clutches. He did fuck-all to rescue the Romanovs—and the poor czar his own first cousin. Can you believe it? His own cousin, and he wouldn’t give him sanctuary. His Imperial Majesty Cunt George, I call him. I tell you, once we’ve got Russia back from the Bolshies, I’ve a good mind to invade England.”

  They all believe that, Schmidt thought. He hadn’t yet met a Russian émigré who wasn’t convinced that his or her exile was merely temporary, that Communism was a passing fad, and that within a year or two their subjects would be pleading, cap in hand, for them to come back. He stood up.

  “You’re not going? Won’t you stay for the meeting? People are coming by to listen to me tell the tale of how I killed Rasputin. Everyone clamors to hear it—I really ought to sell tickets. You’d love it, big boy.” This was to Willi. “So gory.”

  He stood on his steps to wave them off.

  “God save us.” Willi was still sweating. “You should’ve arrested him.”

  “He didn’t kill her, Willi.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Thing like that ought to be behind bars.”

  “He’d probably enjoy it. Actually, I thought he was rather brave.” Schmidt savored the moment. “And he liked you very much, big boy.”