“Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher of Scotland Yard, to see Grand Duke Rudolf Maximilian,” he said noncommittally, presenting his warrant card.
A flame leapt in the other’s eye, but he bowed slightly, stiffly, and said, “His Excellence expects you. Come.”
The shared hall was cluttered with two bicycles and a pram. The shared staircase was dingy, its maroon flocked wallpaper unchanged in decades. Alec followed the limping Transcarpathian, and behind him came Tom, lightfooted,and Ernie, clumping a bit in his police boots but no longer thumping along like a copper on the beat.
In one of the ground floor rooms, a baby began to wail.
The electric light went off as their guide reached the landing. It must be on a timer: another humiliation. Piper stumbled, muttered something fortunately indistinguishable.
The old man did not bother to press the switch. By the faint light from outside, coming through a high window, Alec saw him cross to a door. As he opened it, light spilled from an entrance hall scarcely bigger than a cupboard. The Transcarpathian opened an inner door to the right.
“Exzellenz, die Polizei,”he announced in tones of ineffable disdain.
With no idea what to expect, Alec moved past him into the room.
The young man who stood on the hearth was a peacock in a world of sepia and grey. Every surface in the room, every spare inch of wall, was covered with photographs. Alec’s gaze flickered over them, picking out Queen Victoria and the Kaiser, noting the cheap deal frames, before his attention returned to the peacock.
And the crow sitting near him in a shabby armchair, a sallow woman in black with a back as straight as a ramrod. Her regal carriage somehow transformed the old-fashioned wisp of black net covering her fading fair hair into a crown.
Did Grand Dukes/Duchesses wear crowns? How the dickens did one address them? Alec, a free Englishman though a commoner, was damned if he’d stoop as far as the subservient “Excellency.”
Inclining his head in a courteous acknowledgement of the woman’s presence, to which she failed to respond, Alec turned to the Grand Duke and said, “Good evening, sir. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher. I hope I shan’t need tokeep you long, but I have one or two questions to put to you.”
“I told dis man everysing,” the Grand Duke said petulantly, pointing at Tring. “Dis sergeant, he has not reported mine answers?”
“Detective Sergeant Tring has presented a full report, sir. It’s a matter of routine for the officer in charge of a case to hear a possible witness’s evidence for himself.” Especially when new information had come to light—information which the young man might prefer not to have broadcast to his family and old retainers. “No need to disturb anyone else. Is there somewhere private we can go?”
The woman said something sharply in German. Rudolf Maximilian answered in the same language, his tone sulkily argumentative. The old soldier moved forward and interjected a few pacifying words.
The Grand Duke explained to Alec. “Mine muzzer, de Grand Duchess Elizaveta Alexandrovna, she wish to hear, but is not women’s business, I say. Instead comes viz us mine Chancellor, General Graf Otto von Czernoberg.”
Count Otto clicked his heels with a minuscule nod.
The Grand Duchess rose.“Komm’, Gertrud!”she snapped, and swept from the room, followed by a pale girl in grey who rose from a table by the window, a book in her hand. Alec had not even noticed her, colourless but live, amongst all the photos.
“She believes not I am not longer child,” said Rudolf Maximilian, glaring after them with a sullen, distinctly childish pout.
However, with the ladies out of the way, they quickly got down to business. On Alec’s suggesting that they would be more comfortable seated, Grand Duke Rudolf ungraciously waved them to threadbare chairs, while he himself took anervous perch on the arm of his mother’s seat. Piper, in a corner by the door, unobtrusively took out his notebook and ever-ready pencil. Alec glanced at Tring.
“Now, sir,” said the sergeant in an officious voice, “please describe for the Chief Inspector your whereabouts from five o’clock yesterday until the constable discovered you lurking behind …”
“I vas in de museum visiting! It is no crime,nicht wahr, HerrInspector? You are a reasonable man.” He cast a resentful look at Tring. “I was notlurking.”
“I expect the constable exaggerated,” Alec soothed. “It’s an interesting place, isn’t it? You go often?”
The Grand Duke visibly dithered, and decided a lie would be too easily exposed. “Not often. Sometime. Here have I no affairs of state mine time to occupy.”
“None, sir?”
“Little. I try mine contrymen to help, but vhat can I do vhen I have nozzing?” His gesture took in the room and the flat beyond, the chancellor who answered the door, perhaps the chancellor’s wife in the kitchen, for all Alec knew. “Nozzing—only pictures to remind of past life.”
“It’s an unhappy situation,” Alec sympathized. “I expect you would do anything for a chance to regain lost glories.”
“Any—”
“Vorsicht, Exzellenz!”Count Otto warned. Alec silently damned him.
“I vish to fight,” Rudolf said hotly, “to drive de Bolsheviks from Transcarpathia. But vizzout soldiers can I nozzing, and vizzout money, no soldiers.”
