Madame Olga’s face grew paler by the instant.
“What a playwright you would have made.”
“There’s no room up there. Not for mistakes. Not for emotions. Did he demand a reason, wave his arms . . . then overbalance and, waving his arms, in the heat of anger and protest, fall, grab a bungee cord and struggle to climb up, save himself? And instead enmesh himself in it, his safety rope becoming a noose?”
“No, no!”
“And you watched, unable to do a thing, not even report it because that would betray the scheme. He hung there for hours after his death, a human pendulum, your own brother, who had taken a more noble stand than you had.”
Temple had thought and thought about what could have led to Andrei’s plunge from the platform high above the exhibition. She had theorized like a defense attorney on his mute behalf. And now she had made her case before the jury.
Madame Olga Kirkov shriveled into sobs of protest, hiding her quizzical old face in her time-veined hands.
“This is outrageous.” Pete Wayans stood. “Madame Olga is the greatest ballet artist of her generation. She has volunteered her expertise in both arranging for and designing this exhibition. She is an old lady and her brother has died violently. This must stop. My God, she’s an old lady!”
“Sit down,” Detective Alch said mildly from the door.
Pete Wayans eyed him and the silent, unnamed man next to him. He sat.
The room’s only sound was the choking sobs of Madame Olga.
“He had changed his mind about even planning the theft,” she said at last. “Gazing down at the exhibition space he felt a pride of nation I had never seen in him before. He said he would rather die than take the scepter. Andrei! My crooked brother. I would never have asked such a thing of him, but . . . I had to. He was so shocked by my demand, so horrified. He backed away . . . from me, from the very idea. I never touched him. I couldn’t save him. I could only watch, paralyzed, as he fell and . . . run away.”
Volpe had risen to come and stand behind her chair, his knotted hands pressing deeply into its upholstered back.
“It wasn’t murder, then,” Temple said.
“Oh, yes!” Madame Olga’s eyes surfaced from behind her hands. “I murdered his illusions about myself. I was the Sugar Plum Fairy, the good sister lifted twice daily by the prince in white tights. Pure Russian. Innocent! Andrei was no prince, and we both knew it. Until I tried to force him against his . . . his own honesty. Which humbles mine, in the end. Andrei! I not only let you fall, I let you take the blame for your fall. It was I. I was the snake in Eden and he was a better Adam than there ever was.”
Temple’s knees were shaking. She’d hoped . . . she had to . . . clear up a few mysteries, not peel back the top layer of human souls.
Old souls. Old wounds. New perfidies.
She was doing this for Max. One last obligation. He was the odd man out in all of this and shouldn’t have to swing for it. She saw his rueful grin even as she thought that two-edged phrase.
If she convicted someone else, Max would be exonerated, even if only in her own heart. And she knew that this was where it would matter most to him, to her.
“Why did you have to persuade Andrei to take the scepter?” Temple asked the old woman. Gently.
The words came sharp and bitter. “Because my masters demanded it.”
Volpe’s hands moved from the chair back to her frail shoulders with a white-knuckled grip that shouted “Silence!”
Madame Olga had been used to commanding audiences, not being commanded. Not even by a confrere. She lengthened her swan’s neck, hardened her fading features.
Temple decided to let that intriguing matter go for now.
“So with Andrei dead, who replaced him? Who was recruited next to steal the scepter?”
“You saw him,” Volpe said. “We all did. “The man in the mock–Cloaked Conjuror costume. He played Andrei’s part: swooped down in masked disguise, disabled the installation case, and grabbed the scepter, escaping the same way he had come, from the magic show flies and wings high above. We don’t know who he was, we don’t know where they got him.”
Madame Olga pressed her thin lips together. Temple knew that Count Volpe was seizing on Max’s unexpected appearance to end these unsettling explanations.
“The police,” Volpe added with a haughty glare at Detective Alch, “haven’t any clue to who he is. I suppose with so many Cirque du Soleil shows in town, the place is crammed with unemployed world-class acrobats. Andrei had been unfit for such a caper, anyway, and too old.”
“He could have done it!” Madame Olga said, her pride pricked again.
She was the one who would confess, because she was the one most offended by whatever forces had pushed them into this scheme gone wrong.
“The man who actually took the scepter,” Temple said, “was obviously a last-minute hire. So much went wrong. It was a wonder he escaped with the prize. No, Madame Olga, there was someone much closer to the exhibition who was the ideal substitute for Andrei. Someone your ‘masters’ spotted and snapped up. Someone you, and Count Volpe on your behalf, felt obligated to protect, so that even Andrei’s death didn’t free you to wash your hands of the affair.”
“A handy substitute,” Wayans asked, sitting up. “Not the guy in black?”
“Were you aware of his participation?” Temple asked Madame Olga and Count Volpe.
He began to shrug, but she said No most definitely. “I’m tired of play-acting and lying, Ivan,” she told him over her shoulder. “It’s obvious we will not leave this room with our reputations intact. I see no reason to spare anyone else’s.
“He was a complete surprise,” she went on, addressing Temple and the room at large, “and he was completely surprised by the breakaway set pieces up there. He obviously saved the Cloaked Conjuror’s life, and almost, almost—” She broke down in sobs, as Volpe knelt beside her.
“She’s been through so much,” he accused Temple. “You are putting her through more for no purpose.”
“For the purpose of an answer so the show that you’ve all worked so hard on can go on and justice will have been done.”
Pete Wayans was looking frankly puzzled. “You seem to know who this mysterious accomplice was. Why don’t you just tell us?”
“Because I have a point to make and it’s always better to let it be made by the suspects. This case is like, and very unlike, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, where everyone did it. No one in this room is a murderer.”
The silence was complete, and Olga let her iron control dissolve as her head sank onto Ivan’s shoulder.
Wayans nodded. “This Andrei guy obviously died during an argument in a place where he shouldn’t have been, a place way too dangerous for civilians. No one is allowed up in that performance area but the performers.”
“And mysterious men in black,” Randy put in.
Temple wished he hadn’t. The less they thought about Max the better.
Time for her to exercise some iron control.
“Exactly, Mr. Wayans. Nobody was allowed up there but performers, and once Andrei was dead, the theft’s masterminds had no literal fall guy.
“Except for a piece of wild luck and coincidence.”
Olga and Ivan were now regarding her with mutual alarm. Temple knew they were involved, but she didn’t know why yet. Or how deeply. Olga already carried her brother’s death on her conscience, but something else deeply personal was still tormenting her.
Everyone in the room was quiet and still, as if any noise or movement would draw unwelcome attention. Dimitri and his twin bodyguards were as stolid as the red marble statues in the Red Planetary Restaurant (although they would look a lot less interesting nude).