Ice on the Canal

Petrograd, December 1916, Saturday, 11 am. Twenty degrees below zero. At 8 am, the river police pulled the body of a long-bearded man from under the ice, near the Islands Bridge.

He was Matvei Rodin, 47, a Siberian healer the empress called a saint and the court called a demon. He left home at midnight in a closed automobile and never came back. On the bridge, an overshoeovershoe Waterproof rubber shoe worn over ordinary shoes to protect them from snow, mud and wet. and blood on the parapetparapet Low wall along the edge of a bridge, roof or terrace that stops people from falling..

The investigation leads to a palace on the canal, where, according to the neighbors, there was a party all night long.

Three people spent the early hours on that stretch of the canal. One of them knows what happened in the cellar.

A Russian palace salon by a frozen canal, with a gramophonegramophone Early record player that plays disks by hand-wound mechanism, with a large horn that amplifies the sound., a piano and still-warm ashes.