Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

by David Dickinson

  ‘Can you tell me one thing, Lord Powerscourt?’ Natasha Bobrinsky and her young man Mikhail and Lord Francis Powerscourt were waiting for coffee at the end of their dinner in the Alexander Hotel halfway along the Nevskii Prospekt. Their table was hidden away at the end of the dining hall, decorated like a London club, a rather expensive club with valuable paintings all over the walls. To their right a small orchestra could be heard tuning up for the dancing which was due to commence in fifteen minutes. Two servants were lighting enormous candles on the walls of the ballroom.

  ‘Of course, Natasha, whatever you like,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘Well,’ said the girl, leaning forward to address Powerscourt more closely, speaking in her near perfect French, ‘I think I understand most of what has been going on when I’ve not been there. Mikhail told me all about the wicked Major and what happened to him and what happened to Mr Martin and I think you were all very brave about that. I know about the little boy.’ She paused briefly to look at a couple of violinists making their way towards the stage, tugging vaguely at their instruments. Powerscourt was impressed that she had chosen not to name the disease.

  ‘But there are two things I don’t understand.’ Her long fingers began tapping out some unknown musical beat on the white linen tablecloth. Waltz? wondered Powerscourt. Foxtrot? Mazurka? He suddenly remembered Natasha’s grandmother in that great bed, humming her way through the dances of her youth, trying to salvage Martin’s name from the depths of her memory. ‘Why didn’t Mr Martin tell Tamara Kerenkova he was coming? He’d always told her before.’

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure about that,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘but remember, the previous times he came he wasn’t working, if you see what I mean. He wasn’t representing Great Britain or the Foreign Office, just himself. This time he was on business, very important business, and the Prime Minister must have told him he couldn’t even tell the church mouse a thing about it. I think Kerenkov knew Martin was coming because the Okhrana read the telegrams from the Foreign Office giving the date of his arrival and told Kerenkov about it in some ploy of their own.’

  Natasha Bobrinsky nodded. ‘I see. My second question has to do with that meeting. How did you work out what happened between the Tsar and Mr Martin? How did you know that there was a plan to send the family to England?’

  Powerscourt smiled. It was difficult not to smile at Natasha, she looked so pretty this evening. ‘Part of the answer lies in the information you brought from the Alexander Palace, Natasha.’ He paused while a waiter arrived with a tray of coffee. ‘I think it really started when I tried to analyse what had happened already. Mr Martin had been sent from London on a mission of some kind. Our Foreign Office knew nothing about it. Our Ambassador here knew nothing about it. Why? If it was something routine like a treaty with all kinds of clauses and things, the diplomats would all have been involved. Nothing they like better than criticizing each other’s drafts and correcting the Ambassador’s spelling. But no. Therefore it probably wasn’t a treaty. But what was it? And why had somebody been killed? Was it because of what they said or what they refused to say? Then there were the words you overheard the Tsar saying to his wife about how many dead members of their own family did she want to have before she followed the path of the dead Martin. If you think about it that means there is a way to keep the family alive, Martin’s way, which must involve them not being in St Petersburg at all. When you mentioned to Mikhail about the Trans-Siberian Railway egg having disappeared, I didn’t think very much of it at first. Gone to be cleaned perhaps, clockwork engine needs a service. But then you said that some other toys had gone and that Alexis was very devoted to the railway egg. I thought of the French Revolution and the whole royal party trying to escape from their semi-imprisonment in the Tuileries in 1791, only to be recaptured at Varennes the following day. The toys were sent ahead so the children, and especially the little boy, wouldn’t feel so homesick when they were moved. A British frigate has been on patrol in the Gulf of Finland now for weeks waiting to take them all off. Surely in terrible times it would only be natural for any royal household to think of getting their women and children out before it may be too late. But that knowledge would be dynamite in today’s Russia. The Tsar is sending his family away! He’s deserting his people! It could have meant the beginning of the end of the Romanovs. Maybe those security agencies like Major Shatilov’s suspected something of the sort was afoot, some plot to send Alexandra and the children away. It must, as you know better than I, Natasha, be very difficult to keep anything secret in that palace. That’s why they were so keen to know what happened between the Tsar and Martin and between me and the Tsar. The information was so important they were prepared, quite literally to kill for it. Twice.’

  Powerscourt paused and poured himself a cup of black coffee. The orchestra was tuning up, the first enthusiastic dancers beginning to form up on the floor.

  ‘Why England?’ asked Natasha. ‘Why not Sweden or somewhere closer?’

  ‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I think it could only be England in the end. You want to choose somewhere similar – I mean, if you’re a great power you’re only going to be happy going to another great power. Sweden or Norway would have been slumming it, and perhaps a bit too close so your enemies might pop over the water and blow you to pieces. Germany had the problem of the Kaiser nobody liked, France had a revolutionary tradition that might not welcome foreign royalty, but England was full of cousins and most members of the imperial family speak English. So they sent a secret message to King Edward and Mr Martin brought the answer. That confused me for a long time. At first sight when you hear about a man going from London to St Petersburg, you assume he’s bringing a message from London to St Petersburg. It’s only natural because you don’t know about the first message that has gone from St Petersburg to London. But once you work it out, that Martin was bringing, not a question, but an answer, then everything begins to fall into place because there’s really only one question the Tsar of Russia might want to send secret messages to the King of England about at this time of assassinations and explosions, and that’s to see if he could send his family there.’ Powerscourt drank some of his coffee. ‘Clear?’ he said.

  ‘Perfectly clear,’ said Natasha. ‘But why haven’t they gone?’

  ‘Good question,’ said Powerscourt. ‘All I can say is what I said to the Tsar. Maybe the Empress didn’t want to go. Maybe the children didn’t want to go. Maybe they thought it would look defeatist, as if they thought they were beaten. I’m not sure.’

  ‘Well, Lord Powerscourt, I’m now so well trained in telling you what’s going on in Tsarskoe Selo, that I have to make one last report. And this might, just might, have something to do with why they’re not going. This might be your answer.’ Natasha glanced quickly over at the beginnings of the dance. ‘Tomorrow, out there at Tsarskoe Selo, they’re expecting a visitor. Or, to be more precise, the Empress is expecting a visitor. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but the Tsar and the Tsarina are deep into mystics and seers and tarot cards and psychics and all that rubbish. They had some crook of a Frenchman on board a couple of years ago. Now they think they’ve found another one, a man who calls himself Rasputin, Father Grigory Rasputin. They say he can heal the sick. Alexandra has ordered at least eight reports about him, from fellow mystics, from priests, even from people he’s claimed to have healed. Maybe she thinks he can help with Alexis. Maybe she thinks he’s the answer to all her prayers. Maybe this is why they haven’t gone to England, why they’ve stayed here. Maybe she thinks he will cure the little boy. He’s due to call on her at two o’clock tomorrow.’

  Powerscourt wondered if this was another piece of gossip he could report back to the Prime Minister in London. Then suddenly Natasha was by his side and she was pulling him to his feet.

  ‘You can’t leave St Petersburg without dancing, Lord Powerscourt. It’s not allowed. And you can’t leave St Petersburg without dancing with me. That’s not allowed either. Come alon
g, please.’

  Thirty seconds later they were floating round the floor to a waltz by Johann Strauss. Powerscourt thought Natasha was a perfect partner. She leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

  ‘Will you come to our wedding, Lord Powerscourt? Me and Mikhail?’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Powerscourt. ‘This is all very sudden. I didn’t know you were engaged. Mikhail didn’t mention anything. Is the wedding soon?’

  ‘Well,’ said the girl defensively, swinging round happily in Powerscourt’s arms, ‘it hasn’t really happened yet. I mean so far Mikhail hasn’t actually asked me, but he will. He will do it very soon.’

  Powerscourt thought of asking if she too had psychic powers but he thought better of it.

  ‘It’s my grandmother, Lord Powerscourt. She’s always told me that the girls decide on the marriages, the young men merely ask the question.’

  On reflection, Powerscourt thought there might be something in it. Perhaps he should check with Lucy when he got back home. But Natasha hadn’t finished with him yet.

  ‘Anyway, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Natasha Bobrinsky, ‘I wanted to ask your advice. You’ve travelled a lot. You’ve been nearly everywhere. Where is the most romantic place in the world to get married and have your wedding reception?’

  Powerscourt hesitated for about five seconds before he gave his answer. Rome, Paris, London, Madrid, Vienna, Salzburg, all fell at the early hurdles.

  ‘There’s only one answer,’ he said, smiling at Natasha and feeling at least seventy years old, ‘Venice. You get married in the Basilica of St Mark, or if you can’t manage that, San Giorgio Maggiore across the water. You have your reception in the Doge’s Palace. If that’s not possible, I’m sure you could rent a whole palazzo on the Grand Canal. It would be wonderful. Mikhail’s father and yours might have to throw quite a lot of money about, but the Venetians have been taking bribes for centuries. Anyway, you should all feel at home there.’

  ‘Should we?’ asked Natasha.

  ‘Of course you should,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully, ‘whole bloody city’s built on the water. Just like here.’

  Shortly before two o’clock the following day Rasputin was within sight of the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. He had walked all the way from St Petersburg, believing that this would give a better impression than coming by train. Holy men don’t need public transport. Up on the roof Alexandra had been watching the road for some time through her husband’s binoculars. Was this new holy man going to be the answer to her prayers? Was he the greater figure Philippe had spoken of? Every single report she had received about him had been favourable.

  In the first class section of the St Petersburg to Berlin express Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were settling into their seats. Their train was due to leave at five past two. Johnny had asked Powerscourt for a period of silence at the beginning of their journey. Never, he said, in a decade or two of drinking, had he come across somebody with such a capacity for alcohol as Ricky Crabbe. The young man had drunk him, not merely under the table, but under the floorboards as well. Only once before, Johnny confessed, had he been blessed with such a hangover, and that was the morning after the publication of his first book when he had been taken in hand by a couple of alcoholic publishers.

  Now Alexandra could just about make Rasputin out as he approached the sentry post that led into the palace grounds. She could see the tattered green coat, the dishevelled beard, even the long fingernails. Yes, he must be a holy man, she promised herself as she rushed down the stairs to greet him, how I hope he is the answer to all my prayers, how I hope he can heal Alexis.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Rasputin in his thick Siberian accent to the sergeant on duty. ‘I believe you are expecting me. My name is Father Grigory. I have come to save Russia.’

  The Berlin express was pulling slowly out of the station. Powerscourt stared out of his window as the outer parts of St Petersburg slid past beyond the steam from the engine. He was going home to Lucy and the children. He was safe. He had not been killed in this, his first investigation since he had nearly died after the encounter in the Wallace Collection. Ricky Crabbe had sent a cable from him to Lucy, via William Burke, telling her he was safe and well and returning to London. He remembered that he had promised to take Lucy to Paris to celebrate his safe return. Maybe they could call on the elegant M. Olivier Brouzet of the French secret service and his Watteau in the Place des Vosges.

  Haemos. Blood, the Greek word for blood. Philos, love of something, as in philosophy, love of wisdom, philology, love of words. Haemophilia, literally, love of blood. Powerscourt was thinking about blood and the Russians’ love of it. He thought of the blood on the snow in the streets of St Petersburg as the workers tried to reach the Winter Palace to hand in their petition to the Tsar, mown down by the Imperial security services, their faces chopped into bloody pieces by the cavalry, their children shot as if they were criminals. He thought of the end of that terrible day when he and Mikhail and Rupert de Chassiron had tried to help the wounded outside the Stroganov Palace. Often all they could do was to wipe away the blood and send the dying off to meet their Orthodox God with clean hands and clean faces. Cleanliness next to Godliness. He thought of the blood being spilt in that ludicrous war between Russia and Japan, the disfigured and the maimed and the blind and the deaf returning to beg on the streets of their capital. He thought of the blood flowing in the basement cells of the Okhrana, of the terrible whips lacerating men’s backs till their blood ran down in red puddles on to the floor, of Roderick Martin’s lifeblood dripping into the dust as he was lashed to death in Major Shatilov’s squalid office. He thought of Grand Duke Serge, cousin of the Tsar, married to the Empress Alexandra’s elder sister, his blood and guts blasted by the nitroglycerine explosion all over the walls of the Nicholas Gate in the Kremlin.

  He thought of the little boy called Alexis, the Tsarevich, growing up in the Alexander Palace, the blood flowing uncontrollably round his body.

  Haemophiliac Son. Haemophiliac Nation.