‘I am grateful for that, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Richard Gilbert, ‘truly I am. It has always been my policy to avoid the limelight; to work, if not in the shadows, in the quiet places.’
Powerscourt could see that for once the man was speaking the whole, unvarnished truth.
‘I am an old man now, Lord Powerscourt. I have no children of my own. But the nephews and their parents have always been a source of great delight to me.’
I’ll say amen to that, Powerscourt said to himself, and a great deal of playing rather wicked games with them and their families.
‘. . . thought I would outline to you gentlemen some of our proposals for keeping you in touch with this terrible crime.’ The general manager was on his feet, the pens still moving rapidly across the notebooks. ‘We propose to hold a conference with you every morning at this time to bring you up to date with events, bringing in representatives of the police and the Ballets Russes as appropriate . . . happy to answer questions except that the Ballets Russes, who will probably be represented by their principal choreographer, Monsieur Fokine, are not with us this morning. He will be speaking in French . . .’ There was a deep sigh from the journalists, a sigh of regret for not paying enough attention to French lessons at school, and a cry of pain at the thought of trying to extract money for the services of a French translator from a miserly news editor, but the general manager threw them a lifeline. ‘We shall of course be offering the services of translators in French and Russian as required . . .’
‘There has been a change in our plans, Lord Powerscourt. Originally my sister in St Petersburg was going to come and bring Alexander home in person. But that has proved difficult to organize and, obviously, a cross that my sister does not feel able to bear. We have engaged a courier from Thomas Cook to bring the boy home, starting the day after tomorrow. He will be away for at least ten days.’
‘Our daily programme will include another conference at four o’clock here at the Royal Opera House. This afternoon we will be pleased and proud to offer you the Russian Ambassador, who asks you to remember that his only comments on the terrible affair will be made here this afternoon. Otherwise he regrets to say that the pressure of business is such that he will be unable to answer individual requests for comment or interview. And the following afternoon we shall have senior spokesmen, not as yet finalized, but definitely coming from the Russian Orthodox Church, to speak of Alexander Taneyev . . .’
‘I’m sure that is the right thing to do,’ said Powerscourt, ‘to commission Thomas Cook to take the body from London to St Petersburg. I think you are all very sensible, Mr Gilbert. I have made that journey a number of times and it is a very tiring business, particularly the final stretch when you feel surrounded by the vast size of Russia. Are your other nephews going to the funeral?’
‘Alas, no, the pressure of work or study is too great for them to be away so long. If you feel you need to be in touch with the family in St Petersburg, I have arranged that Lady Ripon could leave a message at the embassy there. They have very kindly given permission. The Ambassador is a former partner of mine at whist.’
Powerscourt took his leave a few minutes before the press conference broke up at the Royal Opera House. The general manager had done his job very efficiently, and two or three of the better brought-up journalists made a point of shaking him by the hand as they left. The one thing they had to be thankful for, as Patrick Butler of The Times had pointed out, was that there were unlikely to be many entries in the London telephone directories in the name of Taneyev.
11
Second position; seconde
Second position of the leg – the dancer stands with feet turned out along a straight line as in first position, but with the heels about one foot apart. The term seconded generally means to or at the side.
Second position of the arm – raises your arms to the side. Keep your arms slightly rounded. Lower your elbows slightly below your shoulders. Make sure your wrists are lower than your elbows. Keep your shoulders down, your neck long and your chin up.
Captain Yuri Gorodetsky was very worried about what his master in Paris would say when he heard the news. The call was booked for four o’clock on the afternoon of the great gathering at the Royal Opera House. As ever, the call came through on time. The General did not. As usual he was in the building but nobody knew precisely where he was. Messengers would be sent to search for the missing leader. Gorodetsky always wondered what it was that caused the delay. Did the General pop down to his basement to check the ordered ranks of his files? Did he nip into the library to catch up on the latest newspapers from Moscow and St Petersburg? The answer was none of these. The General merely felt that his presence would carry more weight if people had to wait around to talk to him. Being wanted, as it were, he would be more wondered at.
‘Gorodetsky!’ he boomed at last. ‘What news of the Bolsheviks?’
‘Good news, General, in one sense.’
‘What do you mean “in one sense”? Give us a clear message, man, for God’s sake!’
‘They have changed the money, all of it. Our English colleagues, I have to say, were appalled at the way their fellow countrymen treated the revolutionaries. They all gave them a terrible rate of exchange, about two-thirds of what it should have been according to the published rates in the English papers.’
‘There can’t be that many people wandering round London wanting to buy that amount of roubles in large denomination notes, can there?’
‘You’re probably right there, General.’
‘Is that the good news in the sense you referred to earlier, Gorodetsky?’
‘No, it is not, General.’
‘What is it then?’
‘It’s this. They’ve put all the money into an English bank account. The Central Provincial, Ludgate Circus branch, now holds tens and tens of thousands of English pounds. The chief Bolshevik, Arthur Cooper, had opened the account a few days before. He arranged for all his colleagues to meet him there. This caused a certain amusement among our English colleagues, General, but each Bolshevik had to watch as the chief cashier, operating from a private office, counted all the money and made the appropriate entry in his ledger.’
For once the General saw the joke. ‘One load of money stolen from a bank in Tigris, being watched as it is counted into the vaults of another bank in the City of London, eh? What was the point? I’ve heard of robbing Peter to pay Paul, but this is robbing Peter only to put the money into a different Peter in another country. God help us all!’
‘You don’t think they’ve changed sides, do you, General? Seen the light?’
‘I bloody well do not think that for a moment, Captain, and if you make that suggestion again you’ll be counting the damned daffodils in some isolated Siberian hovel before I’ve finished with you!’
‘Yes, sir, sorry, sir. Perhaps they want to buy something? Something to further the cause of world revolution, sir?’
‘Ludgate Circus sounds a pretty odd place to me to be starting the world revolution. But come, let’s think. He’s a crafty bugger, that Lenin. He knows that if he transfers the money to Cracow or anywhere else in Russia there’ll be more secret police waiting for him to come out of the bank than he has supporters. So what’s his game? It has to be something he can buy in England and he must know how on earth he’s going to get it out of England. Isn’t that so?’
‘Guns? Some kind of armaments, sir?’
‘I can’t see those boys going round buying guns. They enlist some poor soldiers or sailors in their cause and then use theirs. It’s not weapons they’re after.’
‘Maybe Lenin’s going to retire, sir? This is the golden egg for himself and Mrs Lenin to change direction. Perhaps they’re going to go to America to start a new life.’
‘New life be damned! The only new life that bastard wants is in Russia, and would lead to you and me being confined in the St Peter and Paul Fortress for the rest of our lives, or in that bloody daffodil village in Siberia. He’s
good for the employment prospects of counterintelligence officers like you and me, Gorodetsky, I’ll say that for him. Where would we be without Lenin, for God’s sake?’
‘Where indeed, sir? Our English colleagues are going to ask around the Russian community in a general sort of way about what Lenin might want to do with the money.’
‘Good. We’ve got to find an answer to this one, Captain. I can feel the pressure coming from St Petersburg when I send in my next report. We’re going to have bloody Lenin for breakfast, lunch, tea and supper for a long time to come.’
It might have been Lady Ripon’s random fire into the ranks of the authorities that produced the Inspector. It might have been Lord Rosebery’s more discreet applications of pressure in a world he knew so well. But when Powerscourt returned to Markham Square early that afternoon, there was a visitor waiting in his drawing room, twirling his hat in his hands.
‘Good afternoon, my lord. Dutfield at your service; Inspector Matthew Dutfield of the Metropolitan Police. Also on the case is my interpreter Anna, transferred to my care by some Anglo-Russian banking house, currently reading up on the details of the case. Red hair, my lord, English by birth, loves everything Russian.’
‘Are you the reinforcements, Inspector?’
‘I suppose you could say I am. I was pulled off a nasty case of armed robbery to join your team, my lord. I’ve been doing my homework with Sergeant Jenkins.’
Matthew Dutfield was a tall thin young man with a mop of unruly brown hair and a winning smile.
‘And I have news for the case, sir. The Commissioner’s assistant received news from his colleagues that the Duke intends to give in to Diaghilev’s commands for money. The great ballet performances at Blenheim Palace can go ahead.’
‘That’s good news indeed. Excellent news. I look forward to it. But isn’t there one piece of police work that we could use to our advantage?’
‘What’s that, my lord?’
‘Well, if my memory serves me right, don’t the local police force have to give permission? There has to be adequate transport, no risks to public order, sufficient police available on the day to make sure things progress smoothly, that sort of thing?’
‘You’re right, sir, you’re absolutely right.’
‘I don’t see why we can’t use that to our advantage,’ said Powerscourt. ‘If the Ballets Russes don’t behave at this end, then we block the performance at the other end. This could be the key to unlock Diaghilev’s ban on our talking to his senior people. That has been the major block in this investigation. Until now we’ve made little bits of progress here and there, but until we can talk to those people we’re operating largely in the dark.’
‘I see what you mean, my lord. Begging your pardon, but could I use your telephone? It’s just that the Assistant Commissioner seemed to have some sort of instant connection to Diaghilev’s people – maybe it’s this Lady Ripon woman – but if I can talk to him right now, he might be able to press a few buttons for us.’
‘You carry on, Inspector, down the stairs and first door on the left.’
Powerscourt wondered if it was the shame of putting a Sergeant on the case that forced the Metropolitan Police to produce an Inspector. Maybe the thought of all those conferences at the opera house had forced their hand. It wouldn’t take long for one of the journalists to ask if it was normal to put police sergeants onto murder cases involving distinguished artistic people from foreign countries. That, he said to himself, was probably the answer.
Inspector Dutfield was back in a few moments. ‘Whoever got hold of that key into Diaghilev’s inner circle has done us a great favour, my lord. Maybe they warned him that police cooperation at both ends of the Oxford Road was necessary. They’re all going to speak to us, preferably after the event at Blenheim; all of his top people, and that’s official. Even Diaghilev himself, apparently.’
‘I wonder if I might leave that one to you, Inspector. The man stormed out of a meeting with Natasha Shaporova and myself earlier in this inquiry and stomped off down the stairs.’
‘Begging your pardon, sir, but aren’t you forgetting something? I’ve been reading up as much as I can about these ballet characters, and from what I can see they’re all pretty volatile, liable to have a tantrum and threaten to leave in the morning, and then be best friends at lunchtime. And they’re Russian as well. They’re a pretty emotional lot. Can you tell me, my lord, of a successful English novel where the heroine throws herself under a train at the end? Dorothea Brooke? Elizabeth Bennet? Fleur Forsyte?’
‘Do you know,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that thought had never occurred to me. How interesting.’
‘Let me tell you, my lord, how I intend to proceed. I’ve earmarked a couple of pages in my new notebook here for each one: Benois, Bakst, Stravinsky and so on. I’m not just going to ask them about where they were on the night in question, I’m going to ask them what they knew of the whereabouts of the others. That way, if they’re telling the truth, we can check all their alibis. Is there anything you’d like me to ask them, my lord, while I’ve got them in the witness box, as it were?’
‘Well, you should remember that Monsieur Fokine, the choreographer, is sort of on our side. He volunteered his help a few days ago and he’s most useful. Get him to give you an impression of Diaghilev at the Palladian bridge in Blenheim Palace. He may need a cane or a poker to make it work, but it’s very entertaining. Now then, I think you should include Alfred Bolm, the man who was supposed to have been dancing that evening.
‘And the reserves, if you like – the girls and the men who were not down to dance that evening, but were presumably acting as understudies in case somebody got ill. Sergeant Jenkins is working his way through the stagehands and so on.
‘You ask, Inspector, if I have any special question I would like to ask these top men from the Ballets Russes. Well, there is. It may seem way outside the scope of our inquiry, but I would like you to ask it anyway. Who were the next great stars going to be? Who were the next people to become as well known as Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova?’
George Smythe, trainee art dealer by day, part-time jewel broker for Anastasia from the corps de ballet and party-goer by night, hated being disturbed early in the morning. The fact that it was a telegram did not register with him at all at eight fifteen in the morning. His long and expensive education had included no training in the question of telegrams. The place of origin, Berlin Central, did not rouse him either. It was only when he saw the figure halfway down the form that he woke up. In excess of forty thousand English pounds. George ran a hand through his hair and sat down in his living room, strewn with abandoned shoes and neckties from the night before, to read the thing properly.
For the attention of: George Smythe, 74 Albemarle Street, London.
From: Elias Killick, of Johnston Killick jewel brokers, Imperial Hotel, Berlin.
‘Delighted to inform you all jewels disposed of at respectable prices. Total of forty-thousand pounds. Would you wish monies sent direct to Moscow Bank or brought back to London? Direct transfer by far the safest option. Please advise by three o’clock this afternoon. Regards. Elias Killick.’
George Smythe hadn’t dressed as fast as this since he overslept in Oxford and almost missed the last paper in his finals. A cab swept him to the Royal Opera House in less than ten minutes. He found Anastasia waiting to rehearse in an hour’s time and dragged her off to a quiet corner of the Fielding Hotel.
‘Look, Anastasia,’ he began, ‘that jewel man Killick has sold the lot. They’re worth about forty thousand pounds. Can you believe it? It’s marvellous news, don’t you think?’
Anastasia shook her head, as if she too had been out late the night before. ‘Tell me if I’ve got this right. The man Killick has sold the jewels? Is that true? For forty thousand pounds? Holy Mary, Mother of God!’
‘That’s right. It’s fantastic!’
‘Where is he now, the man Killick?’
‘He’s in Berlin. The thing is, Anastasi
a, we’ve got to decide how to get the money. Killick says they can transfer it direct to that Moscow bank you told me about. Nobody will know. You won’t have to hide it in your luggage going back to St Petersburg or whatever you were going to do with it.’
‘We’re not going straight home – we’ve got engagements in a couple of other places before we get back to St Petersburg.’
‘But can’t you see, this is the safest way to get the money back to Russia.’
‘I promised Prince Felix that I would bring him the money myself. It’ll make him love me more, don’t you see? He can’t fall in love with a length of telegraph cable! I promised him!’
‘That’s all very fine,’ said George, feeling that a man might indeed have strong emotions when a beautiful girl arrived on his doorstep with a fortune in her hand, ‘but how are you going to get it back?’
‘I’ll find a way. I promised, didn’t I? What would Felix think if I got back to St Petersburg without the money? I’d be in the doghouse with no supper for days.’
‘We have to give an answer very soon. By first thing this afternoon at the latest. Can’t you see, Anastasia, that the wire is the safest way to do it? I promised the Prince to do all I could to look after his interests and to keep you safe. Won’t you see sense?’
‘I refuse to have the money sent by wire, George. I could ruin my prospects with the Prince. How can I hope to keep him faithful in the meantime if I do not return with the money?’
George Smythe thought that the chances of Prince Felix Peshkov remaining faithful to his beautiful ballerina were slim at the best of times, but he said nothing of that.
Death Comes to the Ballets Russes Page 12