Death on the Nevskii Prospekt lfp-6

by David Dickinson

  Natasha wondered where he might be sent then, New York, or Siberia perhaps. Maybe she should find herself a more stationary sort of young man.

  ‘I haven’t told you,’ she said, ‘I’ve been offered a job as a lady-in-waiting.’

  ‘Waiting for whom or for what?’ said Mikhail gravely.

  ‘The Empress and her children out at Tsarskoe Selo,’ said Natasha proudly. ‘They want to have a sensible young girl to talk to the daughters and so forth. The only thing they checked about me was whether I was fluent in French or not. I am, as you know. So I got the position.’

  Mikhail looked at her carefully. Sensible? Would he have called Natasha sensible? It wasn’t the first word that would have come to mind. Beautiful, certainly. Attractive, yes. Desirable, undoubtedly. Maybe Natasha was sensible too. It seemed such a mundane, a prosaic adjective to describe such a gorgeous creature.

  ‘Congratulations, Natasha! What an honour to be picked for that post!’

  ‘I may not like it, Mikhail,’ she said. ‘My mother says they’re all mad out at the Alexander Palace and my father says to keep an eye out for the bombs and the terrorists.’

  ‘Not sure it’s bombs you need to keep an eye out for. Beware faith healers, ouija boards, necromancers, fakes and phoneys of the spiritual world. One of these fiends convinced the Empress she was pregnant a couple of years back.’

  There was a sudden burst of whistles from the front of the train. Natasha thought she saw something like a flag waving. Mikhail hopped on to the step at the door of his compartment. He thought he would still be able to kiss her from there if the opportunity presented itself.

  ‘You be careful in London, Mikhail Shaporov,’ said Natasha firmly. ‘There are all kinds of bounty hunters and wicked people over there. I read about them in a book by Henry James.’

  ‘Not females, surely, Natasha? Not members of your own sex, trying to trap a man for his money? Impossible, surely.’ The young man laughed.

  The train began to move very slowly. The engine was giving out great gasps as if it were in labour. The white-grey smoke billowed back down the platform. Natasha began walking alongside Mikhail’s carriage. Very suddenly he reached down and pulled her up on to the same step. He kissed her firmly and then returned her to the platform.

  ‘Take care, Natasha,’ he said, ‘take great care out there in your palace.’

  Natasha’s head was spinning. Why did this have to happen now when he was going away? Was that the kiss of a friend or a lover? Lover, she thought, every memory on her lips said lover. She was nearly running now.

  ‘Take care in your wicked city, Mikhail! Come back safely! Will you write to me?’

  There was an enormous roar, almost an explosion, as the train gathered speed and began to move clear of the station.

  ‘Of course I’ll write,’ Natasha thought she heard him say. The train was disappearing now. Natasha made her way home slowly. She was not going to tell anybody about the kiss. It would be a secret between them. Natasha rather liked secrets. And London? Well, she remembered a governess in her youth who had tried in vain to teach them about distances. London, she thought, was only about two thousand, one hundred and fifty miles away. Not really that far when you considered how far it was to Siberia.

  PART ONE

  THE WINTER PALACE

  The Intelligentsia only talk about what is significant, they talk philosophy but meanwhile in front of their eyes the workers eat disgusting food, sleep without pillows, thirty or forty to a room, everywhere fleas, damp, stench, immorality…

  Trofimov, Act Two, The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov

  1

  London, December 1904

  Lord Francis Powerscourt looked carefully at the number at the top of the page. One hundred and twenty-three did indeed follow on from one hundred and twenty-two. Earlier on in his perusal of this work he had discovered page two hundred and four coming directly after page twenty-three and page eighteen coming immediately after page ninety-one. His eye moved on down the first couple of paragraphs. There may be a place called Salusbury somewhere, he said to himself, there probably is, but it doesn’t have a cathedral and this one should be spelt Salisbury. Sissors should be scissors. Sacistry should be sacristy.

  Powerscourt himself was the author of this forthcoming volume. These were the proofs of the first in a three-part series on the cathedrals of England. He had completed all his research, travelling to every cathedral in the country, often with Lady Lucy as his companion. Powerscourt remembered Johnny Fitzgerald telling him, very shyly, of the extraordinary pride he felt in becoming a published author, of seeing a physical book with your own name on the cover. Powerscourt now felt the same and his elder children were growing incredibly excited, demanding regular bulletins on the book’s progress and asking when they could go and see it on display at Hatchard’s in Piccadilly.

  Page one hundred and seventy-one, Wrocester did not have a cathedral, Worcester did. People did not reseive the sacriment, they received the sacrament. Powerscourt thought he might finish these proofs before lunch when there was an apologetic knock at the door and the sound of a slight cough on the far side. Rhys, the Powerscourt butler, another veteran from Indian Army days, always coughed before entering a room.

  ‘Excuse me, my lord, forgive me for interrupting you, but there is a gentleman down below who wishes to speak to you. He says his business is most urgent, my lord.’

  Powerscourt glanced down at the name on the card. Sir Jeremiah Reddaway, Permanent Under Secretary, HM Foreign Office. Did he know this Reddaway? Had he had dealings with him in his earlier life as an investigator? Was he, much more likely, one of Lady Lucy’s relations? But, in that case, why not ask for his wife?

  ‘Is he in the hall now, Rhys, the Reddaway fellow?’

  ‘He is, my lord.’

  ‘Show him into the drawing room and say I will join him shortly. And ask him if he would like some coffee.’

  As he tidied up his proofs, Powerscourt wondered if his past had come back to haunt him, if some fragment of an earlier case had resurfaced and needed tidying up. Maybe it would blow up instead, the past returning to explode in the face of the present. Sir Jeremiah, Powerscourt saw as they shook hands in the middle of the drawing room, was extraordinarily tall and equally extraordinarily thin. Sir Jeremiah leant forward when he walked as if some bureaucratic truth or disobedient memorandum had escaped his clutches and he was pursuing it down a recalcitrant Foreign Office corridor. He had a long thin nose and a small tight mouth. There was a very slight air of menace about him this morning, as if he might despatch a destroyer or a squadron of horse against you if you crossed his path.

  ‘Lord Powerscourt,’ he began, sitting beside the fireplace and stretching out those long legs till they almost reached the far side, ‘please forgive me for calling at such short notice and without warning. I am here on the instructions of the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister.’

  Powerscourt bowed slightly. The previous Prime Minister Lord Salisbury he had known quite well. The current one he did not know at all.

  ‘I have come, Lord Powerscourt, on a most delicate and most urgent mission.’

  ‘Forgive me, Sir Jeremiah, I do not know if you are fully acquainted with my current position. As of over two years ago I have given up investigations. I attend to no more murder inquiries in society or anywhere else. My detecting days are over.’ Powerscourt smiled at the man from the Foreign Office. ‘I write books now, Sir Jeremiah, books about cathedrals.’

  Sir Jeremiah did not give up easily. ‘I look forward to reading your work as soon as it is published. But we are talking here of a matter of the utmost importance. In the Prime Minister’s words it is crucial to the well-being of the nation and the Empire. It is our wish that you should take one final bow on the world stage, Lord Powerscourt, in the service of your country.’

  ‘I do not think you have understood me,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I do not do investigations any more. I am a retired investigat
or. I am a Chelsea Pensioner of an investigator, or, if you prefer a parliamentary to a military analogy, I have taken the Chiltern Hundreds and resigned from the House. I do not mean to be rude but I don’t intend to change my mind for you or the Foreign Secretary or even the Prime Minister.’ With that Powerscourt smiled politely at his visitor.

  Sir Jeremiah remembered the advice from a Foreign Office official who had seen Powerscourt in action during his time as Head of Military Intelligence in the Boer War. ‘You’ve got to tempt him, Sir Jeremiah. I know you can’t tell him much until he agrees to take on the job, but make it sound as dangerous and difficult as you can. That might pull him in. The man likes a challenge.’

  ‘Lord Powerscourt, please, permit me to give the briefest outline of our difficulties. Surely you will give your country the right to enlighten you?’

  Sir Jeremiah was rubbing the tips of his fingers together as he spoke. Powerscourt suddenly saw what he must be like in Foreign Office meetings. Polite. Polished. Lethal. He was not going to fall out of step in this gavotte of la politesse as if his drawing room had been magically transported back to the court of the Sun King in the vast and draughty salons of Versailles.

  ‘Of course, Sir Jeremiah, you must carry out your instructions.’ Powerscourt saw that Sir Jeremiah did not like being referred to as a bearer of instructions, as if he were a messenger boy or a deliverer of telegrams. A brief frown shot across his long thin face before the customary bureaucratic mask reappeared. ‘But, as you say, the briefest of outlines, for my mind is already made up.’

  Sir Jeremiah pulled another card from his department’s investigations into Powerscourt’s past. Somebody remembered sitting next to somebody at a dinner party at Powerscourt’s sister’s house, and the second somebody recalled Powerscourt speaking very eloquently about the glory and the grandeur of St Petersburg which he had just visited in the company of Lady Lucy.

  ‘Do you know St Petersburg, Lord Powerscourt?’ Sir Jeremiah was now purring slightly. Looking at his incredibly long legs Powerscourt thought he looked like one of those Spy cartoons that appeared in Vanity Fair. Perhaps he had already appeared there. Perhaps he should ask him. Perhaps not.

  ‘I do,’ said Powerscourt, in the most neutral tone he could think of. He was not going to give Beanpole, as he was sure his children would describe the man from King Charles Street, any hint of advantage.

  ‘Did you care for the city? Did you find the architecture and so on agreeable?’

  Here was an opening, surely. Powerscourt slipped through it like a rugby three-quarter making a break for the try line.

  ‘Forgive me, Sir Jeremiah,’ he said, ‘I thought you came here to discuss a matter crucial to the well-being of the nation and the Empire, not to debate the architectural merits of northern Russian cities as if we were compiling a guidebook or an updated edition of Baedeker.’

  The sally made no impact whatever. Sir Jeremiah seemed to be carrying steel armour many inches thick as if he were some sort of human battleship.

  ‘As I said, Lord Powerscourt, St Petersburg is at the heart of our difficulties. Four or five days ago a man was found dead early in the morning by one of the bridges on the Nevskii Prospekt. He had been murdered. That man was a distinguished member of the Foreign Office, in Russia on a secret mission. We need to know who killed him. We need to know why they killed him. We need desperately to know if he was killed by a hostile power and how much he may have told them, under torture perhaps, who knows, before he died. That is the essence of this task. Will you do it, Lord Powerscourt?’

  There was not a fraction of a second of hesitation. ‘No, I will not,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘I cannot take that answer as definitive, Lord Powerscourt.’ Sir Jeremiah, Powerscourt thought, was now moving into the ‘let’s persuade the Minister to change his mind routine’, a technique honed and perfected by the Foreign Office over many governments and many ministers and many centuries.

  ‘I would remind you, Lord Powerscourt, of the shifting sands of contemporary European politics. For many decades Europe was at peace after the Congress of Vienna. There were occasional interruptions, the Crimea, the Franco-Prussian War, Russo-Turkish and so on. But now we are in uncharted waters. Germany wants an empire and recognition of her power for her unstable Emperor. France is frightened of Germany and seeks alliances against her. A new naval arms race threatens the peace of the high seas. The Great Powers are fighting over the division of Africa like rabid dogs over a corpse. The Russian Empire itself is racked with unrest, its politicians decimated by assassinations, its Tsar weak and indecisive, liberals and revolutionaries of every shape and size conspiring for democratic change. The death on the Nevskii Prospekt is surely a part of this mosaic, this cauldron of uncertainty and doubt that has spread over Europe like dark clouds massing before a tempest.’

  Powerscourt could barely restrain himself from smiling happily at the mixed metaphors pouring from the Foreign Office mandarin.

  ‘This is the task your country asks of you, Lord Powerscourt. Go to St Petersburg. Solve the mystery of the murdered man. Find out who killed him and come back to London. I need not tell you that your services would be exceedingly well rewarded. Will you do it? Will you answer your country’s call?’

  Powerscourt was furious. ‘No, Sir Jeremiah, I will not. And how dare you come into my house and try to bribe me to work in the service of my country! I have served Queen Victoria for many years as an officer in her army. I have served her in dangerous places, more dangerous even than the corridors of the Foreign Office. I have risked my life in battle while you and your colleagues compose memoranda on future policy and fill the passing hours with meetings about the changing map of Africa or the tribal troubles on the North West Frontier. If I wanted to serve my King and carry out this mission I would never have asked for money. You demean yourself and your office by offering it, you demean me by making me listen to it. I have said No to your offer twice already. Now I say it again.’

  Powerscourt rang the bell for Rhys. ‘And now, Sir Jeremiah, if you will forgive me, I have work to do. Rhys will show you out. Thank you for considering me for this task. The answer will always be No.’

  Two hours later there was an emergency meeting in the Powerscourt drawing room. Johnny Fitzgerald had been summoned from sorting out his notes on the birds of East Anglia. Lady Lucy had returned from a shopping mission with the twins to Sloane Square. Powerscourt had spent most of those two hours pacing up and down his drawing room in a state of total uncontrolled fury.

  ‘Well, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, opening a bottle of Pomerol, ‘I hear the Senate has come to the farm to recall Cincinnatus to the service of Rome. Maybe you could ask for dictatorial powers?’

  Powerscourt laughed. ‘I don’t think you could refer to the Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office as the Senate, Johnny. Not even a consul. Maybe an aedile. Weren’t they some sort of minor official?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Johnny cheerfully. ‘I only got as far as consuls. What did the fellow have to say?’

  ‘Beanpole,’ said Powerscourt, ‘was eight feet tall and less than eight inches wide. He looked as though he had been ironed. Some British diplomat has been found dead on the Nevskii Prospekt in St Petersburg. He was on a secret mission. Beanpole and his friends, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, want to know who killed him and if he spilled any secrets before he died. I said No, of course.’

  Powerscourt looked at Lady Lucy as he spoke, as if seeking her approval. She smiled. ‘Well done, Francis,’ she said. ‘I’m very proud of you.’

  ‘Sounds bloody dangerous to me, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, taking a second sip of his Bordeaux. ‘They enjoy blowing people up, those Russians, rather like other people enjoy playing football.’

  Johnny Fitzgerald was fascinated by Powerscourt’s reaction to this offer of a dangerous but important investigation. It was exactly the sort of challenge his friend enjoyed. And Johnny suspected his friend was ambi
valent about the whole business of retiring from investigations. He was almost certain that Lady Lucy had finessed Francis into renunciation before he was fully recovered from his injuries. Of course he understood her position and her fears for the children without a father. But he and Powerscourt had led such intertwined lives, fellow army officers, fellow investigators, now fellow authors. Johnny Fitzgerald could not see his friend being pushed in his wheelchair along the Promenade des Anglais on the Mediterranean sea front in his old age without having carried out one more major investigation. Powerscourt’s Last Case. Johnny had often thought about that. Maybe even Powerscourt’s Last Stand. Was this Corpse on the Nevskii Prospekt that final mission?

  Lady Lucy too was perturbed. She sensed – no, if she was honest with herself, she knew that her husband would love to carry out this investigation. He had turned it down because of her and the promise she had exacted from him in Positano. She wondered if she should release him from his vows.

  And Powerscourt? To be fair, even he would have said that he didn’t know what he really felt about the offer. Flattered, yes. To be sought out more than two years after he had stopped investigating was no mean tribute to his powers. Part of him felt, as Ulysses said in Tennyson’s poem that brought him back from the dead, that he did not like rusting unburnished, not to shine in use. But he had given Lucy his word on that hotel balcony in Positano. He could not go back on it now.

  ‘There’s only one thing I’m sure of,’ he said, pouring himself a glass of wine and smiling at his wife and his friend. ‘Beanpole is the advance guard, the voltigeurs, the skirmishers in Napoleon’s army, if you like. He may have failed. But he won’t be the last. They’ll come back. And next time they’ll bring the cavalry. Maybe the heavy artillery.’