‘You’ve done incredibly well, Grandmama. I’m so proud of you. Now tell us about Tamara Kerenkova,’ said Natasha.
‘I will when you’ve run and fetched us all some champagne, my child.’ Elizabeth Bobrinsky’s success had brought a flush to her cheeks and new energy to her demeanour. ‘I’ve always said that vodka is a drink for peasants and factory workers. Did you know Mr Martin, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I’m afraid I did not,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘He was an English diplomat. I have been sent by my government to find out what happened to him.’
‘I don’t think I want to know about that,’ said the old lady. ‘Look at the trouble I got into for knowing poor Mr Martin in the first place, all this rootling about in my memory like an old dog in an attic. Ah, the child has brought some champagne.’
As they toasted the old lady in Taittinger, Powerscourt waited for Natasha to ask the question. He hadn’t thought it fair to pursue it while she was out of the room.
‘Tell us about Tamara Kerenkova, Grandmama,’ she said.
‘She was a Bukilov before she married. I knew her people a little. Clever family, artistic rather than military.’
‘And what happened to Mr Kerenkov?’
‘He was a naval gentleman, I think. Maybe he still is. He was probably away at the time of the ball.’ Powerscourt thought that the Kerenkovs would not be the first naval couple to embark on manoeuvres while the husband was away. And he was quick to observe that there was no whiff of censure or disapproval of a married woman attending a ball without her husband.
‘You wouldn’t know where she lives, this Tamara, would you, Grandmama?’
‘Give me till tomorrow, my child, I’m sure old Maria Bukilov will tell me in the morning.’
Powerscourt suddenly remembered the words of the first Detective Inspector of the Metropolitan Police he had ever worked with in a case of a corpse with no name. ‘Give me a name and I’ll get you an address. Give me an address and I’ll get you people who knew the dead man. Give me people who knew the dead man and I’ll get you a murderer.’
8
Johnny Fitzgerald had decided to tidy up his study before he began work on Powerscourt’s queries. The study was Johnny’s special sanctum, a large room at the top of his house, twenty-eight feet by twenty-four, with fine views over the gardens of South Kensington. Very few people were allowed in. At this point Johnny was approximately halfway through the writing of his third book about British birds, The Birds of the West, which covered the country from Devon and Cornwall, north into Somerset and Glamorgan and onward into North Wales. Johnny reckoned he had stayed in all the cheap hotels he ever wished to see, though he remained resolutely cheerful to the landladies. A visitor to this room would have found it hard to tell whether there was carpet or rugs on the floor or even whether there was any floor at all. Papers covered it as the waters had covered the earth in Noah’s flood. They were stacked several layers high at the corners of the room. Ranged around the centre were drawings of some of the birds Johnny had encountered during his research, great birds of prey in flight across moorland or coastline, delicate warblers and finches and chaffinches to be found in the hills and the wooded quarters inland, gulls and cormorants and skuas that patrolled the cliffs and the sea. If asked, Johnny would have said that he loved them all, with a love so simple and pure he could not imagine transferring it to the more perilous world of human relationships. And, oddly enough, if you had asked him, he could have told you the exact whereabouts of every piece of paper he had worked upon. He had charted their position as accurately as any vessel surveying the waters of the great oceans of the world. He stood for some time, this January morning, wondering how to strike his camp. He looked rather sadly at some of the drawings, particularly of the seabirds, as though he was going to miss them. Then he got down on his hands and knees and made a series of piles of paper running in sections down the room. When they were all together he tied each one firmly with string and lined them up in order of assembly on a gap in his bookshelves. Johnny reckoned he could reproduce the chaos more or less as he had created it.
Johnny had already written to William Burke outlining Powerscourt’s concerns about the finances of Roderick Martin. He had launched inquiries in travel arrangements to and from St Petersburg with Rosebery’s butler. Now he was going to read all he could about Russian politics in a local library where they kept back copies of the newspapers. He didn’t want to sound ignorant in St Petersburg. It would, he thought, be bad enough with them all talking in Russian all day. Johnny had had a low opinion of Russian and Russians ever since he discovered they used a different alphabet. Different words were bad enough in his view, but different letters were beyond the pale. Like the bloody Indians, he said to himself. And after his session with the press, he was going to take tea with Lady Lucy Powerscourt and her family. Johnny Fitzgerald was godfather to the boy twin, Master Christopher Powerscourt, now almost three years old. He took his responsibilities very seriously, Johnny, specializing in crawling races across the floor and piggy-back rides up and down the staircase.
At around the same time Mikhail Shaporov, Natasha Bobrinsky and Lord Francis Powerscourt were having an urgent meeting to discuss what to do about Tamara Kerenkova, dancing partner of the late Roderick Martin. They had secured an address for her from Natasha’s grandmother’s connections near the Alexander Nevskii Monastery at the far end of the Nevskii Prospekt. Now what were they to do? Natasha was for immediate action.
‘We must go at once, all three of us, and call on her. We can’t afford to waste time. There is not a moment to lose.’
‘I’m not sure all three of us barging in on the poor woman would be a very good idea,’ said Mikhail. ‘It might put her off.’
‘Off what?’ said Natasha angrily. ‘Off telling us the truth?’
‘Well,’ said the young man, trying to be tactful, ‘how would you feel if three complete strangers were to call on you and ask you about your intimate relations with some strange Englishman? You’d have to ask some pretty delicate questions too.’
Such as, was he your lover? Powerscourt thought. And if so, for how long? If the affair collapsed, did you kill him? Or did your husband kill him? And where is your husband now, madam?
‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said Mikhail, ‘could you give us the benefit of your experience here?’
‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, smiling at the two of them, ‘first of all we do not know if she is still at this address. And however much we might all want to meet the lady, I do not think three of us is a good idea. I have had some experience of dealing with people in these tricky situations. The most important thing is to make sure that they do not feel threatened. In London I used to invite them to come to my house rather than my going to theirs. I felt they would feel less vulnerable in my home. Their own house with all its connotations and memories would not be contaminated by this awkward and difficult knowledge. So I think the first thing to do is to send Mrs Kerenkova a note asking her if she would like to come here for morning coffee or afternoon tea. And, I’m sorry, Natasha, I think Mikhail and I should see her in the first instance so he can translate for me. When we see how that goes we can bring you in later.’
Natasha laughed. ‘It’s all right, Lord Powerscourt,’ she said, ‘I thought three was going to be too many whatever happened. Anyway, I’ve got to get back to Tsarskoe Selo.’
‘Please remember,’ said Powerscourt, ‘how incredibly important anything you might find out there would be to our cause. And please be careful. I cannot over-emphasize that.’
As she skipped off to catch her train, Powerscourt and Mikhail began to compose a letter to Tamara Kerenkova, inviting her to call.
Lady Lucy Powerscourt embraced Johnny Fitzgerald on his arrival in Markham Square. The twins attached themselves to his lower legs like limpets on manoeuvres. Johnny knew how worried Lady Lucy must be, with Francis away on his dangerous mission. He was only too aware how one dead Englishman on some foreign shore c
ould easily turn into two, particularly in a place as febrile as St Petersburg.
‘Have you heard from Francis, Lucy? Did he seem well? You can’t say much in messages on those telegraph machines.’
She smiled a huge smile. ‘I’ve had two letters from him so far. He spent most of his time describing the people in the Embassy. There’s a diplomat he rather likes called de Chassiron, I think. He doesn’t care very much for the Ambassador. And he says dealing with the Russian ministries reminds him of the bureaucracies of the states run by the Indian maharajahs, incredible torpor for days and days followed by sudden, inexplicable bursts of activity.’
‘The news is terrible, with all those people shot the other day,’ said Johnny tactfully, displaying a small fraction of his new knowledge, ‘but I don’t suppose that’s got anything to do with the death of Mr Martin.’
The twins at this point released themselves from Johnny’s legs and demanded that he organize running races round the dining-room table. The memory stayed with Johnny a long time, two small children doubled up with laughter and giggles as they bumped into table and chair legs and each other, and their mother watching from the side with a look of great sadness in her eyes.
Lord Francis Powerscourt felt sure he had been taken up to heaven like one of those people in Renaissance paintings. It was surprising, he thought, how white everything was. He knew, of course, that white was the colour of purity and of cleanliness and as such might be expected to feature heavily in any celestial colour scheme, but not, surely, to the detriment of everything else. He remembered vaguely the words of the Christmas carol about how we would wait around in heaven, all dressed in white. God himself, he recalled from the Book of Revelation, had a head and hairs that were white like wool, as white as snow. Powerscourt wondered how long you had to wait before you were called to action. Maybe there was no action at all up here, maybe the waiting was all. Better to be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of the ungodly. He wondered if there might be any detective work to be carried out in heaven. He was sure any decent investigator would be able to throw light on the motives of Pontius Pilate and the precise nature of the activities of Judas Iscariot. Powerscourt had always been doubtful about the thirty pieces of silver. Maybe he should ask William Burke to find out the exchange rate and the conversion tables so that the money that betrayed a son of God and started a world religion could be seen in the cold currency of English pounds. Then he told himself he was being remarkably silly. Surely God knew all that. He knew everything. Of all people in all places this was the last one to need investigators. Never mind. He would be a doorkeeper. He would watch out for the ungodly. It was, he reflected suddenly, rather noisy up here in heaven. He had thought that the engines of torment were down below rather than up here. There was a terrible screech and the St Petersburg to Volkhov train shuddered to a halt, its engine shrieking like a wounded animal.
Powerscourt looked up and checked his watch surreptitiously. He had only been asleep for a couple of minutes. Beside him Mikhail Shaporov was locked into his reading of Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo. Their destination was Volkhov, to the east of the capital. For they had discovered, by a complicated series of messages over a period of ten or more frustrating days, that Tamara Kerenkova was not in St Petersburg but currently resident on her husband’s estates some fifteen miles north of Volkhov, and that she would be happy to meet Lord Powerscourt and his interpreter early on the afternoon of Monday January 31st. ‘Exiled’, had been Mikhail Shaporov’s verdict – probably, Powerscourt thought, after a conversation with his father: ‘Bloody husband doesn’t want her parading round St Petersburg with the wretched Englishman, so he packs her off to the ancestral fields out in the back of beyond. Nobody to talk to. People go off their heads with boredom out there, they end up as characters in Chekhov plays for God’s sake, forever whining on about going to Moscow.’
Gradually the engine lurched back into life. Everywhere you looked outside, fields, hills, trees, all were white. There was nothing visible that was not white. Inside the long train various military men paraded up and down in their red and black uniforms, naval and army officers returning home on leave perhaps from the Russo-Japanese War. In the third class nobody was going to war but they seemed to have brought ample supplies with them, cooking pans, plates, food, vodka, all to sustain them on their journey. He remembered suddenly his conversation with de Chassiron the day before. Powerscourt had asked him what rules, if any, governed affairs between members of the aristocracy in St Petersburg.
‘Rules?’ de Chassiron had said, unscrewing his monocle with great care. ‘Rules? I’m not sure I know the rules, my friend, but I’ll try. I’ve never been involved in one of these affairs myself, they send us home on the first mule they can find if we do.
‘Let me put it like this, Powerscourt. You know the rules, the conventions, that govern what goes on in some upper class house parties in England. Not in all of them, of course, but the ones where almost all the guests are sleeping with other guests they’re not married to. Often involving the King when he was Prince of Wales, and presumably, continuing now he’s King, only more so. Adultery by Royal Command. Everybody knows where everybody else’s bedroom is – some hostesses, I believe, leave out a sleeping plan with the occupants of all the bedrooms named like a seating plan for dinner – so at a certain point the guests peel off and creep round the upper floors till they’ve found their lover. Much creaking of floorboards, squeaking of doors, seeking of nocturnal happiness and so forth. All very gentlemanly. No challenges. No duels. No pistols at dawn. All caused by a leisured class with too little to do where adultery becomes the sport of choice. Most dangerous option on offer after all. I think it’s probably the same here, more or less. Former Ambassador, man much more interested in human behaviour than the current one, swears he once overheard three young men at a party discussing which of five different men might have been their fathers. It’s a long time now since Pushkin went to his death in a ludicrous duel over his wife’s honour.’
‘I see,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But if all that is true, and I’m sure it is, why is the Kerenkova no longer in Petersburg? Why has she turned into the chatelaine of the family estates miles from anywhere?’
‘I can only guess, Powerscourt, maybe the husband has banished her. Maybe it had all got too serious – these affairs are tolerated, on the whole, because the rules stipulate that at some point everybody will go back to their husband or wife. Not necessarily for ever, but until the music starts again.’
Sitting in his railway carriage, with the white world flying past, Powerscourt suddenly wondered about the husband. They knew nothing about him. He would have to ask this Tamara not only about her lover, if he was her lover, but about the man she married as well.
A light snow was falling over the Alexander Park at the Tsar’s Village, Tsarskoe Selo. Natasha Bobrinsky and the four Grand Duchesses, daughters of the Tsar, each pulling a toboggan, were by the west side of the Toboggan Hill. The girls never tired of pulling their vehicles up this hill and hurtling down it as fast as they could go. The most daring, the most reckless was the third daughter of the Tsar and the Tsarina, Marie Nicolaievna. She persuaded her elder sister to push her as fast as she could on the top of the hill before she began her descent. This meant she travelled even faster going down. The light was beginning to ebb. The soldier on duty to their right seemed to have drifted off. Marie was embarking on what must, surely, be her last or her second last run of the day. Then it happened. Natasha said afterwards that it must have been because of the fading light. She had total faith in the girl’s ability to control herself and her machine. As the toboggan and the girl hurtled down towards the bottom of the hill Marie swerved suddenly to avoid a stone or some other obstacle in her way. The angle was too sharp. The toboggan turned over and Grand Duchess Marie was flung out, hitting her head on a tree trunk hidden in the snow and rolling over several times before she finally stopped.
‘She’s dead!’
shrieked Anastasia, the youngest.
‘She’s bleeding,’ shouted Olga, the eldest, wailing piteously, hunting in her pockets for a handkerchief to staunch the blood.
‘They’ll blame us for what happened!’ yelled Tatiana. ‘They’ll never forgive us if she dies!’ And she proceeded to cry and sob as though her heart would break.
‘Marie’s not going to die,’ said Natasha, trying to take control of the situation.
‘Girl! You!’ A young soldier rushed out of the bushes in front of the Krasnoselskie Gates. ‘Mind my place till I get back!’ He pointed to a small shed just inside the palace grounds. ‘I have been trained in first aid. I will take the girl to the Palace.’ With that he bent down and picked up Marie and held her tight. He began running towards the palace in great strides, shepherding the other girls beside him, telling them to be calm and not to cry.
Natasha reached the shed and went inside. There was a rough desk facing visitors and a large book sitting on it. Outside the gates, by the great wall that ran right round Tsarskoe Selo, was a security station. Here, visitors to the palace had to show their papers and were searched if the guard thought it necessary. The Captain of the Guard came for a brief word with Natasha.
‘I saw what happened, miss. You’ll have to wait here till he comes back or he’ll be dismissed the service for dereliction of duty. And you must enter the name and purpose of visit of anybody we send through in that big book.’ With that the captain returned to his post, aware that he too could be dismissed for dereliction of duty. Quite soon the Tsarskoe Selo piano tuner came through. Natasha smiled cheerfully at him and put his name in the book.
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