Death on the Nevskii Prospekt lfp-6

by David Dickinson

  ‘Were they any use?’ asked Powerscourt.

  The young man laughed. ‘He had to get rid of them in the end. Said they couldn’t make up their bloody minds which way to go.’

  ‘Forgive me, gentlemen.’ Tamara Kerenkova was back, smiling at her guests. ‘Those, believe it or not, were my nearest neighbours, only ten miles away, dropping by to invite me to a party at their house next weekend. Now, where were we, Lord Powerscourt?’

  ‘I am most grateful to you for your time, Mrs Kerenkova. It is nearly time for us to go and catch our train. Let me ask you this though: did Mr Martin ever talk to you about his work at all?’

  She paused and looked at the fire. ‘Roderick wasn’t one of those men who have to tell you everything they’ve done during the day the minute they walk in the door. He used to talk to me about his work sometimes at the balls. I was amazed at how many people he knew at these functions, ambassadors, politicians, lawyers, financiers, all sorts of people.’

  ‘I didn’t so much mean at the grand functions,’ said Powerscourt, ‘rather when you and he were alone together.’

  ‘Pillow talk, do you mean?’ said the girl, laughing, and then something snapped inside her and her laughter turned into tears, tears which she could not stop.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, wiping away the tears with Mikhail Shaporov’s handkerchief, ‘I’m so sorry. You see, I told myself I had to be brave for this meeting and I’ve practised it for days in my head. I’ve tried to lock out of my mind the fact that he’s not here, that I’ll never see him again. It’s hardly any time at all since I heard of Roderick’s death, you see.’ She broke down again. The two men waited. Potemkin came to snuggle up beside his mistress. ‘I wanted to be cheerful and happy and English stiff upper lip and now I’ve let myself down.’

  ‘You haven’t let yourself down at all, Mrs Kerenkova,’ said Powerscourt in his most emollient tones. ‘You’ve been very brave. Please compose yourself and we’ll take our leave of you.’

  The young woman made a desperate effort to control herself. ‘I just want to answer your question, Lord Powerscourt. About Roderick talking to me about his work.’ She blew her nose loudly on the Shaporov handkerchief. ‘It was one day last summer. We’d just gone to bed. He’d been very worried all day and he wouldn’t tell me what it was. I went on and on at him, the way women do about a secret. I was amazed when he told me. “Tamara,” he said at last, “my government are about to do a very foolish thing. They’re going to make an alliance with France and they’re going to call it the Entente Cordiale.” “Surely that’s a good thing, making alliances with your neighbours,” I said, not that I cared very much who was allied to whom, nothing like as interesting as who’s married to whom. Roderick sat up in bed and looked very solemn. “There is only one reason France wants allies,” he said, “and that’s to find other countries to fight Germany. One day we will have to fight Germany because of this alliance with France and it will be terrible.” Then he went straight to sleep.’

  She looked up at Powerscourt, her eyes still red, her cheeks still stained with tears.

  ‘If there’s anything else you remember later on,’ said Powerscourt, rising to his feet, ‘you have Mikhail’s address in St Petersburg. And thank you so very much for being so helpful. ’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said, ‘thank you so much for coming. I hope I was of some use.’

  Potemkin raced their carriage down the drive until it turned the corner by the side of the cherry orchard. Powerscourt was wondering what other high diplomatic secrets might have been divulged between Roderick Martin and his mistress in between the sheets. Another thought struck him when Volkhov and the Kerenkov house and the borzoi Potemkin were far behind. He remembered the question he should have asked. Suppose there was an estrangement between Martin and Tamara, a falling out, maybe an end of the affair. She suspects him of being involved with another woman. That could be why he has not told her of his latest visit. And when she hears of his impending return to St Petersburg, does she borrow her husband’s revolver and return to the city in a fit of Russian passion to shoot the man who had been her lover?

  As they headed back towards St Petersburg, out at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo Natasha Bobrinsky was pacing up and down her room in stockinged feet, desperate for the time to pass. It was, she had decided, much much worse than waiting for a lover. There were still days to go before she could be released from her palace prison to tell Mikhail and Powerscourt what she knew, that shortly before his death Mr Roderick Martin of His Majesty’s Foreign Office had been received, alone, in his study quite late at night, by Nicholas the Second, Tsar of All the Russias.

  9

  The note was waiting for Powerscourt at the Embassy a couple of days after his return from Tamara Kerenkova. ‘Please join me for a small private tour of the Hermitage this evening. My man will call for you at six thirty. Derzhenov.’ Mikhail Shaporov was checking various coastguard offices in case they had custody of the body of Roderick Martin. Natasha Bobrinsky was still locked up at the Alexander Palace. Rupert de Chassiron, reading volumes of cables that had come in overnight, was sceptical about his cultural expedition.

  ‘It seems fairly absurd, Powerscourt, with the whole country in ferment, possibly on the edge of revolution, that you and the head of the secret police should be gallivanting round the galleries of the Hermitage late at night when there’s nobody about. Do you suppose he’s got a stash of pornography hidden away up there?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Powerscourt wearily. ‘Tell me something, de Chassiron. Who would you say has the best intelligence system here in St Petersburg?’

  De Chassiron’s customary look of weary boredom left him for a few moments.

  ‘Do you mean best intelligence system about the foreigners or about the natives?’

  ‘Both,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘Well . . .’ De Chassiron bent down to retrieve a recalcitrant cable that had fallen on to his carpet. ‘The best intelligence system about the foreigners is run by the colleagues of General Derzhenov whom you are going to see this evening. As for the best intelligence about the natives, the Americans are too crude in their approach, too liable to barge in and ask people to tell them what is going on, that sort of thing. We British are more interested in intelligence from Berlin than we are from here, more prepared to spend money there. Cousin Willy more interesting than Cousin Nicky perhaps. My own knowledge is based on the local papers, a lot of reading, a number of local contacts, and, frankly, diplomatic gossip. I could talk for hours about the Russians but my knowledge is pretty thin. The best informed people are the ones with the longest cultural links with this country, the ones who provide a home from home for the local aristocracy in Paris or Biarritz or on the Riviera. The French, I should say, are the best informed. And there is one further reason why they need to know precisely what is going on.’

  ‘Which is?’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘Money,’ said de Chassiron. ‘French loans have paid for the modernization of Russia – well, not entirely, but without them it wouldn’t have happened on this scale. The Russians need another loan fairly soon. If they don’t get it, there are fears that the economy could collapse. If the revolutionaries don’t get them,’ de Chassiron visibly cheered up at this point, ‘then the bankers will. That is why the French are the best informed.’

  ‘And I presume,’ said Powerscourt, feeling his way through, ‘that the centre of that intelligence, the brains and the knowledge, would be in Paris rather than St Petersburg. It would be too dangerous to concentrate the knowledge here. Am I right?’

  ‘You are,’ said de Chassiron. ‘And why, pray, this interest in the best intelligence about Russia?’

  ‘My friend,’ Powerscourt laughed, ‘I cannot be expected to amass a detailed knowledge of this country in a week or ten days. I may need to tap into somebody else’s brains.’

  ‘I don’t think our lords and masters at the Foreign Office will be very pleased to hear that their
star investigator is crawling off to the French secret service. His Nibs will have a fit. Maybe worse.’ De Chassiron grinned like a schoolboy at the thought of his Ambassador losing his temper.

  ‘I’ve no intention of consulting His Nibs, de Chassiron. You and I have never had this conversation. A man could stop off in Paris on his way back to London after all. You see, I’m beginning to have a theory about why Martin was killed. It’s very flimsy, on the surface very unlikely. I should just like to bounce it off somebody and I don’t want to burden you with it right now in case it’s too preposterous.’

  ‘It’s your investigation,’ said de Chassiron cheerfully. ‘I’m happy to help any time I can.’

  A large body of soldiers were marching across Palace Square as Powerscourt made his way towards the Hermitage. He looked forward to going inside, even in such nauseating company, for he had long been keen to see the finest art gallery in Europe. A footman in blue and scarlet took his coat and gloves as he entered. A tall, rather sombre waiter offered him a glass of clear liquid from a silver tray. Maybe it was going to be a combination of cocktail party and art viewing, Powerscourt said to himself.

  ‘My dear Lord Powerscourt! Please do me the honour of taking a glass of this special vodka! It is of exceptional purity. Now then, do bring your glass with you. Have you been to the Hermitage before? No? Well, I’m afraid most of it is closed but I have my own humble section to show you.’

  Derzhenov, his bald head shining like a small light, led the way up an enormous marble staircase, decorated with huge pillars and monumental mirrors.

  ‘We must not forget our business, Lord Powerscourt, about that poor Mr Martin. Such a shame!’ With that Derzhenov opened an enormous door and led them through a series of interconnected rooms full of Italian masterpieces of the Renaissance. They were hard to see in the gloom, and Derzhenov had now got so far ahead that only the odd word drifted back across the marble floors. ‘Leonardo room . . . such a treasure trove, Raphael room . . . what a privilege . . . Raphael’s Madonna Conestibale . . . what a painting.’ Powerscourt suspected that the man knew very little about art but was perfectly capable of enthusiasm in spite of ignorance about the Old Masters. Such characteristics, after all, are not confined to St Petersburg.

  Then they turned left and Derzhenov opened another enormous door. It gave on to a long corridor, lined with tall windows that looked out across a courtyard to the opposite side of the building. The Okhrana man pressed a button and rather feeble, yellow, museum-strength light came on to illuminate the pictures.

  ‘All of these are of special interest to me, Powerscourt. The Hermitage authorities have allowed me to mount my own little private collection within the larger whole. Such a privilege! And now to have you with me to share its delights!’

  Derzhenov had positioned himself in such a way that only one painting was so far visible. ‘What about this one, my dear sir? Sixteenth-century Spanish if you please. Not just one saint but three! And Christ and the Virgin and God Almighty too!’

  Powerscourt saw that the painting was called St Sebastian between St Bernard and St Francis, completed in 1582, by the Spanish painter Alonso Sanchez Coello. It existed on three separate layers. On the bottom of the picture Sebastian was tied, rather loosely, to a tree. He was naked except for a white loincloth fastened at the waist and he was leaning outwards on his right hip which curved in to meet his trunk. He was pierced by a number of arrows, one in the leg, one which had gone right through his right arm and five to his stomach, waist and shoulder. There was no blood from his wounds and the saint had a rather dreamy expression on his face as if he expected to levitate up to heaven fairly soon. To his left St Francis, clad in a brown habit, appeared to be pleading with him on some undisclosed saintly business. On his other side St Bernard knelt with a crook clasped between his hands. Behind the saint shadowy figures could be seen, with mountains and a lake in the distance. On the next level, Christ, in a similar loincloth to the saint but with a red robe, and the Virgin appeared to be discussing possible rescue missions or preparing to welcome him home. And on the topmost level, God, in a golden light, surrounded like an elderly and benevolent headmaster by hosts of misbehaving and mischievous putti, gazed down on the scene, the world in his hand, and released a dove of peace.

  ‘Well,’ said Derzhenov, taking a large swig of his vodka, ‘what do you think of it?’

  ‘As a work of history or as a work of artistic composition?’ said Powerscourt, feeling rather like a new and junior curator at the National Gallery being interrogated by the Director.

  ‘None of those! God in heaven, Powerscourt! Have you no idea what my interests in these pictures are likely to be?’ He strode forward and tapped Sebastian on the heart.

  ‘Look, man! They’re meant to be killing this fellow, for Christ’s sake! And they’re pathetic! If this was an archery contest, the heart would be here in the very centre of the ring.’ Derzhenov drew a series of imaginary circles like an archery ring outwards from St Sebastian’s heart. ‘Anybody shooting an arrow or anything else into the centre in there would get maximum points. But look at this! Not a single shot near the heart! Not one! No points for the archers. No blood either. The fools are not shooting hard enough, for God’s sake. Bloody arrows are going far enough to penetrate the skin but not hard enough to do any real damage. No proper management of those archers, that’s what I say. If they’d behaved like that under my command I’d have crucified every third one of them! Even our new peasant intake when we bring them here can see the bloody archers are a lot of old women.’

  Powerscourt shuddered when he realized that Derzhenov must be conducting courses in torture here, bringing his minions to learn what lessons they could from the works of the Old Masters.

  Derzhenov had moved on to another canvas. ‘And what about this one? By that Italian fellow who got everywhere, Titian,’ he demanded angrily. ‘See any improvement?’

  This, Powerscourt saw immediately, was a very different sort of St Sebastian. He was flanked by no companionable saints. Neither Christ nor the Virgin nor God nor his putti offered comfort from the layers above. You could just see that the saint was attached to a dark tree, barely visible behind him, a white loincloth round his waist. The background was unclear, a turbulent impasto of dark purple, broken and illuminated in places by yellow or gold patches that might have been sunshine or the lights of a great city or the campfires of a distant enemy. The saint himself was lit from the front so his trunk was in pale gold. The arms and legs were paler, with the head and the right arm in shadow. There were two arrows piercing his right arm and three in his torso. The expression on his face was of long suffering, of acceptance of his fate.

  ‘Well?’ snapped Derzhenov, as Powerscourt finished his preliminary inspection of the painting. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well,’ said Powerscourt gingerly, ‘it’s a much greater painting than the other one, much simpler, more powerful.’

  ‘Powerful? Poppycock!’ Derzhenov tossed off the remainder of his vodka. ‘Do I need to remind you what was wrong with the first one? Inaccurate archery fire again. Nowhere near the heart, for God’s sake. Arrows not drawing blood. Pathetic. Sebastian should have been dead long before if they could have fired straight, those Mauretanian archers. Know what I think, Powerscourt? It’s a serious failure of duty by the counter-terrorist forces in Rome. Couldn’t be tolerated here in Russia. Third century AD, all this stuff with arrows and loincloths and so on, I think. Roman history not my strong point, but this Sebastian had been clearly discovered by the authorities giving comfort and sympathy to Christian revolutionary elements. Enemy of the state. Should have been disposed of quietly in some Roman basement like our own. No bugger would ever have heard of him then. No bloody paintings either. Instead the archers are so bad the man survives! He was rescued, for God’s sake, by some other terrorist sympathizer called Irene and nursed back to health. Fellow only dies when he shows himself to the Emperor who has him stoned or cudgelled to death, ca
n’t remember which. Terrible failure by the security services, that’s how I portray it to our students.’

  Powerscourt was saved from the need for speech by the reappearance of the waiter with the vodka tray who glided in almost invisibly from a door hidden by a tapestry.

  ‘Splendid, splendid,’ said Derzhenov, downing one glass and taking another. ‘Let me lead you to our next pair of pictures, Lord Powerscourt. These I always take care to show our new recruits. Can I interest you in a couple of Flagellations on the way?’ Derzhenov had moved away to the window and was looking at the snow falling fast on the courtyard outside. ‘Both remarkable examples of how not to whip a man? No? A couple of heads of John the Baptist, perhaps? One a Caravaggio where the mouth of the beheaded prophet seems to carry on speaking after death? My own favourite depiction of violence, the blinding of Samson, a quite remarkable early work by Rubens? No? Well, before we step along to the last two, perhaps we could speak of Mr Martin.’

  Powerscourt had known this must be coming. He wondered if the violent paintings had been meant to soften him up. Well, he thought to himself, he had seen far worse things in battle. Then, he told himself, so too had Derzhenov.

  ‘My assumption, Lord Powerscourt,’ the Okhrana man continued to stare out at the snow, deliberately avoiding eye contact in the manner of an Old Bailey barrister, ‘is that you have not found the answer to the death of Mr Martin. If you had, you would have gone home by now. Is that right?’

  ‘You will understand, General, that I am not at liberty to discuss the case with you, however much I might want to.’

  ‘Nonsense, Lord Powerscourt, don’t give me that rubbish. If you thought I could help, you would have been begging for my assistance.’

  ‘And you must understand, General, my belief that if you had the information you seek, you would not be questioning me at all.’

  Not so much chess as fencing, Powerscourt felt, unsure of his ground. He wondered if the Okhrana man had read Lord Rosebery’s cable by now.