Death on the Nevskii Prospekt lfp-6

by David Dickinson

  A disconsolate Powerscourt sat down and began to run his fingers through his hair.

  ‘Don’t worry, Francis,’ said Lucy, ‘you’ve had cases as difficult as this in the past and you’ve always solved them in the end.’

  ‘It wouldn’t look too good,’ her husband said bitterly, ‘if I allowed myself to be brought out of retirement for a case I couldn’t solve. I’d be finished then, as an investigator, totally finished and hung out to dry.’

  ‘Francis, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, leaning over to refill his friend’s glass, ‘you are forgetting one of the most salient facts of this investigation, if you can have a most salient fact. What is that? I hear you ask. Quite simply this. You have been operating on your own. Single. Unaided. Achilles without Patroclus. Aeneas without whatever he’s called, the faithful Achates. Wellington without Blucher at Waterloo. You have not had me at your side to offer sympathy, friendship, intelligence, common sense and alcohol on your journey through this vale of tears. But I am here now. Oh yes, Johnny Fitzgerald is now on the case. So why don’t you make all our lives easier by offering up your thoughts as to what might have happened to the late Roderick Martin. And,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘to his wife, if you have formed any theories yet in that department. You don’t usually wait for the facts to get in the way of the theories.’

  Powerscourt smiled. Lady Lucy felt relieved and stood up to give her husband a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘When you’re ready, Francis,’ she said, ‘we’re ready when you are.’

  ‘I said earlier,’ Powerscourt began, ‘that I would speculate about what has been going on in this case. I don’t think I feel capable of speculation yet, so what I would like to offer you are some questions to which I don’t know the answers.’ He gazed at Lady Lucy, suddenly realizing that the shape of her mouth and her chin were identical to those of their twin daughter Juliet. He found the thought cheering, knowing that a partial replica of Lucy would be at large in the world long after the original had gone.

  ‘Question Number One,’ he said, Lady Lucy fascinated to see that he was not, for once, emphasizing his point by tapping the index finger of one hand into the palm of the other, ‘may seem obscure, but it would help enormously if we knew the answer. Why did Martin not tell his mistress Tamara Kerenkova that he was coming to St Petersburg? He had always told her before. Why not this time? It was, after all, about to be the season for balls and dancing, even if the balls were not as magnificent as in years gone by on account of the Tsar not providing any entertainment because of the war with Japan. Did Martin know that her husband was in St Petersburg? But then that didn’t seem to have bothered either of them before. Has anybody any suggestions?’

  ‘Is it possible,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘that Martin had broken it off as you implied earlier? He promised his wife he would not see her and he kept to his word.’

  ‘And surely it’s equally possible,’ said Johnny, ‘that her husband did not know about any giving up on Martin’s part. Kerenkov killed him. He told the local police about the body and then his naval friends made it disappear. Isn’t it possible that we’re not dealing with high politics at all, Francis, but with the old story of the revenge of the jilted husband?’

  ‘Perfectly possible,’ agreed Powerscourt, ‘but that wouldn’t explain the interest of the Russian secret service in Martin and his movements. The biggest unanswered question is Martin’s meeting with the Tsar. Who arranged it? The British? Possibly. Or the Tsar? What in God’s name were they talking about that was so sensitive it had to bypass the Ambassador and the diplomats and the diplomatic protocol and the diplomatic bag? Military matters? Something to do with the naval conflict in the Far East? Were the British offering to break their treaty with the Japanese and ally themselves with the Russians? Unlikely, I should have thought. Were the British looking to extend their alliance with France to include France’s ally, Russia? The normal channels might be a trifle stormy just now after the sinking of those fishing boats, but the Tsar could take a long view. He needs all the allies he can get against his cousin Willy in Berlin, after all.’

  ‘Why are you so sure it had to do with high politics, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy.

  ‘Because,’ he replied quickly, ‘I can’t think what else it might have been. The Tsar doesn’t need a man like Martin to get him an invitation to Cowes Week or to Ascot. He’s got teams of flunkeys to look after that side of things. If his wife wants some more furniture, they’ll send for a man from Maples, not a man from the Foreign Office. And it looks as if Martin was sent from London on a mission which included, or perhaps mainly consisted of, seeing the Tsar. I’m sure it had to do with politics, Lucy.’

  ‘And the third question, Francis?’ Lady Lucy was well used to questions in her husband’s investigations that came in numbers now, numbers sometimes quite small, unrolling themselves like the platforms in some great railway station, on other occasions growing into large numbers that taxed her ability with figures.

  ‘I think,’ Powerscourt began, ‘that the last question has to do with the inability of the various bits of the Russian bureaucracy to agree with each other. Why weren’t they all singing the same tune about Martin’s death? Why didn’t the Foreign Ministry know about Martin’s previous visits to St Petersburg? Come to that, why didn’t the Okhrana? I think there may be a perfectly simple explanation that has to do with the nature of bureaucracies whether they’re in modern Russia or ancient Rome. They’re all competing with each other in a spirit of Darwinian struggle if not for the survival of the fittest, then certainly to be the part of the system with the best information for their master. De Chassiron told me that all sorts of the imperial protection units had their elite corps looking after the Tsar, the police, the household troops, the customs, the navy and so on. One of them is going to know what happened to Martin, I’m certain of it. As to which one, I simply haven’t a clue.’

  Powerscourt got up and poured himself another glass of claret. ‘There’s another possibility, actually,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just thought of it. You know I’ve always wondered if Martin was a double agent, a man really working for the Russians rather than his own side. He’d be a perfect recruit with his brains and his career prospects. Imagine having the British Ambassador in Washington or Berlin reporting direct to the Tsar in the Winter Palace. But suppose the British find out. They decide there’s only one thing to do with him. They kill him. And they send a message to his masters in St Petersburg that they know what has been going on by dumping his body, or appearing to dump his body, on the most famous street in the Russian capital. I’m just a distraction, a means of trying to persuade everybody that Martin is really a good British man after all.’

  ‘I’ll say one thing for you, Francis,’ said Johnny, ‘you may have been away from investigations for a year or two but the brain hasn’t got any slower.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ said Lady Lucy loyally, wondering, as she had all evening, how much her husband was not telling her about what went on in St Petersburg.

  In his little office at the back of the Alexander Palace Major Andrey Shatilov of the Imperial Guard, Royal Palaces Security Division, was reviewing the reports on Suspect No. 28,487B. This was only one of the hundreds of such files that passed through his office every day. The Major was only concerned with the St Petersburg district. Other officers had Moscow and the provinces, especially the royal palace at Livadia in the Crimea, under their control. Shatilov saw that Suspect No. 28,487B was employed as a lady-in-waiting in the Alexander Palace. This made him immediately suspicious as many of the waiters and the footmen and the grooms and the maids were already on the payroll of the Imperial Guard. There were, in the Major’s view, few finer places to obtain accurate first-hand intelligence on the imperial family. And 28,487B’s activities outside Tsarskoe Selo were equally suspect. She was consorting with a rich young nobleman called Mikhail Shaporov, whose father was suspected of links and contacts right across the political spectrum from the Social Revolutio
naries on the extreme left to even more dubious cells on the far right. Shaporov pere would not, the Major reflected grimly, be the first one in uncertain times to take out as many insurance policies as possible. Then there was the Englishman, Powerscourt, with whom she had been observed in three separate locations, including one at the Imperial Yacht Club where they had been inquiring about the dead man, Martin. Powerscourt, the Major saw on his file, had returned to England but was expected to come back to St Petersburg in the near future. He was some sort of an investigator, despatched to look into the death of the wretched Martin. Soon, Major Shatilov said to himself, soon we shall have Miss Natasha Bobrinsky in for questioning. That way we shall also send a message to this fool Englishman come to meddle in other people’s affairs.

  The offices of Evans Watkinson and Ragg were in a handsome eighteenth-century building at the end of Tonbridge High Street nearest the church. A collection of prints of clippers, elegant vessels with greyhound lines that used to speed across the Atlantic or the tea routes to China, adorned the reception area, manned by an ancient greybeard who looked as if he might have begun his career during the Crimean War. Mr Ragg, Mr Theodore Ragg, Powerscourt was told, would attend to him, if Lord Powerscourt would step this way up to the first floor.

  Ragg was about fifty years of age, with a small well-trimmed moustache and suspicious brown eyes. He was wearing a brown suit that his wife might have told him was slightly past its best. Powerscourt wondered if there was a Mrs Ragg and decided that there probably was. Lucy could always tell about these things.

  ‘You’re here about Mr and Mrs Martin, I understand, Lord Powerscourt?’ Ragg’s voice sounded to Powerscourt as though he disapproved of investigators as a class, and even more of ones who were lords.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Powerscourt brightly. ‘I was asked by the Foreign Office to look into the death of Mr Martin in St Petersburg, you see.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Ragg. ‘I would point out, however, that this is Tonbridge rather than the Russian capital. How may we assist you here?’

  Powerscourt realized that brevity might be the order of the day. ‘Did either of them leave a will?’

  ‘No,’ said Ragg.

  ‘To whom does the estate pass in that case?’

  ‘I am not sure I am at liberty to tell you that, Lord Powerscourt.’

  ‘Tell me, tell me not,’ said Powerscourt quickly, ‘but if you do not tell me you will have the police here this afternoon, and they will take up even more of your valuable time, Mr Ragg. Are you competent at shorthand? Some of the London forces are like lightning with it. I have never cared for it myself. But the chances are that a policeman taking very slow shorthand could take up most of your afternoon. And if by any chance you should decide not to co-operate with the police, you would have the Foreign Office lawyers to deal with instead. Charming, the Foreign Office lawyers, of course, but pretty brutal, I think you’d find.’

  ‘As far as we know, Mr Samuel Martin, some sort of cousin,’ said Ragg, with considerable malice.

  ‘Address, Mr Ragg, address?’

  ‘I’m not obliged to give you that.’

  ‘For God’s sake, man. We’re talking about one or possibly two murders here and you are refusing to hand over an address. It’s not credible.’ Suddenly a dark suspicion flitted across Powerscourt’s mind. ‘You don’t represent Mr Samuel Martin too, do you, Mr Ragg?’

  ‘No, I don’t. 128 Hornsey Lane, London N is the address you seek.’

  ‘I also understand,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that there was something resembling a family feud concerning the ownership of this house and estate the last time they changed hands. Is that so?’

  ‘It is so, and a very interesting case it proved to be, Lord Powerscourt.’

  Theodore Ragg seemed to have softened suddenly. Powerscourt wondered if it was the legal subtlety of the case or the size of the fees and the length of the affair that caused the sudden change in his temperament. The answer was soon apparent.

  ‘Fascinating case, my lord, fascinating,’ said Theodore Ragg with a faraway look in his eyes. ‘It went on for over five years before it was finally settled in the House of Lords.’

  Five years of fees, Powerscourt thought, noticing also that Thedodore Ragg’s gums seemed to be bleeding slightly. The man was having to swallow constantly to stop drops of blood escaping down his chin. Maybe this accounted for his earlier ill temper. Maybe he didn’t like dentists.

  ‘Old Mr Martin, the dead Mr Martin’s benefactor, was very ill at the end, Lord Powerscourt, this must have been over twenty years ago now,’ said Ragg. ‘His mind was going, you see. Mr and Mrs Roderick Martin were abroad on Foreign Office business, they were very young then, so Mr Samuel Martin and his wife came to stay to look after the old gentleman. If my memory serves me, Mr Roderick Martin was first cousin, and Mr Samuel Martin second cousin, twice removed. We used to have their family trees all over the offices here in those days. The Samuel Martins tried to get rid of the old man’s own doctor, Dr Morgan, but he, the doctor, didn’t like the look of what was going on. He kept coming back to see the old man whenever he could. The staff used to let him in the back door. Then the Samuel Martins brought in another doctor, a man nobody liked, by the name of West, Barnabas West. And when the old gentleman finally died, the Samuel Martins produced another will, signed two weeks before he passed on, leaving the house and the estate and the money to the Samuel Martins and witnessed, among others, by the doctor, West. Then the Samuel Martins promptly moved into Tibenham Grange and took charge of their inheritance. When Roderick Martin came back, he said the other will was a forgery. He went to court with the original will, signed some ten years before and kept here in our safe. Originally the lawyers said that the later will had to take precedence and it was up to Mr Roderick to prove otherwise. Well, my lord, we used to say it would become like Jarndyce versus Jarndyce, Martin versus Martin, new counsel being instructed every six months, new judges in the Court of Appeal who didn’t know the background. Eventually it was proved that the signatures of one of the witnesses were forgeries and that was an end to it.’

  Ragg sank back a little, obviously tired by his narrative. Powerscourt wondered if his entire career had been a disappointment after that. ‘What a fascinating time it must have been, Mr Ragg. Did the two sides of the Martin family bury the hatchet in the end?’

  There was a cackle from the solicitor. Now at last, Powerscourt thought, blood was going to escape from the unfortunate man’s mouth. But with a Herculean effort, swallowing hard three times like a seabird swallowing a fish, Theodore Ragg kept his dignity. ‘Bury the hatchet, Lord Powerscourt? The only way either side would have been satisfied would have been to bury the hatchet in the other party’s neck. I’m sure that’s still true today.’

  Suddenly Theodore Ragg looked exhausted. He began to look anxious like a man who thinks he might miss his train or fail to make his connection. Powerscourt wondered if the blood was an omen of something rather more sinister than bad gums. He remembered a previous President of the Royal Academy coughing blood into a series of perfectly laundered white handkerchiefs and dying not long afterwards.

  ‘I must leave you in peace, Mr Ragg,’ said Powerscourt, looking into the sad brown eyes of the solicitor. ‘Just one last question. How old would Mr Samuel Martin be now?’

  ‘About fifty or a few years more,’ said Ragg. ‘Forgive me if I was rude earlier on, Lord Powerscourt. I was feeling particularly unwell.’

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ said Powerscourt, rising to his feet and heading for the door. ‘There’s nothing to forgive, you have been most helpful.’

  As he made his way towards the front door, he understood what an enormous effort Theodore Ragg must have been making during their conversation. The coughing in the room behind him began like a slow rumble far off, then it turned into a great hacking shriek, and finally it ebbed away into sounds of weeping. Powerscourt could hear doors opening and closing as the partners went to offer help and co
mfort to their dying colleague.

  The telegraph office was but a hundred yards away down the High Street. Powerscourt was shown into the office of the manager, a dapper young man by the name of Charlie Dean, who looked as if he and his clothes would have been happier in Finsbury Circus or Leadenhall Street in the City of London. He was quick to grasp the import of Powerscourt’s visit and the importance of any possible messages from St Petersburg.

  ‘How long would we keep a message, you ask, my lord. Three months.’

  Fine, thought Powerscourt. If Martin had sent any message to his wife here, and if, for some reason she had forgotten to collect it, the message should still be somewhere in the system.

  ‘And what kind of authority would you need before you handed the message over to somebody, Mr Dean?’

  ‘Company rules say we have to try three times to deliver to the recipient in person. Well, we tried and failed three times in this case so now it could be handed over to anybody with a proof of connection with the address. If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, Lord Powerscourt, I don’t think anybody has been in here asking for cables they have no business with. We know most of our customers in a place like this, you see.’ Charlie Dean sounded rather sad as he said that. Powerscourt thought he would be much happier somewhere very busy in the metropolis where every customer was a perfect stranger, a new challenge, offering possibilities of fresh messages and fresh romance.

  ‘And suppose you wanted to send a message the other way, Mr Dean. Would you have a copy of anything Mrs Martin might have sent to Russia?’