Death on the Nevskii Prospekt lfp-6

by David Dickinson

  ‘I do believe you, Lieutenant,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘but could you set my mind at rest about one thing?’

  ‘What’s that?’ Kerenkov asked, staring down below at the worker ants engaged on painting the sides of the ship.

  ‘Your presence at the railway station the night Martin was killed.’

  For the first time Kerenkov laughed. ‘I’m not quite sure how to put this, Lord Powerscourt. Following the example of my wife perhaps? When in St Petersburg carry on as the St Petersburgers do? I was waiting, Lord Powerscourt, for a lady who is not my wife.’

  Successful voyage round the inner islands, Powerscourt said to himself as they set out back towards the city. Pirate strikes gold.

  PART THREE

  THE TSAR’S VILLAGE

  All Russia is our orchard.

  Trofimov, Act Two, The Cherry Orchard , Anton Chekhov

  13

  Natasha Bobrinsky was feeling confused as she sat in the train carriage bringing her back to St Petersburg. For well over a week she had been more intimately involved with the royal household in Tsarskoe Selo than ever before, taking care of the four daughters, helping with Alexis, trying to provide care and support for the Empress Alexandra. Strange fragments of news filtered into her part of the Alexander Palace. Natasha heard whispered conversations about strikes and industrial disputes, about the lack of enthusiasm for the monarchy, about peasant unrest in the provinces. The previous evening the Empress seemed to have cracked. She did not sink to her knees in private prayer once she had emerged from caring for the sick baby as she usually did. She stared at Natasha as if she didn’t know who she was and began attacking the aristocrats of St Petersburg. Vain, worthless, godless, hopeless, selfish, arrogant, self-indulgent, drunk, were some of her kinder adjectives. None of them, according to the Empress, were fit to serve the Tsar, none of them truly fit to speak for the soul of Mother Russia. And on the peasants she bestowed the blessings of the beatitudes: blessed were the poor in spirit for theirs was the kingdom of Heaven, blessed were the meek for they should inherit the earth, blessed were the merciful for they should obtain mercy. These peasants, according to Alexandra, were the true supporters of the monarchy. They knew instinctively about the sacred relationship between Tsar, peasant and God that sustained the Romanovs on their throne and kept the wheels of Russian society turning properly.

  It was, perhaps, regrettable that Alexandra should have sounded off in this fashion, for Natasha had been feeling a growing sympathy for the Empress. Now, she thought, as the Tsar’s countryside rolled past her windows, she was not so sure. Maybe it was unfortunate that Natasha’s parents chose to spend more of their life in Paris and on the Riviera than they did in Russia. Natasha could see the appeal. Nobody said that her father, a man devoted to the joys of the table and the wines of Bordeaux, on which, indeed, he had written a short monograph for a Russian publishing house in Paris, had to spend his time in St Petersburg or Moscow. A career in the public service, ascending the slow steps on the ladder of bureaucratic advancement, he would have regarded as beneath contempt. And as for Natasha’s mother, she had never heard her speak of the Empress with anything other than a withering scorn about her German ancestry, her lack of social graces and the vulgarity of her personality. Natasha would never have claimed to be an expert on the peasants. But one of her brother’s friends at university, in a fit of misplaced zeal for the general advancement of mankind, had gone with some like-minded souls to live with a group of peasants, to try to improve their lot and welcome them into the joys of civilization. Their reception showed little of the spirit of the meek or the merciful and plenty of that of the poor in spirit or, more precisely, poor in worldly goods. One of Natasha’s brother’s friends had been beaten up so badly he had to be taken into hospital, their money and valuables were all stolen by the peasants, even their clothes were taken from them. Such people might embody the Tsar’s support in his wife’s view, but Natasha wanted nothing to do with them.

  She was carrying the one word she had heard from the doctors to pass on to Mikhail and to Powerscourt. She had looked it up in the big dictionary in the Tsarskoe Selo library and felt as she read the entry that this particular page had been visited many times in recent weeks. As she left the station and set off to walk to the Shaporov Palace, the man in soldier’s uniform followed her once again. Hello, missy, he said to himself, I haven’t seen you for a week or more, welcome back. And as Natasha crossed the street with a toss of her head, the soldier grinned. You haven’t grown any uglier while you’ve been away, missy, that’s for sure. I do hope they’re not going to do anything nasty to you when they read another of my reports.

  ‘Haemophilia,’ said Natasha firmly when she and Mikhail and Powerscourt were all seated on their eighteenth-century French chairs in the Shaporov library.

  ‘What on earth is that, Natasha?’ said Mikhail.

  ‘Is that what the little boy has? The Tsarevich, out there at the Alexander Palace?’ Powerscourt had turned pale.

  ‘It is,’ said Natasha, slightly cross that anybody could have guessed her secret so quickly. ‘How did you know, Lord Powerscourt?’

  ‘It was a guess, Natasha. You said the word with so much meaning it obviously had to be something very important. But please, please, don’t tell a single soul about it apart from the two of us. It could be fatal. It may already have been fatal.’

  ‘But what does it mean?’ asked Mikhail, feeling slightly left out.

  Powerscourt nodded slightly to Natasha as if to indicate that she should provide the definitions.

  ‘Basically, it means that your blood won’t clot,’ she said. ‘If you’re bruised from a fall, Mikhail, your blood will clot quickly and the flow will stop. But if it happens to Alexis, the blood keeps on flowing and ends up making a big swelling which can be very painful.’

  ‘What happens if he cuts himself?’ asked Mikhail. ‘Will he bleed to death?’

  ‘I’m not sure, I’m not an expert,’ said Natasha, ‘but I think I heard them say that if the bandage is very tight, the cut will heal itself.’

  As the girl regaled her lover with the details of her time with Alexis, Powerscourt was wondering if this one word, eleven letters long, held the key to his dash across Europe in the quest for Martin’s killer. Had Martin learnt that the baby had haemophilia? Had he, somehow, tricked the Tsar into confirming it? Had he been killed because he knew of the terrible secret at the very heart and future of the Romanov dynasty? Or had he been killed because he refused to tell what he knew? Could he, Powerscourt, now go home?

  Mikhail’s questions went on. ‘Do you die of it? Die early, I mean?’

  The girl looked lost. The dictionaries had provided no help on this one. ‘I don’t think you’re likely to live as long as anybody else,’ said Powerscourt. ‘However many precautions you take, one accident could still prove fatal. It’s a royal disease. Lots of royal houses have had it, including quite a lot of Queen Victoria’s relations. It’s a nightmare for any royal family though. Do you assume that this child will grow up to succeed to the throne? Or do you have to resign yourself to the fact that he will be gone before he can assume the crown? In which case the child may find out that his own parents think he will be dead before he’s twenty-one, hardly a vote of confidence. You don’t dare try to have any more children. To have one haemophiliac son might be regarded as a disaster. To have two would be a catastrophe.’

  Before he could elaborate any further the door opened and one of the oldest men Powerscourt had ever seen came into the room very slowly, leaning heavily on a stick. He was quite bent, remarkably slim, and with a cascade of dandruff flowing down one side of his black jacket.

  ‘Messages, my lord,’ said the greybeard, holding out a small silver tray for Mikhail. ‘Just come. Sent over from the British Embassy.’

  ‘Thank you, Borodino,’ said Mikhail. ‘You may go now.’

  As the old retainer shuffled off, his stick clicking regularly on the floor like th
e beat of a metronome, Mikhail handed the messages to Powerscourt. The door closed as he peered at his correspondence.

  ‘Did you really call that old gentleman Borodino, Mikhail?’ asked Natasha sharply, as if she thought a reprimand was in order.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Mikhail. ‘What of it?’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s rather rude, naming him after a battle?’

  Mikhail laughed. ‘Calm down, Natasha,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘When my brother and I were small he looked very old even then; my father told us he had fought at the battle. General Kutuzov’s right-hand man, he was, or so my father said. So he’s been known as Borodino ever since.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Powerscourt, looking up from his mail, ‘I have some interesting news. My great friend Johnny Fitzgerald will be joining us tomorrow. God knows how his telegram took three days to get here. Maybe the Okhrana held it up. Anyway, Johnny Fitzgerald and I have served, well, almost as far back as Borodino itself!’

  Amid the laughter he did not disclose the precise contents of his telegrams. From Lord Rosebery, asked to make certain specific inquiries of the royal household, there came a one word answer. Yes. And from Johnny, apart from the details of his arrival, Mrs Martin most likely suicide. More later. Eastern England, you cunning old serpent. Answer Yes. At last, thought Powerscourt. At last bits of this puzzle may be starting to fall into place.

  ‘Natasha, Mikhail, forgive me,’ said Powerscourt, rising anxiously to his feet. ‘I must go and warn the Embassy to prepare another bed. Perhaps I could buy you supper later?’

  ‘That would be lovely, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Natasha. ‘I don’t have to be back in Tsarskoe Selo until tomorrow.’

  As Powerscourt left, his feet tapping out a slightly faster rhythm down the great corridor than Borodino’s, Mikhail looked anxiously at Natasha. He felt that he must make the most of the little time they had left before she returned to the palace. But he also felt that she did not realize just how dangerous her new knowledge might be.

  ‘Natasha,’ he began.

  ‘Mikhail,’ she countered, thinking this was the forerunner of some romantic advances and wriggling into a more comfortable position.

  ‘Be serious for a moment, please, Natasha, I don’t think you understand how serious that knowledge is. I think you could be in great danger.’

  ‘Haemophilia, Faemophilia, Mikhail, I don’t care. I know Lord Powerscourt said it could be fatal, but I don’t see how. They’ll deny that there is anything wrong with the little boy until the last breath in their bodies.’

  ‘All the same,’ said Mikhail, ‘they’re not exactly advertising the fact that a Romanov has got haemophilia, are they? Even the doctors were whispering the word when they thought nobody else was listening, weren’t they?’

  ‘I don’t see what all the fuss is about, Mikhail. And you know I’ve got to be back there tomorrow.’ Natasha twisted herself round until she was in what she thought might be a more alluring position. There wasn’t much room to display yourself to best advantage on these French chairs, she thought.

  ‘I think you shouldn’t go back there at all,’ said Mikhail. ‘I think you should write in and say you’re ill and can’t go back in case you infect anybody.’

  ‘I’ll come and infect you in a minute, Mikhail Shaporov,’ said Natasha, rising to her feet at the lack of any advance from the Shaporov quarter. ‘Wasn’t it on this floor you said there was that little room with the naughty Caravaggios?’

  Mikhail decided to beat a tactical retreat. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘very well for now. Let me take you to this little room, Natasha. I think you’ll like it. The only thing is, there’s hardly any room to sit down in there.’

  ‘Why is that?’ asked Natasha at her most demure.

  ‘Most of the space is occupied by something other than a chair or a sofa.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you mean, Mikhail Shaporov,’ she said, laughing at him with her eyes and taking him by the hand. ‘Perhaps you’d better show me.’

  Powerscourt was just a few hundred yards from the British Embassy when he felt a touch on his arm. There was that bald head again, complete with the ingratiating smile beneath it. Powerscourt thought he would rather have walked all the way to Siberia than have another meeting with this face.

  ‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said Derzhenov, the Okhrana chief, ‘how delightful to meet you again. Perhaps you would do me the honour of accompanying me to my humble abode? I have something to tell you and something to show you. Both will be of interest, my dear friend.’

  Powerscourt felt himself being steered away from the sanctuary of the Embassy and de Chassiron’s Earl Grey in the direction of the Fontanka Quai and its revolting basement. He wondered if Derzhenov had any more torments to show him down there. He rather suspected he had.

  ‘Have you been seeing much of that charming Natasha Bobrinsky lately, Lord Powerscourt? Such a beautiful girl.’

  ‘I have seen her recently, as a matter of fact, Mr Derzhenov. She was in good spirits.’

  Derzhenov looked shiftily around him, as if he were under surveillance from some of his own operatives. ‘I should tell her to take care, Lord Powerscourt, if I were you, to be very discreet. Some of the other organs of state security have been keeping an eye on the fair Natasha and they might not like what they see.’

  Powerscourt felt lost in the thickets of the Russian intelligence chess game, a pawn surrounded by marauding knights and bellicose bishops. Why on earth, he said to himself, is Derzhenov telling me this? Surely he is on the same side as this other organ of state security, whatever that might be, wherever it might be found. Relief came from the unexpected quarter of the basement of the Okhrana headquarters and a couple of guards saluting their master and his foreign visitor. On the way down the steps Powerscourt was assailed once again by the smell, a putrid compound of sweat, dried blood and human waste that rose to greet the visitors. The noises too were the same as before, the groans and smothered grunts of men whose lips are sealed and have no way to express their agony. Further up the corridor there was the familiar sound of whips meeting human flesh. But Derzhenov was drawing Powerscourt towards a door that led into a small courtyard outside. What he saw there took his breath away.

  On the left-hand side, nearest to the wall, a soldier was holding back a couple of people whose filthy faces and bloodstained clothes showed they must be prisoners pressed into service as extras. On the far right were a couple of young men carrying buckets with coiled whips in them. Seated on a table were two or three more prisoners, spectators of the scene beneath them. A young woman was trying to hide behind them. The light was dark everywhere. On the right-hand side of the scene a prisoner, clad only in a loincloth, was being fastened on to a gridiron. Another man, naked to the waist, seemed to be supervising the fire underneath it. Powerscourt could see the flames taking hold below. He could hear the hiss as they leapt from coal to coal. Powerscourt thought it was probably the most obscene sight he had ever witnessed.

  ‘Do you not like my artistry, Lord Powerscourt? Do you not admire the echoes of the martyrdom of St Lawrence I showed you in the Hermitage? The prisoner in the loincloth, he even looks a bit like the dead saint. My two boys with the whips in the buckets – so much more appropriate than the fish in the original, don’t you think, Lord Powerscourt? – are under orders to set to work if they think the man may talk.’ Derzhenov paused briefly and shouted something in Russian. The man supervising the fire bent to his task with greater vigour than before. The two guards fastening the man on to the gridiron strapped him down.

  ‘We think this fellow on the gridiron has links with the people who blew up Grand Duke Serge in Moscow,’ Derzhenov went on. ‘We’ve got a couple of the gang here. They’re a bit squeamish down there in the Kremlin. The unfortunate Grand Duke was shattered into hundreds of pieces by the bomb. Our friend here’ – Derzhenov pointed to the prostrate figure, his mouth gagged, his face already contorted into a rictus of pain – ‘is only being
burnt a little. All he has to do is to tell us all he knows and he will be released.’

  Derzhenov inspected his little tableau. ‘Oh, Lord Powerscourt, I almost forgot. You see the girl at the back there, hiding behind the men? That is his sister. We thought she might enjoy the show.’ Derzhenov laughed a bloodcurdling laugh. ‘If he does not talk, Lord Powerscourt, maybe we will swap them over. The young man can watch his sister take on the role of St Lawrence, that should loosen his tongue.’

  Derzhenov steered Powerscourt back towards the corridor. ‘Would you like to join us in a bet, Lord Powerscourt? We take bets, you see, on the time the prisoner will talk or the time he will die. You can take your pick.’

  Powerscourt shook his head and wondered how much more he could take. There was always a double-edged quality to Derzhenov’s displays of torture. One side of it showed how ruthless he and his colleagues could be. The other was a warning to Powerscourt. If you don’t cooperate, then you’ll be next on the skewer or underneath the whips or fastened to the gridiron.

  ‘We must take one very quick look at one of the cells near the end here,’ Derzhenov said, almost licking his lips in anticipation. ‘It is, dare I say it, another of my combinations of art and interrogation!’

  Powerscourt had visions of rows and rows of real crucifixions mounted in the style of Rubens and Caravaggio and Tintoretto and the etiolated saviours of El Greco. What confronted him in Cell 24 of the Okhrana basement was worse.

  On the back wall of the cell somebody had painted a forest scene in the evening. There were occasional shafts of light visible in the gloom. In front of this sylvan idyll a great tree trunk had been fixed with chains. And hanging upside down was a prisoner, his legs secured to the upper branches. His hands at the bottom of the tree were bound with rope. His arms were locked in a circle round his head. Standing by the prisoner’s left side was a young woman, almost naked, her bare right breast not far from the victim’s chin. In her right hand she carried a knife and she was peeling the skin from the prisoner’s chest in slow deliberate movements. Kneeling on the floor a male guard, also equipped with a deadly knife, was peeling the skin from his lower legs. The prisoner’s body was totally covered in blood.