Death on the Nevskii Prospekt Read online

  Ricky Crabbe bent over his code book. His right hand produced a new, completely unintelligible version of the messages which he proceeded to send to London at breakneck speed.

  ‘You’re here about that Mr Martin, aren’t you, my lord,’ he said to Powerscourt as his hands continued to tap out the code, ‘trying to find out what happened to him, isn’t that it?’

  ‘You’re absolutely right, Ricky,’ said Powerscourt, remembering what hotbeds of gossip places like embassies could be. ‘Do you know anything about it? You must have all kinds of secrets passing through your hands in such a sensitive and important post as this.’

  Ricky Crabbe frowned. ‘Do you know something, Lord Powerscourt? You’re the first person who’s ever asked me that.’ He paused and stared at the last two lines of the despatches to London. ‘There’s just one thing, my lord. I’m sure it’s nothing, nothing at all.’ He paused again, and then hit about six of his keys in rapid succession.

  ‘There, they’ve gone. Now then, where was I? Mr Martin, that’s it. I’m fairly sure, my lord, but I couldn’t prove it, that at some point round about the time of Mr Martin’s disappearance, somebody used these machines here without my knowing. There were only two times over those days when I wasn’t here on duty – once I had an urgent signal to take immediately to His Nibs, and the other early the following evening when I was summoned for a drink in his office for Christmas. I didn’t know the summons was social, if you know what I mean, I thought it was just to pick up a message, so I ran as fast as I could. Now I think about it, my lord, that was the time when the lock on this door broke and we couldn’t find a Russian to come and fix it for about three days. They were all drunk. So I tried to do what I could but I suppose somebody could have walked in here and sent a message.’

  ‘Assuming they knew how to send one, that is,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘Indeed, my lord, there’s none of the diplomats here know how to do it.’

  Powerscourt wondered again if Martin had been a spy. Suddenly he remembered Sir Jeremiah Reddaway telling him that Martin had been trained in the use of the telegraph. These machines would hold no mystery for him. ‘What made you think, Ricky, that somebody else had been on your machines?’

  ‘Two things,’ said Ricky Crabbe promptly. ‘I always put the cover back on when I’m not actually using it.’ He took a dark cover off the machine and replaced it quickly. ‘When I got back, the cover was off.’

  ‘And the other thing?’

  ‘Well, that’s hard to explain, Lord Powerscourt. Telegraphists would find it easier to understand. I’ve got what they call a light hand, my lord, I don’t press down very hard on the keys. Whoever used it when I was away, if somebody did, had a much harder fist than me, so the key felt different for a little while when I got back. It had just got used to the other fellow, don’t you see.’

  Endless possibilities were spooling out of Powerscourt’s brain. He suddenly realized how much it must have taken the young man to tell him this.

  ‘Ricky,’ he said, ‘I cannot tell you how grateful I am for this news. It may make a substantial difference to my inquiries. Naturally I do not have to remind you to keep all of what has passed between us this evening as confidential.’ He smiled happily at Ricky. ‘I can see that you are going to be as valuable a member of my team here as your brother was in South Africa!’

  Ricky Crabbe turned pink with pleasure. ‘Thank you, my lord, thank you. I tell you what, my lord. I’ll keep all your messages here for you unless you want them sent round, if that would be a good plan.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘And there’s one other thing, my lord,’ said Ricky, as Powerscourt prepared to take his leave. ‘If you want to send a really private message to London, one nobody knows about, just let me know. Me and my brother have been experimenting with secret codes and things. I can certainly send you a message nobody else will be able to read.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear that,’ said Powerscourt, shaking the young man’s hand. ‘Thank you very much indeed. And what is the appeal for your brother in his bank of these kind of messages, Ricky?’

  Ricky laughed. ‘He says we could make our fortune, my lord. These banks, he says, are so obsessed with secrecy they’d pay a king’s ransom to be certain no other bugger was reading their messages.’

  ‘Hindustani Rules at the Embassy.’ Powerscourt was beginning his message to Johnny Fitzgerald, perched on the edge of de Chassiron’s desk, a sea of telegrams floating off to his right. He wondered if he should repeat the phrase and decided against it. Johnny was sure to remember the time he and Powerscourt had been reading the ingoing and outgoing messages to and from a rebellious Hindustani chieftain, allowing the British authorities to mount a deadly and devastating response to a rebellion the Maharajah had thought was entirely secret. Hindustani Rules would be enough to tell him that all formal traffic to and from the British Embassy was being decoded and read elsewhere. This message was going through Mikhail’s father’s telegraph machines to Johnny Fitzgerald via Powerscourt’s brother-in-law William Burke’s bank. ‘Urgently need information on Martin’s movements,’ Powerscourt’s message continued, ‘supposed to have been in St Petersburg on following dates: 1904, January 5th to 11th, March 21st to 29th, October 15th to 22nd. 1903, January 4th to 12th, March 23rd to 30th, October 1st to 9th. 1902, January 6th to 14th, October 5th to 12th. Please check via FO, FO travel agents, possibly Rosebery butler for unorthodox routes.’ Lord Rosebery’s butler, a man called Leith, was famous throughout Rosebery’s wide acquaintance for his encyclopedic knowledge of United Kingdom and European boat and railway timetables. If there was a coal steamer to Hamburg, connecting to a timber transport to Riga or Tallinn with virtually unknown railway links to St Petersburg, Leith would know about it. His admirers claimed that his greatest coup was to have spirited abroad, for a fee of five hundred pounds, a man not only wanted by the police, but watched for in person at every port and railway station in Britain. ‘Please check Martin financial situation with William Burke. Debts? Gambling? Women? When inquiries launched please proceed to St Petersburg as fast as possible. Could be preliminary reconnaissance for Birds of Northern Europe. Love to Lucy and the children. Looking forward to seeing you. Francis.’

  Mikhail Shaporov and Natasha Bobrinsky were sitting demurely in front of the fire, drinking tea, when Powerscourt returned to the Great Drawing Room shortly after six thirty. He thought there was something slightly different about their clothes as if they might have been readjusted in a hurry or even taken off during his absence but he made no comment. He remembered that he was to have the pleasure of taking the two of them out to dinner in one of the Nevskii Prospekt’s finest hotels. He handed over his message to Johnny Fitzgerald.

  ‘It’s to my greatest friend,’ he said, smiling at the two of them. ‘We have been together on all my investigations.’

  ‘And will you ask him to join you here?’ asked Natasha, pouring Powerscourt a cup of tea.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Powerscourt smiled.

  ‘I will take the message to my father’s telegraph office this evening,’ said Mikhail, ‘but come, Lord Powerscourt, we were going to talk about Mr Martin and how to find out if he has been here.’

  ‘Do you know why he came here?’ asked Natasha.

  Powerscourt took a sip of his tea and fingered a long thin biscuit. ‘Well, Miss Bobrinsky,’ he began.

  ‘Please call me Natasha,’ said the girl with a smile that could have launched a few hundred ships or more on the route to windy Ilium. ‘Miss Bobrinsky makes me sound like a governess or an old maid.’

  ‘I’m sure that any family in Europe,’ now it was Powerscourt’s turn to smile a pedestrian, humdrum smile that could scarcely have launched a rowing boat, ‘would be overjoyed to have you as daughter or governess, Natasha. However, let me return to Mr Martin.’ He took a mouthful of biscuit and stared earnestly into the fire.

  ‘I can think of any number of reasons why Mr Martin
should have come to St Petersburg in those earlier years,’ he began. ‘He could have had a second wife here. I do not imagine the authorities in St Petersburg check with the authorities in London to ask whether a man has been married before. Or he could have had a relationship with a woman here and not been married to her. He could have had a child or children with either of the above and come to visit them. He could, more fancifully, have been a devotee of Russian church music and come here at Easter and the other times to satisfy his passion. In case you think that is unlikely,’ he turned and smiled at Mikhail and Natasha, ‘I was once involved with a case in England where a man wrongly arrested for murder was going round the cathedrals of England attending Evensong, or Vespers as I think it would be called in the Orthodox rite.’

  ‘How many did he get through?’ asked Mikhail.

  ‘How many services? Or how many cathedrals? Same thing, really,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘I think it was about seventeen. He was over halfway through. Anyway, on another tack, our friend Martin could have been here because of gambling debts. I gather people here do gamble in rather a big way, palaces, estates, entire stables wagered away in the course of an evening. Perhaps he ran up enormous sums and came back when he could to pay them off. I know it sounds unlikely, but I don’t think it’s impossible. Then there’s blackmail. Perhaps he was being blackmailed and came back at these intervals to settle another tranche of his debt.’

  Natasha was entranced. Mikhail had told her Powerscourt was clever. Now, she felt, he was trailing his brain in front of the two of them like a matador with his cloak in the bull ring.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Powerscourt went on, unaware that he had been despatched to the Plaza del Toros in Pamplona or Madrid on what might prove to be his last mission, ‘ though even I think this is unlikely, perhaps he had Russian ancestry somewhere and had come to search for his past. Perhaps there was a great fortune, some vast estates maybe, waiting way out there beyond the snows and the route of the Trans-Siberian. Or, more sinister of all, perhaps Roderick Martin was a spy. A spy not for the British but for the Russians. Perhaps he came here to report back on his previous period of treachery in the service of the King Emperor and to be briefed for the months ahead in his service of the Tsar of All the Russias. Perhaps the confusion between the ministries about whether Martin was here or not was caused by the fact that only one of them knew he was a spy. The rest thought he was what he said he was, an English diplomat. Perhaps, and this is my last thought, Martin was a kind of conduit for messages that were too important or too sensitive to go through normal diplomatic channels. There is little diplomacy that does not have its back channels, secret routes for the passing of information. Maybe Martin, according to these dates, had been doing this dangerous work for years.’

  As Powerscourt stopped Mikhail gave him a loud cheer and Natasha leant over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Bravo, Lord Powerscourt! A tour de force!’

  ‘Superb,Lord Powerscourt!’ The laughter rang out across the Great Drawing Room. Powerscourt suddenly felt the world was a better place and that he was a younger man.

  ‘We have been thinking while you were away,’ said Mikhail earnestly, still smiling, ‘and we have two suggestions.’ Powerscourt was glad there had been time for thought in his absence. ‘You have a photograph of Mr Martin, maybe two or three, I think,’ the young man went on.

  ‘I have half a dozen, I believe,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘With one or two of them,’ said Mikhail, ‘Natasha and I will go to the Yacht Club and ask around. I think we just have to say he is a relative of ours who has gone missing. But everyone who is anybody in St Petersburg goes there. We will spend several days there and see what we can find.’

  ‘And the other thought?’ said Powerscourt, admiring the slight flush in Natasha’s cheeks from the fire.

  ‘That involves my granny,’ said Natasha happily. ‘I think you’d better come along too, Lord Powerscourt. I’m sure my granny would approve of you. You see, at the times we have for Mr Martin’s presence in St Petersburg, at the start of the year, those are the great times for balls and parties. All of St Petersburg gets involved. Almost everyone attends one of these balls or soirées or supper parties or dancing parties or whatever they are called. My granny must be the only person in Russia who has attended every single function for years and years and years. And she never forgets a face, never. The only slight problem,’

  Natasha began to giggle rather disloyally here, ‘is that now her memory is beginning to go. So, she’ll say of course I know who he is, I met him at the Oblonskys’ in ’95. But it may take some time to remember the name nowadays. I think we’d better give her plenty of notice before we go and see her so she can get her thoughts in order.’

  ‘I look forward to meeting her,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if Natasha’s granny had been a beauty in her youth. ‘This all sounds very promising.’

  ‘I’m not sure, you know,’ said Mikhail seriously. ‘This will only work if Mr Martin moved in our sort of world. What happens if he didn’t, Lord Powerscourt?’

  ‘We’ll just have to wait and see,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘And there’s something I forgot.’ Natasha Bobrinsky looked very serious all of a sudden. ‘I thought of it on the way here. Lord Powerscourt, Mikhail told you about the missing Fabergé Easter eggs, the Trans-Siberian Railway egg and the Danish Palaces egg?’

  ‘He did,’ said Powerscourt. ‘What of them?’

  ‘Somebody said the other day that they’d both gone abroad.’

  ‘Just abroad? Not London? Not Paris or Rome or New York?’

  ‘Just abroad,’ said Natasha. ‘Do you think they could have been trying to send somebody some sort of a message?’

  For the next three days visitors to St Petersburg’s most fashionable location, the Imperial Yacht Club, were greeted at some point during their stay by Mikhail, or Natasha when she could get away, or occasionally both together, asking if, by any chance, they recollected meeting the person in the photograph. It was, they assured their victims, a question of an inheritance, a rather large inheritance, always a subject dear to an aristocrat’s heart. Powerscourt was invited in from time to time to witness these encounters and was most impressed with the seriousness with which the young people took to their task. They worked well in harness, Mikhail taking all the women and Natasha taking all the men. Mikhail would look at the women with great devotion, Natasha managed to give the impression that she, in person, might form part of the inheritance.

  Powerscourt regretted that he did not have a wider choice of photograph. The Foreign Office had been in such a hurry to send him to St Petersburg that he had accepted the first clutch of photographs he had been offered. They were identical. They all showed Martin in a rather nondescript suit, with an undistinguished shirt and a dreary-looking tie with a stain near the top of it. He was seated in a garden chair with a wide expanse of lawn behind him. Powerscourt happened to know that the lawn was the lawn of Martin’s house, Tibenham Grange, in Kent. Had the photographer turned his subject round one hundred and eighty degrees, the spectator would have seen the moat, the fifteenth-century square building, the little tower, maybe from the right angle, the tiny courtyard within. Tibenham Grange was one of the finest small moated houses in England, much praised by the American novelist Henry James when he came to stay. With the Grange behind him, Martin would have looked like a man of substance, a man of discernment in his choice of property, possibly even a little eccentric to have bought such an ancient specimen in a modern age of continual progress towards a better world. But with the anonymous lawn behind him, he could have been a civil servant or, perhaps, a local government official in the lower ranks.

  Not that there was any shortage of identifications of Roderick Martin from the blue-blooded clientele of the Imperial Yacht Club. He was, an elderly dowager informed Mikhail, undoubtedly the man in charge of the sleeping cars on the Moscow to St Petersburg express. She had had dealings with him only the week before. This was t
he fellow, a red-faced colonel told Natasha, who counted out the money for you in the Moscow Narodny Bank further up the Nevskii Prospekt. The colonel would put money on it.

  Nonsense, said a society beauty, dazzling Mikhail with her most flattering smile, everybody knew this man: he was a senior official in the Ministry of Finance who had entered into a sensational wedding with an heiress some years before. The marriage, alas, had not lasted. Ability with figures, the beauty told Mikhail sadly, was not sufficient for a happy union. Powerscourt actually wondered if that might be true until he was told that the lady was a notorious liar.

  The most plausible identification came from an elderly man who drank champagne faster than anybody Powerscourt had ever seen. ‘Dobrynin!’ he said. ‘Blow me down, it’s bloody Dobrynin! Haven’t seen the bugger for years!’

  While Natasha waited for further enlightenment, the man downed the rest of his glass and held it out absent-mindedly for a refill. A Yacht Club waiter seemed to be in permanent attendance solely for the purpose of replenishment.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ the elderly gentleman said. ‘Has somebody killed the bastard at last? Surprising he’s lasted as long as he has really.’

  Natasha did not mention that somebody had actually killed the bastard.

  ‘Who is he, sir?’ she asked in her most innocent voice.

  ‘Who is he?’ snorted the man, holding out his glass for yet another refill. ‘I should think,’ the man said, peering round the room, ‘that a large number of the people in this club have been through his hands. And I mean literally through his hands! A very large number indeed!’

  The old man nodded as if he had solved the problem. Natasha waited. The old man peered at the photograph again.

  ‘Bloody man!’ he said again, memories coming back fast, probably speeded on their way by the Dom Perignon. Natasha looked at the old gentleman once more.