Death on the Nevskii Prospekt lfp-6 Read online

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he began. ‘The news is bad. It comes from Moscow. Let me tell you first of all what we know for certain.’ He paused and riffled through his pile of cables, finally selecting one that seemed to contain a very short message indeed.

  ‘This comes from the British Consul in Moscow. Grand Duke Serge, Governor General of Moscow, uncle and brother-in-law of the Tsar, has been assassinated. Revolutionary elements blew him up with a bomb by the Nikolovsky Gate on the way out of the Kremlin this morning. Death was instantaneous.’

  Ricky Crabbe the telegraph operator came in with some more cables to add to de Chassiron’s pile. He nodded cheerfully at Powerscourt and stared long and hard at Natasha before returning to his post.

  Nobody spoke. ‘There is other, unconfirmed information. The Grand Duke, as you know, was one of the most hated members of the imperial family. People said he boasted that he never slept in the same bed in the Kremlin for two nights running in case the revolutionaries came for him. He was a most determined opponent of the granting of any reforms whatsoever. According to some of the other reports, the bomb was thrown straight into his carriage. The coachman was mortally wounded but he took some time to die. The Grand Duke was in the epicentre of the explosion. His clothes were ripped off his body, his head was gone, all that was left of him was a hand and part of a foot. He was scattered into hundreds of fragments of blood and muscle and bone, some of them sticking to the walls of the gateway. There was a rumour that students from Moscow University hurried to the scene and carried tiny pieces of the Grand Duke’s flesh away as souvenirs.’

  Outside the watcher in soldier’s clothes wondered how much longer the young lady was going to stay inside the British Embassy. He felt sure he would be well rewarded for this information. And though he wanted to be home he knew he could not desert his post now. He pulled his vodka bottle from his pocket and settled down to wait.

  Natasha Bobrinsky had gone pale. ‘He was married to the Empress Alexandra’s elder sister, this Grand Duke, wasn’t he, Mr de Chassiron?’

  The diplomat nodded.

  ‘I met him shortly after I’d gone to work for the Romanovs,’ she said sadly. ‘And to think of him now reduced to hundreds of pieces of flesh and blood, like minced meat. The Empress came to her sister Ella’s wedding to this Grand Duke years ago in the Winter Palace chapel. She told me about it just before Christmas, the great pillars in the chapel, the singing and chanting of the choir, the clergy in their rich vestments, and the jewels all over the society ladies. Alexandra said she felt like a German pauper.’

  ‘What do you think the reaction will be, de Chassiron?’ asked Powerscourt, wondering how it might affect his investigation. Anything that made Derzhenov and his thugs less interested in the strange death of Roderick Martin was to be welcomed.

  ‘It’ll make the imperial family even more security conscious than they are already. There’s a rumour that nobody is to be allowed to leave Tsarskoe Selo for the funeral when the body is brought up here from Moscow. They’re to remain inside the Alexander Palace, cowering behind the walls. God only knows what kind of example that sets their subjects if you’re unwilling to be seen burying your dead.’

  ‘But will there be reaction or reform?’ Powerscourt had scarcely asked the question when Ricky Crabbe burst in without knocking and handed a cable to Powerscourt.

  ‘This has just come from the Foreign Office for you, my lord. From Sir Jeremiah Reddaway, my lord.’

  Powerscourt expected some freshly discovered details about Martin’s past or his financial affairs. Nothing had prepared him for this.

  ‘Corpse found lying in water at Tibenham Grange with severe head wounds consistent with fall from the tower of the house or assault and battery with blunt instrument. Body positively identified as Mrs Letitia Martin, wife of late diplomat, Roderick Martin. Please return soonest. Reddaway.’

  10

  Two more deaths, Powerscourt thought bitterly. The one in Moscow would surely bring more hatred and division to a country that already suffered from a surfeit of both. The one in Kent might bring an end to the family Martin, for, as far as Powerscourt knew, there were no children of the marriage. De Chassiron was scrabbling through a little booklet brought out from one of his desk drawers. Ricky Crabbe was hovering with intent by Powerscourt’s side, as if expecting a telegraph message to materialize almost instantly.

  ‘How terrible,’ said Natasha Bobrinsky. ‘Two more dead people. Will it never stop?’

  ‘I presume you will have to go back to London, Lord Powerscourt?’ asked Mikhail. ‘Would you like me to accompany you? It can be a long and tedious journey.’

  Powerscourt managed not to say that he had no need of an interpreter in his own country. ‘That’s a very generous offer,’ he said, ‘but you need to stay here and keep watch over Natasha. I know you think I’m being absurdly old and fussing, Natasha, but I am sure you could be in very great danger if your employers or some of their staff find out that you are in touch with me and the British Embassy.’

  ‘Here we are!’ said de Chassiron suddenly, holding up a battered copy of a railway timetable. ‘There’s an express to Berlin in two and a half hours, Powerscourt, you’ll be able to pick up a connection there easily enough.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Powerscourt, his brain a long way away. ‘Could you bear to hold on here for a minute while I compose a message or two for the Foreign Office with Ricky here.’

  With that Powerscourt followed the young man into his telegraph room. ‘I have a number of questions and messages for you, Ricky,’ he began. ‘The first is the least important. I presume that if I send a message to the Foreign Office, and you turn it into code, that it could be read at the other end within minutes of arrival?’ Powerscourt was thinking of the Okhrana at this point rather than the Foreign Office.

  ‘Correct, my lord,’ said Ricky Crabbe.

  ‘Something like this then,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Terrible news death of Mrs Martin. Returning London via 19.30 to Berlin.’

  In less than half a minute, Crabbe had coded the message and sent it off to London.

  ‘Now then, Ricky, I want to try your secret system to your brother. This message is to be sent to Mr Burke, whose address I am writing for you on this piece of paper. “Returning London because of death of Mrs Martin in mysterious circumstances. Please inform Lady Lucy I leave today, Friday, on the 19.30 from St Petersburg to Berlin. All love, Francis.” There was nothing in the message that needed to be kept secret, but Powerscourt wanted to test this secure channel of communication in case it was needed for more important messages in the future.

  ‘That’s going to cheer up your wife, my lord, knowing you are coming home.’

  ‘Never fear, Ricky, I shall be back here very soon. Now I want to ask you about keeping records of the telegraph messages and things like that. I’ve suddenly realized that it could be very important.’

  ‘Fire ahead, my lord,’ the young man said.

  ‘When you send messages out, Ricky, do you keep a copy?’

  ‘I have to, my lord. Normally I have the piece of paper with the original message, handwritten by the Ambassador or Mr de Chassiron. Then I code it, sometimes on the bottom of the same piece of paper, sometimes on a different sheet. The Foreign Office Telegraphy School, my lord, is adamant that all outgoing messages, copies and originals, must be filed.’

  ‘I’ll come back to that in a moment, if I may. Tell me about the incoming messages.’

  ‘Same thing, really, my lord. We have to write them down. Sometimes we have to decode them. Other times we can bring the message to the recipient as taken down. But even before I leave this room, I have to make a copy. If the traffic goes on increasing at current rates, my lord, we’re going to have to rent a warehouse to keep all the stuff.’

  ‘Do you file the messages under subject matter or under day of the month?’

  ‘Day of the month, my lord, with the subjects subfiled in alphabetic order. Messages from Buch
arest ahead of those from Vienna, as it were.’

  ‘Now then, Ricky, I come to the point. You told me before that it was possible that Mr Martin could have sent a couple of messages out of here when the office was empty. What would have happened to them?’

  Ricky Crabbe looked at him keenly. ‘Well, I don’t think he would have left any copies lying around for me to file, my lord. He’d probably stuff the message in his pocket and get rid of it later. As for the far end, it may have gone to the Foreign Office, though if it had they would have surely told you about it, my lord, or to some telegraph office at a local train station or in a town. God knows whether they’d keep copies, probably they would until it had been collected.’

  ‘And if it had gone to the Foreign Office, would he have sent it in code?’

  Ricky Crabbe paused and stared at his machinery. ‘I doubt if he would have sent it in code at all, my lord. He might have done. But not even Mr de Chassiron knows how to use the codes.’ Suddenly Ricky stopped staring at his wires and buttons and turned slightly pale. ‘Do you think, Lord Powerscourt, that he could have sent a message to his wife saying he’d found the Crown Jewels or whatever else he had found out? And because of what he knew, one lot of Russians killed Mr Martin here, and another lot could have killed Mrs Martin in Kent if they knew what was in the message? Or if they tortured poor Mr Martin till he told them what was in the message?’

  Powerscourt nodded. ‘Well done, that is indeed what I am wondering. Please don’t tell anybody else about it, Ricky, you were very quick to work that out.’ Powerscourt looked at his watch. An hour and three quarters left before his train. ‘Could I ask you one further favour, Ricky? Could we have a look at the incoming traffic from the Foreign Office over the five days before I came here?’

  Ricky pulled a series of files down from his shelves. Once they were properly sorted he read with growing astonishment Sir Jeremiah Reddaway’s very full accounts of the Foreign Office’s efforts to make him change his mind and return to detection. Now for the first time he realized the importance of the visit of Lord Rosebery to Markham Square. One mystery at any rate was solved, even if a whole lot more awaited him in London. General Derzhenov didn’t have battalions of spies lurking behind the trees in Markham Square to know the details of Powerscourt’s visitors come to persuade him out of retirement a month before. He just read Sir Jeremiah’s telegrams.

  ‘Ricky,’ he said, shaking the young man’s hand, ‘thank you so much for your help. If anything important should happen in my absence, please send a message to Mr Burke on your secure channel with your brother. Don’t go near the Foreign Office. If I need to get in touch with you I’ll go through your brother.’

  ‘Mr Burke’s office will have the address by now, my lord. Can I say I hope we see you back here soon? And that your mission to Kent is successful?’

  Powerscourt wondered if there was a suggestion that his visit to St Petersburg had been unsuccessful. As he walked back to de Chassiron’s room, he decided to write a series of very short letters. He wrote to Mr Bazhenov, Deputy Assistant Under Secretary at the Interior Ministry, to Mr Tropinin, Under Secretary at the Foreign Ministry, to General Derzhenov of the Okhrana in his torturer’s lair on the Fontanka Quai and to Mrs Tamara Kerenkova, onetime mistress of the late Roderick Martin. He informed them as a matter of courtesy that he had been recalled because of the sudden, mysterious death of Mrs Martin. He thanked them for their assistance during his stay and said that he looked forward to renewing their acquaintance on his return. With Mikhail and Natasha he was as optimistic as he dared be in the circumstances.

  ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he said. ‘It may be that the second death makes it much easier to solve the first. Depend upon it, I have often known that happen in the past. Natasha,’ he smiled at her, ‘please take very great care. I know I’ve said it before but I dread to think what might happen to you if they ever found you out, those people at the Alexander Palace. Mikhail, I fear we shall never find the body now, but please keep trying. And if you need to get in touch, Ricky Crabbe has his own methods of reaching me in London.’

  ‘Why do you think the body will never be found, Lord Powerscourt?’ asked Mikhail.

  ‘I suspect that somebody doesn’t want us to see what happened to Roderick Martin before he died. He may have been tortured because he wouldn’t tell his captors what they wanted to know. Or he may just have been killed because his captors didn’t want anybody else to know what he knew. Or he may have been killed in frustration because he wouldn’t tell them what he knew. I just don’t know. Martin’s body was left out on the Nevskii Prospekt in the middle of the night and then spirited away. Something tells me that whatever his secret, the people who wanted to find it still haven’t done so. At least one of them, the Okhrana, hope I will lead them to it.’

  There were over twenty people out in the night air, men and women, standing in the clearing in the forest, dressed in home-made white robes. Three bonfires marked the limit of their territory. In the centre of the area stood a man called the Pilot, the leader of the group and the Master of Ceremonies for this evening. Beside him was his wife, known as the Blessed Mother. Behind them a group of drummers beat out a rhythm of ever-increasing frenzy. Each person carried a candle and as the candle burnt down they began to dance, slowly and reverently at first and then with more vigour. The Pilot noticed that the stranger who had come to his house earlier that day and soothed his sick daughter was dancing particularly wildly, his dark head rolling vigorously as if he was drunk. As the delirium grew and the dance grew wilder yet, the celebrants flung their robes to the ground and knelt before the Pilot to be whipped with birch rods. Then they began to whip each other with the birch rods, the khylysti that gave their name to the sect, the drums beating faster still, the candles flung to the ground, their terrible hymn broadcast into the forest air.

  I whip, I whip, I search for Christ,

  Come down to us, Christ, from the seventh heaven,

  Come with us, Christ, into the sacred circle,

  Come down to us, Holy Spirit of the lord.

  At the point when hysteria was about to engulf them all, the Pilot grabbed a woman and dragged her to the ground. According to the rules of the sect it was impossible for anybody to refuse a member of the opposite sex at these orgies. The Pilot was followed by the other khylysti members until there was a mass of groaning, shrieking couples on the ground. There were more women than men. The unfortunate just had to wait their turn. The Pilot noticed that the stranger seemed to be giving himself generously to the business. The drums beat on, calling the faithful to their duty. This was the first necessity of their belief system. Without sin, there could be no repentance and no salvation. Without first indulging in these rites of darkness there could be no entry into a state of grace. The Church frowned on these practices and they had been declared illegal by the state, even though there were said to be over a hundred thousand khylysti members across Russia.

  The stranger left early next morning, looking refreshed rather than exhausted by his exertions the night before.

  ‘Are you going back home now?’ asked the Pilot.

  ‘No, I am continuing my journey,’ the stranger replied.

  ‘May I ask where are you going to?’ the Pilot continued.

  ‘I am going to St Petersburg,’ said the stranger.

  ‘Will you tell me your name, in case we meet again?’ said the Pilot, holding out his hand for a farewell handshake.

  ‘One day,’ said the stranger, ‘everybody in Russia will know my name. I am a priest. I am called Rasputin, Father Grigory Rasputin.’

  Powerscourt wondered if Lucy would come to meet him at Victoria station as his train arrived in the middle of the morning. As he strode down the long platform, packed with porters and passengers, he peered at the crowd of welcomers at the far end. There was the usual collection of especially tall people only found at the great railway termini who blocked the view for everybody else. And Lucy was not part
icularly tall. Then he saw the head of a small figure raised aloft on shoulders he could not see. There was a shout of Papa! three times and two tiny people hurtled towards him as fast as their legs would carry them. Powerscourt was amazed at how effectively they dodged in and out of the surrounding traffic, navigating their way past porters with vast trolleys and elderly ladies of uncertain gait. He waved vigorously from time to time even when he couldn’t see them to give the twins something to steer for. Then, laughing with excitement, Juliet and Christopher were upon him, demanding to be lifted up at once for a better view of the station. They were both uncontrollably happy, peering into Powerscourt’s face from time to time to make sure he was really home and giggling cheerfully when their inspection was proved right. So it was a heavily laden husband, with a twin on each shoulder and a porter carrying a suitcase and a large shopping bag in each hand, who was reunited with his wife at the bottom of Platform 14, Ashford, the Dover Boat, Calais and Paris.

  ‘Francis, my love,’ Lady Lucy said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see you home.’ She squeezed whatever bits of her husband she could find. ‘They’ve been frantic, these two,’ she nodded at the twins, ‘ever since they heard you were coming back. They promised to be good if they were brought to the station to meet you, and they were, staying ever so still, not fighting, not running round at all. I was quite taken in! I relaxed my guard, you see, so when I lifted Juliet up I didn’t have a firm hold on Christopher and then they were off!’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Powerscourt, taking hold of a section of his wife’s shoulder and holding it tight. ‘We’re all here and we’re all fine.’