Death on the Nevskii Prospekt lfp-6 Read online

  ‘That would be before she was killed, I suppose,’ said Charlie happily, glad to welcome murder to the Tonbridge telegraph office. ‘Well, there should be a copy of that too. If you wait here, my lord, I’ll just go and make some inquiries.’

  The walls of the little office were adorned with prints of great cricketers like C.B. Fry and Ranjitsinghi, interspersed with modern photographs of ancient telegraphic equipment. Powerscourt was reflecting that a man who scored as fast as Fry could probably transmit a telegraph message at record speed when the manager returned, in a very excited state.

  ‘Look, Lord Powerscourt, it’s a message! From Russia!’ He handed Powerscourt the thin envelope used to protect the cable. It came from St Petersburg, dated December 22nd, possibly the very date of Mr Martin’s death.

  ‘Has this been here ever since? Nobody has asked for it or anything like that?’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘It’s been here ever since,’ said Charlie Dean. ‘Aren’t you going to open it? The fiendish killer might be unmasked right here in this office, my lord.’

  Powerscourt grinned. He wondered if Charlie was a regular reader of the adventures of heroes like Sexton Blake with their emphasis on excitement and melodrama rather than detection and analysis. He looked at the envelope.

  ‘What are you thinking, my lord? Do you feel you may have the master criminal in your hands?’ Powerscourt was feeling rather nervous. This could be the answer to all his problems. It could mean that he would never have to go back to St Petersburg. Above all, he thought of Roderick Martin. Did he send this message before he saw the Tsar or after? If it was after, had he put in the cable the news that was to kill him, and might have killed his wife too? The message, after all, might have been in the hands of the Russian security services inside the hour. Plenty of time to prepare an expedition to Tibenham Grange and push a widow into the moat beneath. And, maybe more important yet, how much longer did Martin have left to live when he wrote it?

  Charlie Dean’s eyes were burning bright. His brain seemed to have taken off to some fictional Valhalla. ‘Maybe he’s going to tell of the deadly fight on the ice floe with the Russian killers, my lord. Maybe the chief villain behind Mr Martin’s murder is going to be exposed at last!’

  Powerscourt opened the envelope. He looked rather sadly at the message. He handed it over to Charlie.

  ‘Coming home tomorrow, Thursday,’ it read, ‘should be back in three or four days.’

  ‘It must be in code, my lord,’ said Charlie feverishly. ‘Tomorrow probably means enemies vanquished and Thursday means, well, coming home Thursday.’

  ‘I think we’ll find,’ said Powerscourt, folding the message carefully and putting it in his pocket, ‘that the message is more useful than might first appear.’

  ‘You mean there is a secret code, my lord?’ Hope died hard in Charlie Dean’s heart.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘but think about what the message says. He must have done, or been about to do, whatever he went to St Petersburg for, don’t you see, Charlie? Otherwise he wouldn’t be so confident about coming home tomorrow. Mission accomplished, that’s how I read that bit.’ Privately, Powerscourt wasn’t so sure. It could mean, this has all been a complete disaster, so I’m coming home tomorrow, he said to himself, though he wasn’t convinced. And had he sent it during the day? Or in the evening when Ricky Crabbe thought somebody else had been using his machines? And why – Powerscourt’s brain was circling round the problem like a bird of prey – hadn’t Mrs Martin come to pick it up? Maybe her husband wasn’t in the habit of sending messages. After the shock of his death it could have passed completely out of her mind as she mourned for her husband.

  ‘And the other thing, Charlie,’ said Powerscourt, keen to bring as much excitement as possible to the young of Tonbridge, ‘is that sending this may have been one of the last things he did alive.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Charlie. ‘Did the Cossack monsters charge in and drag him off the telegraph machine to his death?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but he could have been killed very soon afterwards, outside in the snow.’

  ‘I’ll never forget this morning, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Charlie. ‘For me, it’s been so exciting. I know I read too many of those detective stories, but this has been like a look through the door of one of them. I’m ever so grateful, my lord.’

  ‘I tell you what I’ll do, Charlie,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘When I know what happened, what really happened, I’ll let you know. I tell you what, even better, I’ll send you a telegram.’

  Forty minutes later Powerscourt was climbing up the little stone staircase that led to the top of the tower at Tibenham Grange. Of Inspector Clayton, or Constable Watchett, keeping the property free of visiting architects, there was, at present, no sign. As he stood on the top once more Powerscourt gazed intently at every single stone in the surface, in case they had all overlooked a vital clue. He stared into the woods, imagining a fifty-five year old man, bent on revenge for what had happened all those years before, inching his way towards the Grange. He saw him helping himself to a weapon in the kitchen and presenting himself in front of an unsuspecting Mrs Martin in her favourite bay in the library. Then he saw her marched at knifepoint through the house she loved towards the tower from where she would see it no more. He saw the man creeping back through the woods towards a train to London, secure in the knowledge that this time his claim on the estate would surely win the day. He was woken from his reverie by a loud shout from Inspector Clayton who had appeared suddenly on the lawn.

  ‘Thank God you’ve come,’ yelled the Inspector. ‘See you in the library.’

  There a panting Inspector delivered his message. ‘You’re to return to London, my lord, as soon as possible, your wife says. There’s news from Russia. Lady Powerscourt didn’t say what it was, but it surely concerns the investigation.’

  Before he set off for the station Powerscourt told Clayton all he had discovered about the earlier court case from Theodore Ragg, and he showed him the telegram from St Petersburg.

  ‘I wish that message had been more help to you, my lord,’ said the Inspector. ‘Do you think it likely that this old family feud has come to the surface?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but I’m sure we have to look at it closely. If we can eliminate the other Martin, as it were, we’re still left with the original three contenders.’

  ‘Three?’ said Inspector Clayton.

  ‘Three,’ Powerscourt replied firmly. ‘Did she fall, did she jump, or was she pushed? Something tells me we may never find the answer.’

  Powerscourt was lucky enough to secure a whole compartment to himself on the way back to London. He sat by the window and stared out over Kent. He hoped, he prayed, that the news from St Petersburg was not what he feared it might be. He wondered if he should take Johnny Fitzgerald back with him or leave him working on the death of Mrs Martin. He wondered how upset Lady Lucy would be if he disappeared into dangerous territory once again. He wondered, less seriously, if he should buy more dolls and soldiers for the twins.

  The message was brief, sent by Mikhail Shaporov via his father’s private system to William Burke. ‘Natasha due to meet me at four o’clock yesterday,’ it said, ‘but she did not appear. Nor has she come today. What should I do? Mikhail.’

  Powerscourt swore violently to himself. It was what he had feared, that something would happen to the girl. Had she fallen into the hands of the Okhrana? Would she live to survive her incarceration? Was Natasha Bobrinsky, young, beautiful and clever, about to meet the fate of Roderick Martin on the ice of the Nevskii Prospekt?

  12

  Powerscourt had composed his reply on the train. ‘Suggest no, repeat no activity for the present. There may be some domestic crisis at the Alexander Palace. Leaving London for return to St Petersburg tomorrow. Regards. Powerscourt.’ He sent it off to William Burke’s office in the City and began pacing up and down his
drawing room. He was debating with himself the sending of a rather different cable to the Russian capital, one that would precipitate a crisis in his investigation. It might also, he reflected grimly, kill him. He thought of Lady Lucy and knew that, for once, he could not ask for her advice. The one person he could ask, Johnny Fitzgerald, was not in London, although he might be later. He consulted a train timetable as a diversion and discovered that if he left London that evening he would have time for a meeting in Paris in the morning and still connect with the service to St Petersburg. Then he found his mind made up and he set off for the Foreign Office. Sir Jeremiah Reddaway was able to squeeze him in between a meeting of the Ottoman Empire working party and afternoon tea with the Icelandic Ambassador.

  ‘God bless my soul,’ was the mandarin’s first reaction to Powerscourt’s request. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing before. It’s quite unconstitutional.’ Powerscourt refrained from pointing out that as there was no written constitution it was difficult to break it. ‘Are you sure about this, man? What do you think you will gain from it?’

  ‘I need to test a theory about Martin’s death, Sir Jeremiah.’

  ‘But what’s wrong with us here at the Foreign Office, Powerscourt? What’s wrong with me, for God’s sake?’

  Once again Powerscourt held his tongue. ‘I want to speak to the best informed person I can find about Russia and the court of the Tsar. Our Embassy in St Petersburg’ – he did not name de Chassiron – ‘believe that the best informed person is the head of the French secret service. The French Ambassador in St Petersburg is well informed, but M. Olivier Brouzet is the man I wish to see. With your approval, of course, Sir Jeremiah. We are allies with France now, after all, are we not?’

  The diplomat snorted. Rosebery had observed long ago that concluding an alliance of friendship with another country virtually guaranteed that relations would begin to deteriorate immediately.

  ‘All right, man. I’ll sanction it,’ said Sir Jeremiah with bad grace. ‘If I didn’t, I presume you’d just go ahead and make the appointment anyway.’

  Powerscourt made no comment. Ten minutes later he made his way to the telegraph office and dictated a message to go at once to de Chassiron in the Petersburg Embassy.

  ‘Returning St Petersburg tomorrow. Believe I should be in a position to know what happened to Martin in a week or so. Please request audience with Tsar for me on Martin related business. Kind regards. Powerscourt.’

  The real recipient was not de Chassiron. It was the Okhrana. Powerscourt hoped Mikhail Shaporov’s information about reading the messages was correct. He felt elated suddenly, as a man might who is gambling with his life. The message might smoke Derzhenov out and force him to reveal what he knew about the death of Martin. And if he were granted an interview with the Tsar, it might also produce the same result as before. Powerscourt could join Martin in a cold and icy grave.

  The normal pattern of life at the Alexander Palace was in turmoil. The routine, the patterns by which this most regular of families lived their lives had been thrown into chaos. The heir to the throne, His Imperial Highness Alexis Nicolaievich, Sovereign Heir Tsarevich, Grand Duke of Russia, was sick, very sick, and none of the doctors sent from the city could cure him. It began with a haemorrhage which arose without the slightest cause and lasted for three days. Bandages were applied which sometimes showed blood. Then a bruise ruptured a tiny blood vessel beneath the skin and Alexis’ blood began to seep slowly into surrounding muscle or tissue. The blood did not clot as it would in a normal person, it went on flowing for hours, leading to a swelling the size of a grapefruit. Natasha Bobrinsky was now looking after the four girls virtually on her own. She had no time to visit the city or even to write letters. She went with the girls on their visits to their infant brother and ushered them out a few minutes later. She noticed that the parents were reluctant to conduct any conversation with the doctors in front of the princesses. This is the future of Russia, Natasha said to herself, standing by one of the nurses at the end of the crib and watching the infant toss from side to side, this child, this tiny Romanov holds the fate of the empire in his hands. Should he die, the Emperor and Empress might never recover. When she wasn’t by her son’s side the Empress was praying, on her knees in front of her icon of the Virgin, beseeching the cruel God who had done this to her child to take pity. Earthly sinners are urged to repent, she told herself, God can repent too and take back whatever dreadful fate he has handed down to my Alexis, the awful horrors of joints that bled and would not stop, the terrible cries of pain from the child that could not be assuaged. Natasha would sink to her knees beside her Empress when she could and join her in her prayers. She felt that this family were being asked to suffer too much. The thought of a lifetime punctuated by these bouts of illness and uncertainty was more than she could bear. Late one afternoon Natasha accompanied two of the doctors from the sick room to the front door and the carriages that were waiting to take them back to the city. She heard the word whispered between them when they thought nobody was looking or listening, only some servant girl. Natasha didn’t know what the word meant but she could look it up in the library when she got a chance. She felt sure that Lord Powerscourt would like to know.

  Only one thought offered faint consolation to the Empress. All through the illness she had prayed that the faith healer Philippe’s prophecy to her might be fulfilled, that he was only a messenger for a greater healer due to follow him. The Montenegrin sisters had sent word that a new staretz, another holy man, a man with extraordinary powers of healing had arrived in the capital from Siberia. Maybe this man would be the answer to her prayers.

  Powerscourt had letters to write on his return to Markham Square. He wrote to Lord Rosebery asking him to make a very particular request from the Private Secretary to the King. He asked him not to elaborate, not to give any hint of why he was making this peculiar inquiry. If pressed, he could say it was to do with national security and the death of a British diplomat. No details could be given of where the Foreign Office man had met his doom. When Rosebery had the answer – and the question was of considerable urgency – he was under no circumstances to send the cable via the Foreign Office. He was to send one word, Yes or No, to be transmitted to Powerscourt through the house of Shaporov in St Petersburg from the offices of William Burke in London. He, Powerscourt, thanked Rosebery most sincerely for his help and promised to fill him in on the details on his return. Then he wrote to Johnny Fitzgerald. When he, Johnny, had satisfied himself that he knew all there was to know about the death of Mrs Letitia Martin, he was to come to St Petersburg. But only after a strange journey to the East of England. Once more Powerscourt enjoined his friend to total security. Once more he requested that a one-word answer be sent to the Shaporov address. One look into the eyes of the people he was going to see, Powerscourt told his friend, and Johnny would know if Powerscourt’s guess was correct. He wrote one final letter to Lady Lucy. He sealed it carefully and wrote her name in bold letters on the envelope. He placed it in the front drawer of his desk so it could be easily found if he did not return. ‘Lucy,’ it said, ‘I love you so much. I always will. Francis.’ Then he went to have a farewell cup of tea with her before he set off for the Dover boat.

  The Place des Vosges, Powerscourt remembered the next morning, was, according to devotees of Paris, the most beautiful square in the city, and therefore the most beautiful square in the world. On a bright February morning, with only the pigeons taking their rest on the gravel in the centre, the thirty-nine tall houses made of stone and red brick stared impassively outwards as they had for the previous three hundred years. In the arcade that ran right round the square the cafes and the galleries were setting out their wares. Victor Hugo had lived here, Powerscourt remembered. So had Richelieu for a period of ten or twelve years. A plaque on the front of Number 32 announced the European Art Exchange, the cover story for the French secret service. M. Olivier Brouzet, Director General of the organization, had his office on the first floor,
looking out directly on to the square. He might have just reached forty, Powerscourt thought, and was perfectly dressed in a grey suit with a cream shirt and a pale blue tie. He was tall and slim and looked as though he might have been an athlete in his youth. He had a very small painting behind his desk that could have been a Watteau, and eighteenth-century tapestries on his walls.

  ‘It is, Lord Powerscourt,’ he said after the introductions had been carried out and Powerscourt was settling himself down opposite the Frenchman at his eighteenth-century escritoire. ‘It is a Watteau, I mean. The Louvre were kind enough to let us have it on loan. Now then, how can I be of help to you? I am so pleased to see co-operation between our two countries on intelligence matters. Some of your compatriots, I suspect, might not be so keen.’

  His English was perfect. Powerscourt was to learn later that Brouzet had spent three years at Harvard after his time at the Sorbonne. Powerscourt explained his mission, the missing Martin, the missing body, the different accounts of his activities from the different ministries, Martin’s affair with Tamara Kerenkova, the fact that he had met the Tsar. He included his meetings, but not their accompanying delights, with Derzhenov. He repeated his belief that the French secret service was the best informed organization about Russia in the world.

  ‘Derzhenov the primitive!’ the Frenchman said. ‘Does he still take time to torture his victims in person down in that frightful basement in the Fontanka Quai?’

  ‘I’m afraid he does.’

  ‘Let me be frank with you. I think we should be as open as possible with each other. One of us, as surely as night follows day, will want to keep something back, but so be it. Let us help each other where we can. We knew about Mr Martin in this office and his love trysts with la Kerenkova. Some of my colleagues here wanted to elect him an honorary Frenchman for the way he carried out his affairs. We have many sources of information, as you might imagine, Lord Powerscourt. There are the emigres all around us here in Paris and on the Riviera. Three times now I have applied for extra funds to put a man on permanent station in the casino at Monte Carlo. Never, I tell my superiors, are Russian aristocrats more likely to tell the family secrets than when they have just lost all their money at blackjack or on the roulette table. Always they refuse me at the Quai d’Orsay. I say they must be damned Presbyterians or Quakers or some other form of terrible American Puritan. Never mind. We also have many agents in St Petersburg, in the banks, among the servants of the aristocracy, and most of all, at the imperial court at Tsarskoe Selo. That is how I know about your visit and your two Russian colleagues. All the reports I have seen about Natasha Bobrinsky incidentally, tell me she is very beautiful. It is true?’