Death on the Nevskii Pros Read online

  ‘Well, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, opening a bottle of Pomerol, ‘I hear the Senate has come to the farm to recall Cincinnatus to the service of Rome. Maybe you could ask for dictatorial powers?’

  Powerscourt laughed. ‘I don’t think you could refer to the Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office as the Senate, Johnny. Not even a consul. Maybe an aedile. Weren’t they some sort of minor official?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Johnny cheerfully. ‘I only got as far as consuls. What did the fellow have to say?’

  ‘Beanpole,’ said Powerscourt, ‘was eight feet tall and less than eight inches wide. He looked as though he had been ironed. Some British diplomat has been found dead on the Nevskii Prospekt in St Petersburg. He was on a secret mission. Beanpole and his friends, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, want to know who killed him and if he spilled any secrets before he died. I said No, of course.’

  Powerscourt looked at Lady Lucy as he spoke, as if seeking her approval. She smiled. ‘Well done, Francis,’ she said. ‘I’m very proud of you.’

  ‘Sounds bloody dangerous to me, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, taking a second sip of his Bordeaux. ‘They enjoy blowing people up, those Russians, rather like other people enjoy playing football.’

  Johnny Fitzgerald was fascinated by Powerscourt’s reaction to this offer of a dangerous but important investigation. It was exactly the sort of challenge his friend enjoyed. And Johnny suspected his friend was ambivalent about the whole business of retiring from investigations. He was almost certain that Lady Lucy had finessed Francis into renunciation before he was fully recovered from his injuries. Of course he understood her position and her fears for the children without a father. But he and Powerscourt had led such intertwined lives, fellow army officers, fellow investigators, now fellow authors. Johnny Fitzgerald could not see his friend being pushed in his wheelchair along the Promenade des Anglais on the Mediterranean sea front in his old age without having carried out one more major investigation. Powerscourt’s Last Case. Johnny had often thought about that. Maybe even Powerscourt’s Last Stand. Was this Corpse on the Nevskii Prospekt that final mission?

  Lady Lucy too was perturbed. She sensed – no, if she was honest with herself, she knew that her husband would love to carry out this investigation. He had turned it down because of her and the promise she had exacted from him in Positano. She wondered if she should release him from his vows.

  And Powerscourt? To be fair, even he would have said that he didn’t know what he really felt about the offer. Flattered, yes. To be sought out more than two years after he had stopped investigating was no mean tribute to his powers. Part of him felt, as Ulysses said in Tennyson’s poem that brought him back from the dead, that he did not like rusting unburnished, not to shine in use. But he had given Lucy his word on that hotel balcony in Positano. He could not go back on it now.

  ‘There’s only one thing I’m sure of,’ he said, pouring himself a glass of wine and smiling at his wife and his friend. ‘Beanpole is the advance guard, the voltigeurs, the skirmishers in Napoleon’s army, if you like. He may have failed. But he won’t be the last. They’ll come back. And next time they’ll bring the cavalry. Maybe the heavy artillery.’

  Powerscourt would have been surprised to learn that Sir Jeremiah Reddaway was not unduly upset by his reception in Markham Square. For he had not expected success at the very first attempt. He felt now like a general in charge of some mighty siege operation. The siege train has been battering the walls for weeks. An infantry attempt to break through has failed. The general will simply have to continue his bombardment and plan his next attack. The main reason Reddaway had opened the assault himself was that he wanted to have a look at Powerscourt in person, to get a feel of the man. Now he had no doubt that Powerscourt was the right choice for the task ahead, if only he could be persuaded to take it on. Sir Jeremiah merely widened his net in the quest for the key or the trigger that would change Powerscourt’s mind. Powerscourt’s old tutor in Cambridge was contacted. Charles Augustus Pugh, a barrister who had been closely and critically involved in one of Powerscourt’s cases, reported that he had been approached by some person from the Foreign Office wearing the most vulgar shirt Pugh had ever seen. ‘Fellow tried to pump me for information about you, Francis, so I sent him packing. I couldn’t have looked at that shirt for another second in any case,’ his note to Powerscourt said. Even Johnny Fitzgerald told the Powerscourts that some chap he had known years before had tried to get him drunk at an expensive restaurant in South Kensington. His contact also worked for the Foreign Office and, Johnny announced happily, had to be carried senseless from the table by two waiters while he, Johnny, walked home unaided and pinned the rather large bill on to the man’s suit as he lay stretched across the pavement. As a final touch, Johnny said, he bumped into two policemen at the end of the street and reported that a drunk was lying on the pavement further down and obstructing the King’s Highway.

  Two days after the meeting with Sir Jeremiah a rather nervous Lady Lucy spoke to her husband after breakfast. Powerscourt was feeling cheerful that morning. The day before he had delivered the proofs to his publisher and he was looking forward to resuming work on his second cathedral volume.

  ‘Francis,’ Lady Lucy began, ‘I’ve just had a note. It’s from one of my relations.’

  ‘What of it, my love?’ said Powerscourt. ‘You must get one of those a couple of times a day, if not more.’

  ‘Well, this one’s from a cousin of mine, not a first cousin, a second cousin, I think. Anyway, he wants to come and see you at eleven o’clock this morning.’

  ‘Never mind, Lucy. All kinds of people come and see me, even now.’ Powerscourt regretted those last two words as soon as he said them. He saw the look of pain cross Lucy’s face. ‘Didn’t mean that last bit, so sorry, my love. I suppose I have to meet this person if he’s a relation. What is his business?’

  Lady Lucy looked sadly at her husband. ‘He’s a politician, Francis, member for some constituency in Sussex, I believe.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Edmund Fitzroy.’

  ‘You’re keeping something back from me, Lucy, I can tell from the look on your face.’

  ‘He was in the army, Household Cavalry or one of those. Now he’s a junior minister in the government, Francis.’ Even before she finished the sentence Powerscourt knew what was coming. ‘In the Foreign Office.’

  ‘Is he, by God?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Never mind, Lucy.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’ll just have to see him off like that other fellow.’

  Edmund Fitzroy was a plump young man in his middle thirties with sandy hair and dark brown eyes. He looked older than his age, always a useful asset for a politician. Powerscourt thought when they met in the drawing room that he would go down well with old ladies. Fitzroy had one main objective from Sir Jeremiah. He was to find out why Powerscourt had given up detection. Once he knew that, Reddaway felt, he might be closer to success.

  ‘You would think,’ Powerscourt said to Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald later that day, ‘that even a politician would try to be polite to his host in his host’s own drawing room.’ But it was not to be. Fitzroy was rude from the beginning and grew progressively ruder as the conversation continued.

  ‘I’ve heard from Sir Jeremiah Reddaway about your disgraceful attitude over this Russian business, Powerscourt, and I think you should be ashamed of yourself,’ was his opening gambit.

  ‘Really?’ said Powerscourt, resolutely avoiding all eye contact with the man.

  ‘You’re a disgrace, Powerscourt,’ Fitzroy went on, ‘refusing to serve your country when we ask you. Just remember the oaths you swore when you accepted Her Majesty’s commission all those years ago. Now you seem to think they mean nothing, nothing at all. I too have sworn the same oaths and regard myself as bound by them today as I was twelve years ago. You seem to have decided that patriotism is something you can put on and off like a coat on a rainy day. Others may have to endure muc
h in the service of their country while you indulge your conscience or your reluctance for the fray in the luxury of your drawing room.’

  ‘I think you’ll discover,’ said Powerscourt, in the most patronizing tone he could muster, ‘if you take the trouble to find out about these things, forgive me for sounding arrogant, that my service to this country is considerably more distinguished than yours, which consisted, as far as I know, of remarkable courage shown on the parade ground at Aldershot, and bravery under fire while in charge of Royal Salutes at Windsor Castle.’ Lady Lucy had passed on this last piece of information just as Fitzroy was ringing the doorbell.

  ‘That’s not the point, Powerscourt, and you know it.’ Fitzroy had attended too many political meetings to be deterred, even by such a direct hit. ‘I am still prepared to serve my country. You are not.’

  ‘I served my country for many years in a variety of dangerous situations. This, thank God, is still a free country. A man may retire from the military with full honours without being bullied by politicians who never saw a shot fired in anger.’

  ‘You’ve lost your nerve, Powerscourt, and you know it. Why did you stop investigating, for God’s sake? Was one bullet in the chest enough to put you off? Did you just run away?’

  ‘It was my decision, and none of your damned business, Fitzroy,’ said Powerscourt, struggling to keep his temper. He could see perfectly clearly what the man was trying to do. He hoped to taunt Powerscourt with suggestions of cowardice so he would announce he was not afraid and volunteer to take on the Russian commission to prove it.

  ‘But why, man, why? For years you were one of the best investigators in Britain, then you just throw in the towel. Why? Did Lucy make you retire?’

  ‘It was my decision and I have no intention of telling you anything about it.’

  Something about the look on Powerscourt’s face when he mentioned Lady Lucy made Fitzroy think that she may have had something to do with it. But he had another line of attack to press.

  ‘That’s another thing, Powerscourt, the family. Not your Irish lot, but your wife’s family, the Hamiltons. They’ve been in the army for hundreds of years. Military service, military loyalty is in their blood. They’re not going to be pleased when they hear that an addition to the family has let the nation down.’

  ‘Are you going to hand over the four feathers in person, or are you going to get Sir Jeremiah to do it for you in a special ceremony at the Foreign Office?’ asked Powerscourt, anxious now to be rid of this incredibly offensive person.

  ‘The family will remember, Powerscourt. They don’t take this sort of thing lying down, I can tell you.’

  ‘Right,’ said Powerscourt, taking three rapid strides to pull the bell and call for Rhys the butler. ‘I have had enough of this discussion. Rhys will show you out. I regard your behaviour here in my house this morning as beneath contempt. It is a disgrace to the good name of the military and unworthy of a gentleman. Don’t ever try to come back here. You will be refused entry. Now I suggest you take yourself and your disgusting manners back to the gutter where you belong. Good morning.’

  With that Powerscourt left his drawing room and went to the upper floors in search of a twin or two to calm him down.

  ‘Bloody man, bloody man,’ Powerscourt said later to Lady Lucy. ‘He practically accused me of being a coward. I tell you what though, Lucy. He is never to be admitted to this house again. And will you please tell your relations that if he is invited to any social function, wedding, funeral, christening, death of the first-born, ritual character assassination, afternoon tea, we shall not be attending.’

  The following morning Powerscourt had gone to look up some information in the London Library in St James’s Square. Just after eleven o’clock a very grand carriage drew up outside the Powerscourt house in Markham Square. Lord Rosebery, former Foreign Secretary and former Prime Minister, was ushered respectfully into the drawing room. Lady Lucy was not sure her hair was what it should have been, nor was she certain of her dress, but Rosebery, apart from his public functions, was a very old friend of her family’s in Scotland. As a boy he had attended her christening, as a man he had attended both her weddings, he was one of the three people allowed to call her Lucy. Because of his great position as a former Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister she had never been able to call him anything other than Lord Rosebery.

  ‘Please forgive me, Lucy,’ Rosebery began, ‘for calling on you out of the blue like this. I will be perfectly honest with you, my dear. I am here at the special request of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Office about this Russian business. I feel I am better placed talking to you than I would be talking to Francis. That Foreign Office fellow thinks I can change Francis’s mind. I am not so sure. Only you, I believe, can do that.’

  Lady Lucy remembered that Rosebery, whatever his weaknesses as Prime Minister, was a famous orator. Even in conversation, she felt, you could imagine him on some lofty platform haranguing the faithful by the thousands. This fastidious aristocrat, she remembered, was the man who had attended a Democratic Party Convention in New York with its cheering and its fireworks and its torch-lit processions and its pre-planned spontaneous demonstrations of enthusiasm for particular candidates, and had brought some of those techniques back to Britain when he organized Gladstone’s Midlothian Campaign.

  ‘I want to put a theory to you, Lucy. It’s only a theory, you understand.’ Rosebery smiled and Lady Lucy suddenly felt afraid. ‘After Francis was shot you went abroad a couple of years ago, just the two of you, to Italy, if my memory serves me. My theory is that on that holiday, or shortly after you returned, you persuaded Francis to give up investigating. You did it for perfectly understandable reasons, of course, four children, two of them tiny, a long history of danger and attempts on his life of one sort of another. I have known Francis for a very long time. I remember when he began investigating even while he was still in the army with a terrible murder case in Simla. I know how he thought of it as a form of public service, making sure the world was rid of some wicked murderers who might kill again. I do not think he would ever have volunteered to give it up of his own accord. It would be like asking W.G. Grace to abandon cricket or Mr Wells to stop writing his stories. Only you could have done it, Lucy. Am I right?’

  Feeling guilty and defiant at the same time, Lady Lucy nodded her head. Rosebery held up his hand as if to forbid her from speaking.

  ‘Please let me continue, Lucy. So. That skeletal person from the Foreign Office thinks I am now going to persuade you to change your mind. I am not going to do anything of the sort. But I would just like you to think of certain things, if I may.’

  And then, to the immense satisfaction of Lady Lucy, he rose from his chair and began pacing up and down her drawing room in exactly the same manner as her husband. Maybe all men, she reflected, have a built-in urge to walk an imaginary quarterdeck like Nelson in pursuit of some elusive French fleet or Spanish galleon, laden with treasure and the spoils of war.

  ‘I should like you to think about courage, Lucy. Not just courage in battle by land or sea, though there are some awesome examples of that in our recent history. The courage of those with mortal illnesses and of those looking after them. The courage to go on living and caring for children after the death of a husband or wife. The courage to carry on when overwhelmed by melancholy or despair. And then think of what happens, not if courage is taken away, but if the opportunity to display courage is taken away. I spoke a moment ago of W.G. Grace being asked to give up cricket. Let us perhaps think of Mr Gladstone or Lord Salisbury being asked to give up politics in their time. That, in a way, is what Francis has had to do in giving up investigating. He has had to show as much courage in renouncing it as you have shown in asking him to do so. But think of what it must have cost him. That fool of a junior minister virtually accused him of being a coward the other day. Francis is not just being denied the opportunity to show what he can do, he is being denied the opportunity to display his courage once again.
I do not know what effect that will have. Some men could rise above it. With others it could eat away at their very souls.’

  Rosebery stopped pacing suddenly to peer into Markham Square. Then he returned to his quarterdeck.

  ‘I want you to think about patriotism, Lucy, about the love of country. Maybe I should say the chance to serve one’s country, to show how much you care by offering to lay down your life for her. In the Funeral Speech in Book Two of Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War, Pericles tells his fellow citizens to fix their eyes on the glory that is Athens and to fall in love with her. Then they can show their true courage on the battlefield or at the oars of their triremes. Francis has shown a very great deal of that courage during his life. Now he is being denied the opportunity to display it once again. When your first husband went off to rescue General Gordon at Khartoum, Lucy, you did not ask him to stay at home in case he was killed. When Francis went off to the Boer War you did not plead with him to change his mind. You went to the railway station and waved him off, even though you must have known he might never come back.

  ‘And finally, Lucy, I want you to think about peace and about your children. When I was Foreign Secretary all those years ago, it looked as if the long peace would go on for ever. War, a European war, seemed inconceivable. Now I am not so sure. The diplomats scurry round from capital to capital thinking up alliances, leagues, defensive groupings, pacts of co-operation if attacked by a third party. The shipyards of the major powers are racing against time and each other to produce deadlier and deadlier vessels, laden with the most lethal armaments man can invent. I recently bought a book of photographs from the American Civil War, Lucy, the most recent example of prolonged industrialized warfare. The injuries are horrendous, limbs ripped off, intestines blown away, heads cut off at the neck, bodies literally split in two. In the years after the conflict there were more cripples in Alabama than able-bodied men. And what has this to do with St Petersburg? Simply this, Lucy, simply this. I do not know the nature of the dead man’s mission but I believe the Prime Minister when he says it could make peace more likely. Peace means there will be no war. I met your Robert, your lovely son from your first marriage, at a dinner at his Oxford college a couple of weeks ago. It happens to be my college too. I do not want to think of that young man in uniform risking his life on some wretched battlefield in France. I do not like to think of all those young men at his college marching off to war. Nor do I like to think of my godson Master Thomas Powerscourt in the same position. Maybe they would all come back safely. Maybe nobody would. Peace means the young men can stay alive. War means many of them will die. If the St Petersburg project brings peace a little closer, we have to think of it very seriously indeed.’