Death on the Nevskii Prospekt Read online

  With that, Rosebery finished his pacing up and down. He bowed slightly to Lady Lucy as if he were a European rather than an Englishman and resumed his position seated opposite her.

  ‘I shall think of what you said, Lord Rosebery, of course I shall. I shall think of it very seriously.’ Lady Lucy was grave in her reply. ‘You have, for most of the time, used male arguments against me. Only at the end did you find a tone that might appeal to a wife and mother. You see, Lord Rosebery, you can see, you can almost touch, all those treaties and pacts, great long documents drawn up by one country’s lawyers and criticized by another’s. These are real to you in a way they are not to me. I see two-year-old twins without a father, fated never to see Francis again. I see myself – when he was nearly dead in that house in Manchester Square I saw this all the time – at his funeral, holding the hands of Thomas and Olivia, both of them crying till you would think their hearts must break, knowing that when the coffin slides into the earth that is the last they will ever see of their father in this world. Forgive me, Lord Rosebery, I rather wish you hadn’t come. I’m really upset now.’

  With Lady Lucy on the verge of tears, Lord Rosebery took his leave very quietly. As he walked back to the Foreign Office he wondered what lever, if any, would make Lady Lucy change her mind.

  Lady Lucy seriously wondered about setting off on the long march up the family drawing room that was so popular with the males. But she stood instead, leaning against the fireplace and wishing Francis was home. She wondered about what Lord Rosebery had said. Was she really taking away Francis’s manhood? Was she denying him the chance to show his courage? Did men have to do that all the time? Surely he had displayed enough courage to last many a lifetime. Was she trying to undermine him, to deny him the chance to show the world what he could do? No, she was only trying to keep him alive. Surely any wife would want that for her husband?

  Had Lady Lucy gone to the tall window and looked out into the street she would have seen a cab draw up with two people inside. One seemed to be a very tall man who opened the door for his companion from the inside as if he did not want to be seen, the other a striking lady in her late thirties dressed entirely in black, right down to the fashionable black gloves she folded away as she advanced to the Powerscourt front door.

  ‘Mrs Martin to see you, Lady Powerscourt.’ Rhys the butler announced their guest with his usual cough.

  Lady Lucy held out her hand. ‘How do you do, Mrs Martin,’ she said formally, ‘I don’t think we have met before.’

  ‘No, we have not.’ Mrs Martin sounded rather nervous as if her mission, whatever it was, seemed more formidable in reality than it had appeared before.

  ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Lady Lucy was growing suspicious about her visitor, so correct in her mourning clothes. ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit down.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Martin, taking up her position in Powerscourt’s favourite armchair by the side of the fireplace. ‘I think I had better explain myself, Lady Powerscourt. You must forgive me for coming in like this. I think you know of my husband, my late husband. Roderick Martin was the man found dead on the Nevskii Prospekt in St Petersburg. That is the death the Foreign Office wished your husband to investigate.’

  Lady Lucy turned pale. Her suspicions had been right. Death had come all the way from Russia’s capital to her drawing room in Markham Square. But what did this spectre in black want of her?

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Lady Lucy managed to say. ‘It must be terrible for you.’

  ‘What I find particularly upsetting, Lady Powerscourt, is that I know so little of the circumstances. I know my husband went to Russia to carry out some sort of work for the Foreign Office. I cannot find out what that work was. They simply refuse to tell me. I do not know why Roderick died. I do not think the Foreign Office know that either. I cannot get them to recover the body and return it to us for a proper English burial. He could have been dumped out to sea for all I know. We have no children, Lady Powerscourt, but Roderick’s parents are still alive. They find the not knowing even more difficult than I do. They are on the verge of tears or breaking down almost every minute of the day. Roderick’s father said that his heart would break if he could not bury his only son.’

  Mrs Martin paused. Still Lady Lucy did not know what was coming.

  ‘I’m not quite sure how I can help,’ said Lady Lucy, suspecting that almost anything she said to this newly bereaved woman would be wrong.

  ‘I’m surprised you can’t see it, Lady Powerscourt,’ Mrs Martin replied, staring coldly at her hostess. ‘I told you, it’s the not knowing that’s the most difficult thing. Even after the drink and the sleeping draughts, that’s what keeps his old parents awake every night. It eats you up, like some parasite that chews out your insides. You see, Lady Powerscourt, the Foreign Office told us they were going to send a special man to find out the truth about what happened to Roderick. They said he was the best man in the country for this sort of work. We all felt better for a day or two after that. We thought we were going to find out the truth. Maybe this miracle worker could even come back with the body as well and my husband could be laid to rest in his graveyard. But it didn’t happen. The special man isn’t going. He’s not going to find out what really happened. You know as well as I do who that special man is and you know as well as I do who the special woman is who’s stopping him. One of those Foreign Office people told me that if it was up to your husband, he’d take the commission and go to St Petersburg tomorrow. You’re the one who’s stopping him. You’re the one bringing misery to all that’s left of my family. You’re the one who’s torturing those two old people who’ll never see their only son again.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Mrs Martin.’ Lady Lucy was close to tears. ‘Francis, my husband, has nearly been killed so often in these investigations. It happens almost every time. Last time he was at death’s door with the twins only a few weeks old. Imagine their growing up without a father.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, Lady Powerscourt,’ Mrs Martin spoke very slowly now, ‘but it’s you who don’t understand. You think you have rights that nobody else has, rights to hold on to your husband because he was nearly killed once or twice. Think what would happen if everybody behaved as selfishly as you. Wellington’s army and his commanders would never have driven the French out of Spain or won their great victory at Waterloo if their wives hadn’t let them go. We would now be living in some French department with a French prefect enforcing French laws in the French language from a French town hall with a French tricolour flying from the top and statues of Napoleon in every town square. What would happen to the Royal Navy if the wives refused to let their men go back to sea, whining about the fact that they might get killed in some naval engagement? There can’t be one set of rules for you and another set of rules for everybody else. We owe certain duties to society as society owes certain duties to us. But the duties have to be the same for everybody. Your rules are entirely selfish. They would lead to a feeble rather than a Great Britain. They would lead to a nation where every man could opt for cowardice rather than courage. We wouldn’t have an empire. I doubt we would have our liberty. I think you pretend your rules show the mark of courage when they show the opposite. You’re turning your husband into a coward, or that’s what everybody will think.’

  Mrs Martin began to cry slowly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted out between her tears, ‘I shouldn’t have said that very last bit. I think I’d better go now.’

  A watcher in Markham Square would have seen Mrs Martin climb back into the carriage she had come in at the other end of the Square. A very tall, very slim gentleman opened the door for her. He waited for her to speak. Sir Jeremiah Reddaway was most curious to learn if his latest emissary to the Powerscourt household had been more successful than the last.

  Lady Lucy stared blankly at the wall with the bookshelves. She knew that Francis had already decided where to put the first of his cathedral volumes when it was published. She wondered ho
w much pain she had caused him since the return from Positano. She wondered if he would be happier now. She wondered if she had loved him too much, trying to wrap him in a cocoon of love that would keep out the rest of the world. She hoped not. She didn’t think you could love a man like Francis too much. She wondered what he would say when she told him he was released from his promise and was now free to go to St Petersburg if that was what he wanted to do. She went and sat in the chair by the window that looked out over Markham Square and waited for Francis to come home.

  2

  Lord Francis Powerscourt had been told by the Foreign Office that they would provide an interpreter who would travel with him from London. It was, Powerscourt reflected bitterly as he stared down the platform at Victoria station, just about all they had been able to tell him. Sir Jeremiah had, of course, known all the details of Roderick Martin’s early life and career. Educated at Westminster School and New College Oxford, a brilliant linguist, fluent in French, German and Russian and able to cope in Italian, he had entered the Foreign Service with a formidable reputation. Over time he developed a judgement of men and events that was as sharp as his ability at languages. As well as his education in diplomacy, Roderick Martin was trained in the more mundane matters like codes and the use of telegraph machines. He had served in all the great capitals of Europe and by the time of his mission to St Petersburg at the age of thirty-eight, his contemporaries were already speculating about when and where he would take up his first posting as Ambassador. But of the journey to Russia they knew nothing, except that his body had been found early in the morning on the Nevskii Prospekt. Word had come from the Prime Minister that they were to send a man, their best man if possible, to St Petersburg. The Prime Minister himself would brief him. He was to report only to the Prime Minister on his return. That was all. Martin’s wife, Martin’s parents knew no more than his employers. He had stepped into his compartment on this very train, Powerscourt said to himself, he had gone to the Russian capital and he had been killed. That was all anybody seemed to know about him. Maybe the Embassy there would be able to tell him more but they hadn’t been able to tell the Foreign Office very much at all. Even Sir Jeremiah Reddaway, as proper and punctilious as a man in his position should be, had heard the rumours. Martin was having an affair with some diplomat’s wife and had been killed by hired thugs. He had merely run across a bunch of drunken peasants or workers in the wrong part of town and been murdered for his wallet. The beauty of these theories, as Powerscourt saw clearly, was that they disconnected the murder from the mission. Powerscourt believed the opposite was the case. Maybe, Sir Jeremiah had said hopefully, those long legs stretched out in front of his own Foreign Office fire, the mission had to do with the Russian sinking of a British fishing boat and the deaths of two sailors as their navy sailed halfway round the world to fight the Japanese. Maybe they wanted a diplomatic alliance against the Germans. Powerscourt found it hard to believe any of the rumours.

  And where was his interpreter? There were only a few minutes to go before departure. Powerscourt had a very clear picture in his mind of the Russian Interpreter as he referred to him. He would be middle-aged, portly, wear thick glasses and fuss a lot about his business. He would look rather like a bank manager going to seed. He would have little conversation outside the business of interpreting and would prove dull company on his journey. He turned to the door of his compartment where a good-looking young man was preparing to stow his case on the luggage rack.

  ‘I’m afraid that seat is reserved,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘I know it is,’ said the young man. ‘It’s reserved for me.’

  ‘For you?’ said Powerscourt, astonished. ‘That can’t be, I’m afraid. It’s reserved for my Russian interpreter.’

  ‘I know,’ said the young man with a smile, ‘I am your Russian interpreter. You are Lord Francis Powerscourt. I am Mikhail Shaporov, sent by your Foreign Office to assist you. If you don’t want my services, just let me know.’

  Now it was Powerscourt’s turn to smile. ‘Forgive me, please. Delighted to meet you. And my apologies for the confusion. To be perfectly honest, I was expecting somebody older. I had, in fact, decided that my interpreter was going to be middle-aged and look like a bank manager going to seed.’

  The young man laughed. Powerscourt saw that he was just under six feet tall with a broad forehead and a Roman nose. His cheekbones were high and he had very fair hair and soft brown eyes. Powerscourt thought he could do considerable damage to the young ladies.

  ‘Perhaps I should tell you a little about myself, Lord Powerscourt, to reassure you that the young can be as good at interpreting as the middle-aged. My parents – well, I suppose you’d have to call them aristocrats –live in an enormous palace or indeed palaces in St Petersburg. My father has branched out into banking and other sorts of financial business. I have been working in his offices here in London to learn all about it. I lived the first sixteen years of my life in St Petersburg and then I was sent to school in England and then to Oxford, to Trinity College, if you know it. So you see, Lord Powerscourt, I know both societies. I have done quite a lot of translating for my father. I think it must have been he, or your Ambassador in Russia, who recommended me for this kind of work. I have often done it before. I rather enjoy it.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear you know St Petersburg,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’m sure that will be a great advantage in our mission.’

  ‘Can you tell me something about that?’ said the young man doubtfully. ‘All I learned from the Foreign Office was that it was very secret and I had to set out for the station as fast as possible.’

  Very slowly the great train drew out of the station and began its journey towards the hop fields of Kent. A number of friends and relations were left waving disconsolately on the platform. Powerscourt wondered how much he could tell young Shaporov and decided that nothing he knew was a secret worth preserving. So he told him everything.

  ‘That’s all rather exciting,’ said the young man, ‘except for the fact that this poor man is dead. And nobody, you say, knows what he was doing in St Petersburg?’

  ‘Only the Prime Minister, as far as I can tell. Have you any idea at all what could bring about such a level of secrecy as far as Russia is concerned?’

  ‘Scandal?’ said Mikhail Shaporov happily. ‘Blackmail? Secrets of state? Diplomatic treaties that have to be kept hidden for a decade? It’ll be very disappointing, Lord Powerscourt, if we just find that he hadn’t settled his debts at the casino or was carrying on with another man’s wife. Though,’ he went on rather sadly, ‘if people were killed for adultery in St Petersburg, the population would drop very quickly.’ Powerscourt wondered if there was some personal pain hidden behind the sadness.

  ‘The thing is,’ the young man went on, ‘you did say that this poor dead diplomat was a very important sort of fellow, a top dog in the Foreign Office collection, so the chances are that it has to do with great secrets. I do hope we can find out.’

  Shaporov peered out of the window. ‘Forgive me, Lord Powerscourt, but your England always seems quite small to me. Some years ago my parents took us all on the Trans-Siberian Railway just after it opened, thousands and thousands of miles of track. I thought it was splendid. My younger brother, mind you, he got claustrophobia after being kept in the train carriages for days and days. He hardly ever goes in a train now if he can help it.’

  Powerscourt wondered if the young Mikhail’s contacts in St Petersburg might be useful to him. The young man yawned.

  ‘Will you excuse me, Lord Powerscourt? I did not have very much sleep last night and then I had to prepare for our journey. Would you mind if I went next door and had a nap?’

  When he had the compartment to himself again, Powerscourt began thinking about Lucy. He had found her, on his return from the London Library, sitting on the chair by the window in Markham Square, looking out very sadly into the weak late afternoon sun. He thought she had been waiting for him. Close up, she looked more
miserable still. He thought she had been crying.

  ‘Lucy, my love,’ he strode across the room to her, ‘whatever is the matter?’

  She burst into tears and fell into his arms.

  ‘Don’t worry, Lucy. It can’t be that important. We still have each other. We still love each other.’

  After a couple of minutes she composed herself. She took his hands in hers as she had those years before on the balcony in Positano.

  ‘Francis,’ she said, ‘I release you from your promise not to take on any more investigations. You are free to go to St Petersburg as far as I am concerned. I hope I have not made you too unhappy in the meantime. It was my first husband, you see, who went away on the nation’s business and got killed. I couldn’t bear to have it happen again, I really couldn’t. But I’ve got to let you go. I see that now. I hope you don’t think I’m some sort of jailer, Francis. Please forgive me for the whole thing.’