Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

17

A battered Renault taxi-cab drew up outside 32 Place des Vosges, home of the European Art Exchange, the cover story for the French Secret Service Headquarters on the first floor. That taxi passenger must have prepaid his fare, for he shot out of the Renault and into the building in a couple of seconds flat. The other visitor, the Préfet de Paris, or Mayor of Paris, had been shown in through the back door by the dustbin men, who voted for him regularly at election times. M. Dubois was their friend, and any friend of M. Dubois was automatically enrolled in their very own Legion of Honour.

So what brought this disparate group — three Frenchman, and an English Ambassador to France, Sir Miles Myddleton, just returned from attendance on his sovereign in Biarritz — together in a large, eighteenth-century room with high ceilings and elegant shutters on the windows one floor up in one of Paris’s most elegant squares at seven o’clock in the morning? The answer was not long in coming. Colonel Brouzet made the introductions and summed up the reasons for their presence in a single word.

‘Bonds, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘People have been selling French bonds in considerable quantities. If it goes on like this, it could cause a financial crisis all across Europe. It is French government-issue bonds that have brought us here together this morning.’

Outside the birds were still singing and one or two of the cleaning staff could be heard complaining to themselves down in the square. It was going to be a beautiful day.

‘The movements in these bonds coincided with the presence in Paris of the Ballets Russes and their various appendages. I have to tell you that nothing would surprise me regarding the behaviour of the Ballets Russes.

‘As you know, gentlemen, the French government has authorized, some would say organized, vast loans to Russia, many of them designed as bonds due for repayment at some date in the distant future. This, as we all know, messieurs, is war policy disguised as finance. The more Russia is industrialized, the more factories she can build with the money raised from these bonds. She can pay for new facilities to make armaments for use in any future war with Germany. A stronger Russia means a stronger France. Monsieur le Ministre?’

It was an unusual scene. Here, in the afterglow of the belle époque, the French Minister of Finance, M. Blanc, looked as though he should have been head of dustmen, and the leader of the dustbin men, M. Nivelle, looked as though he should be Minister of Finance. The minister was wearing an old suit, much frayed, with a wing collar that looked as if it had been made for his father at the time of the terrible days of the siege of Paris and the Commune back in 1870. The suit, like his vast estates near Chambord and in the poorer quarters of the capital, was part of his inheritance.

‘War and a strong Russia, gentlemen,’ he began, ‘is in the hands of ministries other than my own.’ The man sounded as if every single person in his own department was also part of his immediate family.

‘We follow the instructions of the President of the Republic. It is now a good number of years since the great treaty between our country and Russia was signed. The President charged my predecessor with the task of binding Russia economically to us as part of the stance of the Republic towards our neighbours across the Rhine.’

It seemed that the poor man couldn’t even bring himself to say the word ‘Germans’. It was widely known how unpopular the Germans had been in Paris in 1870 and 1871, proclaiming the new German Empire in France itself, against the advice of Bismarck, who warned it could lead to a hatred that could last for generations. Well, that hatred had survived for forty years or more. It was still going strong. The scars had lasted till this day. The wounds were still suppurating.

‘Perhaps you could give us a brief outline of your methods, Monsieur le Ministre?’ Olivier Brouzet looked closely at the painting from the Louvre that had replaced the Watteau that had hung happily behind the director’s desk for the past seven years. Now it was Fragonard’s The Swing, the girl flying higher and higher, pushed from behind by an old man who must have been her husband, and watched from the front by her lover hiding in the woods.

‘You’ve always done well with jobs for the workers, I’ll give you that,’ the dustbin men’s leader, M. Nivelle, in his immaculate suit, suddenly made his first contribution of the day. ‘The loans have made a difference. There are now lots of working class districts around St Petersburg and the great cities. My people are grateful for that, even if the wages are still terrible.’

‘To our methods.’ The Minister of Finance picked up where Brouzet had left off. ‘Russia is not a democracy like we have here in France or in England.’ He nodded at Ambassador Myddleton. ‘Laws are passed by the Duma, the toy-town Parliament with no real powers, and sent to the Tsar. There they are either rejected or amended by the last person to talk to the Tsar. At the present time, that means the unspeakable Rasputin, or his lover, as St Petersburg gossip would have it, the appalling Alexandra, wife of the Tsar.’

‘Why is she appalling?’ asked the British Ambassador. He would have used a milder term himself.

‘She is German,’ the Minister replied, spitting out the word as if using a mouthwash at the dentist’s. ‘During the Terror here in Paris, the mob called Marie-Antoinette “l’Autriche”, which means either ‘Austrian’ or ‘ostrich’ — with its head in the sand. How right they were. It is the same in that vast Russian hinterland beyond the cities. Religious societies, like ours here in France, and in the Russian Orthodox Church, need a Holy Mary, a Madonna. They need the counterpoint too, the bitch goddess to make up their simple pantheon.’

‘Lucy, my love, do you think she’s telling the truth, that poor girl upstairs?’ Lord Powerscourt asked his wife.

‘Anastasia? Well, as a matter of fact, I do. Don’t you? It’s rather an odd question to ask, surely?’

‘Well, I do think she’s telling the truth. But what a fantastic story. It could almost be something to throw us off the scent. Whatever the scent is. At the moment I’m not quite sure. But think it has to do with jewels stolen in St Petersburg that have come to London, presumably in the luggage of the Ballets Russes. The jewels must have been sold through a dealer. And then the money itself is stolen. It’s vanished. It’s all too fantastic for words.’

‘Do you think it has to do with the murders?’

‘I don’t, except for the Ballets Russes connection. I suppose I’ll have to ask that poor man Inspector Dutfield to put his people onto the Premier Hotel.’

‘But there’s no mention in Anastasia’s account of any connection with Bolm or Taneyev, is there?’

‘If Natasha Shaporova finds any connection in St Petersburg to the stolen jewels, my love, I’ll take you to New York for a fortnight.’

Lady Lucy and their eldest son Thomas had been waging a persistent campaign for the oldest members of the Powerscourt family to go to New York and stay in a skyscraper. But so far the plan had failed.

‘What would you do, Lucy, if your jewels were stolen?’

‘Here in London?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go to the police.’

‘And I suppose you’d do the same thing in St Petersburg, though by all accounts the police there aren’t as good as ours. Would you employ a private detective to bring them back? Would you employ me?’

‘Of course I would.’

‘I’m not sure I would accept the case, Lucy. Count Powerscourtski would decline. Do you suppose that’s why the Russians are so fond of detective stories? At least in the fiction the crimes get solved, which they don’t in real life. Anyway, Inspector Dutfield will be here in a moment with his account of the movements of various people around Blenheim Palace on the evening of the murder.’

The Ambassador looked closely at Fragonard’s The Swing. He felt that any society whose aristocrats and princes of the Church dabbled in art beyond baroque and beyond rococo must be on the brink of revolution. Art had lost its moorings with society. Fragonard, the Tiepolos, Boucher all lived in a pink universe that was not connected to the people, except perhaps in subject matter and the strings on the swing. He included Poussin in his charge sheet, a John the Baptist for the horrors to come.

‘Perhaps we could return to the bonds,’ growled M. Dubois.

‘Of course, forgive me,’ replied M. le Ministre. ‘My young men with their degrees in mathematics from the École Nationale Supérieure and the other grandes écoles here in Paris have one thing in common. Their eyesight is already going from too many hours spent staring at figures. Many of them wear those owlish glasses you see on the Left Bank these days. They look out for hot spots or hot people, places where money well invested could increase and multiply and encourage the growth of other enterprises. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not. They spotted the sudden and apparently inexplicable sale of these bonds.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mr Brouzet. ‘Now, Monsieur Nivelle, perhaps you could enlighten us about what is happening on the ground here in Paris?’

‘It was one of Monsieur le Ministre’s young men,’ said Nivelle in the coarse accent of the suburbs. ‘He was almost blind by the way, but he alerted us that many of the great finance houses here in Paris were selling French bonds — not in enormous quantities, but making substantial withdrawals nonetheless. We found the same thing happening on the ground in the poorer parts of Paris, people selling off their bonds. One week ago, it all stopped, as if some wizard had blown a whistle.’

‘Forgive me for a moment, gentlemen,’ said Colonel Brouzet, disappearing into a side room. He came back with an ornate ivory chess set, made in China centuries before. ‘It’s from the Louvre,’ he said apologetically. ‘They lent it to me along with the Fragonard. Perhaps these ancient warriors will help us.’

He placed the ivory chessmen carefully on a low table. ‘Let us see,’ Brouzet said, taking out one white castle and one black knight and placing them on the left centre side of the board. Here we have England and France, united by your King Edward’s entente cordiale. Here, we have the German knight, right in the middle of the board. On the far side of the battlefield we have the black castle, the Tsar and his armies. Who benefits from the sale of these bonds? Sir Miles, perhaps you could bring some of your wisdom to the table here?’

The Ambassador hesitated before he spoke. Outside a party of raucous Americans were demanding of an unfortunate waiter why they could not have their breakfast at seven fifteen in the morning. That was what they did in Des Moines, Iowa where they came from, they proudly told the garçon.

‘It all depends, doesn’t it,’ Myddleton said finally, ‘as to why these people are selling their bonds; on whether they are selling them for their own use, or to some foreign agents who are lurking in the poorer parts of the city — forgive me, Monsieur Nivelle — and scooping up these bonds. Do we know what proportion of the total have been sold, by the way?’

‘Just over six per cent of the total,’ said M. le Ministre. ‘That’s a substantial percentage, by the way.’

‘There is no evidence of a Monsieur Scoop operating anywhere in Paris,’ said M. Nivelle firmly.

‘It’s worth remembering,’ said the Ambassador, ‘that there are only two finance houses in Europe that could mount such an operation as this. You would need offices right across the Continent and very large numbers of employees. You see, I don’t think any of the governments would have the personnel to carry out such a conspiracy. They would turn to their bankers. After all, it was Rothschilds who financed Wellington’s later years during the Peninsular War, and on to Waterloo itself. They are one of the houses. They control the bond market across the whole of Europe. The other family are the Ephrussis. They control the supply of grain across Europe from their base at Odessa in the Crimea, the breadbasket of central Europe, and like their rivals they have offices in London and Paris and in other capitals.’

‘Merde!’ said M. le Ministre. ‘Merde alors! What a thought! A cup final between the Rothschilds and the Ephrussis, fought out in the backstreets of the cities and in the Bourses and the Stock Exchanges of Europe, with a grand final between the Rothschilds and the Ephrussis played out on the finest tennis courts in Paris. What a prospect!’

Colonel Brouzet raised his hand. ‘We play a little game, I think. We look at the hopes and fears of both sides. Then we think of who might want to buy these bonds. Sir Miles, I ask you to bat for England, as you say about the cricket in your country. What are her hopes? Fears come later.’

‘The English politicians are preoccupied with matters at home, with strikes, with the problems of the House of Lords and the Irish question that never seems to go away. Her hopes are for a period of domestic peace and no change abroad. She worries that the great days of Empire may be over, that she could become one with Nineveh and Tyre.’

‘And France, Monsieur le Ministre?’

‘France hopes for la revanche, for revenge against Germany. Some of our monuments in the capital have been draped in black since we lost at Sedan in 1870. Nobody, man or woman, horse or dog has ridden through the great arch of the Arc de Triomphe since that date. La Gloire, l’Audace on the battlefield, the restoration of France to her rightful place as the cultural capital of Europe and the world: those are the hopes of France, Monsieur Brouzet.’

‘Germany, Mr Dubois?’

‘I didn’t come here to speak for the Germans, Monsieur Brouzet, but I can speak to the question. We are in touch with our comrades in Berlin and dustmen everywhere. Germany means the Kaiser, a bundle of neuroses and vanities. He wants to be master of the universe. He wants peace with all the world. He is obsessed with the country of his mother and his grandmother Queen Victoria. He is the most unstable ruler in Europe.’

‘I would dispute that, Mr Nivelle. I speak for Russia.’ M. Brouzet was inspecting his ivory chessmen very carefully. ‘I offer Tsar Nicholas the Second in place of the Kaiser. The Tsar is, even now, preparing to celebrate the tercentenary of the Romanovs next year. It will be a year of processions and parades and loyalty reaffirmed. Three hundred years of supreme power. He is probably waiting for some simple peasant being lined up to greet his Father, The Father of all the Russias, Nicholas the Second. Throw in Rasputin and the German bitch and the Tsar wins by several lengths. Above all, he wants no truck with Dumas and democracy. He wants to be an autocrat once again, to reclaim the past to secure his future.’

Colonel Brouzet paused for a moment and moved the white knight forward into an attack position. The black horseman went into the defence.

‘Time is short, messieurs, eternity is long, Sir Miles. We have to grasp the nettle. Each of you has one sentence to explain why your country would want to buy up these bonds. England, Sir Miles?’

‘England would buy the bonds to preserve the status quo and to prevent the Germans getting them.’

‘Thank you. France?’

‘France too would buy them for fear of the Germans having them.’

‘Russia, that’s me, is so preoccupied with the celebrations next year that it takes no notice of what might be happening in Paris.’

‘Germany would buy them to throw a spoke in the wheels of the Triple Alliance and because some Germans want war now before the Russians become too powerful with their new industrial might.’

‘Thank you all,’ said Colonel Brouzet, moving a couple of Chinese pawns on his board. ‘We may not have the answer, but at least we are better informed.’

Later that day, M. Brouzet sent the news of the vanishing bonds to his friend, the English investigator Lord Francis Powerscourt. There was only the most tenuous connection with the Ballets Russes — had one of their number brought word that the selling was to begin, perhaps? — but you could never tell.