Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

8

Johnny Fitzgerald had decided to tidy up his study before he began work on Powerscourt’s queries. The study was Johnny’s special sanctum, a large room at the top of his house, twenty-eight feet by twenty-four, with fine views over the gardens of South Kensington. Very few people were allowed in. At this point Johnny was approximately halfway through the writing of his third book about British birds, The Birds of the West, which covered the country from Devon and Cornwall, north into Somerset and Glamorgan and onward into North Wales. Johnny reckoned he had stayed in all the cheap hotels he ever wished to see, though he remained resolutely cheerful to the landladies. A visitor to this room would have found it hard to tell whether there was carpet or rugs on the floor or even whether there was any floor at all. Papers covered it as the waters had covered the earth in Noah’s flood. They were stacked several layers high at the corners of the room. Ranged around the centre were drawings of some of the birds Johnny had encountered during his research, great birds of prey in flight across moorland or coastline, delicate warblers and finches and chaffinches to be found in the hills and the wooded quarters inland, gulls and cormorants and skuas that patrolled the cliffs and the sea. If asked, Johnny would have said that he loved them all, with a love so simple and pure he could not imagine transferring it to the more perilous world of human relationships. And, oddly enough, if you had asked him, he could have told you the exact whereabouts of every piece of paper he had worked upon. He had charted their position as accurately as any vessel surveying the waters of the great oceans of the world. He stood for some time, this January morning, wondering how to strike his camp. He looked rather sadly at some of the drawings, particularly of the seabirds, as though he was going to miss them. Then he got down on his hands and knees and made a series of piles of paper running in sections down the room. When they were all together he tied each one firmly with string and lined them up in order of assembly on a gap in his bookshelves. Johnny reckoned he could reproduce the chaos more or less as he had created it.

Johnny had already written to William Burke outlining Powerscourt’s concerns about the finances of Roderick Martin. He had launched inquiries in travel arrangements to and from St Petersburg with Rosebery’s butler. Now he was going to read all he could about Russian politics in a local library where they kept back copies of the newspapers. He didn’t want to sound ignorant in St Petersburg. It would, he thought, be bad enough with them all talking in Russian all day. Johnny had had a low opinion of Russian and Russians ever since he discovered they used a different alphabet. Different words were bad enough in his view, but different letters were beyond the pale. Like the bloody Indians, he said to himself. And after his session with the press, he was going to take tea with Lady Lucy Powerscourt and her family. Johnny Fitzgerald was godfather to the boy twin, Master Christopher Powerscourt, now almost three years old. He took his responsibilities very seriously, Johnny, specializing in crawling races across the floor and piggy-back rides up and down the staircase.

At around the same time Mikhail Shaporov, Natasha Bobrinsky and Lord Francis Powerscourt were having an urgent meeting to discuss what to do about Tamara Kerenkova, dancing partner of the late Roderick Martin. They had secured an address for her from Natasha’s grandmother’s connections near the Alexander Nevskii Monastery at the far end of the Nevskii Prospekt. Now what were they to do? Natasha was for immediate action.

‘We must go at once, all three of us, and call on her. We can’t afford to waste time. There is not a moment to lose.’

‘I’m not sure all three of us barging in on the poor woman would be a very good idea,’ said Mikhail. ‘It might put her off.’

‘Off what?’ said Natasha angrily. ‘Off telling us the truth?’

‘Well,’ said the young man, trying to be tactful, ‘how would you feel if three complete strangers were to call on you and ask you about your intimate relations with some strange Englishman? You’d have to ask some pretty delicate questions too.’

Such as, was he your lover? Powerscourt thought. And if so, for how long? If the affair collapsed, did you kill him? Or did your husband kill him? And where is your husband now, madam?

‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said Mikhail, ‘could you give us the benefit of your experience here?’

‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, smiling at the two of them, ‘first of all we do not know if she is still at this address. And however much we might all want to meet the lady, I do not think three of us is a good idea. I have had some experience of dealing with people in these tricky situations. The most important thing is to make sure that they do not feel threatened. In London I used to invite them to come to my house rather than my going to theirs. I felt they would feel less vulnerable in my home. Their own house with all its connotations and memories would not be contaminated by this awkward and difficult knowledge. So I think the first thing to do is to send Mrs Kerenkova a note asking her if she would like to come here for morning coffee or afternoon tea. And, I’m sorry, Natasha, I think Mikhail and I should see her in the first instance so he can translate for me. When we see how that goes we can bring you in later.’

Natasha laughed. ‘It’s all right, Lord Powerscourt,’ she said, ‘I thought three was going to be too many whatever happened. Anyway, I’ve got to get back to Tsarskoe Selo.’

‘Please remember,’ said Powerscourt, ‘how incredibly important anything you might find out there would be to our cause. And please be careful. I cannot over-emphasize that.’

As she skipped off to catch her train, Powerscourt and Mikhail began to compose a letter to Tamara Kerenkova, inviting her to call.

Lady Lucy Powerscourt embraced Johnny Fitzgerald on his arrival in Markham Square. The twins attached themselves to his lower legs like limpets on manoeuvres. Johnny knew how worried Lady Lucy must be, with Francis away on his dangerous mission. He was only too aware how one dead Englishman on some foreign shore could easily turn into two, particularly in a place as febrile as St Petersburg.

‘Have you heard from Francis, Lucy? Did he seem well? You can’t say much in messages on those telegraph machines.’

She smiled a huge smile. ‘I’ve had two letters from him so far. He spent most of his time describing the people in the Embassy. There’s a diplomat he rather likes called de Chassiron, I think. He doesn’t care very much for the Ambassador. And he says dealing with the Russian ministries reminds him of the bureaucracies of the states run by the Indian maharajahs, incredible torpor for days and days followed by sudden, inexplicable bursts of activity.’

‘The news is terrible, with all those people shot the other day,’ said Johnny tactfully, displaying a small fraction of his new knowledge, ‘but I don’t suppose that’s got anything to do with the death of Mr Martin.’

The twins at this point released themselves from Johnny’s legs and demanded that he organize running races round the dining-room table. The memory stayed with Johnny a long time, two small children doubled up with laughter and giggles as they bumped into table and chair legs and each other, and their mother watching from the side with a look of great sadness in her eyes.

Lord Francis Powerscourt felt sure he had been taken up to heaven like one of those people in Renaissance paintings. It was surprising, he thought, how white everything was. He knew, of course, that white was the colour of purity and of cleanliness and as such might be expected to feature heavily in any celestial colour scheme, but not, surely, to the detriment of everything else. He remembered vaguely the words of the Christmas carol about how we would wait around in heaven, all dressed in white. God himself, he recalled from the Book of Revelation, had a head and hairs that were white like wool, as white as snow. Powerscourt wondered how long you had to wait before you were called to action. Maybe there was no action at all up here, maybe the waiting was all. Better to be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of the ungodly. He wondered if there might be any detective work to be carried out in heaven. He was sure any decent investigator would be able to throw light on the motives of Pontius Pilate and the precise nature of the activities of Judas Iscariot. Powerscourt had always been doubtful about the thirty pieces of silver. Maybe he should ask William Burke to find out the exchange rate and the conversion tables so that the money that betrayed a son of God and started a world religion could be seen in the cold currency of English pounds. Then he told himself he was being remarkably silly. Surely God knew all that. He knew everything. Of all people in all places this was the last one to need investigators. Never mind. He would be a doorkeeper. He would watch out for the ungodly. It was, he reflected suddenly, rather noisy up here in heaven. He had thought that the engines of torment were down below rather than up here. There was a terrible screech and the St Petersburg to Volkhov train shuddered to a halt, its engine shrieking like a wounded animal.

Powerscourt looked up and checked his watch surreptitiously. He had only been asleep for a couple of minutes. Beside him Mikhail Shaporov was locked into his reading of Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo. Their destination was Volkhov, to the east of the capital. For they had discovered, by a complicated series of messages over a period of ten or more frustrating days, that Tamara Kerenkova was not in St Petersburg but currently resident on her husband’s estates some fifteen miles north of Volkhov, and that she would be happy to meet Lord Powerscourt and his interpreter early on the afternoon of Monday January 31st. ‘Exiled’, had been Mikhail Shaporov’s verdict – probably, Powerscourt thought, after a conversation with his father: ‘Bloody husband doesn’t want her parading round St Petersburg with the wretched Englishman, so he packs her off to the ancestral fields out in the back of beyond. Nobody to talk to. People go off their heads with boredom out there, they end up as characters in Chekhov plays for God’s sake, forever whining on about going to Moscow.’

Gradually the engine lurched back into life. Everywhere you looked outside, fields, hills, trees, all were white. There was nothing visible that was not white. Inside the long train various military men paraded up and down in their red and black uniforms, naval and army officers returning home on leave perhaps from the Russo-Japanese War. In the third class nobody was going to war but they seemed to have brought ample supplies with them, cooking pans, plates, food, vodka, all to sustain them on their journey. He remembered suddenly his conversation with de Chassiron the day before. Powerscourt had asked him what rules, if any, governed affairs between members of the aristocracy in St Petersburg.

‘Rules?’ de Chassiron had said, unscrewing his monocle with great care. ‘Rules? I’m not sure I know the rules, my friend, but I’ll try. I’ve never been involved in one of these affairs myself, they send us home on the first mule they can find if we do.

‘Let me put it like this, Powerscourt. You know the rules, the conventions, that govern what goes on in some upper class house parties in England. Not in all of them, of course, but the ones where almost all the guests are sleeping with other guests they’re not married to. Often involving the King when he was Prince of Wales, and presumably, continuing now he’s King, only more so. Adultery by Royal Command. Everybody knows where everybody else’s bedroom is – some hostesses, I believe, leave out a sleeping plan with the occupants of all the bedrooms named like a seating plan for dinner – so at a certain point the guests peel off and creep round the upper floors till they’ve found their lover. Much creaking of floorboards, squeaking of doors, seeking of nocturnal happiness and so forth. All very gentlemanly. No challenges. No duels. No pistols at dawn. All caused by a leisured class with too little to do where adultery becomes the sport of choice. Most dangerous option on offer after all. I think it’s probably the same here, more or less. Former Ambassador, man much more interested in human behaviour than the current one, swears he once overheard three young men at a party discussing which of five different men might have been their fathers. It’s a long time now since Pushkin went to his death in a ludicrous duel over his wife’s honour.’

‘I see,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But if all that is true, and I’m sure it is, why is the Kerenkova no longer in Petersburg? Why has she turned into the chatelaine of the family estates miles from anywhere?’

‘I can only guess, Powerscourt, maybe the husband has banished her. Maybe it had all got too serious – these affairs are tolerated, on the whole, because the rules stipulate that at some point everybody will go back to their husband or wife. Not necessarily for ever, but until the music starts again.’

Sitting in his railway carriage, with the white world flying past, Powerscourt suddenly wondered about the husband. They knew nothing about him. He would have to ask this Tamara not only about her lover, if he was her lover, but about the man she married as well.

A light snow was falling over the Alexander Park at the Tsar’s Village, Tsarskoe Selo. Natasha Bobrinsky and the four Grand Duchesses, daughters of the Tsar, each pulling a toboggan, were by the west side of the Toboggan Hill. The girls never tired of pulling their vehicles up this hill and hurtling down it as fast as they could go. The most daring, the most reckless was the third daughter of the Tsar and the Tsarina, Marie Nicolaievna. She persuaded her elder sister to push her as fast as she could on the top of the hill before she began her descent. This meant she travelled even faster going down. The light was beginning to ebb. The soldier on duty to their right seemed to have drifted off. Marie was embarking on what must, surely, be her last or her second last run of the day. Then it happened. Natasha said afterwards that it must have been because of the fading light. She had total faith in the girl’s ability to control herself and her machine. As the toboggan and the girl hurtled down towards the bottom of the hill Marie swerved suddenly to avoid a stone or some other obstacle in her way. The angle was too sharp. The toboggan turned over and Grand Duchess Marie was flung out, hitting her head on a tree trunk hidden in the snow and rolling over several times before she finally stopped.

‘She’s dead!’ shrieked Anastasia, the youngest.

‘She’s bleeding,’ shouted Olga, the eldest, wailing piteously, hunting in her pockets for a handkerchief to staunch the blood.

‘They’ll blame us for what happened!’ yelled Tatiana. ‘They’ll never forgive us if she dies!’ And she proceeded to cry and sob as though her heart would break.

‘Marie’s not going to die,’ said Natasha, trying to take control of the situation.

‘Girl! You!’ A young soldier rushed out of the bushes in front of the Krasnoselskie Gates. ‘Mind my place till I get back!’ He pointed to a small shed just inside the palace grounds. ‘I have been trained in first aid. I will take the girl to the Palace.’ With that he bent down and picked up Marie and held her tight. He began running towards the palace in great strides, shepherding the other girls beside him, telling them to be calm and not to cry.

Natasha reached the shed and went inside. There was a rough desk facing visitors and a large book sitting on it. Outside the gates, by the great wall that ran right round Tsarskoe Selo, was a security station. Here, visitors to the palace had to show their papers and were searched if the guard thought it necessary. The Captain of the Guard came for a brief word with Natasha.

‘I saw what happened, miss. You’ll have to wait here till he comes back or he’ll be dismissed the service for dereliction of duty. And you must enter the name and purpose of visit of anybody we send through in that big book.’ With that the captain returned to his post, aware that he too could be dismissed for dereliction of duty. Quite soon the Tsarskoe Selo piano tuner came through. Natasha smiled cheerfully at him and put his name in the book.

Then she looked out into the gloom that stretched towards the Alexander Palace. She checked that the captain and his men were all in their positions. Then she began turning back the pages of the visitors’ book. Faster and faster she went, in case the soldier returned. Her hand began to shake. Now she was back to the beginning of January, now back to the last days of December. Natasha thought her knees were knocking against each other. The light was really bad and she didn’t know where the lamps were kept and she didn’t think she had time to look for them. The handwriting changed with the year and the old 1904 script was much more difficult to read. Natasha wished she was one of those sensible people who go around with matches in a side pocket. December 31st, nothing there. December 30th, no. Is there anybody coming? Not yet. Her hands were really shaking now. Yes! At last! Here it was! December 22nd, British diplomat, Roderick Martin, time of arrival nine thirty in the evening, time of leaving, not there, purpose of visit, meeting with the Tsar. Meeting with the Tsar! The Tsar on his own! Nobody else! No diplomats, no heads of protocol, no members of the Imperial Security Service, no Foreign Minister. Natasha knew by now just how rare that was. She felt her heart was going to come right out of her chest as she turned the pages back to the present day. Hadn’t Lord Powerscourt said how important her role here was? And hadn’t she proved him right? Mikhail might swan about the city interpreting senior government officials, but she had found the pearl without price. She didn’t think she could bear the wait to pass on her news. As Natasha made her way back to the palace, having handed the sentry post back to the soldier, one further thought struck her.

Mr Martin hadn’t gone out through the Krasnoselskie Gates. Or if he did, they had taken care not to write it down. Had he left by some other route? Or had he never left at all? Had he been killed here and his body carried back to the frozen waters of the Neva?

‘You must be Lord Powerscourt! And you must be Mikhail Shaporov! You both must be cold and hungry after all that travelling. Come in and we’ll have some tea.’

Tamara Kerenkova greeted them on the porch of her house, bowing slightly as she addressed her visitors. The house was old, many of its external features hidden by the snow. She showed them into a long room with tall windows looking out into a garden. Powerscourt thought he saw rows and rows of cherry trees in the distance, their boughs laden with snow. There was a great fire blazing in the grate and a young borzoi asleep on one side. A liveried servant came to take their coats. Mrs Kerenkova disappeared briefly to organize tea and refreshments. Powerscourt knew there was something unusual but he couldn’t put his finger on it. It was Mikhail Shaporov, laughing, who filled him in.

‘You’ll get it any second now, my lord,’ he said.

‘Get what?’ Powerscourt replied.

‘Now then.’ Tamara Kerenkova had come back. ‘Please tell me how I can help you. Thank you for telling me about the death of Mr Martin in your letter, Lord Powerscourt. I am so glad you saw fit not to wait for personal contact.’

Powerscourt wanted to laugh but felt the circumstances were inappropriate. She was speaking perfect English, this Russian lady, she could have been conversing in a Mayfair drawing room. He didn’t need an interpreter. But then, remembering previous encounters of this sort in previous cases, perhaps he did. But he needed an interpreter of the female heart rather than of the Russian language.

‘May I compliment you on your English, Mrs Kerenkova?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Here I am with my excellent interpreter Mikhail and he’s not needed at all.’

‘I’m sure,’ said the lady with a smile, ‘that a young man of such wide education and such an excellent family will always be useful to you, Lord Powerscourt.’

She must have been about thirty, Tamara Kerenkova, of average height with very delicate features, a small nose and pale blue eyes that held you in their gaze. Her hair was blonde, falling in ringlets down the sides of her face, and every now and again she would toss her head to clear her face. Powerscourt couldn’t work out whether the gesture was natural, affectation or flirtation. Did she shake her locks like that when she was on her own? he asked himself. He didn’t know the answer.

‘We had an English nanny, Lord Powerscourt,’ she went on, ‘Mrs Harris, all the time we were growing up. Part of her job was to teach my sister and me English. She came from Brighton, our Mrs Harris. If you wanted to distract her from a boring spelling lesson, you could always ask her about the pier. For some reason she was mad about piers. If you were lucky she would draw the sea front and the chain pier for you in your art book. It might take up all the time allotted to the spelling! Mrs Harris always laughed when she realized what had been going on. Maybe she didn’t like spelling either.’

Powerscourt had a strange vision of two little Russian girls in a vast schoolroom up in a draughty St Petersburg attic learning English with a woman from Brighton who liked piers.

‘I’m afraid, Mrs Kerenkova, that some of the questions I may have to put to you may seem rather distasteful. May I offer my apologies in advance for any queries that may seem prurient or inappropriate.’

The young woman laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Lord Powerscourt, you don’t have to sound like the family solicitor. I’m sure we’ll get along very well.’

‘Could you tell us first of all how you met your husband?’ Powerscourt had decided in the train that it would be easier to start with Mr Kerenkov rather than Mr Martin.

‘My husband?’ Tamara sounded surprised but she carried on. ‘I met him nine years ago at a ball just before Easter. He was in the navy. He still is, as a matter of fact. We were married the following year.’

‘May I ask if you have any children?’

‘You may. We do not. Not yet anyway. There is still time.’ The slightly pained look with which Mrs Kerenkova began her reply was replaced with one of defiance at the end. Powerscourt wondered how much hurt lay behind the words. He wondered too if Roderick Martin had seemed to offer some sort of solution.

‘Ah, tea,’ said Mrs Kerenkova, as a footman entered with a tray, glad perhaps of the break in the interview. ‘Some cake for you, Lord Powerscourt? And a hefty slice for you, Mikhail – growing boys need plenty of food.’ She gave the interpreter a gargantuan piece of cake, spilling out over the edge of the plate, which he proceeded to demolish with amazing speed.

‘And Mr Martin?’ Powerscourt took a small sip of his tea. ‘Might I ask when and where you met him, Mrs Kerenkova?’

Tamara did not hesitate. It was as if, Powerscourt was to reflect later, she had been rehearsing her answers before they came. ‘We met in Berlin in 1901. In the autumn. My husband was on the staff of the naval attache there at the time.’

Powerscourt thought that in certain countries naval attache meant little more than spy. Regular visits to naval dockyards, earnest interest in the latest techniques of propulsion or navigation or armaments – all could be displayed as examples of naive enthusiasm when in fact they were merely cover for espionage.

‘Did you meet him at some diplomatic function? Some grand occasion at the Wilhelmstrasse, the Imperial German Foreign Office perhaps?’

‘We met at a ball, Lord Powerscourt, a ball given by the Austrian Ambassador.’ Tamara Kerenkova’s eyes drifted away. ‘It was fitting really. You see, my husband hated dancing. He didn’t really like parties of any sort, come to that. Roderick and I were dancing less than a minute after we were introduced. We got to know each other on the dance floor. He was such a beautiful dancer, Roderick, very formal one minute, then breaking all the rules and sweeping you right across the floor the next. It was so exhilarating. I think we fell in love on the dance floor, Lord Powerscourt, dancing a waltz or a two-step or a polonaise, it doesn’t matter now. One of the reasons he came when he did, at the beginning of all those years, was that January was the season for the great balls in St Petersburg. They were the grandest of their kind in Europe. Roderick and I were never happier than when we were dancing. The sprung floors beneath your feet, the beautiful women with their jewellery sweeping past, the men in their finest clothes, the officers in their gaudiest uniforms, and the arms of the man you love holding you tight as you whirl around the floor – time is simply annihilated as your lover guides you through the steps. Inside the form and the rhythm of the dance your mind and your heart can float away to a different world. Do you believe that, Lord Powerscourt?’

It was then that a truly terrible thought struck Powerscourt, one that was never to wholly leave him for his entire time in Russia. Suppose you were the espionage chief of the Okhrana, he said to himself, the spying equivalent of the terrible Derzhenov who was in charge of counter-terrorism. Suppose you had a spy in your employ, a really useful spy who could bring you the secrets of one of the Great Powers of Europe. So often with spies the problem lay with the sending of messages, the transmission of information. Powerscourt remembered the story in Herodotus of Histiaeus who wanted to send a message from the Persian court to his son-in-law Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, urging him to revolt. But Histiaeus suspected that any message might be intercepted with fatal results. So he shaved the head of his most trusted slave and tattoed the message on to his scalp. When the hair had grown back he sent the slave to Aristagoras with a message that he needed a haircut. In modern times there might not be enough room on a single scalp for the message. Elaborate systems of deception were often set up for the spy to meet and to debrief his handler. But suppose the handler was a woman and that she met her lover at the great balls of Berlin or Vienna or St Petersburg. Secrets could be whispered as they twirled round the room in the Viennese Waltz. Pages of information could be popped into a handbag or slipped down a decolletage during a two-step. The next rendezvous for the next exchange of information would be an innocent-sounding conversation towards the end of the evening about the next ball where they would see each other again. As a system, as cover, it was perfect. And, looking at Tamara Kerenkova, he thought she was cool enough to carry it off.

‘I am sure you are right about the appeal of the dance, Mrs Kerenkova, the poets have been enthusing about it for centuries.’ Powerscourt felt annoyed again at the contrast between Russian passion and English reserve. ‘Forgive me for asking a personal question, but where did Mr Martin stay when he was here?’

The young woman laughed. The borzoi awoke and shuffled over to the tea trolley. ‘Why, he stayed with me. My husband was away with his ship, most of those years. He would be away now, in Japan, fighting that terrible war, but he had to come back with a badly damaged ship that needed repairs.’ She broke a piece of cake into small pieces and gave the dog his tea. He seemed to like the cake. Mikhail Shaporov stroked his white coat as he listened to the conversation. He sensed that some dramatic thought had gripped Powerscourt a few minutes before but he had no idea what it was.

Powerscourt gave no sign at all of excitement now. ‘Do you mean that Mr Kerenkov is in St Petersburg right now, attending to the repairs?’

‘Why, yes, Lord Powerscourt, he has been here since the middle of December.’ She smiled at him. Powerscourt thought that naval officers must be pretty good shots with a revolver. Not a problem to shoot a foreigner in the heart and dump his body on the Nevskii Prospekt. He thought the young woman was daring him to ask the next question. He asked it.

‘Might I ask, Mrs Kerenkova, why you are here at the family estate when your husband is in St Petersburg?’

She laughed again and now she too began to stroke the borzoi. ‘See what questions they ask us, Potemkin,’ she began by addressing the dog. ‘I could say,’ there was another of those tosses of the head to clear the face of that blonde hair, ‘that I came here to prepare things for his coming a little later. But that is not the truth. Things are not very good between us just now. I am sure, Lord Powerscourt, that even in England the aristocratic husbands and their wives sometimes do not get on as they should. Is that so?’ Powerscourt nodded, betraying an entire class in an afternoon. ‘At first Vladimir did not care about me and Roderick. He thought it was just an infatuation, that it wouldn’t last. Even when we met up for all those Januarys he didn’t seem to mind.’

‘So what happened?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘How did he come to change his mind? I presume he sent you out here because of some family disagreement?’

Tamara laughed bitterly. ‘Disagreement? I suppose you could call it that. You see, Lord Powerscourt, I’d always told Vladimir when Roderick was coming. Always, so it wouldn’t be a surprise. Then,’ she stopped as if trying to fix a date in her mind, ‘round about the middle of last month he heard Mr Martin was coming, coming to St Petersburg. He didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know. And I didn’t, you’ve got to believe me, Lord Powerscourt. Of course I’d have told him if I’d known, I’d have told all of St Petersburg that he was coming to take me dancing once again, I’d have been so happy.’

Powerscourt was growing used to the shocks now. ‘I believe you, of course I believe you, Mrs Kerenkova,’ he said quickly, and he did, ‘but could I confirm something you just said? You said your husband knew Mr Martin was coming to St Petersburg round about the middle of last month? Is that right?’

The young woman nodded. ‘That’s right. I might be a couple of days out, I can’t remember exactly. Is that important?’

‘It might be,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘but could I just get one thing clear in my mind? Did your husband send you out here because he felt you deceived him about Mr Martin’s visit? Or was there another reason as well?’

Potemkin growled as if he didn’t like the question or the tone. Mikhail scratched his head once again.

‘There was another reason, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Tamara Kerenkova. ‘Vladimir said it wouldn’t have mattered if Mr Martin hadn’t been English. Russian naval people are very annoyed with the English at present. I think our ships sunk a couple of British fishing boats on their way to Japan and the Russians thought the British were making too much fuss. Who cares about a couple of bloody fishermen anyway, was what Vladimir said. He said my affair with Mr Martin could make him very unpopular so he wanted me out of the way for a while.’

‘Quite so,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Did your husband give any idea how he learnt Mr Martin was coming to St Petersburg?’

‘I’m afraid he did not. Could I ask you a question, Lord Powerscourt? Do you know what Mr Martin was doing here, why he came to St Petersburg?’

Now it was Powerscourt’s turn to smile. Potemkin padded off to inspect the snow falling in the garden. ‘If I knew the answer to that question, my dear lady, I would be well on my way to solving the mystery. At the moment, I have no idea.’

‘Can I give you my theory? I believe he must have been sent here on government business. I’m sure your Foreign Office told him he was not to breathe a word to a single soul. Otherwise he would have told me.’

‘How did he usually let you know he was coming?’ asked Powerscourt. Visions of messages in a bottle, of coded signals hidden in the advertisement pages of The Times, of slaves with shaven heads, flashed through his mind. He had visions too of a mythical elderly relative living in a distant part of Britain perhaps, a sort of Scottish Bunbury in Martin’s life, who had to be visited every year in early January.

‘You’re thinking of some romantic roundabout way of letting me know, Lord Powerscourt, I can tell from the look on your face. It was perfectly simple. He wrote to me, that’s all, usually a couple of months in advance.’

‘Did he ever mention Mrs Martin, Mrs Kerenkova?’

‘Very seldom. She had him, Roderick, I mean, for eleven and a half months of the year,’ Tamara Kerenkova said bitterly. ‘I don’t think she knew what she had. I wouldn’t have let him wander off like that if I’d been married to him. Anyway, he wouldn’t have wanted to.’

‘Forgive me this question, Mrs Kerenkova.’ Powerscourt was staring straight into those pale blue eyes. ‘Would you have said your husband was a violent man?’

‘Violent?’ Those pale blue eyes opened very wide suddenly. ‘Of course he is violent. All those naval people are violent, very violent. They’re in charge of enormous guns that can sink a ship in a couple of minutes and drown a thousand sailors. I think that’s a rather naive question, Lord Powerscourt.’

‘I do apologize, Mrs Kerenkova, I wasn’t referring to his professional life.’ Powerscourt said no more. The young woman flushed.

‘If you mean what I think you mean, it is did Vladimir kill Mr Martin, or was he capable of killing Mr Martin? I must tell you the answer is No.’

‘You’re sure about that?’ asked Powerscourt crisply.

‘Lord Powerscourt,’ the young woman said, laying a hand on his arm, ‘I should say that at some point in your life you have been a soldier. I should say that if you were faced, in your professional life, with a charge of your country’s enemies, all racing towards you at full speed like those Zulus with their spears at Rorke’s Drift our governess used to tell us about, you wouldn’t hesitate for a second before you killed as many as you could. But in your personal life, I don’t believe you could kill anybody, unless perhaps it was in defence of your family.’

Powerscourt bowed slightly. Suddenly Potemkin launched into an enormous fit of barking. He raced out of the room towards the front door. There was a tremendous ringing of bells.

‘Please excuse me, gentlemen, I must go and see who that is. Forgive me. I shan’t be long.’

‘Mikhail, what do you think?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Do you believe this Tamara person?’

Mikhail cut himself another piece of cake now the coast was clear. ‘I think she’s a very good actress,’ he said. ‘I think she’s been rehearsing this part for days and days. And I’m sure she’s holding something back but I have no idea what it is.’

Potemkin charged back into the room and sidled up to Mikhail. ‘My uncle used to give his dogs very strange names, Lord Powerscourt. He had a retriever called Raskolnikov once and then he had a pair of hunting dogs called Nicholas and Alexandra, after the Tsar and his wife.’

‘Were they any use?’ asked Powerscourt.

The young man laughed. ‘He had to get rid of them in the end. Said they couldn’t make up their bloody minds which way to go.’

‘Forgive me, gentlemen.’ Tamara Kerenkova was back, smiling at her guests. ‘Those, believe it or not, were my nearest neighbours, only ten miles away, dropping by to invite me to a party at their house next weekend. Now, where were we, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I am most grateful to you for your time, Mrs Kerenkova. It is nearly time for us to go and catch our train. Let me ask you this though: did Mr Martin ever talk to you about his work at all?’

She paused and looked at the fire. ‘Roderick wasn’t one of those men who have to tell you everything they’ve done during the day the minute they walk in the door. He used to talk to me about his work sometimes at the balls. I was amazed at how many people he knew at these functions, ambassadors, politicians, lawyers, financiers, all sorts of people.’

‘I didn’t so much mean at the grand functions,’ said Powerscourt, ‘rather when you and he were alone together.’

‘Pillow talk, do you mean?’ said the girl, laughing, and then something snapped inside her and her laughter turned into tears, tears which she could not stop.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, wiping away the tears with Mikhail Shaporov’s handkerchief, ‘I’m so sorry. You see, I told myself I had to be brave for this meeting and I’ve practised it for days in my head. I’ve tried to lock out of my mind the fact that he’s not here, that I’ll never see him again. It’s hardly any time at all since I heard of Roderick’s death, you see.’ She broke down again. The two men waited. Potemkin came to snuggle up beside his mistress. ‘I wanted to be cheerful and happy and English stiff upper lip and now I’ve let myself down.’

‘You haven’t let yourself down at all, Mrs Kerenkova,’ said Powerscourt in his most emollient tones. ‘You’ve been very brave. Please compose yourself and we’ll take our leave of you.’

The young woman made a desperate effort to control herself. ‘I just want to answer your question, Lord Powerscourt. About Roderick talking to me about his work.’ She blew her nose loudly on the Shaporov handkerchief. ‘It was one day last summer. We’d just gone to bed. He’d been very worried all day and he wouldn’t tell me what it was. I went on and on at him, the way women do about a secret. I was amazed when he told me. “Tamara,” he said at last, “my government are about to do a very foolish thing. They’re going to make an alliance with France and they’re going to call it the Entente Cordiale.” “Surely that’s a good thing, making alliances with your neighbours,” I said, not that I cared very much who was allied to whom, nothing like as interesting as who’s married to whom. Roderick sat up in bed and looked very solemn. “There is only one reason France wants allies,” he said, “and that’s to find other countries to fight Germany. One day we will have to fight Germany because of this alliance with France and it will be terrible.” Then he went straight to sleep.’

She looked up at Powerscourt, her eyes still red, her cheeks still stained with tears.

‘If there’s anything else you remember later on,’ said Powerscourt, rising to his feet, ‘you have Mikhail’s address in St Petersburg. And thank you so very much for being so helpful. ’

‘Not at all,’ she said, ‘thank you so much for coming. I hope I was of some use.’

Potemkin raced their carriage down the drive until it turned the corner by the side of the cherry orchard. Powerscourt was wondering what other high diplomatic secrets might have been divulged between Roderick Martin and his mistress in between the sheets. Another thought struck him when Volkhov and the Kerenkov house and the borzoi Potemkin were far behind. He remembered the question he should have asked. Suppose there was an estrangement between Martin and Tamara, a falling out, maybe an end of the affair. She suspects him of being involved with another woman. That could be why he has not told her of his latest visit. And when she hears of his impending return to St Petersburg, does she borrow her husband’s revolver and return to the city in a fit of Russian passion to shoot the man who had been her lover?

As they headed back towards St Petersburg, out at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo Natasha Bobrinsky was pacing up and down her room in stockinged feet, desperate for the time to pass. It was, she had decided, much much worse than waiting for a lover. There were still days to go before she could be released from her palace prison to tell Mikhail and Powerscourt what she knew, that shortly before his death Mr Roderick Martin of His Majesty’s Foreign Office had been received, alone, in his study quite late at night, by Nicholas the Second, Tsar of All the Russias.