Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

13

Natasha Bobrinsky was feeling confused as she sat in the train carriage bringing her back to St Petersburg. For well over a week she had been more intimately involved with the royal household in Tsarskoe Selo than ever before, taking care of the four daughters, helping with Alexis, trying to provide care and support for the Empress Alexandra. Strange fragments of news filtered into her part of the Alexander Palace. Natasha heard whispered conversations about strikes and industrial disputes, about the lack of enthusiasm for the monarchy, about peasant unrest in the provinces. The previous evening the Empress seemed to have cracked. She did not sink to her knees in private prayer once she had emerged from caring for the sick baby as she usually did. She stared at Natasha as if she didn’t know who she was and began attacking the aristocrats of St Petersburg. Vain, worthless, godless, hopeless, selfish, arrogant, self-indulgent, drunk, were some of her kinder adjectives. None of them, according to the Empress, were fit to serve the Tsar, none of them truly fit to speak for the soul of Mother Russia. And on the peasants she bestowed the blessings of the beatitudes: blessed were the poor in spirit for theirs was the kingdom of Heaven, blessed were the meek for they should inherit the earth, blessed were the merciful for they should obtain mercy. These peasants, according to Alexandra, were the true supporters of the monarchy. They knew instinctively about the sacred relationship between Tsar, peasant and God that sustained the Romanovs on their throne and kept the wheels of Russian society turning properly.

It was, perhaps, regrettable that Alexandra should have sounded off in this fashion, for Natasha had been feeling a growing sympathy for the Empress. Now, she thought, as the Tsar’s countryside rolled past her windows, she was not so sure. Maybe it was unfortunate that Natasha’s parents chose to spend more of their life in Paris and on the Riviera than they did in Russia. Natasha could see the appeal. Nobody said that her father, a man devoted to the joys of the table and the wines of Bordeaux, on which, indeed, he had written a short monograph for a Russian publishing house in Paris, had to spend his time in St Petersburg or Moscow. A career in the public service, ascending the slow steps on the ladder of bureaucratic advancement, he would have regarded as beneath contempt. And as for Natasha’s mother, she had never heard her speak of the Empress with anything other than a withering scorn about her German ancestry, her lack of social graces and the vulgarity of her personality. Natasha would never have claimed to be an expert on the peasants. But one of her brother’s friends at university, in a fit of misplaced zeal for the general advancement of mankind, had gone with some like-minded souls to live with a group of peasants, to try to improve their lot and welcome them into the joys of civilization. Their reception showed little of the spirit of the meek or the merciful and plenty of that of the poor in spirit or, more precisely, poor in worldly goods. One of Natasha’s brother’s friends had been beaten up so badly he had to be taken into hospital, their money and valuables were all stolen by the peasants, even their clothes were taken from them. Such people might embody the Tsar’s support in his wife’s view, but Natasha wanted nothing to do with them.

She was carrying the one word she had heard from the doctors to pass on to Mikhail and to Powerscourt. She had looked it up in the big dictionary in the Tsarskoe Selo library and felt as she read the entry that this particular page had been visited many times in recent weeks. As she left the station and set off to walk to the Shaporov Palace, the man in soldier’s uniform followed her once again. Hello, missy, he said to himself, I haven’t seen you for a week or more, welcome back. And as Natasha crossed the street with a toss of her head, the soldier grinned. You haven’t grown any uglier while you’ve been away, missy, that’s for sure. I do hope they’re not going to do anything nasty to you when they read another of my reports.

‘Haemophilia,’ said Natasha firmly when she and Mikhail and Powerscourt were all seated on their eighteenth-century French chairs in the Shaporov library.

‘What on earth is that, Natasha?’ said Mikhail.

‘Is that what the little boy has? The Tsarevich, out there at the Alexander Palace?’ Powerscourt had turned pale.

‘It is,’ said Natasha, slightly cross that anybody could have guessed her secret so quickly. ‘How did you know, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘It was a guess, Natasha. You said the word with so much meaning it obviously had to be something very important. But please, please, don’t tell a single soul about it apart from the two of us. It could be fatal. It may already have been fatal.’

‘But what does it mean?’ asked Mikhail, feeling slightly left out.

Powerscourt nodded slightly to Natasha as if to indicate that she should provide the definitions.

‘Basically, it means that your blood won’t clot,’ she said. ‘If you’re bruised from a fall, Mikhail, your blood will clot quickly and the flow will stop. But if it happens to Alexis, the blood keeps on flowing and ends up making a big swelling which can be very painful.’

‘What happens if he cuts himself?’ asked Mikhail. ‘Will he bleed to death?’

‘I’m not sure, I’m not an expert,’ said Natasha, ‘but I think I heard them say that if the bandage is very tight, the cut will heal itself.’

As the girl regaled her lover with the details of her time with Alexis, Powerscourt was wondering if this one word, eleven letters long, held the key to his dash across Europe in the quest for Martin’s killer. Had Martin learnt that the baby had haemophilia? Had he, somehow, tricked the Tsar into confirming it? Had he been killed because he knew of the terrible secret at the very heart and future of the Romanov dynasty? Or had he been killed because he refused to tell what he knew? Could he, Powerscourt, now go home?

Mikhail’s questions went on. ‘Do you die of it? Die early, I mean?’

The girl looked lost. The dictionaries had provided no help on this one. ‘I don’t think you’re likely to live as long as anybody else,’ said Powerscourt. ‘However many precautions you take, one accident could still prove fatal. It’s a royal disease. Lots of royal houses have had it, including quite a lot of Queen Victoria’s relations. It’s a nightmare for any royal family though. Do you assume that this child will grow up to succeed to the throne? Or do you have to resign yourself to the fact that he will be gone before he can assume the crown? In which case the child may find out that his own parents think he will be dead before he’s twenty-one, hardly a vote of confidence. You don’t dare try to have any more children. To have one haemophiliac son might be regarded as a disaster. To have two would be a catastrophe.’

Before he could elaborate any further the door opened and one of the oldest men Powerscourt had ever seen came into the room very slowly, leaning heavily on a stick. He was quite bent, remarkably slim, and with a cascade of dandruff flowing down one side of his black jacket.

‘Messages, my lord,’ said the greybeard, holding out a small silver tray for Mikhail. ‘Just come. Sent over from the British Embassy.’

‘Thank you, Borodino,’ said Mikhail. ‘You may go now.’

As the old retainer shuffled off, his stick clicking regularly on the floor like the beat of a metronome, Mikhail handed the messages to Powerscourt. The door closed as he peered at his correspondence.

‘Did you really call that old gentleman Borodino, Mikhail?’ asked Natasha sharply, as if she thought a reprimand was in order.

‘Yes, I did,’ said Mikhail. ‘What of it?’

‘Don’t you think it’s rather rude, naming him after a battle?’

Mikhail laughed. ‘Calm down, Natasha,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘When my brother and I were small he looked very old even then; my father told us he had fought at the battle. General Kutuzov’s right-hand man, he was, or so my father said. So he’s been known as Borodino ever since.’

‘Well, well,’ said Powerscourt, looking up from his mail, ‘I have some interesting news. My great friend Johnny Fitzgerald will be joining us tomorrow. God knows how his telegram took three days to get here. Maybe the Okhrana held it up. Anyway, Johnny Fitzgerald and I have served, well, almost as far back as Borodino itself!’

Amid the laughter he did not disclose the precise contents of his telegrams. From Lord Rosebery, asked to make certain specific inquiries of the royal household, there came a one word answer. Yes. And from Johnny, apart from the details of his arrival, Mrs Martin most likely suicide. More later. Eastern England, you cunning old serpent. Answer Yes. At last, thought Powerscourt. At last bits of this puzzle may be starting to fall into place.

‘Natasha, Mikhail, forgive me,’ said Powerscourt, rising anxiously to his feet. ‘I must go and warn the Embassy to prepare another bed. Perhaps I could buy you supper later?’

‘That would be lovely, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Natasha. ‘I don’t have to be back in Tsarskoe Selo until tomorrow.’

As Powerscourt left, his feet tapping out a slightly faster rhythm down the great corridor than Borodino’s, Mikhail looked anxiously at Natasha. He felt that he must make the most of the little time they had left before she returned to the palace. But he also felt that she did not realize just how dangerous her new knowledge might be.

‘Natasha,’ he began.

‘Mikhail,’ she countered, thinking this was the forerunner of some romantic advances and wriggling into a more comfortable position.

‘Be serious for a moment, please, Natasha, I don’t think you understand how serious that knowledge is. I think you could be in great danger.’

‘Haemophilia, Faemophilia, Mikhail, I don’t care. I know Lord Powerscourt said it could be fatal, but I don’t see how. They’ll deny that there is anything wrong with the little boy until the last breath in their bodies.’

‘All the same,’ said Mikhail, ‘they’re not exactly advertising the fact that a Romanov has got haemophilia, are they? Even the doctors were whispering the word when they thought nobody else was listening, weren’t they?’

‘I don’t see what all the fuss is about, Mikhail. And you know I’ve got to be back there tomorrow.’ Natasha twisted herself round until she was in what she thought might be a more alluring position. There wasn’t much room to display yourself to best advantage on these French chairs, she thought.

‘I think you shouldn’t go back there at all,’ said Mikhail. ‘I think you should write in and say you’re ill and can’t go back in case you infect anybody.’

‘I’ll come and infect you in a minute, Mikhail Shaporov,’ said Natasha, rising to her feet at the lack of any advance from the Shaporov quarter. ‘Wasn’t it on this floor you said there was that little room with the naughty Caravaggios?’

Mikhail decided to beat a tactical retreat. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘very well for now. Let me take you to this little room, Natasha. I think you’ll like it. The only thing is, there’s hardly any room to sit down in there.’

‘Why is that?’ asked Natasha at her most demure.

‘Most of the space is occupied by something other than a chair or a sofa.’

‘I’ve no idea what you mean, Mikhail Shaporov,’ she said, laughing at him with her eyes and taking him by the hand. ‘Perhaps you’d better show me.’

Powerscourt was just a few hundred yards from the British Embassy when he felt a touch on his arm. There was that bald head again, complete with the ingratiating smile beneath it. Powerscourt thought he would rather have walked all the way to Siberia than have another meeting with this face.

‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said Derzhenov, the Okhrana chief, ‘how delightful to meet you again. Perhaps you would do me the honour of accompanying me to my humble abode? I have something to tell you and something to show you. Both will be of interest, my dear friend.’

Powerscourt felt himself being steered away from the sanctuary of the Embassy and de Chassiron’s Earl Grey in the direction of the Fontanka Quai and its revolting basement. He wondered if Derzhenov had any more torments to show him down there. He rather suspected he had.

‘Have you been seeing much of that charming Natasha Bobrinsky lately, Lord Powerscourt? Such a beautiful girl.’

‘I have seen her recently, as a matter of fact, Mr Derzhenov. She was in good spirits.’

Derzhenov looked shiftily around him, as if he were under surveillance from some of his own operatives. ‘I should tell her to take care, Lord Powerscourt, if I were you, to be very discreet. Some of the other organs of state security have been keeping an eye on the fair Natasha and they might not like what they see.’

Powerscourt felt lost in the thickets of the Russian intelligence chess game, a pawn surrounded by marauding knights and bellicose bishops. Why on earth, he said to himself, is Derzhenov telling me this? Surely he is on the same side as this other organ of state security, whatever that might be, wherever it might be found. Relief came from the unexpected quarter of the basement of the Okhrana headquarters and a couple of guards saluting their master and his foreign visitor. On the way down the steps Powerscourt was assailed once again by the smell, a putrid compound of sweat, dried blood and human waste that rose to greet the visitors. The noises too were the same as before, the groans and smothered grunts of men whose lips are sealed and have no way to express their agony. Further up the corridor there was the familiar sound of whips meeting human flesh. But Derzhenov was drawing Powerscourt towards a door that led into a small courtyard outside. What he saw there took his breath away.

On the left-hand side, nearest to the wall, a soldier was holding back a couple of people whose filthy faces and bloodstained clothes showed they must be prisoners pressed into service as extras. On the far right were a couple of young men carrying buckets with coiled whips in them. Seated on a table were two or three more prisoners, spectators of the scene beneath them. A young woman was trying to hide behind them. The light was dark everywhere. On the right-hand side of the scene a prisoner, clad only in a loincloth, was being fastened on to a gridiron. Another man, naked to the waist, seemed to be supervising the fire underneath it. Powerscourt could see the flames taking hold below. He could hear the hiss as they leapt from coal to coal. Powerscourt thought it was probably the most obscene sight he had ever witnessed.

‘Do you not like my artistry, Lord Powerscourt? Do you not admire the echoes of the martyrdom of St Lawrence I showed you in the Hermitage? The prisoner in the loincloth, he even looks a bit like the dead saint. My two boys with the whips in the buckets – so much more appropriate than the fish in the original, don’t you think, Lord Powerscourt? – are under orders to set to work if they think the man may talk.’ Derzhenov paused briefly and shouted something in Russian. The man supervising the fire bent to his task with greater vigour than before. The two guards fastening the man on to the gridiron strapped him down.

‘We think this fellow on the gridiron has links with the people who blew up Grand Duke Serge in Moscow,’ Derzhenov went on. ‘We’ve got a couple of the gang here. They’re a bit squeamish down there in the Kremlin. The unfortunate Grand Duke was shattered into hundreds of pieces by the bomb. Our friend here’ – Derzhenov pointed to the prostrate figure, his mouth gagged, his face already contorted into a rictus of pain – ‘is only being burnt a little. All he has to do is to tell us all he knows and he will be released.’

Derzhenov inspected his little tableau. ‘Oh, Lord Powerscourt, I almost forgot. You see the girl at the back there, hiding behind the men? That is his sister. We thought she might enjoy the show.’ Derzhenov laughed a bloodcurdling laugh. ‘If he does not talk, Lord Powerscourt, maybe we will swap them over. The young man can watch his sister take on the role of St Lawrence, that should loosen his tongue.’

Derzhenov steered Powerscourt back towards the corridor. ‘Would you like to join us in a bet, Lord Powerscourt? We take bets, you see, on the time the prisoner will talk or the time he will die. You can take your pick.’

Powerscourt shook his head and wondered how much more he could take. There was always a double-edged quality to Derzhenov’s displays of torture. One side of it showed how ruthless he and his colleagues could be. The other was a warning to Powerscourt. If you don’t cooperate, then you’ll be next on the skewer or underneath the whips or fastened to the gridiron.

‘We must take one very quick look at one of the cells near the end here,’ Derzhenov said, almost licking his lips in anticipation. ‘It is, dare I say it, another of my combinations of art and interrogation!’

Powerscourt had visions of rows and rows of real crucifixions mounted in the style of Rubens and Caravaggio and Tintoretto and the etiolated saviours of El Greco. What confronted him in Cell 24 of the Okhrana basement was worse.

On the back wall of the cell somebody had painted a forest scene in the evening. There were occasional shafts of light visible in the gloom. In front of this sylvan idyll a great tree trunk had been fixed with chains. And hanging upside down was a prisoner, his legs secured to the upper branches. His hands at the bottom of the tree were bound with rope. His arms were locked in a circle round his head. Standing by the prisoner’s left side was a young woman, almost naked, her bare right breast not far from the victim’s chin. In her right hand she carried a knife and she was peeling the skin from the prisoner’s chest in slow deliberate movements. Kneeling on the floor a male guard, also equipped with a deadly knife, was peeling the skin from his lower legs. The prisoner’s body was totally covered in blood.

‘The flaying of Marsyas, Powerscourt, do you not think it fine? And the girl at work on his chest, maybe arousing the final pangs of desire from the victim in her deshabille? My own special touch, I must confess. Really, I am not sure which I am fonder of, this Marsyas in here, or the Martyrdom of St Lawrence without. It is so hard to tell.’

The prisoner uttered what must have been a scream. The gags on his mouth made it sound like a small groan. ‘We thought this one was going to talk about half an hour ago,’ Derzhenov went on, ‘but when we took the gag out he just spat in the eyes of his captors. But come, upstairs, I have news for you.’

This time the Okhrana chief took him, not to his office, but to a small sparsely furnished sitting room on the third floor. The only decorations on the walls were a painting of a monastery and a silver crucifix. Any notion Powerscourt might have had about a religious side to the Russian secret service was swiftly dispelled.

‘Forgive me, Lord Powerscourt, they may be using my office for interrogations shortly so I thought we had better find alternative accommodation. We have a tame priest or two on the books here, you might be surprised to hear. Often some prisoners will talk more easily to them. This is the room we give the priests.’

So that explains the monastery and the cross, Powerscourt thought. He wondered briefly if it was the famous monastery Dostoevsky used as a model in The Brothers Karamazov.

Derzhenov was coughing significantly in the chair to his left. ‘I promised I had news for you, Lord Powerscourt. And what exciting news it is! Can you guess?’

Powerscourt wondered briefly if he was to be taken on a special tour of all the Okhrana torture rooms in Russia from Moscow to Archangel with specially adapted carriages on the Trans-Siberian Express, soundproofing for screams a speciality, and specially adapted facilities for carrying passengers half in half out of their compartments, being torn apart by the speed and the wind.

‘I cannot imagine, General Derzhenov,’ he said, his mind suddenly very alert. He remembered the rash message he had sent to the Embassy from the Foreign Office in London saying that he hoped to solve the mystery of Mr Martin within a week. He had thought at the time that he might catch something with that message. He felt sure Derzhenov had read the cable. Had his catch now arrived? Was he the catch?

‘I expect notice of this audience is awaiting you at the Embassy, Lord Powerscourt, indeed I’m certain of it. But it gives me great pleasure to be the first to tell you in person. Your request, Lord Powerscourt, your request for an interview with the Tsar has been granted! You are going to meet with the Autocrat of All the Russias! Tomorrow evening! To think that I will not be there to see it.’

‘This is excellent news, General Derzhenov. Thank you if your good offices have had anything to do with it.’

‘One must always do one’s humble best to help one’s friends, that’s what my dear mother used to say, Lord Powerscourt.’

Powerscourt tried to imagine what Derzhenov’s mother must have been like, monster, harpy, she-devil, tutor and mentor to the Borgias and to Lady Macbeth, ogress, fiend, but words failed him. He wondered if she were still alive. Better not to ask.

‘I don’t suppose you know the time for the meeting?’ asked Powerscourt. If it were late then Johnny Fitzgerald might be able to accompany him.

‘Nine thirty,’ said Derzhenov, beaming with his knowledge and his ability to convey good tidings. He paused for a moment before dropping in, ‘Same time as the unfortunate Mr Martin, oddly enough. And that was on a Wednesday too.’ The Tsar at nine thirty. Death by half past one.

But if he thought Powerscourt might be superstitious, there were no signs of it. ‘There is just one small thing I would ask of you, Lord Powerscourt, one very tiny favour.’

‘Of course, General, ask away.’ Inwardly Powerscourt prayed that the good Lord would forgive him this and all his other sins.

‘If you could see your way, Lord Powerscourt, to telling me the gist of your conversation with the Tsar, insofar as it has to do with Mr Martin, I would be most grateful.’

Powerscourt thought he disliked the Uriah Heep Derzhenov even more than the earlier Attila the Hun Derzhenov. And he wondered, not for the first time, about the strange fascination Martin’s meeting with the Tsar had for his secret service. Certainly Derzhenov seemed to have no idea what was discussed or what was resolved.

‘General Derzhenov,’ Powerscourt went on, relieved to know he had a slightly better hand than he thought he might have had five minutes ago. Derzhenov had to keep him alive until tomorrow evening at least. ‘I am sure you know the responsibilities of a man in my position towards his government, particularly when the death of a senior diplomat is involved. And the discretion involved. But rest assured, if I can see my way clear to helping you in the manner you request, I shall certainly do so.’

And may the Lord have mercy upon my soul, he said to himself.

Derzhenov had one last card to play. ‘It so happens that I shall be in these offices tomorrow night when you return from Tsarskoe Selo. Perhaps you could pop in then, if it was convenient.’

Had Martin, too, popped in at Fontanka Quai on his way back from the Alexander Palace? Had that been the last place he had seen alive? Powerscourt didn’t feel happy.

‘I fear my Ambassador will want to hear my news first, General Derzhenov. But the next morning, have no fear.’

As he made his way out of the building, Derzhenov trotting by his side, Powerscourt thought he smelt something particularly nauseous rising from the basement. It was, he decided, after a couple of discreet sniffs, the smell of roasting flesh. Or, to be more precise, roasting human flesh. St Lawrence was being offered up as a sacrifice to his God once more.

His hair was dirty. His fingernails were black and extended far forwards like the claws of an animal or the talons of a bird. His beard was untrimmed. He smelt of the countryside, of the filth of the peasants, so alien to the salons of the capital. The most remarkable thing about him were his eyes, deep-set, grey, that seemed to disappear into pinpricks of light when he spoke. The self-styled Father Grigory Rasputin was the latest sensation to burst into the jaded world of the seance takers and the psychic-loving circles of St Petersburg. He claimed to possess two of the attributes of the staretz, the traditional holy man said to come from the purer world of Siberia to cleanse the capital of its decadence. Holiness Rasputin certainly thought he possessed. Had he not walked the length of Russia not once but twice, and been on pilgrimage to the Holy Land? And could he not cure people of their illnesses? There were many witnesses to his ability as a healer. People said he could even reverse the flow of blood, to direct it away from a wound, for example.

It was the Montenegrin sisters, Militsa and Anastasia, both Grand Duchesses, who introduced Rasputin into society as they had introduced the Frenchman Philippe Vachot years before. Within a short time women of all classes were flocking to his dirty apartment in search of an audience with him, or more. Rasputin had one unique advantage for a holy man who might be a fraud. He offered a threefold package to his women admirers, in the shape of sin, redemption and salvation. Before they could be saved, Rasputin assured the gullible and the neophytes, they had to commit sin. If they cared to step with him into his bedroom, soon known as the Holy of Holies, he would be happy to provide the sin in his role as another weak and humble servant of God. Then, in his role as Holy Father, he could offer redemption from their transgressions. Finally he would bless them and see them through to the final stage of their journey to salvation. The Montenegrins spread his fame. To the rich women of St Petersburg, they said, he brought the promise of carnal and spiritual satisfaction at virtually the same time. To those nursing the sick and the afflicted, they stressed his healing powers. The messages sent to the Alexander Palace stressed that here was a mighty healer. They reminded Alexandra of the words of Philippe Vachot that he, Vachot, was but the forerunner of one greater and more powerful than he. Rasputin, they implied to the beleaguered party in Tsarskoe Selo, was the Christ to Vachot’s John the Baptist.

Johnny Fitzgerald was very taken with St Petersburg. He liked the great buildings, he like the huge squares, he confessed most of all to having developed an enormous liking for the vodka on the train.

‘There I was, Francis, minding my own business, when these two fellows came in and joined me. They were pretty well gone by this stage but they offered me a choice of three varieties of vodka as if I was their long-lost relative. I’m sure I will be able to find some more of the stuff round the place.’

Powerscourt was delighted to be able to tell him that the Ambassador, of all unlikely people, had a small cellar devoted to vodka and might be persuaded to open up. More seriously, Johnny was able to tell Powerscourt of the latest discoveries in the case of Mrs Martin. None of the police inquiries, he reported, had produced any sightings of strangers going up or down the path to the house. Furthermore, a note had been discovered in the bureau in the study of Colonel Fitzmaurice’s house, apparently in Mrs Martin’s hand, addressed to her in-laws but not posted, saying that she could go on no longer. There was no further news of the mysterious Russian visitor, who seemed to have vanished into thin air. The Colonel, possible paramour of Mrs Martin, had not disappeared at all. He had taken himself to the south coast to recover from the excitement and wrestle with the treacherous winds and very fast greens of Rye Golf Course. On a normal day Powerscourt would have been asking for more details, checking on the handwriting, inquiring what the police view was and generally making himself a nuisance. But today the affairs of the late Mrs Martin and the little tower at the top of Tibenham Grange seemed very far away. Today was a day for her husband, the late Mr Martin. Was not he, Powerscourt, going to have an evening audience with the Tsar on exactly the same day of the week as Martin? Might today not be the day when he would find Martin’s killer? Or perhaps, he wondered, it would be the day when Martin’s killers killed him too. The Ambassador had only ever had two private audiences with Nicholas the Second since he took up his post and he regarded it as slightly unfair that a mere upstart, a hired hand rather than a member of the proper Foreign Office, should enter the imperial presence after a couple of weeks or so.

A party of six set off to escort Powerscourt to his audience. He was accompanied by Johnny Fitzgerald, Mikhail as interpreter, secretly hoping for a quick glimpse of Natasha, the coachman, a sergeant from the Black Watch and Ricky Crabbe the telegraph king who had expressed such pathetic longing to see the Tsar’s palace that even the Ambassador could not resist him. Powerscourt had a brief conversation with de Chassiron about the interview before he left.

‘House rules?’ de Chassiron had said, placing his beautifully polished shoes on his coffee table and fiddling absentmindedly with his monocle. ‘Not much different from school, really, going to see the headmaster. Sorry, Powerscourt, that wasn’t helpful. Just like going to see the King really, big handshake, bow, don’t interrupt him, however stupid the things he says, all these damned monarchs since Louis the Sixteenth have thought they were cleverer than they actually were. If you’re lucky there won’t be a flunkey there during the interview, though they may be listening at the doors. Flunkeys in my experience get very irritated if they think their master is carrying out business behind their back. It’s almost a criminal offence.’

‘And how should I think of him when I talk to him, de Chassiron? Foreign Office official? Adjutant of regiment? Manager of a small bank out in the country?’

De Chassiron smiled and lifted his feet off his table in one quick, elegant movement.

‘Not the first, Powerscourt, not the second, maybe the third. How about this though? Think of him as a rather dim Captain of Cricket at school, chap who can barely add up, can’t remember much history, hopeless at languages but very popular with the boys and a good batsman. You must have met plenty of those, Powerscourt.’

Powerscourt agreed that he had. As they travelled the fifteen miles out to Tsarskoe Selo, Mikhail was bringing him up to date on the latest number of strikes that were slowly strangling the country. Johnny Fitzgerald was peering out into the darkness as if Russian birds, previously unknown to him but of fabulous size and plumage, were flying in formation around their carriage. Ricky Crabbe’s fingers, Powerscourt noted, were still tapping messages out on to the frame of the carriage widow. Maybe he did it in his sleep. The sergeant from the Black Watch went to sleep.

The Alexander Palace was made up of a centre and two wings. All the state apartments and the formal reception rooms were in the centre. The imperial family’s private apartments were in one wing, the ministers of the court and the attendant staff in the other. Ricky Crabbe decided to remain with the coachman. He would, he said, take a peep inside a bit later. In reality, he was rather overwhelmed by the grandeur of the surroundings, the troops of horsemen riding round the walls of the park on permanent patrol against terrorists, the soldiers and policemen who stopped the carriage at the entrance gate and peered carefully into all their faces before writing their names down in a book, the sentries in their long coats striding up and down the outside of the building at regular intervals as if they were mobile flower boxes.

Powerscourt and his two companions were guided on their journey to the Tsar by a symphony in gold braid and a footman with a plumed hat. Through the audience rooms they went, through the Empress’s private drawing room, down a long corridor leading to the private apartments. In the last room at the end of the corridor the Tsar’s personal aide-de-camp indicated that Johnny and Mikhail were to wait there with him. He began an animated conversation with Mikhail on the virtues of the capital’s most expensive restaurants. Powerscourt felt his mind going far away to the ice on the Nevskii Prospekt where a fellow countryman lay dead, ignored and forgotten by the authorities. A strangely clad Ethiopian was on guard outside the Tsar’s door. As he opened it the symphony in gold braid coughed slightly and announced in perfect English:

‘Your Imperial Majesty! Lord Francis Powerscourt from His Britannic Majesty’s Foreign Office!’