Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

1

London, December 1904

Lord Francis Powerscourt looked carefully at the number at the top of the page. One hundred and twenty-three did indeed follow on from one hundred and twenty-two. Earlier on in his perusal of this work he had discovered page two hundred and four coming directly after page twenty-three and page eighteen coming immediately after page ninety-one. His eye moved on down the first couple of paragraphs. There may be a place called Salusbury somewhere, he said to himself, there probably is, but it doesn’t have a cathedral and this one should be spelt Salisbury. Sissors should be scissors. Sacistry should be sacristy.

Powerscourt himself was the author of this forthcoming volume. These were the proofs of the first in a three-part series on the cathedrals of England. He had completed all his research, travelling to every cathedral in the country, often with Lady Lucy as his companion. Powerscourt remembered Johnny Fitzgerald telling him, very shyly, of the extraordinary pride he felt in becoming a published author, of seeing a physical book with your own name on the cover. Powerscourt now felt the same and his elder children were growing incredibly excited, demanding regular bulletins on the book’s progress and asking when they could go and see it on display at Hatchard’s in Piccadilly.

Page one hundred and seventy-one, Wrocester did not have a cathedral, Worcester did. People did not reseive the sacriment, they received the sacrament. Powerscourt thought he might finish these proofs before lunch when there was an apologetic knock at the door and the sound of a slight cough on the far side. Rhys, the Powerscourt butler, another veteran from Indian Army days, always coughed before entering a room.

‘Excuse me, my lord, forgive me for interrupting you, but there is a gentleman down below who wishes to speak to you. He says his business is most urgent, my lord.’

Powerscourt glanced down at the name on the card. Sir Jeremiah Reddaway, Permanent Under Secretary, HM Foreign Office. Did he know this Reddaway? Had he had dealings with him in his earlier life as an investigator? Was he, much more likely, one of Lady Lucy’s relations? But, in that case, why not ask for his wife?

‘Is he in the hall now, Rhys, the Reddaway fellow?’

‘He is, my lord.’

‘Show him into the drawing room and say I will join him shortly. And ask him if he would like some coffee.’

As he tidied up his proofs, Powerscourt wondered if his past had come back to haunt him, if some fragment of an earlier case had resurfaced and needed tidying up. Maybe it would blow up instead, the past returning to explode in the face of the present. Sir Jeremiah, Powerscourt saw as they shook hands in the middle of the drawing room, was extraordinarily tall and equally extraordinarily thin. Sir Jeremiah leant forward when he walked as if some bureaucratic truth or disobedient memorandum had escaped his clutches and he was pursuing it down a recalcitrant Foreign Office corridor. He had a long thin nose and a small tight mouth. There was a very slight air of menace about him this morning, as if he might despatch a destroyer or a squadron of horse against you if you crossed his path.

‘Lord Powerscourt,’ he began, sitting beside the fireplace and stretching out those long legs till they almost reached the far side, ‘please forgive me for calling at such short notice and without warning. I am here on the instructions of the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister.’

Powerscourt bowed slightly. The previous Prime Minister Lord Salisbury he had known quite well. The current one he did not know at all.

‘I have come, Lord Powerscourt, on a most delicate and most urgent mission.’

‘Forgive me, Sir Jeremiah, I do not know if you are fully acquainted with my current position. As of over two years ago I have given up investigations. I attend to no more murder inquiries in society or anywhere else. My detecting days are over.’ Powerscourt smiled at the man from the Foreign Office. ‘I write books now, Sir Jeremiah, books about cathedrals.’

Sir Jeremiah did not give up easily. ‘I look forward to reading your work as soon as it is published. But we are talking here of a matter of the utmost importance. In the Prime Minister’s words it is crucial to the well-being of the nation and the Empire. It is our wish that you should take one final bow on the world stage, Lord Powerscourt, in the service of your country.’

‘I do not think you have understood me,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I do not do investigations any more. I am a retired investigator. I am a Chelsea Pensioner of an investigator, or, if you prefer a parliamentary to a military analogy, I have taken the Chiltern Hundreds and resigned from the House. I do not mean to be rude but I don’t intend to change my mind for you or the Foreign Secretary or even the Prime Minister.’ With that Powerscourt smiled politely at his visitor.

Sir Jeremiah remembered the advice from a Foreign Office official who had seen Powerscourt in action during his time as Head of Military Intelligence in the Boer War. ‘You’ve got to tempt him, Sir Jeremiah. I know you can’t tell him much until he agrees to take on the job, but make it sound as dangerous and difficult as you can. That might pull him in. The man likes a challenge.’

‘Lord Powerscourt, please, permit me to give the briefest outline of our difficulties. Surely you will give your country the right to enlighten you?’

Sir Jeremiah was rubbing the tips of his fingers together as he spoke. Powerscourt suddenly saw what he must be like in Foreign Office meetings. Polite. Polished. Lethal. He was not going to fall out of step in this gavotte of la politesse as if his drawing room had been magically transported back to the court of the Sun King in the vast and draughty salons of Versailles.

‘Of course, Sir Jeremiah, you must carry out your instructions.’ Powerscourt saw that Sir Jeremiah did not like being referred to as a bearer of instructions, as if he were a messenger boy or a deliverer of telegrams. A brief frown shot across his long thin face before the customary bureaucratic mask reappeared. ‘But, as you say, the briefest of outlines, for my mind is already made up.’

Sir Jeremiah pulled another card from his department’s investigations into Powerscourt’s past. Somebody remembered sitting next to somebody at a dinner party at Powerscourt’s sister’s house, and the second somebody recalled Powerscourt speaking very eloquently about the glory and the grandeur of St Petersburg which he had just visited in the company of Lady Lucy.

‘Do you know St Petersburg, Lord Powerscourt?’ Sir Jeremiah was now purring slightly. Looking at his incredibly long legs Powerscourt thought he looked like one of those Spy cartoons that appeared in Vanity Fair. Perhaps he had already appeared there. Perhaps he should ask him. Perhaps not.

‘I do,’ said Powerscourt, in the most neutral tone he could think of. He was not going to give Beanpole, as he was sure his children would describe the man from King Charles Street, any hint of advantage.

‘Did you care for the city? Did you find the architecture and so on agreeable?’

Here was an opening, surely. Powerscourt slipped through it like a rugby three-quarter making a break for the try line.

‘Forgive me, Sir Jeremiah,’ he said, ‘I thought you came here to discuss a matter crucial to the well-being of the nation and the Empire, not to debate the architectural merits of northern Russian cities as if we were compiling a guidebook or an updated edition of Baedeker.’

The sally made no impact whatever. Sir Jeremiah seemed to be carrying steel armour many inches thick as if he were some sort of human battleship.

‘As I said, Lord Powerscourt, St Petersburg is at the heart of our difficulties. Four or five days ago a man was found dead early in the morning by one of the bridges on the Nevskii Prospekt. He had been murdered. That man was a distinguished member of the Foreign Office, in Russia on a secret mission. We need to know who killed him. We need to know why they killed him. We need desperately to know if he was killed by a hostile power and how much he may have told them, under torture perhaps, who knows, before he died. That is the essence of this task. Will you do it, Lord Powerscourt?’

There was not a fraction of a second of hesitation. ‘No, I will not,’ said Powerscourt.

‘I cannot take that answer as definitive, Lord Powerscourt.’ Sir Jeremiah, Powerscourt thought, was now moving into the ‘let’s persuade the Minister to change his mind routine’, a technique honed and perfected by the Foreign Office over many governments and many ministers and many centuries.

‘I would remind you, Lord Powerscourt, of the shifting sands of contemporary European politics. For many decades Europe was at peace after the Congress of Vienna. There were occasional interruptions, the Crimea, the Franco-Prussian War, Russo-Turkish and so on. But now we are in uncharted waters. Germany wants an empire and recognition of her power for her unstable Emperor. France is frightened of Germany and seeks alliances against her. A new naval arms race threatens the peace of the high seas. The Great Powers are fighting over the division of Africa like rabid dogs over a corpse. The Russian Empire itself is racked with unrest, its politicians decimated by assassinations, its Tsar weak and indecisive, liberals and revolutionaries of every shape and size conspiring for democratic change. The death on the Nevskii Prospekt is surely a part of this mosaic, this cauldron of uncertainty and doubt that has spread over Europe like dark clouds massing before a tempest.’

Powerscourt could barely restrain himself from smiling happily at the mixed metaphors pouring from the Foreign Office mandarin.

‘This is the task your country asks of you, Lord Powerscourt. Go to St Petersburg. Solve the mystery of the murdered man. Find out who killed him and come back to London. I need not tell you that your services would be exceedingly well rewarded. Will you do it? Will you answer your country’s call?’

Powerscourt was furious. ‘No, Sir Jeremiah, I will not. And how dare you come into my house and try to bribe me to work in the service of my country! I have served Queen Victoria for many years as an officer in her army. I have served her in dangerous places, more dangerous even than the corridors of the Foreign Office. I have risked my life in battle while you and your colleagues compose memoranda on future policy and fill the passing hours with meetings about the changing map of Africa or the tribal troubles on the North West Frontier. If I wanted to serve my King and carry out this mission I would never have asked for money. You demean yourself and your office by offering it, you demean me by making me listen to it. I have said No to your offer twice already. Now I say it again.’

Powerscourt rang the bell for Rhys. ‘And now, Sir Jeremiah, if you will forgive me, I have work to do. Rhys will show you out. Thank you for considering me for this task. The answer will always be No.’

Two hours later there was an emergency meeting in the Powerscourt drawing room. Johnny Fitzgerald had been summoned from sorting out his notes on the birds of East Anglia. Lady Lucy had returned from a shopping mission with the twins to Sloane Square. Powerscourt had spent most of those two hours pacing up and down his drawing room in a state of total uncontrolled fury.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Name?’

‘Edmund Fitzroy.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 how 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.