The Blood Royal

Chapter Thirty

‘Born 1897. Which makes her twenty-five these days. High class family. Mother a lady-in-waiting to the Tsarina. I expect the little Anna was considered a suitable companion for the royal children. They had few enough of those. English is her first language, with French, German and Russian, of course.’

‘Who compiled these notes, sir?’

‘None of this is from the lady herself, you understand. It’s a résumé of snippets of information from various Russian sources put together by the Branch, with additions from other interested parties. She’s known to have arrived in London and signed her entry papers under her real name of Anna Petrovna with the joint sponsorship of the Princess Ratziatinsky and the captain of an English naval cruiser who seems to have been ready to vouch for her.’ He paused for a moment, deep in thought. ‘All too ready, perhaps. He was the naval gent who welcomed her aboard his vessel in Murmansk and brought her over here to England. The girl was in a poor state — reduced to skin and bone apparently — when the British consul enlisted Captain Swinburne’s help. He dropped her off with her friends, then she promptly went to ground in the capital. She had no intention of becoming better known to the authorities, it seems.’

Joe gave Lily time to absorb the brief notes on the first page before turning over.

‘This is interesting, sir, wouldn’t you say? It’s only an aside scribbled between the lines but it may be significant.’

‘A close and tender relationship appears to have been established between Miss Petrovna and the crown prince Alexei. The heir to all the Russias, poor little boy.’ Joe’s voice had softened. ‘What a weight to place on those thin shoulders.’

‘Are all the stories true, sir?’

‘Yes. I can confirm that the press and rumour had it right all those years — he was indeed very ill. Terminally ill. Haemophilia. Inherited from his mother’s line and untreatable. The only relief from debilitating pain and the constant threat of death from uncontrolled bleeding seems to have been administered by the foul Rasputin. The Tsarina firmly believed so. The prince led a sheltered life, his every movement monitored by family members and servants.’

‘And friends. It says here that Anna was frequently with him, telling him stories, carrying him about, making him laugh. How does Bacchus know all this?’

‘None of your business, Wentworth. I can just say that the Branch and MI1b and c have done intensive research into the expatriate Russian community … compiled dossiers, listened intelligently to people only too happy to tell their tale.’ He smiled. ‘Articulate lot, Russian émigrés and they all have a blood-curdling story to tell.’

‘May I speak from personal experience, sir?’

‘One of the reasons you’re sitting here with me now, Wentworth. Fire at will.’

‘I know what it is to get fond of a … disadvantaged … younger boy. It can be a strong feeling. One combining the best impulses of sister, mother, nurse and friend. I think it’s a girl’s natural urge to care for something or someone smaller and weaker. A doll or a pet animal often has to substitute. Combine that love with an overriding belief in the divine right of the Romanovs to rule … It’s something a girl would sacrifice her life for.’

‘Would she sacrifice someone else’s life?’

‘To take vengeance of some sort? Yes. Possibly. Oh, someone ordinary like me would rage and fume and curse and plan all sorts of retribution but wouldn’t necessarily arm herself and put it into practice, but …’

‘But you feel you could do it? If you were pushed?’

Lily swallowed and hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I could. Women do. It’s not unknown. But it would take a frightful force to push me over the edge.’

‘We’ll press on and find the origin of this impulse to slaughter, shall we? I don’t think we’ve got there yet.’

‘And here it comes, in all its disturbing detail,’ Joe said some time later, turning the page they had just read. ‘I should tell you that no woman has been allowed a sight of these documents. Bacchus gave clear warning that the contents are not fit for a girl’s eyes.’

A different hand had written notes in the margins of the typed text. Watching Lily, Joe was aware that her breathing was increasing in speed as she read. He listened to her sighs and the small noise of pity that caught in her throat.

‘Are we beginning to see it, Wentworth — the motive for the wholesale slaughter of a section of the British Establishment?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Lily scanned quickly through the text again. ‘Am I to gather that her whole family was killed off? Anna is the last remaining?’

Keeping his voice level, Joe replied briefly. ‘It seems so. Apparently the family behaved with great courage. Father, mother, the girl Anna and two younger brothers followed the Romanovs into detention in Tobolsk in Siberia. Many — about fifty — of their devoted courtiers made the move with them. They tried to follow when the royal family were suddenly entrained and sent off south and east to Ekaterinburg. Fearing the worst, Anna’s father made a fuss and the local soviet, with the loss of temper and discipline that characterizes these people, had the whole family arrested — with others — and taken off by their guards. Seems to have been a favourite trick of the Bolsheviks — throwing families down mine shafts … alive …’

‘And dropping grenades on top of them? Until the screaming stopped?’ Lily’s voice was tight with horror.

‘The investigators report that some managed to crawl away down side shafts where they lived on for hours, perhaps even days, before succumbing to their wounds. Or starvation. When the bodies were recovered by a contingent of the White Army that swept through the region, Anna’s was missing.’

‘And all this happened in the dead of night. I can’t begin to imagine …’

‘That’s the way they do things. In the confusion and struggling … the father had armed himself and defended his family with some spirit … no one noticed that Anna was being bundled offstage by one of the guards. A young and impressionable lad.’ Joe sighed. ‘Had he fallen for Anna, are we to suppose? Some of the Bolshevik guards were anything but the sadistic fiends they have been portrayed as … One of the Romanov guards, in Ekaterinburg, with starvation stalking the streets, got hold of the wherewithal to bake a birthday cake for the archduchess Maria’s nineteenth birthday. She was a bonny lass, Maria, flirtatious and friendly. The guard was discovered being given a kiss of thanks and the poor lad was sent off to the front. To certain death.’

‘Our Anna may well now wish she had gone to certain death with her family in the pit,’ was Lily’s comment as she turned the page and read on. ‘I don’t much like the sequel to this tale.’

‘It gets worse. Hardly a romance, is it? A lost year spent hiding in a village somewhere in Siberia in the family of this young ruffian. He claimed to have married her, but she denies this and says she was raped, kept as a slave, overworked and beaten by the members of the family. Finding herself with child, she chose to stay until the baby was born and then escaped and somehow made her way north to Murmansk on the coast. The consul secured her a passage aboard Captain Swinburne’s gunboat — we keep a snarling presence in those waters — and fetched up in London. Where she rejoined her compatriots, nursing her hatred to her bosom.’

‘Not her baby. Left behind? Perished?’

He flipped through the notes again, checking. ‘We don’t know. And Anna’s not saying, apparently. This stage of her life seems to have been reconstructed from accounts of her friends who have chosen to follow a less secretive way of life in their adopted country. Two or more accounts, all telling the same tale.’

‘And after her harrowing time she learns that not only is her own family dead, but Alexei too and her friend Tatiana. But, perhaps most shocking of all for a Russian of her class, the Tsar — “the anointed of God”! He was more than a man, more than a king. By the grace of God, he personified the Russian people. All things considered, this was a crime of heinous proportions.’

‘Proportions big enough to unseat you from your moorings, would you say, Wentworth?’

Lily nodded, her face glacial. ‘I’d go looking for my gun,’ she said quietly. ‘And a target for my rage.’

They were both silent for a moment, Joe turning back instinctively to look once again at the photograph of the five lovely girls in their white silks and satins.

‘She must have asked what the British monarchy did to help their cousins,’ Lily said. ‘I’ve heard the question asked — were the forces of the British Empire not equal to the task of rescuing one small family? They had over a year to plan and effect their removal. They can send in gunboats to save nations — surely a horse and cart to fetch out seven people could have been managed?’

Joe resented her implied criticism but replied mildly enough. ‘King George had his hands full at the time, you might remember, fighting the Germans to a standstill in the last stages of the war.’

‘I don’t think that would have weighed heavily with a Russian aristocrat. She would have focused her bitterness very precisely on the ones who had washed their hands of the Romanovs in their hour of need. Shall I speak their name? On the Windsors, I mean. Is this what’s staring us in the face? Vengeance? An eye for an eye. A prince for a prince? Her own prince was lying dead in an unmarked grave in a Russian forest. Ours is alive and well and being fêted wherever he goes. On a polo field, in a night club, down a coal mine — wherever he finds himself, the reaction is the same: unthinking adulation. He was engaged in a triumphal tour of India soon after she arrived here. Sporting and popular. Everyone’s blue-eyed boy. It must have rubbed salt in the wound. She was going to make him atone with his life.’

‘I fear you may be right, Wentworth. And will she stop at one? More royal figures may follow if we don’t lay hands on her. They’re safely up in Norfolk for the moment but they won’t stay there for ever. They work hard, they travel around the country. They have their seasonal movements, their social demands. And I’m quite sure they feel themselves inviolable. They’ll soon break out of my protective ring. It can only be a matter of time and patience on an assassin’s part.’

‘But I have to ask because I don’t understand — why the admiral, sir? What’s the link? Is there a link?’

‘Where, indeed, does poor old Dedham feature in all this? An opportunistic coup? I don’t think so. I fear there may be a link to chill the blood, Wentworth. There had been a series of crimes by the IRA … Scotland Yard itself had survived an attempted bombing. It was expected in the press that national figures were in line for assassination. What better cover for our Anna than the admiral dying spectacularly on his own doorstep at the hands of a pair of Irishmen only too happy to confess their patriotic motives to the waiting press? We all had Dedham marked down as number four in a series of IRA attacks. Clearly, the next attempt was going to be politically motivated also. And the one after that. And everyone knew the Prince of Wales was an Irish target.’

‘She’s not intent on martyrdom, then, sir? She hasn’t shot and surrendered. Or topped herself.’

‘Which can only mean, if I read her desperate mental state aright, that she wants to stay at liberty long enough to slay others. Covering her killings with the blanket of Irish nationalism. My God! We can expect more of the same. She’s going for the whole family!’

‘Sir? We’re thinking that this woman sacrificed Admiral Dedham as no more than a smokescreen for her further activities? A murder to conceal the motive for further murders? It’s insane …’ There was horror in Lily’s voice.

‘Quite.’ Joe hoped he could trust her to toe the line he was about to draw. ‘Listen, Wentworth — Cassandra must never find out. A hero’s widow should not be burdened with the knowledge that her husband’s death was no more than a distraction, a diversion from the main business … a cover for a thrust of mad, venomous spite directed at a completely different target.’

‘And those other poor dupes — the Irish lads?’ There was pity as well as a question in Lily’s voice. ‘Young Patrick told me he’d been used. He didn’t know the half of it!’

He was being offered a bargain he was glad to accept. Joe replied at once: ‘They also should be left in ignorance. They think they are dying a patriot’s death. We can let them go to the gallows with that last comfort at least.’

He closed the file. ‘We must dash if we’re not to be unpardonably late in Melton Square. I’ll fill you in on the Dedham scenario as we go. One last thing to do here. I won’t let this show go on a moment longer. I have the glimmerings of a scheme to neutralize this woman. I shall need your help. Tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock suit you? Here? Rather a lot to think about … Excuse me while I set this up.’

He grabbed his phone and asked again for Bacchus. ‘James. That article in the Californian newspaper that caused you such amusement … San Francisco Advertiser, was it? Still got the cutting, have you? Bring it with you tomorrow. Here, at nine. Two more requests. Can you lay hands on the box of Romanov bits and bobs we have in stock somewhere? … No. Not the box that was delivered to the palace last year. That was just body parts and I’ve no wish to inspect those bogus offerings … charred jaw-bones … severed fingers and the like … I’m sure they’ve been sent out of the country anyway. Hasn’t the Pope taken delivery? No, I’m talking about the other one …You know very well … Shall we call it the Ekaterinburg hoard? … Oh, I make it my business to know these things. Never you mind! Just get hold of it! I don’t care how we came by it or how many arms you have to twist to get it … do what you have to do. And lastly, our forger-printer chap — roust him out again and tell him to start flexing his fingers. Oh, one more thing.’ He glanced speculatively at the painting. ‘A camera? Can you operate one? Bring it along, will you?’