TWO FINGER OF SUSPICION

Prince Felix Yusupov was interviewed by General Popov of the Gendarmerie. The date on his statement is Sunday 18 December, and it seems likely that this interview took place early, because by the end of the morning Yusupov, by his own account, had moved out of the palace where he had been ordered to remain.

Yusupov began by explaining how he and Rasputin had become acquainted:

I had first met Grigori Efimovich Rasputin about 5 years ago at Mournya Evgenievna Golovina’s house. During the following years I saw him a couple of times at Golovina’s house. This year, 1916, I saw him in November also at Golovina’s house and he made a better impression on me than during previous years. I suffer from chest pains and my medical treatment does not help substantially. I discussed this with Mournya Evgenievna Golovina and she advised me to go to Rasputin’s apartment and talk to him about it. He had cured many people and could be of help to me. At the end of November I went to Rasputin accompanied by Golovina. Rasputin did his passes and I thought that my condition had improved slightly. During my last visits Rasputin told me ‘we will cure you completely, but we still need to go to the gypsies, you’ll see good women there and your illness will completely disappear’. These words made an unpleasant impression on me.

Questioning then apparently turned to Rasputin’s alleged visit to the Yusupov Palace on the night of Friday 16 December. Having had the best part of a day to concoct and perfect his version of events, Yusupov was clearly at pains to explain the circumstances surrounding the rumours:

Around 10th December Rasputin telephoned me and suggested we went to the gypsies. I refused and gave him an excuse that I had to sit exams the next day. During our meetings Rasputin initiated conversations about my wife, where and how we live. He said that he wished to meet my wife. I evasively responded that a meeting could be arranged when she returned from the Crimea. However, I did not want to introduce Rasputin to my household.

Having emphasised his reluctance to invite Rasputin to the Yusupov Palace, Yusupov was now pressed to give his account of the night of 16 December:

I’d had the rooms of my Moika house refurbished and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich suggested I have a house warming party. It was decided to invite Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich, several officers and society ladies to the party. Given the obvious reasons I do not want to name the ladies who attended the party. I also do not want to name the officers who were at the party because this may create rumours and damage the careers of these innocent people. The party was planned for 16th December. In order not to embarrass the ladies, I ordered my servants to serve the tea and dinner in advance and not to enter the room later. The majority of guests were supposed to arrive not at the front entrance of the building at 94 Moika, but to the side entrance at number 92. I kept the key to that entrance on me. I arrived home at around 10.00p.m. I think that I entered the apartment through the side entrance at number 92, although I can’t be certain. Everything was ready for the guests in the dining room and the study. Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich arrived at around 11.30p.m.; he came through the front entrance, then the other guests started to arrive as well. All the ladies without doubt arrived at the side entrance at number 92. I can’t remember where the male guests arrived. The guests had tea, played the grand piano, danced and had dinner.

Yusupov continued to maintain that Rasputin had never visited the palace that night, although he had indeed spoken with him:

At around 12.30-1.00am I went upstairs to my study in the same building and heard a telephone ring. It turned out to be Rasputin who invited me to visit the gypsies with him. I replied that I was not able to come because I had guests. Rasputin suggested that I should leave the guests and come with him, but I refused. I asked Rasputin where he was calling from, but he refused to answer. I asked Rasputin this question because on the telephone I could hear voices, some noise and even female squeals, therefore I came to the conclusion that Rasputin was not calling from home, but from a restaurant or from the gypsies. Following that conversation I went downstairs into the dining room and said to my guests; ‘Gentlemen, Rasputin spoke to me a minute ago and invited me to the gypsies’. The guests cracked jokes and laughed, suggesting that we go, but everyone stayed and continued with the dinner.

Popov was clearly already familiar with the shot-dog story, which he must have heard anecdotally, and did not accept it as uncritically as Balk and the Minister of Justice, Makarov, had done. The Prince was asked to be specific. Who had fired the shot? Where and when? Yusupov said:

At around 2.30-3.00a.m. two ladies decided to go home and left through the side entrance. The Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich left with them. When they went out I heard a gunshot in the yard, so I rang the bell and ordered one of the attendants to go out and have a look. The servant returned and reported that everyone had left and there was nothing in the yard. Then I went out to the yard myself and noticed a dead dog by the fence. When I came out to the yard a person hurriedly walked away from the dog. He was wearing a grey shirt, similar to a military uniform, he was slim, but I could not see him well because it was dark. When I came back to the apartment I ordered the servant to remove the dog from the yard. I called the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich straight away and told him about the dead dog. His Imperial Highness told me that he had killed the dog. I remonstrated that there had been no need to do that, as it had created a noise and the police would be coming and the fact that I had a party with ladies in attendance would become public. Dmitri Pavlovich replied that it was nothing wrong and there was no need to worry. I then ordered to call a policeman from the street and told him that if there were to be enquiries about the gunshots, he was to say that my friend had killed a dog.1

Yusupov’s account of the murder night is a mixture of truth, fabrication and omission that others later contradicted with different truths and more fabrication and omission. Whilst not central to the account of the night’s events, some have questioned the basis on which Yusupov claimed he initially re-established contact with Rasputin, namely to seek relief from chest pains. Although his story was corroborated by family friend Mounya Golovina when questioned by Popov, Rasputin’s family and associates have subsequently denied this. Both his daughter Maria and his secretary Aron Simanovich have maintained that Yusupov sought Rasputin’s help to cure him of his homosexual desires.2

By Sunday lunchtime he had been driven to the Sergei Palace on the Nevski Prospekt to stay in a room provided by Dmitri Pavlovich. At least Dmitri, as a Grand Duke, would not be bothered by policemen. And a move would also take the heat off Yusupov’s parents-in-law and especially his wife’s young brothers. As Romanovs, the family had nothing to fear from the law, but Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia would prefer to avoid incurring the Tsar’s displeasure by harbouring a suspect.

The Sergei Palace was an imposing stone building on a prominent corner of the Nevski Prospekt, Petrograd’s busiest thoroughfare. It overlooked the Anichkov Bridge over the Fontanka Canal, and was opposite the palace of Maria Fyodorovna, the Tsar’s mother. Above its lower floors there rose a tall piano nobile or ballroom floor adorned on the outside with pilasters. The upper levels were occupied by the Anglo-Russian Hospital, one of many such charitably funded hospitals founded to deal with casualties brought back from the front. Dmitri Pavlovich had donated the space and a 200-bed hospital was installed in 1915. Its staff and equipment were a ‘gift from Britain to Russia’, having been funded by public subscription and promoted by the Foreign Office and the British Red Cross. Lady Muriel Paget and Lady Sybil Grey ran the hospital with the help of British doctors and nurses and a small complement of Russian Red Cross officials. Dmitri was glad to do something to help – noblesse oblige, and all that – and besides, his butler had hanged himself in the building so he did not want to be rattling around, when on leave, in a great shell of a place that had felt spooky ever since. The hospital had moved in during the winter of 1915, when plumbing and baths, sadly lacking before, had been installed. Family retainers (‘swarms’ of them, according to the exasperated Lady Grey) continued to occupy the attics. Dmitri’s apartment was accessible by a door from the main entrance hall and by a concealed staircase which led up to the doctor’s rooms.

As a Romanov, Dmitri could be constrained only by the Tsar himself. Yusupov must have felt relatively safe. The two young men had plenty to discuss, not least the detention in her own home of Madame Marianna Derfelden, the stepdaughter of Dmitri’s father. She was one of their own circle and, it was said, a former lover of Dmitri’s. Somebody must have told the investigators that she had been among the women present at the Yusupov Palace. She loathed Rasputin’s influence over the Tsarina but was the sister of one of his leading supporters. Her detention, as it turned out, did not cause her great hardship. Her mother wrote later:

When we arrived at 8 Theatre Square, where Marianna lived, we were stopped by two soldiers who let us through only after taking down our names. All the highest society was at Marianna’s! Some ladies she barely knew arrived in order to express their sympathy with her. Officers came up to kiss her hand.3

Another hot topic was Dmitri’s telephone call to the Tsarina before the party the previous Saturday night. He had heard that she suspected him of involvement, and had rung Tsarskoye Selo and asked to see her. She refused. This was serious, for the imperial family had taken Dmitri under their wing when he was a boy, treated him fairly and knew him well. For the Tsarina to snub him like this, she must be sure that he and Felix Yusupov had something to hide.

And worse was to come. At lunchtime, a telephone call from an aide-de-camp at Tsarskoye Selo informed Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich that the Tsarina ordered him to remain at the Sergei Palace under house arrest. He was furious, knowing that only the Tsar could legally issue such an order. The Tsarina had married into the royal family over twenty years ago and had never fitted in; the Romanovs, Yusupovs, Obolenskis and Galitzines – the aristocrats of Russia – had never liked her; she was prissy and boring and dull. But Tsar Nicholas, everyone knew, did exactly what the Tsarina told him to, and he was an autocrat who could do anything. Dmitri accepted her command. What else could he do?

Visitors started to appear. And among them all afternoon – indeed for days afterwards – the British Ambassador’s friend Nikolai Mikhailovich made a trying companion.

The Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich came several times a day, or telephoned the wildest, most improbable news, couched in such mysterious terms that we never really knew what it was all about. He always tried to bluff us that he knew all about the conspiracy, hoping by this means to worm our secret out of us.

He took an active part in the search for Rasputin’s body. He warned us that the Tsarina, convinced of our complicity in Rasputin’s assassination, demanded that we be shot at once…4

The Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich was known to loathe Rasputin. But he was not usually so curious, and had probably been asked to probe as deeply as possible. Sir George Buchanan wanted to know what had really happened because he had his own suspicions. Perhaps he also wanted to know whether Yusupov and Dmitri, a couple of social butterflies, were capable of sticking to their story. Because by now, London had heard something.

General Popov and Lt-Col. Popel got into their stride. Having yesterday had time to interview only Yusupov’s servants at the Moika, and Mounya Golovina, they now descended on several locations in swift succession. Popov interviewed Maria and Varvara Rasputina, and Katya their maid, at 64 Gorokhovaya Street. Popel took statements from Anya, the niece, and the building attendants at 64, and then headed uptown for the Moika, where there were police witnesses. After that he went out to the Islands and saw the bridge guard.

Rasputin’s daughters, having identified their father’s footwear, were desperately worried and willing to tell Popov anything they knew that might help. Maria, the elder girl, admitted that her father had been expecting to see Yusupov ‘the Little One’ late on Friday night, and that Mounya Golovina had seemed concerned yesterday after she had spoken to the Prince on the telephone.

I saw Prince Yusupov at our apartment only once – about five or six days ago, that must be around the 12th December this year. The prince has the following distinctive features: taller than average, skinny, pale, long face, large circles under the eyes, brown hair. I can’t remember whether he has a moustache or a beard.

Varvara, who was sixteen, had nothing much to add. Popel’s interrogation of Anya, the niece, confirmed what Maria had said but brought another visitor into the frame.

Around 1.00p.m. on 16th December my uncle Grigori Efimovich returned from the bath house and went to sleep. During that day my uncle had many visitors who had also visited him previously. Around 10.00p.m. a plump blonde called Sister Maria arrived, she was called Sister although she wasn’t a nurse. Shortly after midnight my uncle lay down on the bed fully clothed. Katya who lives with us and myself came up to my uncle and asked him why he did not get undressed. My uncle replied that ‘today I am going to visit the Little One.’ Later I went to sleep and did not hear when my uncle left or who with.

Katya the maid confirmed what Rasputin had said, as he rested ‘fully clothed and in his boots’.

When I asked him who [he would be visiting] Rasputin replied ‘the Little One, he is going to pick me up’ and ordered me to go to bed… I went into the kitchen but did not fall asleep. Rasputin had put on a silk shirt embroidered with basilisks but could not do up all the collar buttons. He came into the kitchen and I did up his buttons. At the time somebody rang the back entrance bell. Rasputin opened the door himself. The visitor asked ‘Is nobody here?’ Grigori Efimovich replied ‘Nobody and the children are asleep. Come in dear’. Both of them went through the kitchen past me into the rooms. At the time I was behind the kitchen partition for the maid. I moved aside the curtain and saw that the visitor was the Little One, known to me as Irina Alexandrovna’s husband… I recognised his face. I can’t tell whether the collar of his coat was up. A short time later Rasputin went through the kitchen. I was in bed by that time. Grigori Efimovich said in a low voice that he had locked the front door and was going to leave by the back entrance, and that he would come back through that entrance, and ordered me to lock the door behind him. I replied ‘Yes’ to all these orders while still in bed and locked the door when they went out. I have not seen Grigori Efimovich since.5

Mounya Golovina had told her that Yusupov denied having been there, but when Katya heard this she had insisted that she was not mistaken; the person she saw had been ‘the Little One’.

After that Maria Evgenievna Golovina has not visited us. The distinctive features of the Little One are the following: quite tall, slim, slim face, straight nose, dark hair, no moustache and no beard, blue circles under the eyes.

Popel then questioned the dvornik, the concierge, who would have been in the pay of the Okhrana. She was a woman of twenty-eight, illiterate, and held no great opinion of the tenant of number 64.

On 16th December I saw Grigori Rasputin only once, at about 3.00p.m. when he returned from the bath-house, when he went through the back entrance. He had not received any visitors in the morning because he was very drunk.6 Even when he came back from the bath-house he was not quite sober. He had not more than seven visitors between 3.00p.m. and midnight; they used to visit him previously as well. Only at around 10.00p.m. a lady I had never seen before arrived and stayed with Rasputin until 11.00p.m., when she left. The lady had the following distinctive features: blonde hair, about 25 years of age, medium height, medium build. She was wearing a flared dark brown coat and same colour, only slightly darker, boots and a black hat with no veil. When I locked the front door at midnight Grigori Rasputin was home. I don’t know when he left the house or with whom because he left through the back door.7

The yardkeeper who had been on duty at the apartment block that night said he had been outside, near the gates, when

…soon after 1.00a.m. a large car arrived at the gates. The car was khaki in colour, had a canvas top and safety glass windows; there was a spare tyre on the back. The car had come from the Fontanka direction. It reversed and stopped. A person unknown to me came out of the car and came straight to the wicket gate. I asked who he was visiting and he responded ‘Rasputin.’ I opened the gate and told him ‘Here is the front door’ but the stranger said he was going to go in through the back entrance. He swiftly went straight to that entrance. It was obvious that the person was familiar with the layout of the building. About 30 minutes later the stranger came out with G.E. Rasputin. They got into the car and drove off towards Fontanka… The driver looked slightly older than the stranger, about 35 years of age, had black medium-sized moustache, no beard, was wearing a black coat with lambskin collar, fur hat and red long gloves. Having left, Rasputin did not return home.8

Popel set off for Morskaya Street. There he interviewed Efimov, the policeman who had been on sentry duty outside the Ministry of the Interior, across the canal from the Yusupov Palace at 94 Moika and its adjoining house, number 92, on the night of the disappearance.

I was on my post at Morskaya Street building number 61. At 2.30a.m. I heard a gunshot and 3 to 5 seconds later three more shots followed fast one after another. The sound of gunshots came from Moika Street in the region of building number 92. The first gunshot was followed by a low scream as if it was a woman’s; there was no noise. In 20 to 30 minutes after the shot no car or carriage went along Moika Street. Only half an hour later a car drove along Moika from the Blue Bridge towards Potselyev. It did not stop anywhere. I reported the shots by telephone to the 3rd Kazan Police Station and went towards the place of shooting.9

Reluctantly, perhaps. Officer Efimov was fifty-nine and hardly looking for trouble. A moment later he saw the beat policeman, Vlasuk, coming across the Pochamski Bridge over the canal from the Moika side. He too had heard shots but he thought they were fired somewhere near the German church on the Moika. But Efimov insisted the bangs had come from number 92. Vlasuk, ten years younger but probably no more keen than Efimov to hunt down a gunman in the middle of the night, turned back to investigate.

Questioned by Popel, Vlasuk confirmed that there had been ‘three or four gunshots one after another’. The yardkeeper at number 92 hadn’t heard a thing, he said, but then Vlasuk looked through the fence and saw ‘two people wearing tunics and no hats’.

When they approached us I recognised them. It was Prince Yusupov and his butler Byzhinski. I asked the latter who had fired the shots. Byzhinski replied that he had not heard any shots. However it was possible that somebody could have fired a toy pistol for fun. I think the Prince also said that he had not heard the shots.

They left. Vlasuk claims that he stayed there, looked through the fence, and saw nothing suspicious in the yard or the street. Then he went back to his post, not bothering to report the incident ‘because I often heard similar sounds being made by burst car tyres’. Fifteen or twenty minutes later Byzhinski came, saying that Prince Yusupov would like to see him. There followed the interview in which Purishkevich allegedly said to Vlasuk:

‘Are you Christian Orthodox?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know me?’

I replied that I didn’t.

‘Have you heard of Purishkevich?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am Purishkevich. Have you heard of Rasputin and do you know him?’

I replied that I did not know Rasputin but had heard of him. The stranger then told me that he – Rasputin – had perished.

‘And if you love the Tsar and the Fatherland, you are to keep quiet about it and not tell anything to anybody.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Now you may go.’

I turned around and went back to my post. It was very quiet in the house and I did not see anybody apart from the Prince, the stranger and Byzhinski… I checked the street and yard again, but everything was still quiet and I did not see anybody. About 20 minutes later Inspector Kalyadich approached me at my post and I told him about the incident. Then Kalyadich and I went to the front entrance of building number 94 [the Yusupov Palace]. We saw a car ready to go at the front entrance. We asked the driver who the car was waiting for. He replied that it was for the Prince. Kalyadich ordered me to stay there and watch who was going to use the car… Prince Yusupov alone came out of the front door and drove away towards the Potselyev Bridge… I waited by the door of that building for some time. I did not notice anyone else and returned to my post. It was shortly past 5.00a.m. Kalyadich returned from his rounds after ten or fifteen minutes… The car belonged to the Prince. He always used it. I know this car well. It is small and brown in colour. I had not noticed any signs of a murder and explained the conversation with the stranger in the study as some kind of test of my knowledge of my responsibilities. Meaning a test of my actions following such an announcement…10

Popel interviewed one other person, who had somehow been left out of the interrogations at the Yusupov Palace the day before. This was a young man called Bobkov, the palace watchman. He too had heard shots – two of them, not very loud; he thought they had come from some nearby street, but then, he had been some way away at the time – outside building number 96 – and ‘I did not pay any attention to the sounds assuming they were the sounds of frost or drain pipes’. He had heard no scream. He had seen nothing suspicious. He had seen no cars coming or going. And ‘my eyesight is extremely poor due to my war injury’. Lucky to get the job as a watchman, then.

The nineteen-year-old yard man at number 92 Moika, the three-storey Yusupov house next door in whose yard the crime appeared to have taken place, who claimed to have been sweeping the pavement outside it from two o’clock in the morning onwards, was sure that the gunshots he had faintly heard had come from a nearby street.

Yusupov spent the Sunday afternoon in the Anglo-Russian Hospital upstairs from Dmitri Pavlovich’s having a fish-bone removed from his throat. He and Dmitri

…were sought by the supporters of Rasputin on the pretext of visiting some wounded patients. Lady Sybil Grey confronted them [the Rasputinists] and refused them admission to her hospital. Like everyone else in Petrograd she was well aware that Yusupov was the murderer and wrote ‘there was an uproar of excitement and thankfulness, workers toasting him, nuns blessing him.’ Only the Tsarina dissented.11

Dmitri’s mood was not improved by receiving a telegram of congratulation from his aunt, the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna. She had been a widow for over a decade, had become a nun, and was at present far from the city. Yusupov wrote:

Aware of the ties of friendship between us, and not suspecting that he himself had taken an active part in the destruction of the starets, the Grand Duchess requested him to tell me that she was praying for me and blessed my patriotic action.12

The Grand Duchess happened to be the Tsarina’s elder sister, and from her self-imposed exile exercised quite an influence on the two young men, who regarded her with awe. It is indicative of her unworldliness that she would send such a message, which compromised them both. The Okhrana were watching the suspects closely. They were so obviously heroes that they might, should they move fast and get the smart regiments behind them, be able to engineer a coup. Elizaveta Fyodorovna’s telegram was intercepted by the Okhrana and a copy sent to Protopopov, the Minister of the Interior. He was close to both Rasputin and the Tsarina and showed it to the Tsarina, ‘who immediately concluded that the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna was in the plot’.

She may well have been. Yusupov and Dmitri Pavlovich were in awe of her and in her time she had learned about politically motivated violence. Her husband, Grand Duke Sergei, had been assassinated in 1905. As a Mother Superior, she could perfectly well present a beatific countenance to the world while privately fomenting anger.

Albert Stopford ate an early lunch with a set of Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses and set off at sixteen minutes past one on foot for the embassy in ‘glorious weather: -20 Fahrenheit’.

…brilliant sunshine, in which the red Embassy was glowing. I found the Ambassador, Lady Georgina, Miss Meriel, General Hanbury-Williams, and Colonel Burn, who had brought the bag. I told them all I had heard about Rasputin’s disappearance. I also told the General that I had written home ten days ago that the political situation would end in a tragic dénouement. Whilst we were talking, there was brought in a copy of the Police Report with the different arrivals, departures, and police calls at the Yusupov Palace that night.13

General Hanbury-Williams was in charge of British military matters in Russia as the Ambassador was responsible for political action. The Police Report drawn up the previous day appears to have been shown to some journalists, as well as the embassy, on the Sunday afternoon. Statements came mainly from officers who had been on night duty in the police station across the canal.14 There were too many of these to ignore. Something that the suspects wanted to keep quiet had taken place in the early hours of the morning.

The document was eagerly scanned by all who could read Russian. Another document – a ‘Memorandum, privately circulated’ – had just appeared in English and was read with just as much avidity. This summarised what was being said socially. Rasputin, the gossip said, had been shot in a basement room of the Yusupov Palace; Yusupov, Dmitri Pavlovich, Fyodor and Nikita (Yusupov’s two young brothers-in-law) were all in the palace and knew about it. ‘Conjointly with other Princes of the Blood, including the sons of the late Grand Duke Konstantin, they had decided some time previously to “remove” Rasputin, because they regarded him as the cause of a dangerous scandal affecting the Dynasty and the Empire.’15 The plot was well known, but action did not become imperative until the Duma was summarily prorogued last Friday. Lots were drawn and an assassin chosen; the unlucky one – a son of Grand Duke Konstantin – withdrew, leaving Yusupov to do the deed. The conspirators often met Rasputin at the palace and on this occasion the invitees included ‘some of Rasputin’s lady friends’ to entice him. The report continued:

A revolver was placed in [Rasputin’s] hand, but he flatly declined to commit suicide and discharged the weapon somewhere in the direction of Grand Duke Dmitri. The bullet smashed a pane of glass, and the sound attracted the attention of the police outside. Subsequently he was killed and his body removed to a place unknown, presumably Tsarskoye Selo.16

Stopford took a look at both reports (it is even probable that he wrote the ‘Memorandum privately circulated’) and left to do some networking.

Versions of the Police Report were already being written up for publication in tomorrow’s newspaper. Quite how the Times’s correspondent in Petrograd, Robert Wilton, got hold of it is unknown, but he had it long enough to translate it and cable a copy to his London office, where it never arrived.

Head of British Intelligence Samuel Hoare, who did not share Stopford’s talent for being in the right place at the right time, was meanwhile compiling his own report for his boss in London, as best he could. Later that day he scribbled a telegram. In his autobiography he emphasises the significance of this.

On New Year’s Eve, 1916, I sent to London an urgent wire, coded for greater secrecy by Lady Maud, that on the previous morning, Rasputin had been killed in Petrograd in a private house. Mine was the first news of the assassination that reached the west, and I was the first non-Russian to hear afterwards of the finding of the corpse.17

In England this Sunday was, indeed, New Year’s Eve. But there is more to this, for Hoare’s telegram, retrieved from the archive, reads as follows:

Decode of Telegram

Dec. 18/31 Urgent. Private for C:-

News correct that Rasputin was killed in Petrograd in private house early morning of Dec 30.18

Why ‘News correct that’? His autobiography states that his was the first message ‘C’ got, yet the telegram implies that he is writing in response to a query. In his eyrie in Whitehall Court, this wintry London Sunday, the workaholic ‘C’, Mansfield Cumming, Head of MI1c, the Secret Intelligence Service, must have heard something. If so he would have wondered why Hoare – who was after all in charge of the British Intelligence Mission – had not been the first to tell him about it.

Hoare was desperate for reliable information. Typed out on Monday before despatch, his report – corrected later in ink – alleges that Rasputin had last been seen on Thursday (not Friday) night; that Rasputin’s flat was on the English Prospekt, which it was not; that ‘several’ Grand Dukes were present at the shooting. He amended this document again, slightly, when reprinting it in his autobiography. However, it goes on to state something that does have the ring of truth.

I am informed that the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Count Elston [Prince Yusupov was also Count Sumarokov-Elston] were together all the afternoon of December 31st and when asked, they make no secret of the fact that Rasputin has been killed.

Hoare had not so many friends in well-informed circles that he could have got it from anywhere else. He padded his report with quotations from Sunday’s (and later Monday’s) Petrograd papers, at least one of which printed extracts from the Police Report of the previous day that Stopford had seen. It also included a passage about galoshes and the following, in Hoare’s translation:

A freshly made hole in the ice was discovered and footsteps passing backwards and forwards from it in different directions. Divers were given the duty of examining the bed of the river.

The divers did not necessarily understand the importance of their task. The body must absolutely be found, and identified by the imperial couple. A Rasputin who had been killed would polarise opinion in circles that mattered, but a Rasputin who might have escaped ‘thanks to the Grace of God’ would be the object of superstitious wonder. The Tsarina’s faith in his powers of precognition and healing had never wavered. In his lifetime she had almost worshipped him. Should he never be seen again, she and Vyrubova and the coven of middle-class witches who had followed Rasputin in life would believe in him as the second Messiah. Not only this, but a wave of ‘false Rasputins’ might arise, claiming his identity. At this rate any beardie with a crucifix might gain a following among the impressionable and isolated.

While Hoare cobbled together all he knew, a young woman, with a companion and a maid, was gliding unchallenged away from the city. Her departure had been noted, the reception book of the hotel where she had stayed in Petrograd had been examined, and the staff had been questioned.

Report, December, 1916

To Director of the Department of Police.

A dancer of the Moscow Imperial Theatres Vera Alexeyevna KORALLI, 27 years of age, of the Orthodox faith, arrived in the capital from Moscow, checked in at the Hotel Medved (Koniushennaya ul.) and occupied rooms 103 and 115. At the reception she produced her passport issued by the Moscow Imperial Theatres Office on 16th August, 1914, No 2071, for five years. She is accompanied by her maidservant, a peasant woman, Wilkomir Uezd, Zhmudkaya Volost, and Veronika Osipovna Kuhto, 25 years of age, Catholic, passport issued by the constable of the 2nd police station, Tverskoi district, the Moscow City Police on the 16th June, 1915 No 203, for five years.

19th December, on a train departing at 7.20p.m., the above left for Moscow. The tickets were delivered to them by a lackey in court uniform. During the time of her residence in the capital, KORALLI was visited by: His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke DMITRI PAVLOVICH, escorted by unknown officer, and adjutant of His Imperial Highness MIKHAIL ALEXANDROVICH.

KORALLI also met with another occupant of the hotel, assistant attorney Alexandre Afanasyevich KAZANTSEV, 27 years of age, Orthodox, passport issued by the constable of the 1st police station, Prechistenka district, the Moscow City Police on the 16th July, 1915 No 2038, for five years.

Over the time of her stay in the capital, KORALLI spent every night at the hotel and was not seen leaving the hotel on the night of 16/17 December this year.

Nothing is known to the prejudice of any the above by the department I am in charge of.

Signed: the Chief of Department, Maj.-General Globachev.19

The Okhrana had been told to back off. Vera Koralli, Dmitri Pavlovich’s mistress, was believed to have been at the Yusupov Palace on Friday night but she was allowed to leave town unhindered. This could only be because her lover was a Romanov.

Had he known this, the Hon. Albert Stopford would have drawn comfort from the intelligence. As it was, that Sunday he was out picking up the gen as best he could. He had heard at the embassy that Prince Yusupov had been at the Anglo-Russian Hospital that afternoon, having a fish-bone removed. Stopford, who knew both Dmitri Pavlovich and Felix Yusupov well, had until now assumed that the wanted Prince was serenely en route to the Crimea. The Yusupov Palace had been assuring callers that Prince Felix had gone there. The second, and much more worrying, piece of news came from his friend the Grand Duchess Vladimir, to whom, with Sir George’s permission, he had shown the Police Report. The Grand Duchess told him that Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich had been placed under house arrest.:

…an unheard-of thing, for since the murder of the Emperor Paul (1801) no grand Duke has ever been put under arrest on a grave charge, and on that occasion the Emperor Paul lost his life for only threatening it.20

This was bad enough. But later that evening she had heard from Dmitri Pavlovich himself that it was the Empress who had ordered him to be detained. In other words, the Tsarina had not acted within her rights, yet her orders had been carried out. What the British most feared was a palace coup engineered by the Tsarina; and here, de facto, was the first sign of it.

Over dinner with the Grand Duchess, Stopford discovered that Dmitri Pavlovich had spoken to the Grand Duchess Vladimir and sworn that he had left Yusupov’s party at four o’clock on Saturday morning and was innocent.

We were all petrified by the Grand Duke Dmitri’s denying all knowledge of the affair, and saying that, although he had been to supper there, he had left before four.

He was ‘petrified’. The implication is that Dmitri had been expected to take the rap. Nobody else would do, because nobody else was fully a Romanov, with a cast-iron excuse to get away with murder. If Dmitri refused to take blame, then Yusupov might be accused and put on trial for his life. Yusupov’s position was by no means as secure as Dmitri’s and he knew it; with the prospect of a firing squad in sight, he would crack.


And if he did, what might he reveal?

But maybe Dmitri was just being careful. After all, telephones were not secure. Comforting himself with this thought, Stopford walked rapidly to the embassy rather than ring with the news.

There were lights on the Embassy staircase, so I asked if I could see Lady Georgina, and was shown up to the Ambassador’s bedroom; he was just going to undress. I told him of the Grand Duke Dmitri’s absolute denial of any share in the murder – which, after all, is only natural, though he swore it on his own icon. If all the conspirators acknowledged their complicity on the telephone to their friends and relations it might be disastrous to the actual perpetrator or to the whole lot.

I found the Ambassador very much perturbed and tired. He walked up and down the room; I sat by the fire.21

Sir George Buchanan was not a young man. He cut a strange figure, and with his spare frame, red face, shock of white hair and droopy white moustache was a dream for caricaturists. Dmitri’s denial was clearly unexpected.

In Hoare’s flat across town, it was getting late, and he had to finish his report to get it typed up for despatch tomorrow.

The feeling in Petrograd is most remarkable. All classes speak and act as if some great weight had been taken from their shoulders. Servants, isvostchiks, working men, all freely discuss the event…

Servants and cab-drivers were the only people he would have had the opportunity to ask. Nonetheless, he felt compelled to finish on a predictive note, so he took a wild guess.

What effect it will have in Government circles is difficult to say. My own view is that it will lead to the immediate dismissal of Protopopov and of various directors of the Secret Police, whilst in the course of the next few weeks the most notorious of Rasputin’s clientele will gradually retire into private life. I would suggest for instance that careful attention should be paid to any changes that take place in the Department of the Interior and the Holy Synod, where Rasputin’s influence was always strongest.22

He turned out to be completely wrong.

In the embassy, having wished Buchanan goodnight, Stopford went to sit with Lady Georgina. At half-past ten she got a phone call from the Reuters man, Pierre Beringer, to say that the police of the district where Rasputin lived had ‘seen an automobile go to his house at about 4a.m., fetch him and take him away’. Yet there was still no proof that he was dead. Who knew what to believe?

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