From the corner of his eye, Blackstone saw a woman rise from one of the tables.
‘Dimitri speaks Russian, Uzbecki, Turkaman, some Yiddish and a little German,’ she said to him. ‘That is perhaps three and a half more languages than most Englishmen speak.’
Blackstone turned to look at her. She was around twenty-seven years old and five feet four in height. She had black eyes and black curly hair. Her nose was a little hooked, and the slight smile on her full lips suggested that she did not lack a sense of humour.
‘Perhaps you can help me,’ he said. ‘I wanted a pint of bitter.’
‘Then try one of the public houses on Leman Street,’ the woman suggested. ‘Here, you will only obtain Crimean wine, Russian tea and seventeen kinds of Russian vodka.’
‘Which kind of Russian vodka would you recommend I try?’
The woman’s smile broadened, and she said something to the man behind the bar that Blackstone found incomprehensible.
‘This will be as good an introduction as any,’ she said, when Dimitri had poured large shots of a colourless liquid into two glasses.
Blackstone reached into his pocket. ‘How much will that be?’
‘Forget it,’ the woman told him, sliding a few small coins across the bar. ‘They only take roubles here, and I doubt if you have any of those.’ She looked across the room, and saw that a group of people had just vacated a table. ‘Shall we sit down?’
‘Why not?’
They walked over to the table, and sat down facing each other. ‘You’re being very kind,’ Blackstone said. ‘Is that just part of your nature—or is there some ulterior motive behind it?’
‘I am naturally a helpful person,’ the woman said, ‘but I am also eager to find out what an English policeman is doing in a Russian café.’
Blackstone grinned, despite himself. ‘Is it that obvious I’m a copper?’ he asked.
‘When you have lived in Russia, you learn to recognize policemen however well they try to disguise themselves. And you are making no attempt at disguise at all. So what brings you here?’
‘I’m looking for a man,’ Blackstone confessed.
The woman nodded seriously. ‘Does this man have a name?’
‘Yes,’ Blackstone said. ‘But I’m not sure that he would have been using it here.’
‘Describe him to me,’ the woman said—and it was more like an order than a request.
‘Twenty-three or twenty-four. Slight build. Blond hair. Sensitive features—perhaps almost aristocratic.’
‘Charles Smith,’ the woman said decisively.
‘His first name may be Charles,’ Blackstone admitted.
‘He is a journalist.’
‘I take it then that you know him.’
‘I know him.’
‘And why might that he?’
The woman smiled again. ‘Because this is Little Russia, and when an English journalist—or an English policeman, for that matter—comes into this area, he needs the help of someone like me.’
‘Because you know the territory?’
‘Because I speak the languages.’ The woman brushed one of the black curls out of her eyes. ‘I told you how many languages Dimitri speaks. But even he cannot communicate with half the people who live within a stone’s throw of this café.’ She laughed. ‘You English are so amusing. You think that because you can get from one end of your country to the other in a couple of days the whole world must be like that. But let me tell you, it isn’t. Russia is a vast country, and living within its boundaries are many different peoples—more than your narrow English brains can even begin to imagine.’
Blackstone wasn’t quite sure why it should sting him to be classified with every other Englishman the woman had ever met—but it did.
‘I may have seen more than you think,’ he said, noting how defensive he was sounding. ‘I served in the British Army in India—and I took part in the long march to Kandahar back in ’79.’
Rather than these words being taken as a rebuke, they only seemed to add to the woman’s amusement. ‘So you are a mighty empire builder, are you?’ she asked. ‘A believer in Britain’s imperial dream.’
Blackstone shook his head. ‘My father was a soldier. He married my mother, got her in the pudding club—’
‘The pudding club?’
‘Got her pregnant,’ Blackstone explained. ‘And then sailed off to India. The year,’ he added heavily, ‘was 1857.’
‘The year of the Indian Mutiny?’
‘That’s right. By the time I was born, he was already dead—killed by rebel Indian soldiers in Cawnpore. There’s nothing like growing up in poverty to teach you that the imperial dream is nothing but a hollow sham.’
‘And yet you joined the Army yourself.’
‘Yes, I did. My mother died when I was eight. It was the work that killed her. She was slaving from morning to night to get what little food she could for our table. After she’d gone, they put me in Dr Barnardo’s home for orphans. It was the warden there who suggested I joined up as soon as I was old enough. And I agreed with him, because it seemed the only way to escape from the poverty—my one chance to try and build a better life for myself.’
He paused. He had already told this complete stranger more about his life than he’d told most people who knew him well. Worse yet, he was starting to take himself far too seriously.
He forced another grin to his face. ‘To escape from the poverty,’ he repeated. ‘And it worked. Look at me now. I have not one, but two pairs of boots—a pair for weekdays and a pair for Sundays. But I’ve talked enough about me. Tell me about yourself. You’re Jewish, aren’t you?’
The woman smiled again, slightly wistfully this time. ‘If only it were as simple as that.’
‘Surely you’re either Jewish or you’re not?’
‘I am Khazari. At one time, my people controlled a vast Empire in what is now Southern Russia. We are a Turkic people, but in about AD 740—according to your calendar, that is—our supreme ruler, who was known as the khagan, adopted Judaism as his faith. Most of the ruling class converted soon after. So I am a Khazari, a Russian and a Jew.’
‘And an exile?’
The woman sighed. ‘Yes, that too.’
‘And why should that be?’
‘Most Russian Jews live in the Cherta Osedlosti—the Pale of Settlement,’ the woman said. ‘It is not a matter of choice for them. It is the law—a way of ensuring that St Petersburg, Moscow and the central part of Mother Russia are left uncontaminated by the Jewish presence. You would think that would make us bitter, wouldn’t you?’
‘I think I’d feel pretty bitter if I was forced to live in North Wales,’ Blackstone said.
The woman laughed. ‘We should have been bitter. But we weren’t. Instead, we were amazingly—almost blindly—hopeful. We believed that His Majesty the Tsar was a good man, and that once we had cast off some of our Jewishness and proved we could be model citizens, he would emancipate us—give us the same rights as other Russians.’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘The Tsar was assassinated in ’81. The rumour swept Russia that the murder had been a Jewish conspiracy. It led to the first of the pogroms.’
‘Pogroms?’ Blackstone repeated.
‘That is the Russian word for it. I suppose an English translation would be something between “devastation” and “riot”. What it meant in practical terms was that in over two hundred towns and cities around the Pale, Jews were attacked—and sometimes killed—and their properties were looted.’
‘How long did this go on for?’
‘It has never stopped. Even today it only needs one drunkard railing against the Jews to make the mob go on the rampage. Why shouldn’t they? There are rich pickings to be had from Jewish houses—and the rioters know that the authorities will do nothing to punish them.’
Blackstone took a cautious sip of his vodka. But not cautious enough! The fiery liquid seemed to be burning a hole in the back of his throat
.
‘When did you leave Russia?’ he asked, when he’d finished coughing.
The woman raised her glass and knocked back the entire contents in one easy gulp.
‘When I was sixteen, my father decided that things were never going to get any better for us,’ she said. ‘We sold all we had—at a tenth of its real value—and moved to London.’
‘And what do you do now?’
‘What can I do? I have education, but no training. Perhaps if I had to work, I would find some form of employment, but we still have enough money left to live modestly. And so I amuse myself by reading, thinking—and talking to people like you and Charles Smith.’
Mention of the journalist brought Blackstone up with a jolt and he realized that for the past several minutes he had forgotten about the case altogether and instead had been enthralled by the woman’s story.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
The woman smiled again. ‘My given name is Hannah. To pronounce my family name correctly, you would probably have to stuff a rag in your mouth.’
‘I’m Blackstone,’ the Inspector told her. ‘Sam Blackstone. What can you tell me about Charles Smith?’
Another smile. ‘What would you like to know?’
‘What was his interest in Little Russia?’
The corners of the smile turned downwards, forming a lightly puzzled frown. ‘He told me that he wanted to write a newspaper article about the lives of the Russian exiles.’
‘But you didn’t believe him, did you?’ Blackstone guessed. ‘Now why was that?’
‘Perhaps because I am an exile myself, and he did not seem very interested in my life. Besides...’
‘Besides what?’
‘Though he claimed he had never been in this part of London before, I got the distinct impression that he already knew something about some of the people who live here.’
‘Could you give me an example?’
‘He said he had read something about Count Turgenev, but the Count is the kind of man who goes out of his way to make sure his name does not appear in the newspapers.’
Blackstone leant forward slightly. ‘Tell me more.’
‘About Charles?’
‘About Count Turgenev.’
‘He first appeared in the area a few months ago. He is typical of a certain kind of Russian aristocrat.’
‘Which means?’
‘That he drinks too much—even for a Russian. That he likes money, but is rarely prepared to do anything to earn it. That he is a compulsive gambler, but feels no compulsion to pay his debts.’
‘And what’s he doing in London?’
Hannah shrugged. ‘Back in Russia, he probably got himself into scalding water...’
‘Hot water,’ Blackstone corrected her.
‘Thank you. He probably got himself into hot water, and came here to give the scandal time to die down.’
‘And Charles Smith seemed interested in him?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’d like to meet him if I could. Or at least get a look at him.’
‘I think that can be arranged,’ Hannah told him. ‘Come back here at seven o’clock this evening, and I will take you to one of his haunts.’
‘Will we be escorted?’
‘You mean chaperoned? Of course not.’
‘You seem to have a lot of freedom for a young woman,’ Blackstone said. ‘Does that come from being Jewish—or from being Russian?’
‘It comes from being me,’ Hannah said.
Twelve
Blackstone had walked past the club on Pall Mall many times, but it had never once occurred to him that he might one day pass through its impressive portal. Even now, as he followed one of the club servants down an avenue of black marble pillars, he could hardly bring himself to believe that he was actually inside.
The place reeked of money, he thought—not just of the prosperity that he’d had a sniff of on some of his other cases, but of genuine, unmistakable wealth. The men who sat reading their newspapers in quiet alcoves had never had to worry about where their next meal was coming from, as so many Londoners did daily. They need not concern themselves about what would happen to them when they no longer had the strength to tackle hard physical labour. Blackstone could almost see the aura of certainty and complacency that hovered over their heads, and felt an urge to walk over to one of these fine gentlemen and give him the shaking of his life.
Lord Dalton was waiting for him in the dining room. He smiled when the Inspector entered and gestured him to sit down.
‘I hope you don’t mind having our meeting over luncheon,’ he said, with a slightly apologetic air, ‘but it was the only time I had free during an extremely busy day.’
‘I quite understand, my Lord,’ Blackstone told him.
Dalton opened the menu. ‘There are those who believe that luncheon should be light, and restricted to no more than three or four courses,’ he said easily, ‘but I have always regarded it as my main meal of the day.’ He handed the menu over to the Inspector. ‘Would you care to choose?’
Blackstone glanced down at the card. The whole thing was written in some foreign language—probably French—and unlike in the ABC restaurant where he normally ate, there were no prices.
For a moment, he wondered whether Dalton had invited him to the club with the sole intention of humiliating him. Then he dismissed the idea. For surely, if the noble lord had wanted to make him look a fool, he would have chosen an easier, less time-consuming way of doing it.
The Inspector handed the menu back to Dalton. ‘I’ll be guided by you, my Lord,’ he said.
Lord Dalton nodded and ran his eyes over the bill of fare. ‘I think we’ll start with Hors d’oeuvres Russes,’ he said. ‘We’ll follow that with Pot-au-feu, Sole Waleska, Noisette d’agneau Lavallière, Parfait de foie-gras and Cailles en cocotte. Anything else we may desire can be ordered later. Are you happy with that, Inspector?’
Blackstone gave a nod that he hoped carried with it the suggestion that he considered Dalton had chosen well. And at the same time as his head was doing the nodding, his brain was wondering just what it was that he was about to eat.
For the first half of the gargantuan meal, Dalton did most of the talking, and restricted himself to subjects of general interest—the weather, the government and the preparations for the Jubilee. It was only when the lamb arrived that he took a sip from his wine glass and said, ‘How is your investigation proceeding, Inspector?’
Blackstone shifted positions, and tried to estimate just how close his stomach was to exploding.
‘It’s early days yet, my Lord,’ he said.
‘But you must have discovered something?’ Dalton persisted.
‘I think Charles Montcliffe was working on a story which he hoped to eventually have published in The Radical,’ the Inspector conceded.
Dalton grinned. ‘That would certainly have enraged his father. What kind of story was it?’
‘I’m not sure yet, but I think it might involve Little Russia.’
Dalton shook his wonderingly. ‘Whatever made him waste his time on such trivial matters when he could have held a responsible position in one of my companies?’
‘You offered him a job, did you?’
‘Oh yes. Several times. And not just because I was about to marry into the family. He was an intelligent young man. He would have been an asset to the company.’
‘Unlike his brother, the Viscount,’ Blackstone said, just to see how far he could push things.
‘Exactly,’ Lord Dalton said, refusing to rise to the bait—pretending, in fact, that there was no bait to take at all. ‘I doubt if Hugo Montcliffe would ever consent to he associated with “trade”, but even if he would, he’d be of no use to me.’ He took another sip of his wine. ‘By the way, I’ve been responsible for doing what I believe is commonly known as “saving your bacon”.’
‘You have?’
‘Indeed. After that little incident outside the servants
’ hall yesterday, Hugo was all for contacting the Home Secretary and demanding you be roasted over a slow spit. I talked him out of it.’
‘Thank you, my Lord,’ Blackstone said. ‘Why do you think he was listening at the door?’
It’s an interesting question. Perhaps he merely wanted to make sure that you weren’t giving the servants ideas above their station.’
‘I thought that’s why you were there,’ Blackstone said, pushing his luck once more.
‘True,’ Dalton agreed. ‘That is partly why I was there. But a fool like Hugo never fully recognizes quite how foolish he is. Nor does he often recognize a wiser man when he sees one. It is perfectly possible that my future brother-in-law feared I would make a hash of the whole thing, and wanted to hear for himself what was going on.’
‘Your engagement to Lady Emily Montcliffe seems to have brought any number of headaches,’ said Blackstone, emboldened by the bottle and a half of wine he’d drunk.
‘It has,’ Dalton admitted. ‘But it is worth it. I have never really loved anyone in my life like I love her. I would do anything for her.’
A sudden cloud of embarrassment descended over the two men, as both realized that their conversation had suddenly become far too intimate.
Blackstone coughed. ‘I apologize, my Lord,’ he told Dalton. ‘I had no right to say that.’
Dalton shrugged. ‘If you invite a man out to luncheon, I suppose you must expect him to start thinking that he can address you on equal terms. I like you, Blackstone. I think that in different circumstances we could have become friends.’
But the circumstances weren’t different, Blackstone reminded himself, and it was time to get the conversation back on a proper footing.
‘It might further my investigation if I had an opportunity to talk to Charles Montcliffe’s valet,’ he said, adopting an official tone.
‘You really think that Thomas Grey might be somehow involved in this ghastly affair?’
‘He’s disappeared.’
‘Servants disappear all the time.’
‘Do they now?’ Blackstone asked—appreciating, once again, how little he knew of the life of grand houses.
‘All the time,’ Dalton said. ‘Maids find themselves in “a certain condition” as a result of liaisons with soldiers in the park, and leave the house before it becomes obvious. Others join the household purely because they are involved with some gang which plans to burgle it, and as soon as the robbery has taken place, they vanish without trace.’
Blackstone and the Rendezvous With Death (The Blackstone Detective Series Book 1 Page 8
