The Red Staircase

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘Yes, yes, I know, but what is it you are trying to tell me?’

  ‘But I have told you,’ she said irritably. ‘You have been so rash. Mad. Yes, madness, madness.’ She was rambling a little. ‘Can Russia do without a revolution? Yes, it must, it must. Tell your husband, tell Peter.’

  From behind me I heard a movement. I turned round to see a tall old man pushing open the door that led, eventually, to the back staircase on to the Molka Quay. I knew him.

  ‘General Rahl,’ I said.

  He ignored me and made his way over to the bed. ‘Irene. My old friend, my dear old friend.’ He looked as frail as the Princess herself, if not frailer. I thought I saw in them and their relationship the nucleus of ‘the Piter Circle’ which had met up here.

  ‘Ah, my lover, my last lover and my best,’ came from the old lady’s lips.

  Perhaps he looked surprised, perhaps he did not. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s saying,’ I murmured.

  ‘Irene,’ he said tenderly. ‘Always your own.’

  By now I was alarmed by the old lady’s appearance. The rouge stood out on her cheeks in streaks, beneath it she was grey. ‘Love and treachery,’ she said clearly. ‘Remember, Rose, love betrays.’ Her head fell back on the pillow.

  Ignoring General Rahl’s protests, I took her wrist. I could feel no pulse. I stood there for a second holding her hand. The old soldier, tears now beginning to run down his face and into his beard; the servant wailing on her knees; a cigarette still burning on the counterpane – it made a macabre picture.

  ‘I’ll tell Madame Denisov,’ I said abruptly. ‘She must call a doctor.’

  I ran down the Red Staircase, through the upper halls and down the main staircase to Dolly’s room. She had just finished dressing, and when I flung the news at her she gave a little scream.

  ‘How did it happen? How did you come to be there?’

  ‘She sent for me. We did talk for a little, then she just collapsed, Dolly.’

  ‘Oh, but I should have been there.’ Tears were already rolling down her cheeks. In spite of all she had said in the past, I knew it was genuine grief.

  ‘It was very quick, or I would have sent for you,’ I said apologetically. ‘As it is I have come at once.’

  ‘I must go to her. She must not be left alone, not in death.’

  ‘General Rahl is there. Can I help?’

  ‘No, no.’ Her hands were trembling. ‘I will give all the necessary orders. But you could tell Ariadne for me.’ And she hurried away.

  I went then to tell Ariadne. ‘How can we now go to Paris?’ I thought. Even in grief, selfish thoughts obtrude.

  As Dolly hurried up the great staircase, Ariadne appeared at her own door to ask what the noise was all about. ‘Is it Aunt Irene?’ It was obvious that some quarrel had taken place between Dolly and Ariadne, because through Dolly’s upward rush I heard her call: ‘Now, we shall have an end to your foolishness, miss. Now, I shall get you out of Russia.’

  As I came up to Ariadne, I said: ‘What did your mother mean?’

  Sullenly Ariadne said: ‘I suppose that we couldn’t leave Russia while my great-aunt remained alive.’

  ‘Certainly we seem to be leaving,’ I said. ‘Peter is taking me to Paris.’

  ‘What? I can’t believe it. Never. He’d never leave Russia. He couldn’t do it. Doesn’t he remember what happened to Herzen and to Bakunin? Out of Russia he would have no more credit.’

  ‘I don’t know exactly what it is you are saying, Ariadne,’ I said coldly, ‘but whatever it is, it is already far too much.’ I pushed her into her room, closed the door and stood with my back against it. ‘Now explain yourself.’ The names she had used were the names of famous Anarchists.

  Ariadne was quite silent.

  ‘Tell me why you left the Smolny Institute. Tell me really why. Was it because you and Marisia Lazarev had friends who were more than liberal in feeling, who were revolutionaries?’

  ‘That was partly it.’ She shrugged. ‘But perhaps the school suspected more than it could prove. Of that side of things they really knew very little. Marisia is so clever. But she does not go far enough.’

  ‘And you do? I see,’ I said slowly, wondering if I did.

  ‘I don’t suppose you do. You are very delightful, Rose, but sometimes rather naïve.’ She gave me a sideways glance. ‘And someone, you see, had to make sure of you once we had got you here.’

  I couldn’t say anything to her.

  ‘I do truly like you, Rose. I’ve never pretended. But we had to be sure of you, don’t you see?’

  ‘What do you mean, sure of me? You were sure of me. I was doing what your mother brought me here to do – she pretended it was for the work at Shereshevo, but I know now it was for what I was to inherit.’

  ‘Is that all it was? Oh, Rose, I despair of you,’ she said ironically. ‘Anyway, you had better talk to my Uncle Peter. Ask him.’

  ‘What do you accuse him of?’ I said. I was shouting.

  ‘He is one of us.’

  ‘I believe him to be good and gentle. He let me keep my hare. Don’t you remember the white hare?’

  ‘Your hare!’ said Ariadne contemptuously. ‘Have you ever been to see that hare? Did you ever go and look for it again? I expect its neck was broken within a minute of its being taken downstairs.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I was almost wild with anger.

  ‘Go and look then.’ She gave me a push towards the door; she was as angry with me as I was with her.

  I had been just once before, and that recently with Peter, in the deepest regions of the Denisov house, so I already knew that it was quite unlike the kitchen regions of any English or Scottish town house: instead of the labyrinth of narrow passageways and pantries and kitchens and servants’ halls with which I was familiar, there was one great cavern. The room was everything – kitchen, wine-cellar, buttery and servants’ dormitory – and was dimly lighted and over-hot. I was noticed, I suppose, as I stood there, but no one spoke to me.

  I knew at that moment that my little white hare was not here. How stupid I had been to believe in that fantasy for one moment.

  I stood there with the nasty taste of deception in my mouth. Automatically, and without taking conscious thought, I went down the short passage to the stairwell and into the room Peter and I had visited before.

  It was empty of people. The Chinese pagoda was gone. So was my German servant, and so was Mr Jakob. In what passed for daylight in these subterranean regions I saw a small room with a large, plain wooden table surrounded by upright chairs. Against one wall was one of those large, hooded leather chairs in which the door-man used to sit in great houses. On the wall above was a battery of the mouth pieces of those allegedly disused speaking-tubes, set in rows of four, one above the other, with the names of the rooms to which they led written by them. It was quite true that most of these speaking-tubes looked as if the dust of decades was lodged in them, but one or two were bright, as if handled recently. Above one such I read, in ancient Russian script: the French Room.

  Surely my bedroom was the French Room?

  I think I knew then that some of the whispers and sibilant calls of my name had come through this tube. The voice had been real, not just imagination. And if this were so, then that first voice I had heard had been real also, and not imagination. Conspirators could talk to each other secretly through such tubes, I thought. Had this been their use?

  There was something about this room which stank of quiet talk, of company.

  Truly this house was like Russia itself, with extreme conservatism in the attics and anarchy in the basement.

  I turned and went back upstairs. I was sorting out the facts of betrayal in my mind. I went straight to my own room, the so-called French Room, walked through it and into my husband’s dressing-room. On his table was the leather-bound book I had called his diary. It was locked, but without hesitation I picked up a paper knife from among the litter and ripped it open.

 
It was not a diary, but what you might call an aidememoire; a list of names – members of his group, I supposed – a list of place names, which I took to be safe meeting-places, and then a series of cryptic notes, probably of meetings or plans for the future. These I could not make much of. But I studied the list of names, beside which occupations were listed. Doctors, lawyers, writers, soldiers and gentlemen of leisure. One or two men were called artisans or shopkeepers; Andrew Keller figured here. There was a sprinkling of students. A few were women. I saw Ariadne’s name among them, also that of Marisia. Ariadne had been one of those women ‘used’, I thought, but not fully trusted. My own name should have been here. I too had been used, manipulated and exploited. Of this motley group of anarchists, Peter had hoped to make a revolution. I could imagine the feverish plans these people had made. At once intelligent and dedicated, yet also unrealistic, they were doomed to fail.

  With appalled eyes, I read: ‘Conditions necessary for all calls to commence activities:

  ‘The infiltration of clever men into affairs.

  ‘A knowledge of the town gossips, clubs, etc.

  ‘Influence of high-ranking persons through their womenfolk.’

  This last sentence, about women, had been underlined. I couldn’t stop reading, although every word was an act of destruction to me and of me.

  ‘The revolutionary is a dedicated man,’ Peter had written, as if chiding himself. ‘He has no interests of his own, no feelings, no attachments, no belongings. He is not a revolutionary if he feels pity for anything in this world … all the worse for him if he loves.’

  Does he love? I asked myself. Can Peter love? No, but he makes use of love.

  The last section I read was, for me, the most painful of all. This section was headed ‘Those we must manipulate.’

  The sixth category was that of women. ‘We must use these as instruments, play on their weaknesses, use their affections, for thus we may enter circles otherwise closed to us, even into that innermost circle of all, i.e., the Imperial Family.’ My name was lightly pencilled in here: Rose.

  I read those last words again. I suppose I shall never forget them. I knew well what it meant to me: I was a woman who had been ‘used’, my affections had been manipulated, and I had, indeed, entered ‘that innermost circle of all’. I hated Peter at that point for what he had done to me, my whole being rebelled.

  I raised my head from the page and tried to see the whole picture. I had been brought to Russia by Peter’s will, he had heard of my inheritance, and knew what it might mean to him and his friends from Miss Gowrie. In this arrangement Prince Michael Melikov had been his London agent. I suspected that it was he who had deliberately embroiled Patrick and contrived the breaking-off of our engagement, thus freeing me for Russia. I no longer believed that anything had happened to me by chance; all of it had been contrived. Even, and most of all, my marriage, by which I was chained to the revolution. But for my marriage I would never have undertaken the trip to Moscow, which I saw now implicated me deeply. What had I brought Jakob back for? And was it now I who had gone to get the man? Wickedly and coldly Peter had used me. Because he had realized I meant to leave him and our marriage for Patrick, he had made use of me the more deliberately, perhaps even as a sort of punishment. And yet he had seemed to like me, even to offer love of a sort.

  Another and even more terrible thought about Laure Le Brun was shaping itself at the back of my mind when I heard a timid knock at the door.

  Ariadne came in.

  ‘Oh, Rose, I’m so sorry for all those things that I said. I lost my temper.’

  ‘I know you did.’

  ‘You’ll forgive … ?’ Then her gaze fell on what I was reading. ‘Oh, Rose, what have you done?’ She sounded frightened.

  ‘You see for yourself.’ I threw the book away from me and stood up. ‘Poor girl, I am sorry for you. You have been as thoroughly manipulated as I have been myself. Tell me what you think of your Uncle Peter?’

  Her face came to life. ‘He is my star.’

  ‘A dark star. Oh, Ariadne! Did he kill Mademoiselle Laure? She was his mistress, wasn’t she? Did she know and threaten to betray him?’

  ‘One must not mind violence if it serves the revolution,’ faltered Ariadne.

  ‘And what is going to happen, Ariadne? What did I and the Gowrie Works contribute to the cause of the revolution?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.

  Nor did I, but I was making a terrible guess: a bomb, one planned to explode when a mother, father and child were all taking tea together, as was known to be their habit. Information that I myself had found out and passed on. It was for this task that I had brought the ‘expert’ Mr Jakob from Moscow; it was I who had paid him. How terribly I was tied in to it all. I could not doubt that Peter had planned my involvement on purpose.

  And what part had the Gowrie Works in all this? My possession of a place where high quality explosives were made was crucial, the very beginning of it all. I had thought of myself as coming to Russia to bring life and hope to the suffering, but really, all along it had been planned that I should be the bringer of death.

  I knew that I must go to the Works without any more delay. Even the death of the woman up the Red Staircase took second place to what I must do.

  I drove myself to the Gowrie Works, thanking all the gods there were that I learned to drive. How ironic it was that Peter himself had taught me this freedom.

  Almost to my surprise the world outside, although cold and grey, was going about its normal business. But the minute I got inside the Gowrie Works I knew that all was not as usual. In Andrew’s office an anxious group were standing in obvious consultation. Andrew was apparently absent, but I saw Dr Gurien, his wife, and one of his assistants. Dr Gurien was deep in conversation with Mr Somov.

  They looked up when they saw me, and the whole group of them seemed to draw closer together. There was silence in the room. Not one of them wanted to talk to me, I saw suspicion in their eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ I demanded. ‘Why are you all here? What has gone wrong?’

  For a moment Gurien did not answer, then he said: ‘A certain amount of the best quality explosive has been stolen.’ His manner was extremely stiff, even hostile.

  ‘How much?’ I said.

  ‘Enough to create a large-sized bomb.’ His manner was, if possible, even dryer. ‘I can see that the news does not surprise you.’

  ‘No.’ Better to face him, I thought. ‘That is why I came here. It seemed to me likely that such a thing would have happened. You are quite sure?’

  ‘There can be no possibility of a mistake. You know the precautions we take.’ I nodded. There were checks and counterchecks, locks and double-locks. ‘No, the material is gone. But there is something else; the explosive could only have been removed by a person who knew the way of our precautions and who had the necessary keys.’

  ‘In other words, me?’ Now I understood their wariness. ‘Thank you for coming out with it. I respect your frankness. Still, it is hardly likely I would do such a thing.’

  ‘No, madame.’ Gurien relaxed a little.

  ‘Nor did I give the keys to Miss Lazarev. Or let her borrow them or in any way touch them.’

  He relaxed still further. ‘I guessed at the company she keeps. I know the type.’

  ‘Of this she is totally innocent.’ I wanted to get on now. I knew what my next move must be, but I could see he was still oppressed. ‘What else is there?’

  ‘The explosive is not the worst of the theft, although bad enough. Our new timing device has been removed also.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said.

  ‘We must tell the police.’

  ‘No.’ Quickly, I unlocked the door of my own office. ‘Come into my room please, Mr Somov, and you also, Dr Gurien. I must talk to you.’

  Once inside, I told them what I feared had happened without mincing my words. I did not say how I suspected, but only what I suspected. Nor did I say where the explosion might
be, nor who would go up with it. Nor did I mention Andrew. By their own silence they had named him as a suspect.

  Out of his deep shock, Gurien said again: ‘We must tell the police. Or the army.’

  ‘No. I shall be arrested if you do. Not at once, but in the end. You know I am not guilty of anything, but things have been so arranged that I would find it difficult to prove it. No, in the end I may have to go to the police, but give me a few hours first.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I shall go out to where I think the bomb is placed and try to undo myself what I have helped to do.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. Impossible.’ Andrew was peremptory.

  To Dr Gurien I said: ‘You have a plan, a blueprint of your new device, I suppose? Then get it for me. Show me exactly what I must do.’

  ‘It is partly a matter of chemical reaction, allied to a timepiece – at least, more or less. You must separate the elements,’ he said doubtfully. ‘If you knew what time the explosion was set, perhaps you might …’

  ‘I do know.’ Five o’clock, as the tea was brought in and the whole Imperial Family was together.

  But he shook his head. ‘It’s no good. You couldn’t do it. I must go.’ I saw his hands shaking.

  ‘I shan’t let you. Get me the blueprint and explain it to me. While you are gone I shall write a note, for you to deliver, if you please, to a lodging house not far away from here.’

  Quickly I sat down and described to Patrick what I was about to attempt. He would certainly tell Edward Lacey, and if there was any help to be got for me, they would bring it. By the time I had finished, the blueprint was in front of me.

  I studied it. ‘Yes, I think I see. I shall try.’

  Mr Somov interrupted. ‘I’ve made up my mind that I shall come. No, Gurien, that last heart-attack of yours was your worst. This would certainly finish you. I shall go. I am a competent engineer.’