‘Let’s try it by all means,’ he said. ‘Thank God it’s a Sunday and there are no performances of the Ballets Russes in London. I’ve got a couple more translators, students at the medical school, coming to help with the translation. But they say Diaghilev was refusing to talk to anybody at all last night. He stomped off and looked at the pictures and wouldn’t speak to a soul, even though the Duke’s guests had a couple of fluent French speakers among them.’
Michel Fokine was looking troubled when Powerscourt found him drinking coffee in the State Dining Room.
‘Of course I will take you to him. He is in a terrible mood. “The afternoon of my greatest triumph”, he keeps saying, “spoilt by some silly girl who decides to throw herself over the balcony.” For Diaghilev, my lord, art wins out over everything.’
They found him pacing up and down the Palladian bridge, as the planks and beams were being dismantled beneath him.
‘Good morning, Mr Diaghilev,’ said Powerscourt. ‘May I offer my congratulations on your ballet yesterday afternoon. It was a triumph. It will live long in the memory of all who saw it.’
Diaghilev stamped his cane on the side of the bridge. ‘They will remember it for the dead girl, that Vera Belitsky, not for the poetry of the Ballets Russes.’
‘Mr Diaghilev,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I think you are wrong about that. But I wish to speak to you about matters of today. The local Inspector here will not let your people go until they have been questioned by the police. It is just not possible. You wish to bring your company back to London for tomorrow’s performances in Covent Garden. As things stand, those interviews may still be going on when the curtain goes up. There will, inevitably, be one or two people to whom Inspector Jackson and his staff will wish to talk again. He is well aware of your problems, the Inspector. He has organized another couple of interpreters to come here with all speed from the Oxford Medical School. They are Russian born and one of them is also fluent in French from his time at the Sorbonne. If your people could be organized in groups of five or six, to be interviewed one at a time, of course, the process could be over by early afternoon, if not sooner.’
Diaghilev smacked his cane onto the bridge once again and muttered something to himself in Russian. Fokine kept his own counsel. Diaghilev began making short sorties away from the bridge as another three boards were carried off.
‘Think of it, Monsieur Diaghilev,’ said Powerscourt. ‘If your dancers and your staff do not cooperate, you could still be here tomorrow or even the next day. You could miss out on two performances in London. Those who have bought the tickets, all people desperate to see your Ballets Russes, will be disappointed. Your reputation, so high after yesterday, will suffer. It’s bound to.’
A rather chastened Diaghilev stopped walking for a moment. ‘It is not my reputation I care about, Lord Powerscourt, but my art; the art we create and take with us wherever we go. Art is the only thing that makes life worth living. The rest is all show and vanity.’
‘Even art must go on,’ said Powerscourt, sensing that somewhere there must be a key to unlock Diaghilev’s intransigence, ‘art must go on on Monday and art must go on on Tuesday and art must go on on Wednesday. There’s another thing that would help mark the glories and the triumphs of yesterday.’
Powerscourt was to tell Lady Lucy later that he had no idea where this next suggestion came from.
‘I have one further thought, Monsieur Diaghilev. Why not erect a plaque on this bridge in memory of Vera Belitsky, the dead girl? You could say her death happened after the performance. Maybe you should start collections after each performance for a fund to start a scholarship in her memory.’
M. Fokine suddenly sprang into life. ‘It could be a scholarship for a poor dancer to attend the Imperial Theatre School back home, Sergei Pavlovich. That way her memory would live as long as the ballet.’
Diaghilev sighed. ‘Sometimes I think I am like that man in Shakespeare who is surrounded by a sea of troubles which come not in a single one but in battalions. I have to carry the entire weight of the Ballets Russes on my shoulders and sometimes it feels too heavy to bear. But I like the plaque. I like the scholarship. We shall do as you ask. Perhaps you could see to it, Fokine.’
With that Diaghilev waddled off away from the house towards the great obelisk on the high ground above the lake. Powerscourt couldn’t help wondering if he was going to take its measurements for an obelisk of his own.
Natasha Shaporova’s train was leaving Cologne, the twin spires of the great cathedral still visible from her carriage window. Once she heard from one of the corps de ballet that Alexander Taneyev was always writing letters home, she did not hesitate. She caught the earliest express that could connect to St Petersburg and set off. She packed a bag and Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which she had always meant to read but never got round to starting. She felt it would last her on the outward and the return journeys. Even as she read about the salons of St Petersburg, a part of her brain was saying to her: father, mother, three sisters, friends, sweethearts – was there one person Alexander Taneyev confided in? Who was it? She looked out at the German countryside now shooting past her window. Change in Berlin.
Arthur Cooper was as distressed as he had ever been in his new faith of world revolution, which had been inspired by the scriptures of Lenin and his followers. He had at last found the printer he wanted, a man who could organize the translation from the original Russian into English, and the printing of five hundred copies of each tract. ‘What Is to Be Done Now?’ he had learned, was the title of the latest gospel from Lenin’s fertile pen in Cracow. The comrade, one Harry Smith, had a regular press in Clerkenwell, on which he would print all sorts of subversive literature. In Arthur Cooper’s world he should be offering to carry out the work for a nominal sum. But he wasn’t. Cooper did not know it, but the tale of the roubles changed into pounds – and the very large totals of those transactions – was now common knowledge among a select few of the capital’s revolutionary vanguard. And Harry Smith was one of them.
‘It’s not like it was in the old days, comrade. With these new laws they could lock me up in jail for a long time for spreading this kind of stuff around.’
‘That’s not the point,’ replied Cooper, ‘it’s doing Lenin’s work. That shouldn’t be charged at your exorbitant rates and you know it.’
‘I’ll know it full well when the bloody policemen come knocking at my door. You’ve got to pay the going rate for the job. Why isn’t he circulating the English pamphlet here in England, anyway? Answer me that.’
‘Security, that’s what.’ All difficult questions were to be answered, Lenin’s courier had told him, with that blanket response.
‘If you don’t like my price, go and find somebody else who’ll do it.’
The comrades in Cracow, Cooper had been told, were most anxious that he should clinch the deal.
‘All right. One thousand pounds for the lot. I can’t say I’m happy with that, but it’ll have to do.’
‘Very good. I knew you’d come round in the end.’ ‘Who should I deliver the pamphlets to?’
‘Bring them back here, heavily marked with the words Ballets Russes, Customs Requisitions and Clearances.’
‘Very good.’
As Cooper showed his printer out of the back door, he suddenly knew how he felt. It was if he was still a true believer in the Evangelical side of Christianity, who arrives at Heaven’s gates only to be told by St Peter that a substantial entry fee would be required.
Lady Lucy had taken over the role of friend and counsellor to the girls of the corps de ballet. A translator was found among the great army of her relations in the capital. She had borrowed the samovar and a couple of icons from Natasha’s housekeeper and was reading the notes made after each visit. She thanked her lucky stars that Natasha had written them in English.
‘There’s only one thing that hits you after you’ve read all these things, Francis,’ she said.
‘And what’s that?’ sa
id her husband absent-mindedly. He was reading a selection of the newspapers and their coverage of the Ballets Russes’s display at Blenheim Palace. Most of them were ecstatic; tactfully they had kept the story of the dead girl for the later paragraphs. Fokine had told him to look out for the photographs of the Duke and his lady. The photographers, unaware of the lack of title, had taken shots of them together all over the place, on the steps of the palace, progressing down the great sweep of the entrance court to the bridge, sitting applauding the performers. One inhabitant of Blenheim Palace, at least, would be happy with the coverage and consider the money well spent. Even though Gladys Deacon had still not been described as the Duchess.
‘It’s that man Bolm. He was after those girls like a man possessed. I’m sure one of them could have killed him. But there’s a further complication, Francis. You said that he pulled out about two o’clock in the afternoon because he was ill and Alexander Taneyev took over. So anybody inside the company would have known that the young Alexander and not the older man Bolm was to dance the Prince. But if you were an outsider, a man paid to do the job, you might not have known that. You could have lurked about in the scenic area and the backstage areas and gone to kill the chap who came down through the trapdoor. You mightn’t even realize you’d killed the wrong man until you read about it the next day.’
‘There is and there always has been,’ agreed Powerscourt, ‘a terrible question mark at the heart of the first murder. Did they kill Taneyev because he was Taneyev, or did they kill him because they thought he was Bolm? Or did Bolm take the evening off because he knew he or his associates would be able to kill Taneyev? Nobody backstage would have noticed Bolm at all. I think I’m going to ask the Inspector to make a further check on Bolm’s movements for the whole day. He could, for example, have decided to kill Taneyev days before and laid his plans accordingly, only telling the theatre people after lunch.’
‘I’ve rather grown to dislike Mr Bolm, making his advances on these young girls all over the place and at all times of day.’
‘Doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer,’ said Lord Francis Powerscourt.
East Prussia stretched out in front of Natasha Shaporova’s train. She was making good progress with War and Peace. Her knowledge of geography was poor and she wondered if Napoleon’s armies had crossed the same space a hundred years before. She remembered somebody telling her that Tolstoy himself had seen military service in the Crimea. She hoped that there wouldn’t be too much marching about and military manoeuvres. Never far from her mind was a family that might not be too different from War and Peace’s Bolkonskys and Rostovs: the family Taneyev, with its treasure trove of letters from the dead Alexander. Change in Warsaw.
Anastasia couldn’t tell anybody in the Ballets Russes what had happened. She knew it would mean expulsion from the company, let alone possible prosecution for being an associate to theft in St Petersburg. She had cried so much and for so long that she thought there couldn’t be any tears left in her little body. She found Lady Lucy’s address and set out for Markham Square. Somebody had told her that the husband was a detective. Perhaps he would be able to help. She knew Lady Lucy’s address and hailed a taxi to take her to Markham Square. Fresh reserves and reservoirs of tears overcame her so much in the cab that the driver leant back and offered her his best handkerchief, perfectly washed and pressed by the cabbie’s wife in Harringey. He even forgot to ask her for the fare, but ushered her to the Powerscourt door and waited for Rhys to let her in. The butler had seen all sorts and conditions of visitors to Markham Square in his time but never one as distraught as this. Her whole life seemed to have come to an end.
‘Anastasia from the corps de ballet,’ he announced to Lady Lucy, who was reading the forthcoming programme for the ballet.
‘Anastasia, you poor thing,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Your eyes are so red you must have been crying all afternoon.’ She helped the girl into the large armchair by the fire. ‘Would you like some tea? Something stronger? A glass of water?’
Through her sobs, the girl managed to nod for the glass of water.
‘Now, Anastasia,’ said Lady Lucy, who thought she had met the girl at Natasha’s house in the early days, ‘whatever is the matter?’
There was a prolonged burst of sobbing, broken only by further ministrations with the cabbie’s handkerchief. Lady Lucy waited. Powerscourt had decided to let his wife do all the talking for now.
‘There must have been something terrible,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘We’re not the police, my dear, and we’re not the Ballets Russes either. If you’ve got something to say, it need never go outside these four walls, I promise you.’
The answer came in a whisper. Powerscourt had often remarked how people thought they could minimize the effect of some terrible news by announcing it in the lowest of voices. He had decided it was the opposite of shouting at foreigners in English in the hopes that the volume might bring forth understanding.
‘Jewels.’
‘Jewels?’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Your jewels? Somebody else’s jewels? You must speak up, Anastasia or we’ll never hear you.’
Anastasia did not speak up. She spoke, if anything, even more softly than before.
‘Not my jewels.’
‘If they weren’t yours, then why do you have to be so upset about them?’
‘I don’t have the jewels any more.’
‘Do you mean that you were looking after the jewels for somebody else? And now they’ve gone, you worry you’ll have to replace them?’
‘No, no,’ sobbed the girl, ‘it’s the money. The money from the jewels has gone.’
‘Let’s take this one step at a time, Anastasia? Have another glass of water. I’ll order some tea in a minute. You had some jewels. You sold them one way or another. The money’s gone. Is that it?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s it. That’s right.’
‘But whose were the jewels? Were they yours? Family heirlooms that would cause distress in your household?’
This brought a further burst of weeping, in which the words St Petersburg, George and something that sounded like Kollicky were all the Powerscourts could pick up.
Powerscourt now took over after a nod from Lady Lucy.
‘Did the jewels come from St Petersburg, Anastasia?’
She nodded this time, relieved not to have to speak for a while.
‘And you brought them here? Or did somebody else bring them here?’
The girl pointed at herself. Powerscourt hoped this unhappy experience hadn’t left her partially dumb for the next half an hour.
‘And who is George? A friend of yours?’
The girl nodded.
‘Has he taken the money from the sale of the jewels?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Did he organize the sale of the jewels for you?’
The girl nodded once more.
‘You mentioned somebody who sounded like Kollicky just now. Were they Johnston Killick of Hatton Garden by any chance?’
Another nod.
‘A very reputable and responsible firm they are too, Anastasia. I’m sure they will have done their best for you. Let me try to clear up the London end, if we may. You brought some jewels, which weren’t yours, to London. I am guessing you were under instructions from St Petersburg to sell them during your stay here. You sold the jewels with the help of your friend George. You had the money. I am guessing when I say it was hidden among your luggage at the hotel. Now the money has gone. Is that right?’
The girl nodded.
‘And the suitcase? The money was in a suitcase? Yes? So it is the suitcase that has gone missing?’
This time the girl managed a feeble, ‘Yes.’
‘Anastasia,’ Lady Lucy moved back into command, ‘I think you need to lie down and have a rest. I’ll take you up to one of the spare bedrooms and I’m sure we can find some clean clothes that aren’t stained with tears. We can move on to the St Petersburg end of things later.’
17
&
nbsp; Entrechat
A step of beating in which the dancer jumps into the air and rapidly crosses the legs before and behind. For example: in an entrechat-quatre starting from fifth position, right foot front, the dancer will jump crossing her/his legs and beating first the right thigh on the back of the left thigh, then at the front of the left thigh, landing in the same position she/he started. Three changes of the feet in the air, ultimately changing which foot was front.
A battered Renault taxi-cab drew up outside 32 Place des Vosges, home of the European Art Exchange, the cover story for the French Secret Service Headquarters on the first floor. That taxi passenger must have prepaid his fare, for he shot out of the Renault and into the building in a couple of seconds flat. The other visitor, the Préfet de Paris, or Mayor of Paris, had been shown in through the back door by the dustbin men, who voted for him regularly at election times. M. Dubois was their friend, and any friend of M. Dubois was automatically enrolled in their very own Legion of Honour.
So what brought this disparate group – three Frenchman, and an English Ambassador to France, Sir Miles Myddleton, just returned from attendance on his sovereign in Biarritz – together in a large, eighteenth-century room with high ceilings and elegant shutters on the windows one floor up in one of Paris’s most elegant squares at seven o’clock in the morning? The answer was not long in coming. Colonel Brouzet made the introductions and summed up the reasons for their presence in a single word.
‘Bonds, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘People have been selling French bonds in considerable quantities. If it goes on like this, it could cause a financial crisis all across Europe. It is French government-issue bonds that have brought us here together this morning.’
Outside the birds were still singing and one or two of the cleaning staff could be heard complaining to themselves down in the square. It was going to be a beautiful day.
Death Comes to the Ballets Russes Page 17
