Death on the Nevskii Pros

by David Dickinson

  ‘How very difficult for everybody,’ said Natasha, frowning slightly. ‘And what was he meant to be doing here, the late Mr Martin who isn’t in the morgues or the Interior Ministry?’

  ‘That’s another secret. Only the British Prime Minister knows the nature of his mission to St Petersburg. The Secretary at the British Embassy, the man who knows where all the bodies are buried according to Lord Powerscourt, he doesn’t know. The British Ambassador has no idea. Neither Lord Powerscourt nor I know either. We’re all in the dark.’

  ‘It’s all very exciting,’ said Natasha. ‘I wish I could do something to help.’

  Mikhail rose suddenly from his chair and walked rapidly up and down the room. Ancient leather-bound volumes marched along the walls in order of date of publication and country of origin and watched his passing. The Old Library in this Shaporov palace was filled with European history and literature in the languages the books were written in. The New Library was for Russian works. Mikhail had reached Dante in a particularly elegant binding from a Venetian publishing house when he turned to face Natasha once more.

  ‘Don’t go walking up and down like that, Mikhail,’ she pleaded. ‘It makes me think you don’t care for me. I much preferred it when you were on the other side of this table.’

  The young man laughed. ‘Sorry about that, Natasha,’ he said, returning to his seat. ‘I was just wondering if I ought to tell you something or not.’

  ‘What sort of something?’ she said, her eyes bright with the fun of it all. ‘Are you teasing me?’

  ‘No, I’m not teasing you,’ he said. ‘It really is quite serious. Lord Powerscourt and I think there is a chance, only a slight chance, that Mr Martin’s mission may be connected to the Tsar in some way. Something to do with foreign policy in some form or other. The Tsar’s meant to be in charge of all that sort of thing.’

  ‘But something so secret that even the British Ambassador doesn’t know about it?’

  ‘Something so secret even the British Foreign Secretary doesn’t know about it, Natasha.’

  ‘But where do I come into it?’ said the girl. ‘You said you were wondering whether to tell me something or not. What is the something, Mikhail?’

  ‘It’s this. We want you to help us. We want you to listen very carefully to any conversations involving politics and see if Mr Martin’s name comes up. But don’t for heaven’s sake ask any questions of anybody. If you do you may end up underneath the ice on the Neva. Just listen.’

  Natasha was struck dumb. Twice she opened her mouth to speak but no words came forth. ‘That is the most exciting and most grown-up thing anybody has ever asked me to do,’ she said finally. ‘Do you want me to go back straight away and start listening?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Mikhail Shaporov, ‘you’ve only just left the bloody palace and you don’t have to be back for another hour and a half. Anyway, it’s your turn to talk now, Natasha. I want to know what life is like at Tsarskoe Selo. Are they going to make you a Grand Duchess soon?’

  ‘I tell you what the best thing about joining your boys’ club of secret agents and investigators is,’ she said, ‘for those of us locked up at Tsarskoe Selo at any rate. It’ll be a little something to alleviate the boredom of the days.’

  ‘It can’t be boring, surely. We’re talking about the Tsar of All the Russias here, for heaven’s sake. He must be one of the most powerful men on earth. I fail to see how it can be tedious.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say the Tsar was one of the most powerful men on earth if you saw him up close. You’d think he might be the stationmaster or somebody of middling importance in the bank. He doesn’t look very impressive.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Natasha – what makes it so boring?’

  ‘That’s easy to see when you first arrive and then gradually you are sucked into it. It’s like living in a museum where the waxworks are actually alive. It’s the court ceremonial that does it. There’s this very old Finn called Count something or other and he can remember all the approved ways of doing things going back to Peter the Great. Meals at the same time, breakfast at half past seven for the family except Madam Alix, lunch at twelve, tea at four where the biscuits, somebody told me, are the same as they were in the days of Catherine the Great. Supper at the same time, readings from novels by the Tsar at the same time in the evening. Soldiers, policemen, enormous footmen, some of them black, some of them brown, everywhere. Tsarskoe Selo has a military force around it about the same size as the army of a small country like Denmark. Look out of any of the windows and you’ll see the back of a guardsman or a policeman. After a while, Mikhail, you grow rather tired of all these backs in uniform. Any visitor to the place has their name entered in a book. Anybody leaving it, the same. I can’t imagine why anybody would want to live there when they could be in that fabulous Winter Palace right in the middle of town. Why did Catherine build it if she didn’t intend her successors to live in it in the winter?’

  ‘Security, Natasha, you must see that,’ said Mikhail, ‘they feel safe down there. Any would-be assassins can be intercepted before they reach the front door. That’s not so easy in the middle of Petersburg.’

  ‘I think it might be jolly exciting if an assassin got past the front door,’ said Natasha, treacherously. ‘What do you think they carry their bombs round in? Do they just have them under their coats? Isn’t there a danger that they will blow themselves up?’

  ‘I think you should be serious about these assassins, Natasha,’ said Mikhail Shaporov. ‘You never know where they may strike next. But tell me, what are the daughters like, the ones you have to deal with?’

  ‘The Grand Duchesses?’ The girl stopped for a moment and a smile crossed her lips. ‘They’re sweet, Mikhail, really sweet. They’re very strictly brought up, they have to make their own beds, they have to behave at meal times, they have English governesses, even English furniture for heaven’s sake. The elder two get less pocket money than I did when I was half their age.’

  ‘And what do they talk to you about? Or is it what do you talk to them about?’

  ‘I can see you haven’t read the Court Ceremonial Circular recently, Mikhail,’ said Natasha sternly, ‘really, I’m surprised at you. I can only talk to them if they talk to me. It is forbidden to talk to a member of the imperial family unless they have first addressed you.’

  ‘So, Natasha,’ replied Mikhail, holding his ground, ‘what do they talk to you about?’

  ‘This is where it becomes so sad. This is where their upbringing really handicaps them. Think of it. They’ve hardly ever been to a restaurant. They hardly ever go to the big shops on the Nevskii Prospekt. They go on holiday in the royal train to the Crimea, guarded by dozens and dozens of policemen on the way, or they go cruising in the royal yacht on the Baltic surrounded by dozens and dozens of seamen, handpicked for loyalty and devotion to the Tsar. They have no more idea of the lives of ordinary Russians than they do of the man in the moon. I’m not a typical Russian, as you know, but they have no idea how even people like us are brought up. They think ordinary Russians are all like the peasants who wait beside the train lines to wave at the family as they pass by. Their parents are convinced that the peasants love the royal family, it’s just the decadent snobs in St Petersburg who don’t measure up. The favourite thing with all four girls is for me to describe a shop with all the different things, particularly clothes, that are on sale. They would listen to that for hours at a time. The next favourite is to describe the menu in a fashionable restaurant. After that we can always fill an hour or two with them asking me to describe my wardrobe in enormous detail.’

  ‘You make them sound like deprived children. It can’t be as bad as that, surely?’

  ‘Well, I think it is. There’s no doubt their parents love them all dearly, but they can’t see they’re stifling the life out of them. And there’s another thing, Mikhail.’ The girl lowered her voice and looked about the library very carefully, as if an Okhrana agent might be hiding behind the Voltaire
or the Rousseau. ‘That little boy. There’s something not quite right with him. I don’t know what it is, I don’t think they know what it is, but I’m sure it’s serious, very serious.’

  ‘What do you mean, something not quite right with him? Is he not crawling yet or whatever babies are expected to do?’

  ‘It’s not that, Mikhail. Two or three times now it’s happened. He falls ill, don’t ask me how. Madam Alix puts on an even longer face than usual, Tsar looks like all the bank loans are going to go wrong at once, doctors arrive from Petersburg by the trainload. Literally. Once we had seven medical professors in the Alexander Palace in one day. Fairly soon I’m going to get to the bottom of it all.’

  ‘So is that what breaks up the boredom? Earnest society doctors coming to inspect the Tsarevich? What do his sisters say about it all? Do they know what’s going on?’

  ‘I think they have been sworn to silence, or a cutting off of the biscuit ration at tea-time. They don’t say a word. There is one other thing that’s happened recently though I don’t know if it means anything at all. Two of the eggs have disappeared, two of the most beautiful ones.’

  ‘Eggs? Disappeared? What eggs? Whose eggs? Royal eggs? Special Romanov eggs from special Romanov hens?’ The royal household at Tsarskoe Selo was beginning to sound to the novice Mikhail like a cross between a penal institution and a dairy farm. Even he, never a fully convinced monarchist, wasn’t sure he would approve of such prosaic developments.

  ‘Sorry, Mikhail. I should have explained it better,’ said Natasha with a laugh. ‘The person who makes the eggs is Mr Fabergé, the jeweller. Every Easter he is commissioned by the Tsar to make two new eggs, one for his mother and one for his wife. One of these eggs is called the Trans-Siberian Railway egg and it was made in 1900 to commemorate the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The outside of the egg is made of green translucent emerald gold and has all the stations of the railway marked on it in silver. When you open it up there’s a tiny little train about a foot long which actually goes when you wind it up with its clockwork key. It’s got a dining car, smoking and non-smoking cars. I think it’s even got a chapel carriage at the back.’

  ‘Have you seen it go, this train, Natasha?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, but the girls have. They said it was sensational. The other one is not so dramatic but pretty special all the same. It was called the Danish Royal Palaces egg and when you opened this little chap up you got eight portraits of eight different Danish castles that the Tsar’s mother or some royal Danish person must have lived in when she was growing up. I did see that one opened up and it was just beautiful.’

  ‘So where have they gone?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, glancing anxiously at the clock above the door. ‘One week ago they were all locked up in their own glass cabinet along with the other eggs and the next minute they’d gone. Nobody seems very bothered about it. Perhaps they haven’t noticed. I must go now, Mikhail, or I will get into trouble and be locked up with all the other assassins when I get back. Will you see me to the station?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Mikhail. ‘Any chance next time of meeting at Tsarskoe Selo? Any chance I could bring my new friend Lord Powerscourt?’

  Lord Francis Powerscourt was not overjoyed at his reception back at the British Embassy. For de Chassiron, he felt sure, he brought a sense of excitement and even danger that served to add spice to a life that might easily have degenerated into foppish boredom. De Chassiron would always be glad of somebody new to talk to, some fresh recipient for his sarcasm and his cleverness. De Chassiron was not the problem. The Ambassador was. De Chassiron had given Powerscourt a fairly brutal run-down over breakfast that morning. ‘Done a turn in Washington, His Nibs has, not top man but number two. Only embassy he’s ever served in where he could speak the language as well as the natives, and even that was doubtful. Been Ambassador in Paris, weak on diplomatic and business French. Been Ambassador in Germany where he offended the Kaiser and half the government by forgetting to salute in the right place at some ludicrous parade invented by the equally ludicrous Kaiser. Now he’s here in St Petersburg, aiming to stay for a couple of years at most. Then he can return to London to take over from the etiolated Sir Jeremiah Reddaway as Permanent Secretary to the Foreign Office. He’s already Sir Jasper Colville. Then he can fulfil his wife’s greatest ambition and become Lord Colville of somewhere or other. Tooting Bec maybe,’ de Chassiron said savagely, his contempt for his superior blatant, ‘or Clapham Common. But you, Powerscourt,’ here de Chassiron leaned back in his chair and ran an arm through his hair, only to find yet again that the incipient bald patch was marching inexorably on, ‘you might be trouble. Dead British diplomats, nothing he would like less. Troublesome inquiries with the native authorities, even less welcome. There’s nothing His Nibs would like more than to leave Martin under the ice of the Neva river, if that’s where he is, and for the body not to be found until he has returned home to take up his new position and his seat in the House of Lords. Once you come to him with something concrete, he won’t like it one little bit. Anything that might upset His Majesty’s relations with the Tsar of All the Russias not welcome in this Embassy. You could do him real damage if you find out anything really serious about what happened to Martin. We could almost say you’ve got his future in your hands.’

  Now the three men were sitting in the Ambassador’s study, drinking English tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. The Ambassador had seen too many of his colleagues fall into the wretched customs of their hosts and forget who and what they were. The Ambassador was seated behind a large desk that would not have looked out of place in a Pall Mall club. Powerscourt suddenly realized that all the furniture, the sofas, the chairs, the occasional tables, the racks for newspapers, could have been transferred direct from the Athenaeum or the Reform Club in London’s Pall Mall. Maybe the British Embassy, like the Russian Tsarina, did its shopping at Maples in the Tottenham Court Road.

  Before Powerscourt presented his report on the day’s discoveries, the Ambassador graced his little audience with his own view on the diplomatic problems surrounding the strange case of Roderick Martin. The need to be aware of Russian susceptibilities, of their difficulties both with the Japanese War on the one hand, and with the bomb-bearing revolutionaries on the other. The need, of course, for His Majesty’s representatives to be aware of the dignity of their own position while not compromising the Russians’ room for manoeuvre. The need to be aware, too, of the pressures for information and hard facts from home. Public opinion, although still sleeping on this issue, as everybody had taken great care to keep it out of the newspapers, could easily be roused and might not prove an easy bedfellow. Prejudice against the Russian bear, so prominent a generation ago, in Sir Jasper’s view, could easily come lumbering out of the same forest once again. The need for boldness tempered with caution, for restraint married with respect for the Russian perspective.

  De Chassiron had been nodding vigorously in agreement with his Ambassador’s sentiments. Powerscourt was certain that he was being ironic and, furthermore, that this was a very dangerous game to play. Only when he reflected on it afterwards did Powerscourt realize that de Chassiron knew the Ambassador was so sure of himself that he wouldn’t have recognized the irony and the lack of respect if they had sat down beside him in his own drawing room. Powerscourt thought the Ambassador’s remarks were nonsense, designed to appeal to everybody and to nobody, to preserve his own position sitting on the fence facing in all directions at once.

  His guests paid scant attention to his reports of the visits to the police station and the morgues, though de Chassiron was much taken by the vehemence of the denials that Martin had ever been found by members of that police station. But when he told of the Interior Ministry’s insistence on Martin’s previous visits, they were astonished. Sir Jasper, anxious possibly to see which way the wind would blow, left the initial reaction to Embassy Secretary de Chassiron.

  ‘Good God man, this is dynamit
e,’ he said, screwing his silver monocle into his eye and inspecting the notes in front of him. ‘If Martin came here then he didn’t stay in the Embassy, I don’t think he even visited the place. I’ve been here since the year of Our Lord 1899 so I should bloody well know. What on earth do you think he was doing here, Powerscourt? Did your friend in the ministry have any idea what he was up to?’

  ‘The man from the ministry did not vouchsafe any information on that,’ said Powerscourt carefully. ‘We have to go and see him again early next week for further news. If he was not prepared to tell us all he knew today, I should be surprised if he is going to open his heart to us later on.’

  ‘We, Powerscourt, we?’ Sir Jasper was fiddling with a paperknife. ‘Have you attained the royal plural or were you accompanied by someone unknown to us?’

  ‘I went accompanied by my translator, a young man of impeccable family and equally impeccable language skills called Mikhail Shaporov, Sir Jasper. He came to me from the Foreign Office in London.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Sir Jasper, trying to gloss over the fact that he had been told this information but had forgotten. ‘Please carry on.’

  ‘I can only repeat the possibilities I discussed with my translator after our meeting, Sir Jasper,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if he too would become pompous after a life in the Foreign Service. ‘Martin could have had a mistress here. He could have fathered children out of wedlock whom he wished to visit. He could have come to pay a blackmailer. Or he could have been an agent of the Okhrana, come for a debrief from his masters and a round of fresh instructions. Or he could have come on holiday. The man might have liked the place. It’s very beautiful. I’m sure we all know people who make a point of going to Venice or Rome or Paris once a year or so. Martin could have been one of those.’