Death on the Nevskii Prospekt lfp-6

by David Dickinson

  ‘I know what I meant to tell you, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Natasha suddenly. ‘It’s only just come back to me. You remember Mikhail asked me to listen out for any mention of the name Martin out there in Tsarskoe Selo? Well, I have heard two mentions!’

  The girl paused as if she expected instant congratulations. ‘How very interesting,’ was the best Powerscourt could manage. Inwardly he cursed himself for his English reserve in the face of all this Russian intensity. ‘How did you come to hear it? Who was speaking?’

  ‘The first time was the day before the march,’ Natasha said. ‘That must have been on the Saturday evening. I was passing the door of the Empress’s mauve drawing room and I heard her talking to some official or other.’

  ‘How did you know it was an official, Natasha?’ said Mikhail.

  ‘Well, I couldn’t work out how I knew it at first. Then I realized the man kept referring to her as Your Majesty.’

  ‘And the second?’ Powerscourt this time.

  ‘The second time was Sunday night, quite late. We’d heard the latest episode of The Hound of the Baskervilles.’ She stared at the looks of incomprehension of the two men. ‘Oh yes,’ she said bitterly, ‘in the Tsar’s Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo it is more important that the inmates hear the latest fictional exploits of Mr Sherlock Holmes than they should hear the facts about what is going on in their own city.’ Natasha paused and concentrated hard, trying to ensure that her memory was perfect. ‘I’d been talking to the Empress Alexandra and I’d left my bag in the hall,’ she went on, staring intently at Mikhail as if he could help her remember, ‘so I crept downstairs to collect it. Nicholas and Alexandra were having the most frightful row in the drawing room. I didn’t dare stop because I could hear a sentry coming along the corridor. She was shouting at him about following the path of his father and his grandfather, about how autocracy was the only path the Russians would ever understand and the path to Western fantasies of democracy and constitutional government was bound to be a total disaster.’

  Natasha stopped, listening perhaps to the voices replaying in her head. ‘And what did he say?’ whispered Powerscourt after a moment or two of silence.

  Natasha drew herself up to her full height. ‘He said, I think this is right, how many dead did she want lying on the streets, how many members of their own family had to be buried in St Petersburg, before she followed the path of the Englishman Martin.’

  6

  Outside the windows there came the noise of an enormous steam whistle, like some mighty vessel in pain. Powerscourt stared hard at Natasha. He had no idea what the words meant and, for the present, no idea how he was going to find the answer. Over fifteen years as an investigator, however, had taught him that often you just have to wait for the answers to appear.

  ‘Natasha, Mikhail,’ he said cheerfully, trying to convey a confidence about affairs he did not actually feel, ‘I would very much like to talk some more about Mr Martin, the late Mr Martin. But it must wait for an hour or so, if you will forgive me. I must send some messages to London. I should have done so before.’

  Mikhail stared at Powerscourt. ‘Forgive me, my lord, I -’ He broke off suddenly and looked desperately at Natasha, wringing his hands together.

  ‘Is there something you would rather I did not hear, Mikhail?’ said the girl. ‘Some male secret that we women are not allowed to listen to?’

  Her tone was jocular but Powerscourt thought she was on the verge of anger. Mikhail seized the nettle.

  ‘I should have told you this before, Lord Powerscourt. I forgot. If you want to send a confidential message to London, I would not recommend the orthodox routes. The Okhrana are now able to decode the telegraph traffic from all the major embassies in St Petersburg. They circulate the key points round the people guarding the Tsar and the ministries if they think it’s relevant. That is rather a great secret, and I would ask you not to tell your Embassy just for the moment.’

  ‘Traffic one way? Traffic coming in? Or traffic going out as well?’

  ‘Traffic going in both directions, my lord. They employed some eccentric mathematics professors and a couple of grand master chess players to work out how to do it.’

  ‘May I ask how you know this, Mikhail? If you are able to say, that is.’ Powerscourt managed not to use words like ‘one so young’.

  ‘My father told me,’ said the young man.

  Mikhail’s father was beginning to assume legendary proportions in Powerscourt’s mind, somewhere between a Russian J.P. Morgan and George Bernard Shaw.

  ‘Does he have a couple of tame maths professors and the odd grand master to hand as well, so to speak, Mikhail?’

  ‘I’m sure he’s got lots of those,’ said the young man loyally.

  Powerscourt smiled. Mikhail thought he was enjoying some scheme forming in his brain.

  ‘So,’ said Powerscourt, ‘if I could send a message to people in London by a different route, warning them that the orthodox channels were being broken, we could then send a whole lot of false or inaccurate information to the Okhrana and its customers, secure in the knowledge that they would receive it without knowing that we knew what was in it and that it might be false.’

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Mikhail, gazing hungrily at Natasha and wondering if there might be a time for love as well as a time for secrets.

  ‘And how, Mikhail, do I send a secure message to London from here?’

  ‘Well, my lord, if you give it to me I shall send it by one of my father’s messengers or by his telegraph machinery. It’s perfectly safe. There is a messenger leaving at half past seven tonight, as a matter of fact, and the telegraph is working all the time.’

  ‘That would be splendid,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I shall go and attend to my business at the Embassy. Let me make a suggestion. I am sure you two have important matters to discuss. How would it be if I returned,’ he paused briefly to look at his watch, ‘in a couple of hours’ time, at half past six? We could discuss Mr Martin briefly and then I should be delighted to take you both out to dinner.’

  ‘Thank you very much indeed,’ Natasha and Mikhail said in unison and laughed happily at the accident of their response.

  ‘Take care, Lord Powerscourt,’ Natasha called after him, ‘we don’t want you ending up like poor Mr Martin.’

  Mikhail waited until Powerscourt had gone and then he smiled at Natasha.

  ‘Do you know what this room was designed for, Natasha?’ he asked.

  The girl’s eyes flashed back at him, bright with anticipation. ‘For dancing, of course, silly. Do you think earlier Bobrinskys danced across these boards with earlier Shaporovs?’

  She pulled him to his feet and they waltzed at ever growing speed across the floor. Natasha thought how nice it was to be held in these arms and how much more pleasant life would be in this palace than in her place of exile at Tsarskoe Selo. She could hear the music spinning in her head. She wanted it to go on for ever. Mikhail held her ever tighter, one arm pressing firmly in the small of her back. They stopped in front of a huge French tapestry of Bacchus and Ariadne. Mikhail kissed her, very gently at first, then with a growing passion as he felt her respond. Natasha thought she would like it here on Naxos, with the raging seas outside and the smell of the wild flowers on the mountainside and your lips being caressed by Dionysus.

  Lord Francis Powerscourt was not thinking of love on a desert island, or even romance in a Russian palace, as he climbed the stairs to de Chassiron’s office on the first floor of the British Embassy, looking out over the frozen city. He was trying to work out how to exploit the fact that he knew the Okhrana were reading the outgoing and incoming traffic to and from the British Embassy. He felt sure he and Johnny Fitzgerald had devised some scheme to exploit a similar situation years ago in the Punjab. Not for the first time he wished Johnny was with him. After Johnny had carried out the requests he was going to send by the Mikhail Shaporov message service, he, Powerscourt, would ask Johnny to join him. That would please Lady Lucy too.


  De Chassiron’s enormous desk was covered with telegraph cables, lying in unorganized heaps on the dark green leather. De Chassiron himself was stretched out on the sofa, one hand behind his back, the other doodling notes on a pad in front of him. He was still very pale, as if suffering from shock.

  ‘My dear Powerscourt,’ he said, the words slightly slurred, ‘how good to see you on day three of the Russian Revolution. Will you join me in a glass of Georgian brandy? They say it is good for the nerves.’ He bent to the floor and half filled a tumbler. ‘And how have the travails of the empire struck you today? Have you witnessed any more massacres? Cavalry charges in the poorer quarters? The Tsar in person with a sabre on a black horse?’

  Powerscourt realized that the diplomat was slightly drunk. He must have been drinking for most of the day, for Powerscourt recalled on previous occasions how much alcohol he had been able to consume without showing any ill effects at all. He told de Chassiron about his encounter with the Okhrana. De Chassiron was fascinated.

  ‘As far as I know, you’re the first Englishman to go in there at all, Powerscourt, never mind come out again alive. Congratulations.’ He didn’t seem to take on board the subtler points about the dead Martin.

  ‘I’ve been a bad boy today, a bad, bad boy,’ de Chassiron went on, shaking his head slightly now. ‘Been told off by His Nibs. He didn’t like my account of what happened on Sunday. Asked me if I thought I was working for the Daily Mail with lurid and sensational’ – he just about managed to get the word out – ‘accounts of the slaughter of the innocents. He said, the silly old fool, that I was exaggerating what had happened. His Nibs doesn’t seem to realize that some of us here,’ the drunken diplomat was close to tears at this point, ‘do actually care what happens to this bloody country, that we can’t bear to see it being disembowelled in front of our eyes on such beautiful streets with such beautiful buildings. Our brother in Christ, the French Ambassador, usually well informed, says the people will probably all go on strike now. Whole country going to close down while the Tsar plays charades with the family at the Alexander Palace out at Tsarskoe Selo.’

  De Chassiron bent down and refilled his glass. Powerscourt thought he should help him upstairs to his rooms quite soon so he could sleep it off.

  ‘I told His bloody Nibs I’d seen it all,’ he went on, waving his glass at Powerscourt, ‘that I’d held the hands of some of these poor people as they lay dying. No good. Useless. Ambassador says whole thing has been exaggerated by the liberals. Man in Foreign Ministry had told him so. Foreign newspapers are talking of thousands dead. Italians chief ghouls as usual. Six thousand dead, some rag in Rome says. Mind you, if they’d had their way, those bloody Italians, Our Lord would have fed fifty thousand rather than five on that holy mountain in those bloody Gospels. It’s the old story,’ de Chassiron polished off about half of his glass in one enormous gulp, ‘Foreign Office in London meant to represent interests of foreigners. Foreign embassies meant to represent view of the countries they’re stationed in to His Majesty’s Government, not the other way round.’

  ‘De Chassiron,’ said Powerscourt, knowing that there was limited time to get any sense out of his colleague, ‘I’ve got to send a message to London, to Lord Rosebery and the Foreign Office. How do I do that?’

  ‘All messages to London have to be cleared by Head of Station, His Nibs,’ said de Chassiron, rising slowly to his feet. ‘Telegraph room’s down the corridor from here. Turn left out of my door, second door on the right. Operated by helpful youth called Crabbe, Ricky Crabbe.’ During this little speech, de Chassiron had risen slowly but steadily to his feet. ‘Going upstairs now, Powerscourt. Don’t tell His Nibs you’ve seen me. Mum’s the word.’

  As Powerscourt made his way towards the telegraph room, he wondered if de Chassiron had managed to send any cables to London that day. And, if he had, what they would make of them at Okhrana headquarters at 16 Fontanka Quai.

  Ricky Crabbe, guardian and master of the telegraphic equipment, looked to Powerscourt to be little more than twenty years old. He was clean-shaven, painfully thin and had very clear blue eyes.

  ‘You must be Lord Powerscourt, Lord Powerscourt,’ he said, holding out a rather dirty hand with surprisingly elegant long fingers. ‘Sorry about that, my lord, I’ve not been myself these last two days and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Where did you watch the events from?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘I was over with my friend Harrison Wisebite Junior at the American Embassy, my lord,’ said Ricky Crabbe. ‘They had a near perfect view of the massacre at the Narva Gates. Then the Americans began sending telegrams to Washington and New York as soon as the first volley was fired. My friend Harrison said it was to tell their friends and their brokers to start selling their Russian stocks and bonds as fast as they could. Anyway, my lord, how can I help you? I think you knew my elder brother, my lord, Albert Crabbe, served with you in Army Intelligence in South Africa?’

  Powerscourt looked closely at the young man. Then an elder version of Ricky came to him, again very slim, very cool in action, this one, sending telegraphs out right up to the last moment when the post had to be abandoned before the arrival of the Boers.

  ‘Albert Crabbe!’ said Powerscourt. ‘Known as Quick-Fingered Bertie to his friends! The finest and the fastest telegraphist in the British Army! What has become of him?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Ricky, delighted to hear the praise of his brother, ‘he got bored with peace. No point staying on at army rates of pay to send out all that routine stuff, Albert said. He went to work for one of those big banks in the City, my lord. He’s in charge of all their telegraphs and telephones and heaven knows what all now. Making a packet of money now, our Albert, always on at me to join him.’

  ‘We’ll talk about this another time, Ricky,’ said Powerscourt, looking at the clock, wondering if the Okhrana’s decoders worked twenty-four hours a day. ‘I’ve got to send a couple of messages to London. Is the Ambassador fussy about length, number of words and so on?’

  ‘Don’t think His Nibs knows how the machines work at all, my lord,’ said the young man cheerfully. ‘He’s supposed to see all outgoing messages, but you just write yours out and I’ll send it off for you.’

  As Ricky Crabbe checked the inner workings of his machinery, Powerscourt composed his messages with great care. To Sir Jeremiah Reddaway: ‘Proceeding with mission. Please expect inquiry from Russian sources about our meeting in Markham Square. They merely seek confirmation that you were trying to persuade me out of retirement. They have some silly notion that we discussed Martin and the nature of his mission. I hope to have made them see the truth but your help would be most welcome. Powerscourt.’

  He sent the same message to Rosebery, via the Foreign Office. He wondered if Rosebery’s delicate nostrils might tell him something was slightly wrong in the wording of the message.

  Ricky Crabbe bent over his code book. His right hand produced a new, completely unintelligible version of the messages which he proceeded to send to London at breakneck speed.

  ‘You’re here about that Mr Martin, aren’t you, my lord,’ he said to Powerscourt as his hands continued to tap out the code, ‘trying to find out what happened to him, isn’t that it?’

  ‘You’re absolutely right, Ricky,’ said Powerscourt, remembering what hotbeds of gossip places like embassies could be. ‘Do you know anything about it? You must have all kinds of secrets passing through your hands in such a sensitive and important post as this.’

  Ricky Crabbe frowned. ‘Do you know something, Lord Powerscourt? You’re the first person who’s ever asked me that.’ He paused and stared at the last two lines of the despatches to London. ‘There’s just one thing, my lord. I’m sure it’s nothing, nothing at all.’ He paused again, and then hit about six of his keys in rapid succession.

  ‘There, they’ve gone. Now then, where was I? Mr Martin, that’s it. I’m fairly sure, my lord, but I couldn’t prove it, that at some point round about t
he time of Mr Martin’s disappearance, somebody used these machines here without my knowing. There were only two times over those days when I wasn’t here on duty – once I had an urgent signal to take immediately to His Nibs, and the other early the following evening when I was summoned for a drink in his office for Christmas. I didn’t know the summons was social, if you know what I mean, I thought it was just to pick up a message, so I ran as fast as I could. Now I think about it, my lord, that was the time when the lock on this door broke and we couldn’t find a Russian to come and fix it for about three days. They were all drunk. So I tried to do what I could but I suppose somebody could have walked in here and sent a message.’

  ‘Assuming they knew how to send one, that is,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘Indeed, my lord, there’s none of the diplomats here know how to do it.’

  Powerscourt wondered again if Martin had been a spy. Suddenly he remembered Sir Jeremiah Reddaway telling him that Martin had been trained in the use of the telegraph. These machines would hold no mystery for him. ‘What made you think, Ricky, that somebody else had been on your machines?’

  ‘Two things,’ said Ricky Crabbe promptly. ‘I always put the cover back on when I’m not actually using it.’ He took a dark cover off the machine and replaced it quickly. ‘When I got back, the cover was off.’

  ‘And the other thing?’

  ‘Well, that’s hard to explain, Lord Powerscourt. Telegraphists would find it easier to understand. I’ve got what they call a light hand, my lord, I don’t press down very hard on the keys. Whoever used it when I was away, if somebody did, had a much harder fist than me, so the key felt different for a little while when I got back. It had just got used to the other fellow, don’t you see.’

  Endless possibilities were spooling out of Powerscourt’s brain. He suddenly realized how much it must have taken the young man to tell him this.

  ‘Ricky,’ he said, ‘I cannot tell you how grateful I am for this news. It may make a substantial difference to my inquiries. Naturally I do not have to remind you to keep all of what has passed between us this evening as confidential.’ He smiled happily at Ricky. ‘I can see that you are going to be as valuable a member of my team here as your brother was in South Africa!’