David Dickinson: Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

‘Come to think of it, I’m not sure I have. Maybe they should revise the police manuals. What do you think, Sergeant?’

Sergeant Jenkins had been staring at the stage very hard. ‘Sorry, my lord, it’s those girls. Just look at that blonde one over there. And to think that some lucky bloke probably gets to pick that one up and throw her high in the air six nights a week. It doesn’t bear thinking about. What was your question again, my lord?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Powerscourt, patting the young man on the shoulder. ‘It’s not important. It doesn’t matter at all.’

Powerscourt had a standing invitation to tea at the Shaporova household any time after four o’clock. Natasha welcomed him with the finest English tea. Powerscourt was slightly disappointed. He had brought Sergeant Jenkins along because the Sergeant had told him that he, Jenkins, had always wanted to have tea from one of those samovar things. Never mind, Powerscourt said to himself: looking at Natasha for a while will take the Sergeant’s mind off the corps de ballet.

Powerscourt told her about the disappearing Diaghilev and the repainted crime scene.

‘Typical Diaghilev,’ she said. ‘Don’t flatter yourself that you’ve been singled out for special treatment. It’s perfectly normal, it happens all the time. Now then, I want to ask your advice, Lord Powerscourt. I’ve got a proposition to put before you.’

‘Tell me more,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Well,’ she said, pouring some more tea, ‘you know how Diaghilev and Nijinsky are invited to all the best houses in London? Not just Lady Ripon; she and the Duchess of Devonshire are just the tip of the iceberg. Everybody wants to show the Ballets Russes people off in their own houses. So my plan is to invite the entire corps de ballet to lunch or tea here. Mikhail knows the Russian Ambassador quite well. I think the Ambassador owes Mikhail’s bank a heap of money so he’ll have to come. I can ask the priest in charge of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God in Ennismore Gardens in South Kensington. That’s The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to you heathens. Maybe he’ll be able to rustle up a metropolitan or two to dress the set. We’ve got some icons praying away in a spare room upstairs. We’ll give them an outing down here. Tea in the samovar, Russian food, lashings of vodka. Home from home in Chelsea Square. We’ll make them our friends. I’ll invite some Russian speakers to make them feel at home. What do you think?’

‘I think it is a very cunning plan, actually,’ said Powerscourt.

‘I’m not sure I see why you call it cunning,’

‘Well, if they are our friends, they may tell us things we wouldn’t otherwise know. They could be like our spies in the Diaghilev camp. I presume you would wait until after the tea party before we start interviewing them?’

‘I think it would work better that way, yes.’

‘I tell you what, Natasha. It could be a great help if all these important people turn up — the Ambassador and a metropolitan or two. I’ve always worried that Diaghilev will simply instruct all his people to say as little as possible. He has the purse strings. He hands out the contracts. Do you want to spend the summer in Paris or not? You could ask your distinguished visitors to impress on the corps de ballet how important it is in the eyes of God and Mammon that they should cooperate fully with the English authorities. If they don’t they could be stuck here in London for a very long time. They are ambassadors for the good name of the Tsar and Mother Russia, that sort of line. You follow me?’

‘I do,’ said Natasha with a smile. ‘By the time you’re through with this case, you’ll be about as devious as Diaghilev, Lord Powerscourt. In fact, I suspect you already are.’ She smiled.

‘There is one thing I want to ask you about these interviews, Natasha. Do you think the girls would say more if it was just you doing the talking? If I wasn’t there, in other words?’

Natasha clapped her hands three times and laughed. ‘Goodness me, Lord Powerscourt, I don’t think that is a good idea at all. For a start I might not ask the right questions. And the other reason is clear as daylight to a woman, but obviously not so clear to a man.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You are an English milord. You are a member of the aristocracy. You know prime ministers and those sorts of people. These girls may be beautiful dancers but they are very young. Their heads may be turned. Maybe they will dream of becoming the mistress of an English milord. They can come and live in London. You must remember to wear your smartest clothes when you come to meet the girls. If you’ve got a real coronet in your dressing-up box, you’d better bring that too.’

Ballon means ‘to bounce’, where the dancer can show the lightness of the movement. This is a quality, not the elevation or height, of the jump. Even in small, quick jumps (petit allegro), dancers strive to exhibit ballon. A dancer exhibiting ballon would spring off the floor and appear to pause mid-air before landing.

George Walker was there. He was a docker. Albert Smith was there. He worked on the railways. The brothers William and Thomas Baker were there. They were porters at Euston Station. Arthur Cooper was there. He drove a bus. Henry Farmer was there. He too worked in the docks. Frederick and Alfred Butcher were there. They were miners from Kent. Joseph Turner was there. He was a schoolteacher. John Jones was there. He too was a docker. Walter Shepherd also worked on the railways. Herbert Thatcher was there. He drove a train.

These men were the twelve principal disciples of Lenin’s revolutionary movement in London. The Bolsheviks weren’t the only revolutionary group represented at the private meeting room in the Fox and Hounds in Rotherhithe. There were Syndicalists and Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, all united by extreme hatred of the capitalism that employed them at what they saw as minimal wages, maximum hours and very little concern for safety. For much of 1911 and 1912 they had been on strike or on the verge of a strike all over the country. Some of them wanted a minimum wage. Others, like the supporters of Lenin, wanted the complete overthrow of the capitalist system, an end to the power of the House of Lords, universal suffrage and the replacement of the monarchy by a Republic. Preferably all at once. Just as Christian Evangelicals believe personal salvation has to be experienced before true entry into the Church, so the Bolsheviks believed that conversion to the thinking of Karl Marx, principal saint in the Bolshevik religion, was a key part of being a true revolutionary.

Arthur Cooper, the bus driver and active trade unionist, called the meeting to order.

‘Comrades,’ he began, ‘let me begin by thanking you all for coming to this meeting, especially when I didn’t feel able to tell you what it was about.’ He paused and took a long draught of his pint of mild and bitter. ‘Now I can give you the full story. Very soon now we are all going to take part in a major assault on the capitalist system. We are going into enemy territory. We’re going into the banks.

‘Let me explain. Several years ago our colleagues in Russia organized what the capitalist Press would call a bank robbery in the Georgian city of Tiflis. You and I would say it was setting the people’s money free. So tight-fisted were those bankers that they kept notes of all the numbers on the five-hundred-rouble notes. Five-hundred-rouble notes, comrades, are for so large a sum that no worker could possibly have owned one, let alone seen one. Those notes were indeed the fruits of the oppressing and exploiting class. Comrade Lenin and Comrade Stalin couldn’t change these notes in Russia. They tried to change them abroad but were foiled by counter-revolutionary forces. Now it is our turn. We will have a series of bundles of notes, one for each man present, ready for distribution shortly. We will have prepared individual street maps with bank addresses so that you will all be going to different banks. This revolutionary action should start at precisely eleven o’clock. The reason for the coordination is to stop the capitalist bankers ringing up their collaborators and raising doubts about our plan. If the lackeys at the counter ask where the large note came from, you are to say that it was sent to you by the lawyers looking after the will of a rich relation in Moscow. Please ask to change the money into pounds. Please be polite. Revolutions are not won by guns alone. You are asked by Comrade Lenin to bring the money back here. We will organize its transfer to Lenin’s current location to further the work of the revolution. I will try to answer any questions but I feel that revolutionary discipline should prevail. The less you know the better.’