David Dickinson - Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

‘Who cares about winning horses? People say this is the finest ballet company in the world. We could invite anybody who is anybody from London. The trains to Oxford from London run all the time. Think of the attention! Think of the newspapers!’

Her Ladyship did not say so, but she planned to be at the Duke’s side at all times. Those photos should put that railroad woman from New York in her place.

‘It’s all very vague still, anyway. Nobody’s even decided where the ballets should take place.’

‘You mark my words,’ said Mrs Deacon, preparing a grand departure from the room, ‘that if those dancers don’t come, I shall be seriously displeased. To hell with the money. You’ve got loads of it tucked away for buying racehorses and things. I’m depending on you!’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said the Duke to the departing figure. He knew only too well what serious displeasure meant.

Johnny Fitzgerald thought his friend Francis always gave him the worst jobs. Here he was, standing outside the house of a Mrs Maud Butler, youngest sister of Richard Wagstaff Gilbert, mother to one of the three surviving nephews who might inherit his fortune, aunt of the boy murdered at the Royal Opera House only a few days before. And he had already pressed the bell. What, in God’s name, was he to say to the poor woman? He was shown into an immaculate drawing room with one or two Impressionists that looked like originals on the walls.

‘Mr Fitzgerald, Johnny Fitzgerald,’ a middle-aged woman with blonde hair and a winning smile was inspecting him closely. ‘I think I know you. Aren’t you a great friend of that Lord Francis Powerscourt who used to own half of Wicklow until he sold it to a Guinness years ago? And didn’t you come to help us with the missing pictures of the ancestors that had disappeared off the walls?’

‘How well remembered!’ said Johnny. ‘You must be one of the Butler daughters who lived in Butlers Court. There was a grocer man at the bottom of the thefts, if I’m not mistaken. And is Butlers Court still thriving? Not taken over yet by the rebels?’

‘It’s still there. But look, Mr Fitzgerald, we can’t sit around here all day gassing about the old times. What brings you here today?’

Her hands suddenly shot up to her face. ‘Forgive me, I know why you have come. It’s about poor Alexander, isn’t it? His mother may be here next week, poor Molly. She and I were never close, but you have to be on hand at times like this.’

‘I’m afraid you may find the nature of my questions rather inappropriate at a time like this, Mrs Butler.’

‘No, I won’t. I know just how your friend Powerscourt thinks after watching him at work in Ireland. Alexander’s uncle is a very rich man. Is Alexander his heir? If he is, or maybe if he is not, who else might stand to inherit Mr Gilbert’s fortune? Am I right?’

‘You are.’

‘Some families play pass the parcel, Mr Fitzgerald. We play pass the inheritance round our children and their cousins. You can never tell who’s going to win when the music stops. I know I shouldn’t call him a wicked uncle at a time like this but I will, so there. He teases us. One year it’s my Mark to inherit. Then it’s poor Alexander, God rest his soul, then my two nephews Peter or Nicholas. I should tell you, Mr Fitzgerald, that there are now three nephews left in the hunt. Alexander was Molly’s only son. She and that Prince of hers, they’re all called Princes in St Petersburg, as far as I can make out, have three daughters living, no more boys. My sister Clarissa, Clary we call her, has two boys older than my Mark — Peter and Nicholas, they live near Oxford. Uncle Richard, the wicked old goat, never says who is his final choice. Oh no, that would be too kind on his relations. And he always said he was going to tie up his will so the money couldn’t be shared out between the rival contenders. Heaven only knows how he would do that, but we are all sure he could and he would.’

‘I think that makes the position very clear. Do you know who the current favourite nephew is, or was?’

‘It was Alexander, no question of it. We all had a letter about it in the post a couple of months ago. Not that it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to change his mind.’

‘Perhaps you could warn your sister that I shall be coming?’ asked Johnny.

‘Of course.’

‘And your Mark? Is he still here with you?’

‘No, Mark is at Oxford, failing, according to his father, to pay enough attention to his law books. He’s had to stay behind after term to catch up on his studies. Mind you, he and his friends have hardly been there these last few days. They all keep coming up and down to see the Ballets Russes. I think they’ve managed to see every single performance.’

The telegram came the afternoon before. ‘Eight o’clock a.m. Prepare to accept a call. K.’

Captain Yuri Gorodetsky, sole representative of the Okhrana in London, was ready at his command post near Holborn Station.

‘Captain! Are you there? It is I, General Kilyagin, who speaks!’

Gorodetsky didn’t think there could be many other Kilyagins booming at him down the phone.

‘Yes, sir! Here, sir!’

‘What news of the Bolsheviks? Have they departed from Bethnal Green to learn the rules of changing money?’

‘Yes, they have, sir. They have been most diligent. The chief Bolshevik — can you have a chief Bolshevik, sir?’

‘Bugger the chief Bolshevik, Gorodetsky, just carry on.’

‘He changed some money into French francs. They’ve been going round local banks changing it in and out. The locals must be expecting a French invasion.’

‘Stick to the point, man, for heaven’s sake. When is the big day?’

‘It’s two or three days from now, sir. There’s some question of one of the railwaymen being able to change his shift, and the others won’t go without him.’

‘Good! Excellent! And are our English friends going to funnel them into twelve banks as before?’

‘It’s down to six now, sir. And the banks have agreed to put their smallest porters on duty. The English police are ready and waiting, sir.’

‘Carry on Gorodetsky, carry on.’

‘Diaghilev strode up and down that train in Paddington Station, as though he was the Duke of Marlborough himself on some kind of state visit. He tapped with his cane on the windows of all the carriages where his people were. Then he boarded the train at the rear into his own first-class carriage.’

Michel Fokine was stretched out on the sofa in Powerscourt’s drawing room, giving a first-hand account of what he and the Powerscourts were to refer to ever afterwards as ‘The Grand Reconnaissance’, the day Diaghilev took the first division of his people to check out Blenheim Palace and prepare it for ballet.

‘We were all there,’ Fokine went on: ‘dancers, choreographers, musicians, set designers, painters, an acoustic man, even Stravinsky turned up for the day. And when we got to Oxford, no minor train, no branch line from the outer reaches of the Vanderbilt Empire for us: there were four horsedrawn carriages. Not a whiff of petrol in the air. Diaghilev, in the lead position now, must have thought he was back on his quest for ancestral portraits that took him all over Russia, horse and carriage conveying him from stations miles away to some crumbling heap with masterpieces in the attic.

‘When they got there the steward — he’s the man in charge of the whole estate, am I right?’

Powerscourt nodded, reluctant to interrupt the flow. ‘Well, he’d lined all the servants up around that great front door, like Diaghilev was the King or something. He spoke perfect French, by the way, and he and Diaghilev got on like a house on fire.

‘“Welcome to Blenheim,” says the steward, embracing Diaghilev on both cheeks, “and welcome to the Great Hall.” Diaghilev raised his cane as his eye took in the enormous room rising high up to the painted ceiling. Then he brought it crashing down and rapped the floor very hard. Then he waved it around.