David Dickinson - Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

‘So,’ said George, ‘the father hears about the money coming in? He won’t know how it got there.’

‘He has drawn up a contract or something in banker language which states that any money going to that bank must be used to pay off some of the son’s debts.’

‘And is forty thousand pounds not enough to pay off the debts and leave some change?’

‘I don’t know. Prince Felix doesn’t talk to me about money, only that bit.’

‘I suppose he could find out where the money came from, diamond merchants out of Antwerp and London. You don’t have to be a genius to work out what’s been going on. Dear God, what a mess.’

‘But do you see now that the money must not go to that bank? It must come here to me.’

‘I do and I must go. I’ll send the wire later this morning. And then, Anastasia. .’

‘Then what, George?’

‘Then we’ll have to begin all over again.’

Natasha Shaporova still kept open house for the corps de ballet. They were expected any minute now, for their timetables made them as punctual as clockwork. The girls still came, in the same numbers, some now refusing, very politely, to eat cakes or biscuits because of their weight. But Natasha, for the moment, was engaged in her correspondence.

She had decided, when l’affaire Taneyev , as she referred to it, began, that she would make enquiries at the other end, the Russian end. She did not have the resources of a police force, or even a determined newspaper reporter, but Natasha had something better than that, a host of relations who would know, or who would know who knew, any interesting details of the Taneyev family background. There weren’t that many families in St Petersburg in which the mother was English — always a source of malice and gossip about Russian manners not being properly understood. She had written to her mother and her grandmother, and to two of her aunts and to the only one of her brothers she considered reliable. After that she had further cohorts of friends from school and cousins of every description. The replies were now arriving at regular intervals at her house in Chelsea. Gossip knows no boundaries.

The picture she was forming was orthodox (if you didn’t count the English mother who had a habit of reading to some of her younger children in bed before they went to sleep, which was considered barbaric on the Nevskii Prospekt and the Fontanka Quay). Natasha had only two letters left when she found the hidden secret of the family Taneyev. It came in a long letter from her aunt, who prided herself on her knowledge of St Petersburg family history. After pages and pages of successful Taneyevs, soldier Taneyevs, banker Taneyevs, Admiral Taneyevs, drunken Taneyevs — far too many in Natasha’s view, for she was growing rather fond of this family with a background rather like her own — Aunt Marie eventually came to the dead boy’s grandfather, Josef Ilyich Taneyev, a middle-ranking Guards officer with a very beautiful wife.

This Taneyev was rather old when he married Anna Bulgakov, who was said to be one of the prettiest girls in St Petersburg. She had two sons when they lived in peaceful seclusion in Perm with the Guards Regiment, but very little society to speak of. ‘And then, my dear, it all started to go wrong,’ Natasha’s aunt wrote. ‘The husband was posted to St Petersburg. The duties weren’t very serious so he wanted to live quietly in the country when he wasn’t needed on military duties. His rank, however — for his was one of those fashionable regiments that are expected to appear at social functions in our capital — meant that he had to spend more time than he would have liked attending the great balls and soirees and parties of every sort. And he hated dancing, Josef Ilyich Taneyev — one of my closest friends had predicted that this would cause great trouble even before they were married — while Anna loved it.

She became reckless, dancing with the same partner all night sometimes, and causing great pain to the older man in the sitting-out area, who loved her and had married her. Eventually Anna became besotted with an artistic young man called Pyotr Solkonsky, who wrote a lot of poetry and whose interests and instincts were the opposite of Josef Ilyich’s. You just had to see them together to see that they were having an affair — and they seemed not to care who knew it. She was, or she seemed to be, in love. But she forgot that she had married into a military family. The husband’s fellow officers had been talking to him for weeks about challenging the poet-lover to a duel. Eventually he gave in, and the fateful day finally came: the meeting in a glade in a forest outside the city; the seconds in attendance; the carriages waiting to take the living and the dead back to their homes.’

Natasha was wondering at this point if her aunt hadn’t missed out on a second career as a novelist. She read on.

‘The result was a surprise, but perhaps a tribute to our military training. The poet fired first and missed. Perhaps he intended to miss, who knows? Josef Taneyev did not miss. His bullet struck the poet in the chest and did terrible damage to his lungs. They say the blood was pouring out of him in his carriage all the way back to his home. He died two days later. But, wait, Natasha, here is the point of this terrible story. The poet gathered his three brothers round his deathbed before he passed away. ‘Revenge,’ he whispered, coughing yet more blood onto the sheets, ‘revenge, not in this generation but the next. Take my revenge on the generation after ours.’ He died that evening. It took some time before the family Solkonsky realized what he meant. Any revenge in this generation would mean the death of one who might be the son or daughter of his lover. That was why the Solkonskys had to wait. Even in death he was trying to protect his Anna from unhappiness.’

Natasha knew from her other letters that Alexander Taneyev’s siblings consisted of one older brother, Ivan, and three younger sisters: Marie, Elizabetta and Olga.

Arabesque is the position of the body supported on one leg, with the other leg extended behind the body with the knee straight. The standing leg may be either bent, in plié or straight. Arabesque is used in both allegro and adagio choreography. The working leg is placed in 4th open, à terre (on the ground) or en l’air (raised). Armline defines whether this is 1st, 2nd or 3rd arabesque.

Johnny Fitzgerald was meeting a stockbroker in the City of London, one of the money men recommended to him by Sweetie Robinson, who had played cards for money with Richard Wagstaff Gilbert. Two had declined very politely, but the third, Henry Wilson Pollock, senior partner of Pollock, Richards and Cork in Mincing Lane was prepared to talk to him.

‘You’re an investigator, Sweetie tells me,’ Pollock began. He was a small, stout man who looked, Johnny thought, much as Mr Pickwick might have looked when he grew older.

‘That’s right, Mr Pollock. My current case involves a man you know well, I believe: Richard Wagstaff Gilbert.’

‘That old bastard Waggers!’ said Pollock, almost shouting. Johnny was surprised at the vehemence of his reaction. Most people would stick with the pleasantries of politeness for five minutes or so before showing their anger. This tubby little man launched straight in.

‘I gather that you have had a lot of dealings with the gentleman in your time, Mr Pollock.’

‘Gentleman is not a word I would use in connection with Waggers, Mr Fitzgerald, oh no. Definitely not.’

‘Might I ask why?’

‘If you had called ten or maybe even five years ago, I would not have told you. I would have been constrained by professional etiquette and what remains of the rules of society. But now? I am winding down my affairs. I shall keep a presence in the firm, but I shall not be here very often. I intend to spend my days looking after my garden and following the fortunes of Middlesex Cricket Club in the summer and Tottenham Hotspur in the winter.’