David Dickinson - Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

The year eighteen hundred and seventy-six contained what they were looking for, a Katie Shore married to a Richard Gilbert. There were the usual attendant signatories. The vicar sounded relieved but tired.

‘There we are, my lord, I’m so glad to have been able to find it for you. It wouldn’t do to disappoint a member of the Powerscourt family.’

‘I’m sorry to have to trouble you further, vicar, but could we check the births and the deaths register for the few years after?’

‘Of course. It’s likely that they moved away, mind you. A lot of people of their age moved away to Salisbury, or even to London to look for work that wasn’t based on agriculture. That’s why our local population keeps falling.’

An hour later, Powerscourt decided to call it a day. The unfortunate Sergeant Jenkins could begin his work at Somerset House at the year 1882, when Gilbert should have been thirty years of age.

‘You could look in the graveyard here, if you like, Lord Powerscourt. I just hand over the money to the man who tidies up the grass and props up the falling headstones. I don’t think I’ve ever read the names, now I think of it. There’s enough to do, looking after the living.’

Powerscourt did indeed check on the headstones, the same names coming to meet him that he had seen born, married and buried in the register. If the little church of St Michael and All Angels Blexham had any secrets about the family of Richard Wagstaff Gilbert, it was keeping them close to its heart.

Captain Yuri Gorodetsky didn’t have to wait for his master to speak this time. The General came straight on the line when he placed the call.

‘Gorodetsky, you idler, what is going on in your neck of the woods? What news of the Bolsheviks of Bethnal Green? What are the bastards up to now?’

‘Nothing is happening here, General. The Bolshevik money remains in the capitalist bank in the City of London. There is absolutely no sign of any plans to move it just yet.’

‘And the printer you wrote to me about, the rogue, overcharging like that? You’d think that an outfit dedicated to the equality of man could at least offer a decent price, rather than an exorbitant one for running off a few pamphlets. No intelligence there yet, I suppose. And what do our English colleagues have to say for themselves? I find it hard to believe that there is no activity at all.’

‘They pay their informers well, as always, the English. They’ve had years of experience doing that. They say things do turn quiet sometimes. The comrades go about the place doing their work and recruiting for the cause. They still have the occasional meeting to rally support. I think they may be waiting for instructions about Lenin’s pamphlet. I can’t believe a number of those won’t be left behind for the believers in Bethnal Green.’

‘I have news for you, Captain, but you must keep it a secret. I am not meant to know myself. I only found out about it by accident and I don’t propose to let you in on how I came across it.’

Most people lower their voices when speaking of secrets. General Peter Kilyagin raised his as far as it would go, so the Captain had to hold the instrument away from him.

‘Headquarters, that’s St Petersburg Okhrana, have sent a man to England. They sent him some time ago — how long, I do not know. His mission is known only to a select few at the very top of the Okhrana. I know nothing about the details of his mission.’

‘But why, General, why are we sending one of our top men to London? Why not to Berlin or Hamburg or Wilhelmshaven or one of those naval construction places?’

‘Don’t be absurd, Gorodetsky! Are you expecting our masters to behave rationally? Anybody who has spent time in the domestic department of the Okhrana knows only too well the fantastic lengths the revolutionaries will go to in order to blow up a train or a bridge. Their minds — I’ve always believed this — are shaped by that experience of bombs and explosions and they take it with them into the foreign service.’

‘I still don’t understand, sir.’

‘Never you mind. You just keep your eyes fixed on those Bolsheviks. And remember the great maxim of intelligence gathering: ‘Hold your friends tight but hold your enemies tighter.’

Michel Fokine was in cheerful mood when he called on the Powerscourts in Markham Square. Inspector Dutfield was organizing his forces, some to Somerset House, some to shadowing Alfred Bolm, some to search for more information about strangers on the night of the murder at the Ballets Russes.

‘You’ll never guess the success of those Blenheim Palace performances,’ Fokine said happily. ‘We’ve had invitations to come to all sorts of places: an Elizabethan jewel of a place called Montacute, wherever that is; a place with a room for every day of the year at Knole (and I do know where that it is); and one from the Rothschilds at Waddesdon Manor. The Waddesdon people even offered to build a special replica of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg to be ready when we come back in the autumn. They said it wouldn’t matter if it rained. Why, there was a rumour that the Queen, who is interested in these things, wanted to send an invitation for us to give a small evening performance at Buckingham Palace.’

‘Was the rumour true, Monsieur Fokine? The one about Buckingham Palace, I mean?’

‘No, it wasn’t. People say that the King put his foot down. If I have this dancing lot in, he is supposed to have said, who the hell else is going to come through my doors and bore us all rigid? So that was the end of that.’

‘Monsieur Diaghilev must be vey pleased with the way it went.’

‘He is. But he says he’ll never do it again. The whole event, he says, was much riskier than anybody thought. He hadn’t counted on the people cheering and all that. Suppose they’d decided they didn’t like it, he said, the good people of Blenheim Palace and Woodstock. We, the Ballets Russes — my Ballets Russes, as he refers to them — could have been booed off the stage and into the lake.’

Powerscourt told him in very general terms about Alexander’s letters home and the messages they contained.

Fokine began pacing up and down the room again. ‘The business about being English or Russian is something he talked to me about. I thought it perfectly natural. London is pretty overwhelming when you see it and its people in all their pomp at the ballet.’

‘So what did you tell him?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘I told him not to worry. I said it was perfectly natural to feel English in England — he’s been here loads of times before seeing family and so on; he speaks English at home — and equally natural to feel Russian in St Petersburg or Moscow. I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you, I told him.’

‘And the other stuff, about the papers and so on?’ said Powerscourt.

‘I’ve been thinking about that, my lord, and my only useful thought is that it concerns the future of the Ballets Russes.’ He paused for a moment and looked out into the square.

‘He could perhaps have seen something on Bolm’s desk when he was being made up; Alexander could have popped in to wish him good luck or some gesture like that.’

‘And what could that have related to?’

‘Well, Bolm is one of the senior dancers, so he’s given a sight of some of the upcoming plans to make sure he knows what’s coming. It could relate to one of two things. They might make a very small ripple here in Chelsea, Lord Powerscourt, Lady Powerscourt, but they could create a huge wave in the Ballets Russes.’

‘Are you able to tell us what they might be?’

‘Yes, I’ll try. You’ve been more than generous to me while I’ve been here. The first could relate to the Ballets Russes going to perform back home in St Petersburg. We, the Ballets Russes, have never danced in our own country. Diaghilev had some fearsome row with the theatre authorities some years ago. Maybe he has sorted that out. Maybe I haven’t been reading my mail, which I hate doing. That could be one surprise. It would cause a sensation all over Europe, the prodigal Diaghilev bringing his art and his artists home again.’