David Dickinson: Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

Lenin’s disciple had a further mission. As well as the notes, concealed in the false bottoms of a trunk and a couple of suitcases, he was entrusted with another of Lenin’s revolutionary tracts, proclaiming the inevitability of world revolution and describing the vanguard role to be played by the Bolsheviks. Cracow, Lenin’s latest bolt-hole, was so infested with agents of the Russian Secret Service, the Okhrana, or local policemen hired to work on their behalf, that it was impossible to have anything printed in the city. Lenin’s man was to have five hundred copies printed in each language and sent back to St Petersburg in the Ballets Russes luggage. The money to pay the printers was to come from the proceeds of the bank robbery.

Natasha was looking grave when she came back from the stage. Michel Fokine was shouting at the corps de ballet again.

‘This isn’t a very promising start, I’m afraid, Lord Powerscourt, Sergeant Jenkins. Fokine says that Diaghilev is in a terrible temper. It’s not just the murder, apparently. His inner circle suspect he’s run out of money and can’t pay the bills. It’s happened before, they say. Somehow or other he always manages to pull the squirrel out of the hat.’ She stopped suddenly. ‘Is that right? Squirrel, I mean? Something tells me it’s not the squirrel.’

‘Rabbit,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘It’s a rabbit out of the hat. But I’m sure it might have been a squirrel.’

Natasha laughed. ‘One of the ballerinas said Diaghilev was going to see Lady Ripon. He got a lot of money out of her last year, apparently. He promises to bring Nijinsky down to her house to dance in front of her friends. She’s built a little stage at the edge of her ballroom, they tell me. After Nijinsky has danced for his tea or his supper, she coughs up.’

‘I suppose that makes sense,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Anyway,’ Natasha went on, ‘Fokine says we’ll just have to wait. He’s going to ring me when he’s got some news. Nobody will speak until Diaghilev gives the all-clear. They won’t even let you visit the scene of the murder without his say-so. Maybe we should all go and have a cup of coffee round the corner?’

Natasha took them to the Fielding Hotel near the Royal Opera House, where she and Mikhail often had supper after the performances. Sergeant Jenkins looked ruefully at Bow Street Magistrates Court across the way, as if he would have felt more at home giving evidence in court rather than consorting with prima ballerinas and temperamental impresarios.

‘Natasha,’ said Powerscourt, ‘can you tell us about the ballet? I don’t mean the composers or the choreographers or the artists, but the world of the dancers. What’s that like?’

‘Well, I don’t know a great deal about the ballet, I’m afraid. I have a brother back in St Petersburg who knows all about it. He’s a great ballet lover, what they call a balletomane. I can always ask him for more information. Let me see. .’ Natasha paused to help herself to a piece of chocolate cake.

‘I think the ballet and the opera people all get trained at the Imperial Theatre School in Theatre Street in St Petersburg. I think they can go there as boarders when they’re still quite young. They get a proper education, as well as being trained in their particular speciality, dancing or singing. Nijinsky was a pupil there — I remember my brother telling us that he was going to be the most famous ballet dancer in the world.’

‘Do they get on with each other? The ballerinas?’

‘You should try some of this cake, Sergeant,’ said Natasha with a smile. ‘It’s really good. There’s a bakery round the corner that’s one of the best in London. In answer to your question, Lord Powerscourt, I don’t think the world of ballet is an advertisement for brotherly love. Or sisterly love either. I don’t think they have regular readings of the Sermon of the Mount at mealtimes.’

‘Do they not get on with each other at all?’

‘I think there is one word that explains so much about their behaviour. Jealousy. Just imagine, Lord Powerscourt. You’ve been friends with this boy or girl for a number of years. You’re in the same class. You’re sharing your schooldays. Then, one day, out of the blue, your friend is promoted. He or she is made up a grade. They can see their way right up to the top now, premier danseur or prima ballerina, the summit of your profession, the chance to make dramatic leaps all over the stage and heaps and heaps of money off it. But you, the one not promoted, may spend years stuck in the corps de ballet. You could be there until you take your pension. People are sometimes so possessed with jealousy that they do terrible things.’

‘Stabbing each other to death with Cossack knives just used in a performance, perhaps?’ said Powerscourt.

‘I’ve never heard of anything that bad, but there are some terrible stories. One female dancer, who thought she was the one people came to see, was dancing with Nijinsky not long ago. At the end it was clear that the applause and the standing ovations that rang round and round were for him, not her. She’s never danced with Nijinsky again.’

‘God bless my soul,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Then there was another prima ballerina who found that her roles were drying up. She was cast in fewer and fewer ballets and her parts were getting smaller. She only found out the reason by accident. Another prima ballerina had gone to the choreographer Fokine we saw just now and told him that he, Fokine, must not put her rival in too many roles. She was consumptive. Too much dancing would be very bad for her health. Smaller roles, not too many performances, that was the secret.’

‘It all sounds a bit like London gangsters to me — why don’t we knife the boss of the gang next door?’ Sergeant Jenkins was brushing chocolate crumbs off his jacket. ‘I’m obliged to you, Mrs Shaporova, for the coffee and the cake. You were right about that. It’s delicious. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the station. My inspector may have found somebody who speaks Russian for me by now. I wish you both a very good day.’

Natasha Shaporova was also preparing to leave. ‘I will let you know the minute I hear from Fokine, Lord Powerscourt. Do you have any plans in the meantime?’

‘I do, as a matter of fact. I’m going to find out all I can about the gentleman Alexander Taneyev was staying with, Mr Richard Wagstaff Gilbert. In my rather disagreeable profession, Natasha, we learn a number of disagreeable truths. Jealousy may be one motive for murder. Money, especially money to be inherited, is undoubtedly another.’

Literally ‘lifted’. Rising from any position to balance on one or both feet on at least demi-pointe, which is heels off the floor, or higher to full pointe (commonly for girls), where the dancer is actually balancing on the top of the toes, supported in pointe shoes. Smoothly done in some versions, a quick little leap up in other schools.

‘The buildings in the City of London are pygmies, just pygmies,’ Powerscourt said to himself as he made his way up Lombard Street. The capital’s skyline was still dominated by the same landmark buildings that had been there for centuries, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Monument, Big Ben. In New York, as his son Thomas continually told him (as part of Thomas’s campaign to be taken there on holiday), there was a race towards the stars. The 1890 World Building, at over 300-feet high, had been overtaken by the Singer Building in 1908, which had forty-seven storeys and rose to 612 feet. Its reign as New York City’s tallest building didn’t last long. It was surpassed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Building, measuring 700 feet, a year later.