David Dickinson: Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

He’s making them dip their hands in the blood , Powerscourt thought to himself. We’re all complicit now .

‘I would just remind you all of the dates we agreed at our last meeting at Baddesley Clinton. Three weeks from now we all travel to the desolate country behind Calvi in Corsica for the French demonstration. The Baddesley Clinton protocol — ’ Powerscourt could see how much Danvers Tresilian enjoyed the word ‘protocol’, which spoke, strictly speaking, of private clauses inserted secretly into treaties between states by their despotic rulers — ‘makes it clear that our last demonstration should be in the Ardennes; close, appropriately enough, to the French border.’

The two foreigners nodded in agreement. Baddesley Clinton, Powerscourt thought. Baddesley Clinton. A little jewel of a house, with a perfect moat, in the English Midlands, it had been famous for concealing recusants in the reign of Elizabeth I. Perhaps they’d popped the two foreigners into the priest holes. They would naturally have been suspected of being agents of the Catholic faith — the fact they were foreigners was enough to rouse Elizabeth’s spy master, Sir Francis Walsingham, into action.

‘Now then, gentlemen, questions are allowed, although I cannot give any guarantees of my being able to answer them.’

That means he’s not going to give any answers at all, Powerscourt said to himself.

‘The wind,’ said the Frenchman, ‘would I be right in saying that there was virtually no wind this morning?’

‘You would be right in assuming that,’ said Danvers Tresilian.

‘And there is still virtually no wind now, is that not right?’ asked the German, peering out of the windows at the calm running of the river, swirling on its way to London and the sea.

The man from the Cabinet Office made a brief inspection of the Thames.

‘You too are correct: there is still a dead calm here.’

Powerscourt had managed, with great difficulty, to clear his son Thomas and his friends from his mind. Now he was wondering what on earth was going on. What was this conspiracy all about? Why was the Frenchman here? And the German? Sharing secrets with foreign powers with whom we might be at war in a few years’ time? Had Tresilisan permission from his political masters to be here, offering secret displays of the lethal properties of British poison gas? And if so, which masters? The urbane mandarins of his own department? The Generals in all their pomp and glory on the Imperial General Staff?

‘The gas,’ said the Frenchman, ‘is a gas that could easily be manufactured through detailed knowledge of the more advanced forms of the chemical industry in all our countries?’

‘You know the rules, Monsieur, I couldn’t be expected to reply to such a question. Unofficially, and I shall not include this in the secret minutes of this meeting, unofficially the answer is yes.’

If they all know about how to make the stuff, what are these three doing here? Powerscourt asked himself. Then the answer came, or did it? For his theory was so bizarre that it seemed literally incredible. He remembered the Sherlock Holmes lines in The Sign of Four : ‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’

It couldn’t be true, surely. Or could it? It was too improbable for words.

‘I feel that we have probably exhausted the lines of enquiry that might be regarded as safe,’ said the man from the Cabinet Office, gathering some papers in front of a very large and very expensive leather briefcase. ‘Lord Powerscourt, you have been quiet ever since you arrived. You didn’t even ask for marmalade this morning.’

That must be the Cabinet Office idea of a joke, Powerscourt said to himself. God help us all.

‘Perhaps,’ put in the Frenchman, ‘you should tell our friend the real nature of our business. He was not at Baddesley Clinton. He does not know our purpose. If he does not know that, then why is he here?’

Danvers Tresilian slapped his hand on his brow rather dramatically. He’s covering his tracks, Powerscourt said to himself. Maybe this is how the upper reaches of the mandarin class get themselves out of trouble in the discreet quarters of their Ministry or over a glass of something at the Athenaeum.

‘The Baddesley accords,’ Tresilian began — accords as well as protocols; Powerscourt’s brain was working at full speed now, thinking of Metternich and Talleyrand and the intrigues that followed the war against Napoleon — ‘state quite clearly that we gentlemen here are committed to our countries agreeing never to use poison gas in the event of war between us. We are neutral on the question of war or peace, though we would, naturally, prefer peace. But if there is to be a war, we see it as our duty to ensure that none of our countries use the dreadful stuff we saw in action this morning. How do we propose to secure this harmony? By lobbying as hard as we can with our political masters and their military counterparts to ensure that poison gas is never used. Lord Rosebery suggested you would be a very useful addition to our cause, Lord Powerscourt. That is why you are here.’

Powerscourt rose to his feet and bowed to those present. ‘I am honoured,’ he said. ‘I congratulate you on your courage, to undertake such a mission that could well be laughed to scorn by our colleagues in uniform.’

‘You will forgive me, gentlemen,’ said the German. ‘There is one further argument against the use of this poison gas. It only came to me as I watched the end of the demonstration earlier.’

‘Do tell us your thoughts, my friend,’ Danvers Tresilian was once more the perfect civil servant, not closing the discussion down, leaving avenues of exploration open to visitors, stones not left unturned, when a lesser man might have headed for the exit.

‘We have to have the little game of war, gentlemen,’ said the German. ‘I am on the side where the guns were, the ones that fired a warning for the start and the one that fired the shell with the gas. Let’s say I am the German officer commanding. My French friend here is the officer commanding on the other side. His men receive the full impact of the German gas, possibly even more powerful, having been made in Germany, than the one we saw earlier.’

‘I and my men are in a state of complete chaos,’ said the Frenchman, pulling a small cheroot out of his waistcoat pocket. ‘My men are dying or dead. Some, no doubt, have gone blind or are going blind, and cannot see where they are. Others are running or stumbling away towards what they think is the safety of the rear lines.’

‘Remember the weather,’ said the German. ‘It is still. Every bone in my body, every hour of training tells me that this is the moment to attack. The enemy are in trouble. Now is the time to strike. But I cannot.’

‘Why not, pray?’

‘The gas is still lying there. I cannot order my men forward into the same fog of poison that has decimated the Frenchmen. They too would suffer the same fate. It would be madness to follow up after a gas attack like this one.’

‘Presumably,’ said Powerscourt, ‘if the wind changed it could blow your own gas back into the German lines. There again your troops would suffer the same fate as their enemies.’

‘Exactly so,’ said the German, ‘it is yet another reason why this terrible weapon should never be used. It could boomerang back into the people who sent it there in the first place.’

There was a loud knock at the door and two well-built soldiers burst into the room. ‘Begging your pardon, sirs, but we found this one sketching in his little book outside the plant where they make the stuff, sir.’

Powerscourt remembered the glint that could have come from the sun on a pair of binoculars on the edge of the forest. Perhaps they too belonged to this man, currently wriggling as hard as he could to escape his captors. He was wearing a very long greatcoat with a cap that could be pulled down low. He had a small beard and a great air of injured righteousness, as if he’d been caught defending the Holy of Holies.