David Dickinson: Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

Where on earth were those bloody soldiers? There couldn’t be much left to say about the pipes and the terrible cauldron at the centre. Only one card left to play.

‘Why were your colleagues at the ballet reporting on my movements?’

‘That has to do with the Ballets Russes. I shall tell you a little as you have less than five minutes left to live. We thought everybody would assume that Bolm was meant to be the victim. Everyone except you, my about-to-be-dead friend. I congratulate you on that. The dead man was in fact who the dead man was meant to be, the understudy. He saw something he shouldn’t have in Bolm’s dressing room. He told Bolm he was going to report it to the English authorities. He told one of the girl dancers, Vera Belitsky I think she was called. She, in case you have forgotten, was the dancer I killed at Blenheim Palace. Taneyev may not have known much in the way of mathematics and chemical equations, but any fool can see the word “Goring” and the date. The other victim was also part of Taneyev’s conspiracy. The little fool told the dancer all he knew and what he proposed to do about it. She had to go before she could tell the English authorities. We have a saying in Russia, smert shpionem — death to spies and traitors of every sort. That was what happened to Taneyev and his friend, and good riddance too.’

‘So all of Bolm’s bad behaviour with women was a red herring, as we say in English?’

The man was checking his drawings now. The end could not be very far away. Would he throw a knife or attempt to close in on him with the deadly weapon in his hand? Powerscourt had been fiddling about with his left hand among the materials lined up against the wall behind him. There was a square steel plate about the size of a dustbin lid that might do service as a shield. And there was a very long pole, slightly longer than the pole used to propel punts up and down the waters of the Cam and the Isis — though Powerscourt, for the moment, could not imagine what to do with it.

The Russian put his notebook and his pencil in his pocket. Even as he started, Powerscourt guessed what was coming next. He just had time to drag his steel shield in front of his body, up to the chin. He gambled that the man wouldn’t try for his head, a smaller and more mobile target. The knife seemed to come simultaneously with the hand coming out of his pocket. It smashed into Powerscourt’s shield and fell on the floor. Another followed, then a third, all repelled by the dustbin lid. The man began swearing viciously in Russian and started fiddling about with his right boot. Powerscourt saw his chance. He grabbed the punt pole, which had a sort of paddle at the end, as if for stirring the monstrous brew in the Devil’s kitchen, and charged the thirty feet or so between him and the Russian. He felt, momentarily, that he was Sir Lancelot come to rescue the Lady of Shallot in some terrible jousting tournament. The paddle caught the Russian and pushed him backwards towards the pit. He staggered.

Powerscourt drew his weapon back and shoved again. He knew his strength was failing fast from inhaling these terrible vapours, but it was the best he could do. The man slipped and turned as he fell down the top of the slippery slope and began sliding down into the mouth of hell itself. Powerscourt moved in for the kill. Sliding down, the man made one last effort. He raised himself and sank his teeth into Powerscourt’s arm. Gravity and the weight of the Russian were pulling them both towards the final vision of Hieronymus Bosch. It just needed a few splotches of brilliant red and some dancing flames in front and it could be hanging as the pride of place in some leading German art gallery, Powerscourt thought. He felt his arm might be about to break. He knew the fumes could overcome him at any moment.

There was a shot from near the door. The soldiers, Powerscourt whispered to himself, they’ve come at last. Two burly Corporals used their bayonets to free Powerscourt’s arm — his left, he was glad to see. He was free. Everybody stood and watched in horror as the Russian began slipping down to hell. He was now out of human reach and nobody gave the order to throw him a lifeline. Four enormous steel plates appeared round the edges of the pit and began moving quite fast towards the centre. When they met, the Devil’s saucepan would have a lid that admitted nothing into the mixture within. Somebody must have pressed a lever or a button to start the process off.

They watched in horror as the Russian — now slowly, now quite quickly — began to fall into the pit. He was swearing violently to start with. Then he managed to cross himself and began saying his prayers in Russian. He was going to need them now. Powerscourt found himself shuddering as he thought of what would happen to the man if he wasn’t underwater by the time the square lids closed. He would be cut in half, or a quarter, or, maybe, God forbid, his head would be sliced clean off his body. One second the Russian would be winning the race towards total immersion. Then it would look as though the top of his face, maybe his hair, would be caught in the pincers of the steel plates.

Suddenly it was all over. Gravity won. The Russian was under the noxious mixture before the lid closed. But only by about ten seconds. Powerscourt thought a quick death by steel plate might have been the better option, but he was so glad he hadn’t met the same fate. He realized that blood was flowing fast out of his arm where the spy had held on.

‘We’ve sent for an ambulance, just breathe in the fresh air,’ Danvers Tresilian said as he led him to a veranda looking out over the river. ‘It’ll be here in a minute. I hope to God you’re going to recover fully. The doctors think that it would be impossible to survive in there for more than five minutes. You were in there for seven and a half. May the Lord bless you and keep you.’

To the side or in the second position. À la seconde usually means a movement done by the feet to the side such as a tendu, glisse or grand battement. A technically challenging type of turn is a pirouette à la seconde, where the dancer spins with the working leg in second position in à la hauteur. This turn is typically performed by male dancers because of the advanced skills required to perform it correctly. It is seen as the male counterpart of fouettés en tournant.

The four black funeral horses were standing very still outside Arthur Cooper’s house. The driver, also dressed in black, waited at his post. The back of the hearse was empty. Inside, in Arthur Cooper’s front room, three of his revolutionary colleagues were transferring money from a large container, sent under guard from the bank that held his account. In vain had the bank’s manager pleaded with Arthur to leave some of the money behind. Nobody, he said, should leave their accounts completely empty. Surely, the bank manager had continued, Arthur would need some reserves for the inevitable rainy day.

It was all in vain. The three comrades had taken it in turn to guard the container all through the night.

‘If you’d said to me when I joined the movement, Arthur, that I would spend an entire night guarding money from a bank rather than stealing it, I’d have said you were mad.’

‘But it was stolen in the first place, liberated from the capitalist class in Russia,’ Cooper had replied, ‘and think of the good use Comrade Lenin will put it to when he gets his hands on it.’

‘I tell you another thing,’ said the comrade from Stepney. ‘No customs man is going to be in a hurry to open this lot, I can tell you. I doubt if opening coffins is in their job description. Once it gets to the Continent, all those bloody customs men will be crossing themselves and saying their Hail Marys at top speed.’