Andrew Williams - To Kill a Tsar

At the mention of the count’s name, a little smile began to play on Dobrshinsky’s lips: ‘Well, well! Who has the chief prosecutor been consorting with?’

A knock at the door and the clerk shuffled into the office with a tray and two glasses of strong black tea.

‘And what was your impression of this Dr Hadfield?’ Dobrshinsky asked when the clerk had gone.

‘Perfect Russian. Confident, relaxed, dressed like a…’ Barclay paused.

‘Well?’

‘Like a radical — well, like a rich student or a Frenchman. The thing is, he seemed a little too relaxed. He didn’t seem very surprised to find me in Kovalenko’s house.’

‘I see.’ Dobrshinsky lifted the glass of tea to his lips and blew on it distractedly, before lowering it back to the table without taking a sip. ‘So is he our spy?’

‘Your Honour?’

‘I think the count was hoping he could put our troubles at the door of a foreign power.’

‘Do you want me to have him arrested?’

‘No. No. What would the count say? Aren’t they friends? The doctor may be telling the truth. Perhaps he’s just an English Samaritan. We need to make some discreet inquiries.’ The special investigator sat in silence for a moment, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow, then pushed his chair from the table and rose abruptly to his feet. ‘I can’t keep Grigory waiting. Walk with me.’

They stepped out on to the wing, ambling slowly past the heavy iron doors, behind each a prisoner in a grey box five small steps long and three small steps wide.

‘I will ask Goldenberg about our Englishman,’ Dobrshinsky said. ‘He will refuse to answer but his face may betray something.’ He paused and turned to Barclay. ‘You’re probably wondering why it’s worth persevering?’

Barclay thought for a moment. ‘There are many ways of obtaining information from a prisoner in a place like this, Your Honour,’ he said. He was no stranger to the ‘direct’ approach.

‘No. No martyrs. He’ll have his day in court. And our little Jew is very impressionable. He thinks he’ll be beaten, so it’s important to break his expectation. He’ll prove valuable in time.’

They walked on until they reached the interrogation cell. Peering through the eye in the door, Barclay could see Goldenberg fidgeting at the iron table, pulling at his wispy beard, a sorry sight in his prison greys. It would not be difficult. Give me two burly warders and an hour with him, he thought.

‘Tell Kletochnikov to send me what he can find on our English doctor,’ said Dobrshinsky at his back. ‘I’ll speak to Count von Plehve. Oh, and see if the name Hadfield jogs Madame Volkonsky’s memory.’

The special investigator nodded to the warder at the door who stepped forward with the key. As it swung open, Barclay saw the prisoner rise respectfully from his stool with a broad smile on his face. A cunning fox, he thought admiringly: if anyone was going to lure the Jew into an indiscretion it would be His Honour Anton Frankzevich Dobrshinsky.

Her note found him in the middle of a consultation with a patient exhibiting symptoms of scarlet fever. Gathered about the bed were a dozen students and the matron in charge of Barrack Ward 1 at the Nikolaevsky.

‘This rash,’ and Hadfield pointed to the old man’s naked torso, ‘is characteristic of the condition. Usually accompanied by abdominal pain, vomiting, a sore throat and swollen tongue. Show me your tongue.’

The patient offered his large strawberry tongue to the students. As they shuffled closer to examine the inflamed papillae, Hadfield felt someone jog his elbow. His assistant, Anton Pavel, was standing at the edge of the circle, clutching a grubby envelope. ‘This was left by a babushka at the hospital entrance. She insisted I deliver it to you in person.’

Hadfield glanced at the handwriting then slipped it into his pocket.

The eyes of all in the room turned to him again.

‘In the case of a fever like this, it is important to keep the patient’s temperature under control,’ he said with a wry smile that must have puzzled his students. ‘Sponging the surface of the body with tepid or cold water should do it, or wet packing a sheet, but sometimes ice bags are needed.’

Later, he sat in the small study he shared with two other doctors, his boots on the desk, the little envelope between his fingers. Two anxious weeks had passed since their meeting and his visit to her house in Alexandrovskaya. He had expected his uncle to summon him to the English Embankment or the police to insist on questioning him further, but life had gone on as always, his daily routine punctuated by winter festivities, sledging and skating and a particularly hectic round of parties.

The ambassador and his wife had invited him to accompany them on a bear hunt, no doubt to ensure the comfort of medical advice at all times. He had slept in a village hay loft with ‘the boys’ from the embassy. The third secretary, Lord Frederick Hamilton, had bagged a she-bear. By some miracle, and to the consternation of the shooting party, her cubs managed to escape. Hadfield had blasted away with the rest but was secretly relieved he missed everything he aimed at.

He was impatient to hear from Anna but it had never occurred to him that she would not contact him when she was able. Her note was to the point, as always: he was to be before the Church of St Boris and St Gleb at nine o’clock. He had arranged to spend the evening with Dobson and ‘the boys’ from the embassy. Dumping his feet from the table, he picked up a piece of the hospital’s headed paper and began composing his excuse.

He left the hospital at half past seven, in time to take a cab home and change into warmer, less conspicuous clothes. And as he dressed, he was conscious of a disturbing excitement, and of the need for extreme caution. He was to meet a woman implicated in a plot to kill the tsar, her name and description known by now to every police station and gendarmerie in the empire. From the wardrobe he took his old student coat and Swiss walking boots, and a peaked cap, every inch the petty bourgeois.

The dvornik gave him an uncharacteristically cheery ‘Good evening’ and tipped his hat as they passed at the door. Was he a police informer? The suspicion flitted through Hadfield’s mind even before the door had shut behind him. He dismissed it: he must be calm and watchful, yes, but too much suspicion — there lay the road to madness. He took a droshky to the Nikolaevsky Station, then walked a short way before hailing another, instructing its driver to drop him on the Nevskaya Embankment. Judging it wise not to arrive before the appointed time, he stood in the freezing darkness, gazing blankly across the river to the cathedral on the opposite bank, his stomach tight with nerves. At exactly nine o’clock he made his way to the front of the church. The gangly boy with the red hair who had met him on his first day at the clinic was waiting in the discreet shadow beneath the scaffolding, shivering in a thin serge jacket and factory cap, a scarf tied about his ears.

‘Vasili, isn’t it?’

He nodded and, turning without a word, set off down one of the icy paths that chequered the square. Hadfield followed at his heels, passing along dimly lit streets and alleys and across open yards, walking in tense silence. They stepped below a ramshackle gallery and climbed a wooden stair to a door on the first landing. Vasili opened it and led him into a draughty room lit by flickering candles. It seemed to be home to four, perhaps five, families. A baby was crying somewhere and the room reeked of cabbage and stale sweat. They walked across the naked boards to a door at the far end and on into another room almost identical to the first. An old man with a long grey beard and rheumy eyes reeled drunkenly towards him but Vasili had him by the sleeve, drawing him across the room and on to a staircase. He rattled down it, paused at the open entrance and looked left and right along the street before crossing quickly to a door on the opposite side.