David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

‘But where do I come into it?’ said the girl. ‘You said you were wondering whether to tell me something or not. What is the something, Mikhail?’

‘It’s this. We want you to help us. We want you to listen very carefully to any conversations involving politics and see if Mr Martin’s name comes up. But don’t for heaven’s sake ask any questions of anybody. If you do you may end up underneath the ice on the Neva. Just listen.’

Natasha was struck dumb. Twice she opened her mouth to speak but no words came forth. ‘That is the most exciting and most grown-up thing anybody has ever asked me to do,’ she said finally. ‘Do you want me to go back straight away and start listening?’

‘No, no,’ said Mikhail Shaporov, ‘you’ve only just left the bloody palace and you don’t have to be back for another hour and a half. Anyway, it’s your turn to talk now, Natasha. I want to know what life is like at Tsarskoe Selo. Are they going to make you a Grand Duchess soon?’

‘I tell you what the best thing about joining your boys’ club of secret agents and investigators is,’ she said, ‘for those of us locked up at Tsarskoe Selo at any rate. It’ll be a little something to alleviate the boredom of the days.’

‘It can’t be boring, surely. We’re talking about the Tsar of All the Russias here, for heaven’s sake. He must be one of the most powerful men on earth. I fail to see how it can be tedious.’

‘You wouldn’t say the Tsar was one of the most powerful men on earth if you saw him up close. You’d think he might be the stationmaster or somebody of middling importance in the bank. He doesn’t look very impressive.’

‘I don’t understand, Natasha – what makes it so boring?’

‘That’s easy to see when you first arrive and then gradually you are sucked into it. It’s like living in a museum where the waxworks are actually alive. It’s the court ceremonial that does it. There’s this very old Finn called Count something or other and he can remember all the approved ways of doing things going back to Peter the Great. Meals at the same time, breakfast at half past seven for the family except Madam Alix, lunch at twelve, tea at four where the biscuits, somebody told me, are the same as they were in the days of Catherine the Great. Supper at the same time, readings from novels by the Tsar at the same time in the evening. Soldiers, policemen, enormous footmen, some of them black, some of them brown, everywhere. Tsarskoe Selo has a military force around it about the same size as the army of a small country like Denmark. Look out of any of the windows and you’ll see the back of a guardsman or a policeman. After a while, Mikhail, you grow rather tired of all these backs in uniform. Any visitor to the place has their name entered in a book. Anybody leaving it, the same. I can’t imagine why anybody would want to live there when they could be in that fabulous Winter Palace right in the middle of town. Why did Catherine build it if she didn’t intend her successors to live in it in the winter?’

‘Security, Natasha, you must see that,’ said Mikhail, ‘they feel safe down there. Any would-be assassins can be intercepted before they reach the front door. That’s not so easy in the middle of Petersburg.’

‘I think it might be jolly exciting if an assassin got past the front door,’ said Natasha, treacherously. ‘What do you think they carry their bombs round in? Do they just have them under their coats? Isn’t there a danger that they will blow themselves up?’

‘I think you should be serious about these assassins, Natasha,’ said Mikhail Shaporov. ‘You never know where they may strike next. But tell me, what are the daughters like, the ones you have to deal with?’

‘The Grand Duchesses?’ The girl stopped for a moment and a smile crossed her lips. ‘They’re sweet, Mikhail, really sweet. They’re very strictly brought up, they have to make their own beds, they have to behave at meal times, they have English governesses, even English furniture for heaven’s sake. The elder two get less pocket money than I did when I was half their age.’

‘And what do they talk to you about? Or is it what do you talk to them about?’

‘I can see you haven’t read the Court Ceremonial Circular recently, Mikhail,’ said Natasha sternly, ‘really, I’m surprised at you. I can only talk to them if they talk to me. It is forbidden to talk to a member of the imperial family unless they have first addressed you.’

‘So, Natasha,’ replied Mikhail, holding his ground, ‘what do they talk to you about?’

‘This is where it becomes so sad. This is where their upbringing really handicaps them. Think of it. They’ve hardly ever been to a restaurant. They hardly ever go to the big shops on the Nevskii Prospekt. They go on holiday in the royal train to the Crimea, guarded by dozens and dozens of policemen on the way, or they go cruising in the royal yacht on the Baltic surrounded by dozens and dozens of seamen, handpicked for loyalty and devotion to the Tsar. They have no more idea of the lives of ordinary Russians than they do of the man in the moon. I’m not a typical Russian, as you know, but they have no idea how even people like us are brought up. They think ordinary Russians are all like the peasants who wait beside the train lines to wave at the family as they pass by. Their parents are convinced that the peasants love the royal family, it’s just the decadent snobs in St Petersburg who don’t measure up. The favourite thing with all four girls is for me to describe a shop with all the different things, particularly clothes, that are on sale. They would listen to that for hours at a time. The next favourite is to describe the menu in a fashionable restaurant. After that we can always fill an hour or two with them asking me to describe my wardrobe in enormous detail.’

‘You make them sound like deprived children. It can’t be as bad as that, surely?’

‘Well, I think it is. There’s no doubt their parents love them all dearly, but they can’t see they’re stifling the life out of them. And there’s another thing, Mikhail.’ The girl lowered her voice and looked about the library very carefully, as if an Okhrana agent might be hiding behind the Voltaire or the Rousseau. ‘That little boy. There’s something not quite right with him. I don’t know what it is, I don’t think they know what it is, but I’m sure it’s serious, very serious.’

‘What do you mean, something not quite right with him? Is he not crawling yet or whatever babies are expected to do?’

‘It’s not that, Mikhail. Two or three times now it’s happened. He falls ill, don’t ask me how. Madam Alix puts on an even longer face than usual, Tsar looks like all the bank loans are going to go wrong at once, doctors arrive from Petersburg by the trainload. Literally. Once we had seven medical professors in the Alexander Palace in one day. Fairly soon I’m going to get to the bottom of it all.’

‘So is that what breaks up the boredom? Earnest society doctors coming to inspect the Tsarevich? What do his sisters say about it all? Do they know what’s going on?’

‘I think they have been sworn to silence, or a cutting off of the biscuit ration at tea-time. They don’t say a word. There is one other thing that’s happened recently though I don’t know if it means anything at all. Two of the eggs have disappeared, two of the most beautiful ones.’

‘Eggs? Disappeared? What eggs? Whose eggs? Royal eggs? Special Romanov eggs from special Romanov hens?’ The royal household at Tsarskoe Selo was beginning to sound to the novice Mikhail like a cross between a penal institution and a dairy farm. Even he, never a fully convinced monarchist, wasn’t sure he would approve of such prosaic developments.