David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

‘Sorry, Mikhail. I should have explained it better,’ said Natasha with a laugh. ‘The person who makes the eggs is Mr Faberge, the jeweller. Every Easter he is commissioned by the Tsar to make two new eggs, one for his mother and one for his wife. One of these eggs is called the Trans-Siberian Railway egg and it was made in 1900 to commemorate the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The outside of the egg is made of green translucent emerald gold and has all the stations of the railway marked on it in silver. When you open it up there’s a tiny little train about a foot long which actually goes when you wind it up with its clockwork key. It’s got a dining car, smoking and non-smoking cars. I think it’s even got a chapel carriage at the back.’

‘Have you seen it go, this train, Natasha?’

‘No, I haven’t, but the girls have. They said it was sensational. The other one is not so dramatic but pretty special all the same. It was called the Danish Royal Palaces egg and when you opened this little chap up you got eight portraits of eight different Danish castles that the Tsar’s mother or some royal Danish person must have lived in when she was growing up. I did see that one opened up and it was just beautiful.’

‘So where have they gone?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, glancing anxiously at the clock above the door. ‘One week ago they were all locked up in their own glass cabinet along with the other eggs and the next minute they’d gone. Nobody seems very bothered about it. Perhaps they haven’t noticed. I must go now, Mikhail, or I will get into trouble and be locked up with all the other assassins when I get back. Will you see me to the station?’

‘Of course I will,’ said Mikhail. ‘Any chance next time of meeting at Tsarskoe Selo? Any chance I could bring my new friend Lord Powerscourt?’

Lord Francis Powerscourt was not overjoyed at his reception back at the British Embassy. For de Chassiron, he felt sure, he brought a sense of excitement and even danger that served to add spice to a life that might easily have degenerated into foppish boredom. De Chassiron would always be glad of somebody new to talk to, some fresh recipient for his sarcasm and his cleverness. De Chassiron was not the problem. The Ambassador was. De Chassiron had given Powerscourt a fairly brutal run-down over breakfast that morning. ‘Done a turn in Washington, His Nibs has, not top man but number two. Only embassy he’s ever served in where he could speak the language as well as the natives, and even that was doubtful. Been Ambassador in Paris, weak on diplomatic and business French. Been Ambassador in Germany where he offended the Kaiser and half the government by forgetting to salute in the right place at some ludicrous parade invented by the equally ludicrous Kaiser. Now he’s here in St Petersburg, aiming to stay for a couple of years at most. Then he can return to London to take over from the etiolated Sir Jeremiah Reddaway as Permanent Secretary to the Foreign Office. He’s already Sir Jasper Colville. Then he can fulfil his wife’s greatest ambition and become Lord Colville of somewhere or other. Tooting Bec maybe,’ de Chassiron said savagely, his contempt for his superior blatant, ‘or Clapham Common. But you, Powerscourt,’ here de Chassiron leaned back in his chair and ran an arm through his hair, only to find yet again that the incipient bald patch was marching inexorably on, ‘you might be trouble. Dead British diplomats, nothing he would like less. Troublesome inquiries with the native authorities, even less welcome. There’s nothing His Nibs would like more than to leave Martin under the ice of the Neva river, if that’s where he is, and for the body not to be found until he has returned home to take up his new position and his seat in the House of Lords. Once you come to him with something concrete, he won’t like it one little bit. Anything that might upset His Majesty’s relations with the Tsar of All the Russias not welcome in this Embassy. You could do him real damage if you find out anything really serious about what happened to Martin. We could almost say you’ve got his future in your hands.’

Now the three men were sitting in the Ambassador’s study, drinking English tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. The Ambassador had seen too many of his colleagues fall into the wretched customs of their hosts and forget who and what they were. The Ambassador was seated behind a large desk that would not have looked out of place in a Pall Mall club. Powerscourt suddenly realized that all the furniture, the sofas, the chairs, the occasional tables, the racks for newspapers, could have been transferred direct from the Athenaeum or the Reform Club in London’s Pall Mall. Maybe the British Embassy, like the Russian Tsarina, did its shopping at Maples in the Tottenham Court Road.

Before Powerscourt presented his report on the day’s discoveries, the Ambassador graced his little audience with his own view on the diplomatic problems surrounding the strange case of Roderick Martin. The need to be aware of Russian susceptibilities, of their difficulties both with the Japanese War on the one hand, and with the bomb-bearing revolutionaries on the other. The need, of course, for His Majesty’s representatives to be aware of the dignity of their own position while not compromising the Russians’ room for manoeuvre. The need to be aware, too, of the pressures for information and hard facts from home. Public opinion, although still sleeping on this issue, as everybody had taken great care to keep it out of the newspapers, could easily be roused and might not prove an easy bedfellow. Prejudice against the Russian bear, so prominent a generation ago, in Sir Jasper’s view, could easily come lumbering out of the same forest once again. The need for boldness tempered with caution, for restraint married with respect for the Russian perspective.

De Chassiron had been nodding vigorously in agreement with his Ambassador’s sentiments. Powerscourt was certain that he was being ironic and, furthermore, that this was a very dangerous game to play. Only when he reflected on it afterwards did Powerscourt realize that de Chassiron knew the Ambassador was so sure of himself that he wouldn’t have recognized the irony and the lack of respect if they had sat down beside him in his own drawing room. Powerscourt thought the Ambassador’s remarks were nonsense, designed to appeal to everybody and to nobody, to preserve his own position sitting on the fence facing in all directions at once.

His guests paid scant attention to his reports of the visits to the police station and the morgues, though de Chassiron was much taken by the vehemence of the denials that Martin had ever been found by members of that police station. But when he told of the Interior Ministry’s insistence on Martin’s previous visits, they were astonished. Sir Jasper, anxious possibly to see which way the wind would blow, left the initial reaction to Embassy Secretary de Chassiron.

‘Good God man, this is dynamite,’ he said, screwing his silver monocle into his eye and inspecting the notes in front of him. ‘If Martin came here then he didn’t stay in the Embassy, I don’t think he even visited the place. I’ve been here since the year of Our Lord 1899 so I should bloody well know. What on earth do you think he was doing here, Powerscourt? Did your friend in the ministry have any idea what he was up to?’

‘The man from the ministry did not vouchsafe any information on that,’ said Powerscourt carefully. ‘We have to go and see him again early next week for further news. If he was not prepared to tell us all he knew today, I should be surprised if he is going to open his heart to us later on.’

‘We, Powerscourt, we?’ Sir Jasper was fiddling with a paperknife. ‘Have you attained the royal plural or were you accompanied by someone unknown to us?’