David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

‘Now I think about it, there’s a bloody ship of yours, Powerscourt, a British frigate, wandering about the Gulf of Finland. It’s been going up and down for weeks as if it’s taking a holiday cruise. Do you know what the damned thing is doing here?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Do you know any history, man?’ Kerenkov seemed to be changing tack.

‘A bit,’ said Powerscourt, anxious not to give offence.

‘Do you remember that damned Crimean War?’ Powerscourt nodded.

‘I’ve been reading lots of history books lately, from then on,’ said the unlikely scholar. ‘We lost that war because we were so backward. So from then on Russia must be able to defend itself. Russia must be able to produce the latest weapons, Russia must become modern, Russia must have huge capitalist factories to produce the guns and the bullets and the giant pieces of artillery that could fire a shell across the Gulf of Finland. But that’s not Russia, Powerscourt, capitalists and middle class and workers replacing tsar and aristocrats and peasants. Our poor country is being torn apart by the battle between conservatism and modernity, between change and not change, between the old and the new. I don’t like the new very much, Lord Powerscourt, the only thing is that it’s not as bad as the old.’

An enormous crash heralded the arrival of the gun on to the deck. Sparks and dust temporarily hid it from view. The man in the red hat surpassed himself in the volume of his shouts. Various dots at the front of the vessel seemed to be waving their hands in the air. Kerenkov peered forward to check it was success rather than a catastrophe. ‘Thank God that’s landed safely,’ he said. ‘Let’s pray we meet some wooden Japanese ship from the middle of the last century in the next battle.’ Maybe the safe arrival of the gun mellowed him slightly. ‘Sorry for boring you with my views,’ he said. ‘I just care about what’s going on.’

Powerscourt thought now was the time to ask his questions.

‘Forgive me for asking you, Lieutenant, about your relations with the late Mr Martin. Did you ever meet him?’

‘I did not, sir. I could see little point in shaking the hand of a man who has had intimate relations with my wife.’

‘Quite so, Lieutenant, quite so. I think on this last occasion you had advance warning of his coming to St Petersburg, is that not so?’

‘I did,’ said Kerenkov, ‘lots of people knew he was coming.’

Powerscourt suspected this was not true, but felt there was little he could do about it. ‘And why do you think, Lieutenent,’ he went on, ‘that Mr Martin kept away from your wife on this occasion? He never had before, after all. Did you warn him off?’

Kerenkov looked at him blankly. He did not reply. ‘You were seen, you know,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘at the station, on the evening Martin was killed. Were you waiting for him to come back from Tsarskoe Selo? Were you waiting to take him off to the Nevskii Prospekt? And then to kill him?’

Kerenkov turned red suddenly. Veins began throbbing in his temple. His hand moved ominously towards his pocket. ‘Look here, Powerscourt, I know I’m a rough sort of a fellow,’ he began, restraining himself with difficulty. ‘My profession is killing people, rather as yours is finding out who killed them. But the people I want to kill are Japanese. My country is at war with them. We are not at war with England. Some people think I had every reason to kill Martin but in today’s St Petersburg that sort of morality has long gone. It’s melted away like the snows in spring. I didn’t kill him, please believe me, and I have no idea who did.’

‘I do believe you, Lieutenant,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘but could you set my mind at rest about one thing?’

‘What’s that?’ Kerenkov asked, staring down below at the worker ants engaged on painting the sides of the ship.

‘Your presence at the railway station the night Martin was killed.’

For the first time Kerenkov laughed. ‘I’m not quite sure how to put this, Lord Powerscourt. Following the example of my wife perhaps? When in St Petersburg carry on as the St Petersburgers do? I was waiting, Lord Powerscourt, for a lady who is not my wife.’

Successful voyage round the inner islands, Powerscourt said to himself as they set out back towards the city. Pirate strikes gold.

Natasha Bobrinsky was feeling confused as she sat in the train carriage bringing her back to St Petersburg. For well over a week she had been more intimately involved with the royal household in Tsarskoe Selo than ever before, taking care of the four daughters, helping with Alexis, trying to provide care and support for the Empress Alexandra. Strange fragments of news filtered into her part of the Alexander Palace. Natasha heard whispered conversations about strikes and industrial disputes, about the lack of enthusiasm for the monarchy, about peasant unrest in the provinces. The previous evening the Empress seemed to have cracked. She did not sink to her knees in private prayer once she had emerged from caring for the sick baby as she usually did. She stared at Natasha as if she didn’t know who she was and began attacking the aristocrats of St Petersburg. Vain, worthless, godless, hopeless, selfish, arrogant, self-indulgent, drunk, were some of her kinder adjectives. None of them, according to the Empress, were fit to serve the Tsar, none of them truly fit to speak for the soul of Mother Russia. And on the peasants she bestowed the blessings of the beatitudes: blessed were the poor in spirit for theirs was the kingdom of Heaven, blessed were the meek for they should inherit the earth, blessed were the merciful for they should obtain mercy. These peasants, according to Alexandra, were the true supporters of the monarchy. They knew instinctively about the sacred relationship between Tsar, peasant and God that sustained the Romanovs on their throne and kept the wheels of Russian society turning properly.

It was, perhaps, regrettable that Alexandra should have sounded off in this fashion, for Natasha had been feeling a growing sympathy for the Empress. Now, she thought, as the Tsar’s countryside rolled past her windows, she was not so sure. Maybe it was unfortunate that Natasha’s parents chose to spend more of their life in Paris and on the Riviera than they did in Russia. Natasha could see the appeal. Nobody said that her father, a man devoted to the joys of the table and the wines of Bordeaux, on which, indeed, he had written a short monograph for a Russian publishing house in Paris, had to spend his time in St Petersburg or Moscow. A career in the public service, ascending the slow steps on the ladder of bureaucratic advancement, he would have regarded as beneath contempt. And as for Natasha’s mother, she had never heard her speak of the Empress with anything other than a withering scorn about her German ancestry, her lack of social graces and the vulgarity of her personality. Natasha would never have claimed to be an expert on the peasants. But one of her brother’s friends at university, in a fit of misplaced zeal for the general advancement of mankind, had gone with some like-minded souls to live with a group of peasants, to try to improve their lot and welcome them into the joys of civilization. Their reception showed little of the spirit of the meek or the merciful and plenty of that of the poor in spirit or, more precisely, poor in worldly goods. One of Natasha’s brother’s friends had been beaten up so badly he had to be taken into hospital, their money and valuables were all stolen by the peasants, even their clothes were taken from them. Such people might embody the Tsar’s support in his wife’s view, but Natasha wanted nothing to do with them.