David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

She was carrying the one word she had heard from the doctors to pass on to Mikhail and to Powerscourt. She had looked it up in the big dictionary in the Tsarskoe Selo library and felt as she read the entry that this particular page had been visited many times in recent weeks. As she left the station and set off to walk to the Shaporov Palace, the man in soldier’s uniform followed her once again. Hello, missy, he said to himself, I haven’t seen you for a week or more, welcome back. And as Natasha crossed the street with a toss of her head, the soldier grinned. You haven’t grown any uglier while you’ve been away, missy, that’s for sure. I do hope they’re not going to do anything nasty to you when they read another of my reports.

‘Haemophilia,’ said Natasha firmly when she and Mikhail and Powerscourt were all seated on their eighteenth-century French chairs in the Shaporov library.

‘What on earth is that, Natasha?’ said Mikhail.

‘Is that what the little boy has? The Tsarevich, out there at the Alexander Palace?’ Powerscourt had turned pale.

‘It is,’ said Natasha, slightly cross that anybody could have guessed her secret so quickly. ‘How did you know, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘It was a guess, Natasha. You said the word with so much meaning it obviously had to be something very important. But please, please, don’t tell a single soul about it apart from the two of us. It could be fatal. It may already have been fatal.’

‘But what does it mean?’ asked Mikhail, feeling slightly left out.

Powerscourt nodded slightly to Natasha as if to indicate that she should provide the definitions.

‘Basically, it means that your blood won’t clot,’ she said. ‘If you’re bruised from a fall, Mikhail, your blood will clot quickly and the flow will stop. But if it happens to Alexis, the blood keeps on flowing and ends up making a big swelling which can be very painful.’

‘What happens if he cuts himself?’ asked Mikhail. ‘Will he bleed to death?’

‘I’m not sure, I’m not an expert,’ said Natasha, ‘but I think I heard them say that if the bandage is very tight, the cut will heal itself.’

As the girl regaled her lover with the details of her time with Alexis, Powerscourt was wondering if this one word, eleven letters long, held the key to his dash across Europe in the quest for Martin’s killer. Had Martin learnt that the baby had haemophilia? Had he, somehow, tricked the Tsar into confirming it? Had he been killed because he knew of the terrible secret at the very heart and future of the Romanov dynasty? Or had he been killed because he refused to tell what he knew? Could he, Powerscourt, now go home?

Mikhail’s questions went on. ‘Do you die of it? Die early, I mean?’

The girl looked lost. The dictionaries had provided no help on this one. ‘I don’t think you’re likely to live as long as anybody else,’ said Powerscourt. ‘However many precautions you take, one accident could still prove fatal. It’s a royal disease. Lots of royal houses have had it, including quite a lot of Queen Victoria’s relations. It’s a nightmare for any royal family though. Do you assume that this child will grow up to succeed to the throne? Or do you have to resign yourself to the fact that he will be gone before he can assume the crown? In which case the child may find out that his own parents think he will be dead before he’s twenty-one, hardly a vote of confidence. You don’t dare try to have any more children. To have one haemophiliac son might be regarded as a disaster. To have two would be a catastrophe.’

Before he could elaborate any further the door opened and one of the oldest men Powerscourt had ever seen came into the room very slowly, leaning heavily on a stick. He was quite bent, remarkably slim, and with a cascade of dandruff flowing down one side of his black jacket.

‘Messages, my lord,’ said the greybeard, holding out a small silver tray for Mikhail. ‘Just come. Sent over from the British Embassy.’

‘Thank you, Borodino,’ said Mikhail. ‘You may go now.’

As the old retainer shuffled off, his stick clicking regularly on the floor like the beat of a metronome, Mikhail handed the messages to Powerscourt. The door closed as he peered at his correspondence.

‘Did you really call that old gentleman Borodino, Mikhail?’ asked Natasha sharply, as if she thought a reprimand was in order.

‘Yes, I did,’ said Mikhail. ‘What of it?’

‘Don’t you think it’s rather rude, naming him after a battle?’

Mikhail laughed. ‘Calm down, Natasha,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘When my brother and I were small he looked very old even then; my father told us he had fought at the battle. General Kutuzov’s right-hand man, he was, or so my father said. So he’s been known as Borodino ever since.’

‘Well, well,’ said Powerscourt, looking up from his mail, ‘I have some interesting news. My great friend Johnny Fitzgerald will be joining us tomorrow. God knows how his telegram took three days to get here. Maybe the Okhrana held it up. Anyway, Johnny Fitzgerald and I have served, well, almost as far back as Borodino itself!’

Amid the laughter he did not disclose the precise contents of his telegrams. From Lord Rosebery, asked to make certain specific inquiries of the royal household, there came a one word answer. Yes. And from Johnny, apart from the details of his arrival, Mrs Martin most likely suicide. More later. Eastern England, you cunning old serpent. Answer Yes. At last, thought Powerscourt. At last bits of this puzzle may be starting to fall into place.

‘Natasha, Mikhail, forgive me,’ said Powerscourt, rising anxiously to his feet. ‘I must go and warn the Embassy to prepare another bed. Perhaps I could buy you supper later?’

‘That would be lovely, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Natasha. ‘I don’t have to be back in Tsarskoe Selo until tomorrow.’

As Powerscourt left, his feet tapping out a slightly faster rhythm down the great corridor than Borodino’s, Mikhail looked anxiously at Natasha. He felt that he must make the most of the little time they had left before she returned to the palace. But he also felt that she did not realize just how dangerous her new knowledge might be.

‘Natasha,’ he began.

‘Mikhail,’ she countered, thinking this was the forerunner of some romantic advances and wriggling into a more comfortable position.

‘Be serious for a moment, please, Natasha, I don’t think you understand how serious that knowledge is. I think you could be in great danger.’

‘Haemophilia, Faemophilia, Mikhail, I don’t care. I know Lord Powerscourt said it could be fatal, but I don’t see how. They’ll deny that there is anything wrong with the little boy until the last breath in their bodies.’

‘All the same,’ said Mikhail, ‘they’re not exactly advertising the fact that a Romanov has got haemophilia, are they? Even the doctors were whispering the word when they thought nobody else was listening, weren’t they?’

‘I don’t see what all the fuss is about, Mikhail. And you know I’ve got to be back there tomorrow.’ Natasha twisted herself round until she was in what she thought might be a more alluring position. There wasn’t much room to display yourself to best advantage on these French chairs, she thought.

‘I think you shouldn’t go back there at all,’ said Mikhail. ‘I think you should write in and say you’re ill and can’t go back in case you infect anybody.’

‘I’ll come and infect you in a minute, Mikhail Shaporov,’ said Natasha, rising to her feet at the lack of any advance from the Shaporov quarter. ‘Wasn’t it on this floor you said there was that little room with the naughty Caravaggios?’

Mikhail decided to beat a tactical retreat. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘very well for now. Let me take you to this little room, Natasha. I think you’ll like it. The only thing is, there’s hardly any room to sit down in there.’