David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

Powerscourt was delighted to be able to tell him that the Ambassador, of all unlikely people, had a small cellar devoted to vodka and might be persuaded to open up. More seriously, Johnny was able to tell Powerscourt of the latest discoveries in the case of Mrs Martin. None of the police inquiries, he reported, had produced any sightings of strangers going up or down the path to the house. Furthermore, a note had been discovered in the bureau in the study of Colonel Fitzmaurice’s house, apparently in Mrs Martin’s hand, addressed to her in-laws but not posted, saying that she could go on no longer. There was no further news of the mysterious Russian visitor, who seemed to have vanished into thin air. The Colonel, possible paramour of Mrs Martin, had not disappeared at all. He had taken himself to the south coast to recover from the excitement and wrestle with the treacherous winds and very fast greens of Rye Golf Course. On a normal day Powerscourt would have been asking for more details, checking on the handwriting, inquiring what the police view was and generally making himself a nuisance. But today the affairs of the late Mrs Martin and the little tower at the top of Tibenham Grange seemed very far away. Today was a day for her husband, the late Mr Martin. Was not he, Powerscourt, going to have an evening audience with the Tsar on exactly the same day of the week as Martin? Might today not be the day when he would find Martin’s killer? Or perhaps, he wondered, it would be the day when Martin’s killers killed him too. The Ambassador had only ever had two private audiences with Nicholas the Second since he took up his post and he regarded it as slightly unfair that a mere upstart, a hired hand rather than a member of the proper Foreign Office, should enter the imperial presence after a couple of weeks or so.

A party of six set off to escort Powerscourt to his audience. He was accompanied by Johnny Fitzgerald, Mikhail as interpreter, secretly hoping for a quick glimpse of Natasha, the coachman, a sergeant from the Black Watch and Ricky Crabbe the telegraph king who had expressed such pathetic longing to see the Tsar’s palace that even the Ambassador could not resist him. Powerscourt had a brief conversation with de Chassiron about the interview before he left.

‘House rules?’ de Chassiron had said, placing his beautifully polished shoes on his coffee table and fiddling absentmindedly with his monocle. ‘Not much different from school, really, going to see the headmaster. Sorry, Powerscourt, that wasn’t helpful. Just like going to see the King really, big handshake, bow, don’t interrupt him, however stupid the things he says, all these damned monarchs since Louis the Sixteenth have thought they were cleverer than they actually were. If you’re lucky there won’t be a flunkey there during the interview, though they may be listening at the doors. Flunkeys in my experience get very irritated if they think their master is carrying out business behind their back. It’s almost a criminal offence.’

‘And how should I think of him when I talk to him, de Chassiron? Foreign Office official? Adjutant of regiment? Manager of a small bank out in the country?’

De Chassiron smiled and lifted his feet off his table in one quick, elegant movement.

‘Not the first, Powerscourt, not the second, maybe the third. How about this though? Think of him as a rather dim Captain of Cricket at school, chap who can barely add up, can’t remember much history, hopeless at languages but very popular with the boys and a good batsman. You must have met plenty of those, Powerscourt.’

Powerscourt agreed that he had. As they travelled the fifteen miles out to Tsarskoe Selo, Mikhail was bringing him up to date on the latest number of strikes that were slowly strangling the country. Johnny Fitzgerald was peering out into the darkness as if Russian birds, previously unknown to him but of fabulous size and plumage, were flying in formation around their carriage. Ricky Crabbe’s fingers, Powerscourt noted, were still tapping messages out on to the frame of the carriage widow. Maybe he did it in his sleep. The sergeant from the Black Watch went to sleep.

The Alexander Palace was made up of a centre and two wings. All the state apartments and the formal reception rooms were in the centre. The imperial family’s private apartments were in one wing, the ministers of the court and the attendant staff in the other. Ricky Crabbe decided to remain with the coachman. He would, he said, take a peep inside a bit later. In reality, he was rather overwhelmed by the grandeur of the surroundings, the troops of horsemen riding round the walls of the park on permanent patrol against terrorists, the soldiers and policemen who stopped the carriage at the entrance gate and peered carefully into all their faces before writing their names down in a book, the sentries in their long coats striding up and down the outside of the building at regular intervals as if they were mobile flower boxes.

Powerscourt and his two companions were guided on their journey to the Tsar by a symphony in gold braid and a footman with a plumed hat. Through the audience rooms they went, through the Empress’s private drawing room, down a long corridor leading to the private apartments. In the last room at the end of the corridor the Tsar’s personal aide-de-camp indicated that Johnny and Mikhail were to wait there with him. He began an animated conversation with Mikhail on the virtues of the capital’s most expensive restaurants. Powerscourt felt his mind going far away to the ice on the Nevskii Prospekt where a fellow countryman lay dead, ignored and forgotten by the authorities. A strangely clad Ethiopian was on guard outside the Tsar’s door. As he opened it the symphony in gold braid coughed slightly and announced in perfect English:

‘Your Imperial Majesty! Lord Francis Powerscourt from His Britannic Majesty’s Foreign Office!’

The first thing Powerscourt noticed about Nicholas the Second, Tsar and Autocrat of All the Russias, was that he was quite short for an Autocrat. He must, Powerscourt thought, have been about five feet seven inches tall. His father, Powerscourt remembered, had been a great bear of a man, capable of bending pokers into circles and other feats of strength guaranteed to impress small children. The second thing was a quite remarkable similarity to his cousin George, Prince of Wales, second son of King Edward and Queen Alexandra. There was the same neatly trimmed beard, the same shape of face, the same hair greying slightly at the temples. Nicholas had lines of strain running across his forehead, not surprising, Powerscourt thought, when you were presiding over an empire in chaos, even less surprising when you thought of the haemophiliac son and heir, possibly bleeding to death even now in some upstairs nursery.

The Tsar was wearing a simple Russian peasant blouse, baggy brown trousers and soft leather boots. Standing in front of his desk, he ushered Powerscourt into an armchair. The room was quite small with one window. There were plain leather chairs, a sofa covered with a Persian rug, some bookshelves, a table spread with maps and a low bookcase covered with family photographs and souvenirs.

‘Lord Powerscourt, welcome to Tsarskoe Selo,’ said the Tsar. His English would not have been out of place in an Oxford quadrangle. ‘How may I be of service to you and your government?’

‘I am not in the service of my government, sir. I am an investigator employed by the British Foreign Office to look into the death of a Mr Martin. Mr Martin, sir, was on the staff of the Foreign Office. He came here to see you at the end of last year. Then he was killed.’

‘I heard that sad news, Lord Powerscourt. Tell me, you say you are an investigator. What, pray, do you investigate?’