David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

‘As I said, Lord Powerscourt, St Petersburg is at the heart of our difficulties. Four or five days ago a man was found dead early in the morning by one of the bridges on the Nevskii Prospekt. He had been murdered. That man was a distinguished member of the Foreign Office, in Russia on a secret mission. We need to know who killed him. We need to know why they killed him. We need desperately to know if he was killed by a hostile power and how much he may have told them, under torture perhaps, who knows, before he died. That is the essence of this task. Will you do it, Lord Powerscourt?’

There was not a fraction of a second of hesitation. ‘No, I will not,’ said Powerscourt.

‘I cannot take that answer as definitive, Lord Powerscourt.’ Sir Jeremiah, Powerscourt thought, was now moving into the ‘let’s persuade the Minister to change his mind routine’, a technique honed and perfected by the Foreign Office over many governments and many ministers and many centuries.

‘I would remind you, Lord Powerscourt, of the shifting sands of contemporary European politics. For many decades Europe was at peace after the Congress of Vienna. There were occasional interruptions, the Crimea, the Franco-Prussian War, Russo-Turkish and so on. But now we are in uncharted waters. Germany wants an empire and recognition of her power for her unstable Emperor. France is frightened of Germany and seeks alliances against her. A new naval arms race threatens the peace of the high seas. The Great Powers are fighting over the division of Africa like rabid dogs over a corpse. The Russian Empire itself is racked with unrest, its politicians decimated by assassinations, its Tsar weak and indecisive, liberals and revolutionaries of every shape and size conspiring for democratic change. The death on the Nevskii Prospekt is surely a part of this mosaic, this cauldron of uncertainty and doubt that has spread over Europe like dark clouds massing before a tempest.’

Powerscourt could barely restrain himself from smiling happily at the mixed metaphors pouring from the Foreign Office mandarin.

‘This is the task your country asks of you, Lord Powerscourt. Go to St Petersburg. Solve the mystery of the murdered man. Find out who killed him and come back to London. I need not tell you that your services would be exceedingly well rewarded. Will you do it? Will you answer your country’s call?’

Powerscourt was furious. ‘No, Sir Jeremiah, I will not. And how dare you come into my house and try to bribe me to work in the service of my country! I have served Queen Victoria for many years as an officer in her army. I have served her in dangerous places, more dangerous even than the corridors of the Foreign Office. I have risked my life in battle while you and your colleagues compose memoranda on future policy and fill the passing hours with meetings about the changing map of Africa or the tribal troubles on the North West Frontier. If I wanted to serve my King and carry out this mission I would never have asked for money. You demean yourself and your office by offering it, you demean me by making me listen to it. I have said No to your offer twice already. Now I say it again.’

Powerscourt rang the bell for Rhys. ‘And now, Sir Jeremiah, if you will forgive me, I have work to do. Rhys will show you out. Thank you for considering me for this task. The answer will always be No.’

Two hours later there was an emergency meeting in the Powerscourt drawing room. Johnny Fitzgerald had been summoned from sorting out his notes on the birds of East Anglia. Lady Lucy had returned from a shopping mission with the twins to Sloane Square. Powerscourt had spent most of those two hours pacing up and down his drawing room in a state of total uncontrolled fury.

‘Well, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, opening a bottle of Pomerol, ‘I hear the Senate has come to the farm to recall Cincinnatus to the service of Rome. Maybe you could ask for dictatorial powers?’

Powerscourt laughed. ‘I don’t think you could refer to the Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office as the Senate, Johnny. Not even a consul. Maybe an aedile. Weren’t they some sort of minor official?’

‘God knows,’ said Johnny cheerfully. ‘I only got as far as consuls. What did the fellow have to say?’

‘Beanpole,’ said Powerscourt, ‘was eight feet tall and less than eight inches wide. He looked as though he had been ironed. Some British diplomat has been found dead on the Nevskii Prospekt in St Petersburg. He was on a secret mission. Beanpole and his friends, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, want to know who killed him and if he spilled any secrets before he died. I said No, of course.’

Powerscourt looked at Lady Lucy as he spoke, as if seeking her approval. She smiled. ‘Well done, Francis,’ she said. ‘I’m very proud of you.’

‘Sounds bloody dangerous to me, Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, taking a second sip of his Bordeaux. ‘They enjoy blowing people up, those Russians, rather like other people enjoy playing football.’

Johnny Fitzgerald was fascinated by Powerscourt’s reaction to this offer of a dangerous but important investigation. It was exactly the sort of challenge his friend enjoyed. And Johnny suspected his friend was ambivalent about the whole business of retiring from investigations. He was almost certain that Lady Lucy had finessed Francis into renunciation before he was fully recovered from his injuries. Of course he understood her position and her fears for the children without a father. But he and Powerscourt had led such intertwined lives, fellow army officers, fellow investigators, now fellow authors. Johnny Fitzgerald could not see his friend being pushed in his wheelchair along the Promenade des Anglais on the Mediterranean sea front in his old age without having carried out one more major investigation. Powerscourt’s Last Case. Johnny had often thought about that. Maybe even Powerscourt’s Last Stand. Was this Corpse on the Nevskii Prospekt that final mission?

Lady Lucy too was perturbed. She sensed – no, if she was honest with herself, she knew that her husband would love to carry out this investigation. He had turned it down because of her and the promise she had exacted from him in Positano. She wondered if she should release him from his vows.

And Powerscourt? To be fair, even he would have said that he didn’t know what he really felt about the offer. Flattered, yes. To be sought out more than two years after he had stopped investigating was no mean tribute to his powers. Part of him felt, as Ulysses said in Tennyson’s poem that brought him back from the dead, that he did not like rusting unburnished, not to shine in use. But he had given Lucy his word on that hotel balcony in Positano. He could not go back on it now.

‘There’s only one thing I’m sure of,’ he said, pouring himself a glass of wine and smiling at his wife and his friend. ‘Beanpole is the advance guard, the voltigeurs, the skirmishers in Napoleon’s army, if you like. He may have failed. But he won’t be the last. They’ll come back. And next time they’ll bring the cavalry. Maybe the heavy artillery.’

Powerscourt would have been surprised to learn that Sir Jeremiah Reddaway was not unduly upset by his reception in Markham Square. For he had not expected success at the very first attempt. He felt now like a general in charge of some mighty siege operation. The siege train has been battering the walls for weeks. An infantry attempt to break through has failed. The general will simply have to continue his bombardment and plan his next attack. The main reason Reddaway had opened the assault himself was that he wanted to have a look at Powerscourt in person, to get a feel of the man. Now he had no doubt that Powerscourt was the right choice for the task ahead, if only he could be persuaded to take it on. Sir Jeremiah merely widened his net in the quest for the key or the trigger that would change Powerscourt’s mind. Powerscourt’s old tutor in Cambridge was contacted. Charles Augustus Pugh, a barrister who had been closely and critically involved in one of Powerscourt’s cases, reported that he had been approached by some person from the Foreign Office wearing the most vulgar shirt Pugh had ever seen. ‘Fellow tried to pump me for information about you, Francis, so I sent him packing. I couldn’t have looked at that shirt for another second in any case,’ his note to Powerscourt said. Even Johnny Fitzgerald told the Powerscourts that some chap he had known years before had tried to get him drunk at an expensive restaurant in South Kensington. His contact also worked for the Foreign Office and, Johnny announced happily, had to be carried senseless from the table by two waiters while he, Johnny, walked home unaided and pinned the rather large bill on to the man’s suit as he lay stretched across the pavement. As a final touch, Johnny said, he bumped into two policemen at the end of the street and reported that a drunk was lying on the pavement further down and obstructing the King’s Highway.