David Dickinson - Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

‘This Major Shatilov, Lord Powerscourt, have you seen him lately? A little bird tells me he has gone missing.’

‘I’m not sure I have anything to add to that,’ said Powerscourt blandly. ‘As I say, Mr Martin was taken into custody by the Major in a house on the outskirts of Tsarskoe Selo.’

Derzhenov was still writing. Powerscourt waited patiently until he had finished before he went on. ‘Major Shatilov was most anxious to know the nature of Mr Martin’s conversation with the Tsar, almost as anxious as yourself, General. It’s strange how all the intelligence agencies should want the same piece of news, it really is.’

There was a cackle from Derzhenov. ‘Just get on with the story, Powerscourt. What did Martin tell him?’

‘He didn’t tell him anything.’

‘So what did Shatilov do then?’

‘He beat him to death with a knout, General.’

‘Is that so, Lord Powerscourt?’ Derzhenov looked up from his scribbling. ‘That’s very bad management,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘people shouldn’t die from a single session with the whip.’

‘Maybe he had a weak heart, General Derzhenov. Maybe it was because members of the British Foreign Office don’t live in a world where people are beaten to death with whips. They’re not used to it.’

‘You could have a point there, Lord Powerscourt.’ Derzhenov was back writing again. ‘And you are sure the man Martin said nothing before he died?’

‘Not a word, General.’

‘Not a word? I see. But tell me, what is your source for this information? Where does it come from?’

‘Why, General,’ said Powerscourt, trying to look as innocent as possible, ‘it came from Major Shatilov himself.’

‘Really?’ said Derzhenov with great emphasis. ‘Was this the last action of the Major before he disappeared? Do you expect him to turn up early one morning on the Nevskii, rather like Mr Martin before him?’

Powerscourt had decided some moments before precisely what he was going to tell the Okhrana man. He was going to tell him about Martin’s death as he had done. He was going to tell him about the last conversation Martin had with the Tsar in the sense that it now seemed that a flight to Norfolk was less likely. He would, if he had to, tell him about the death of Shatilov and the skirmish on the train. But he would not, out of a sense of loyalty to the Tsar, disclose anything about the haemophilia. He felt sure the Tsar would want that to remain private.

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Powerscourt, reluctant to be drawn into detailed discussion on the man’s death. Though it was the bridge that killed him, a hostile prosecutor could easily make out a case against Powerscourt and his men.

‘I see, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Derzhenov, temporarily chewing on the end of his pen and looking closely at the Englishman. ‘Maybe we shall come back to this later. But tell me, what of Martin’s conversation with the Tsar?’

So Powerscourt told him: the original approach from the Tsar to the English King asking if his wife and family would be welcome in England, the despatch of Martin, bearing the answer that they would be welcome in Norfolk, Powerscourt’s discovery of the place where they were to be accommodated, the final reluctance to take up the offer, for reasons as yet unexplained.

‘Did the Tsar tell you this himself, Lord Powerscourt? Were there just the two of you at the meeting?’

‘There were just the two of us, General,’ said Powerscourt, ‘and no, the Tsar did not tell me, I told him.’

‘You told him, Lord Powerscourt? But how did you know? You weren’t even there!’

‘Let me put it this way, General, I worked it out. I don’t want to say anything more about my methods, if you don’t mind. But the Tsar confirmed that it was more or less true.’ There’s no point, he said to himself, in rescuing Natasha Bobrinsky from the frying pans of Major Shatilov, heated to unbearable levels, no doubt, before being applied to stripped flesh, into the fires of the Okhrana, gridirons and reproductions of the martyrdom of St Lawrence a speciality.

Derzhenov suddenly seemed to make up his mind. He stopped writing and carefully screwed the top back on to his German fountain pen. ‘Lord Powerscourt, I think there is more that you are not yet telling me. I believe you know more than you let on about the death of Major Shatilov. Let me just ask you one question on that subject, if I may. If he were to be found dead, would you say – assuming you were a guessing man, you understand – that he was killed in a fight or by accident?’

‘Being completely ignorant of the facts, General, I would not like to make any comment at all,’ said Powerscourt, beginning to sweat slightly.

‘I forgive you,’ said Derzhenov, smiling at his visitor. ‘There is one piece of information you have, I believe, which you are not telling me about, but I know it already. Fear not. I respect you for not telling me. Now then. Miss Bobrinsky, how shall I put this? You could tell her friends to expect her back in St Petersburg this afternoon.’

And with that a beaming Derzhenov led them down the stairs and out into the fresh air. He shook them all warmly by the hand. For once there were no noxious smells or sounds of horror coming from the basement.

‘What on earth,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald when they were a good hundred yards clear of the building, ‘was that last bit about?’

‘The bit about I know what you’re not telling me but I don’t mind? He means, I think, that he knows about the haemophilia. Quite how he knows, I can’t imagine. I just hope his organization is quite secure or the whole bloody Russian Empire will know about it before the end of the year.’

Lord Francis Powerscourt was sitting next to Rupert de Chassiron in the back row of the seats in the University of St Petersburg’s theatre at four o’clock the same afternoon, waiting for a play to begin. Natasha Bobrinsky had indeed been released from captivity and had gone home to recover from her ordeal. She and Mikhail and Powerscourt were to meet for dinner at a hotel on the Nevskii Prospekt where they had dancing in the evenings. Johnny and Ricky Crabbe had disappeared on an outing to some distant place where the local birds could be seen to best advantage, way out near the tip of Vasilevsky Island. Afterwards, Powerscourt had learned to his horror, Ricky was going to take his new friend back to his own quarters and introduce him to a range of different vodkas. De Chassiron was slightly apologetic about the play.

‘Don’t expect anything fancy like you would see in the West End, Powerscourt. Don’t expect anything very much at all. The students are all on strike – the English Department only got permission to put this on because it is not part of the course. The English professor is very keen on drama and he has translated this play himself. He put on another one by the same author last year and I came to see it. This one’s called The Cherry Orchard and it had its first performance last year in Moscow.’

‘Should I have heard of this author, if the professor is so keen on his work? Is he famous?’

‘He’s not famous, not yet anyway,’ said de Chassiron, ‘he’s dead now, poor man. He was a doctor called Chekhov, Anton Chekhov. He was still quite young when he died.’

If they had been back in London such an amateur production would probably have irritated both Powerscourt and de Chassiron. The professor’s translation appeared to be more than competent, but some of the student actors seemed to have been spending more time on revolutionary activities than they had on learning their lines. When you added the fact that the prompter appeared only to have a copy of the play in Russian rather than English, the difficulties, for Powerscourt at least, were compounded. And some of the cast had a less than perfect grasp of the English language so that much of the dialogue passed him by.