Death Comes to the Ballets Russes (39 page)

‘That I do not know. Beaten up, broken leg, face smashed in? Worse? Murder?’

‘That’s cheering news, Colonel Brouzet. But do you think this Andrei Rublev actually wants to kill me?’

‘Without knowing how valuable the information hidden in those equations actually is, I cannot be definite. But I should definitely watch your step. I should watch your step very carefully indeed.’

‘Thank you very much indeed. I was going to ask you a question about your source for this information and it seems to me that there is one route that is most likely. But it also seems to me that I should not ask you if you have been reading the Okhrana telegrams over there in the Place des Vosges.’

‘You would be quite right not to ask the question. And I would be quite right in telling you that I could not possibly be expected to give you an honest answer.’

Natasha Shaporova arrived at the same time as a note from Rosebery saying he would be delighted to see Powerscourt at tea time in Berkeley Square.

‘I am so sorry, Lord Powerscourt, I feel I have let you down over those letters and the diary.’

‘Never mind, Natasha, I am sure nobody else could have done half so well. You did discover that there was something suspicious going on after all.’

He filled her in on all the details of what had happened since: the discovery of the diary and the secret meeting at the Kingfisher Hotel at dawn. He mentioned nothing of the warnings from Colonel Brouzet of the French Secret Service.

‘Do you suppose you will solve the mystery as dawn comes up over the Thames, Lord Powerscourt? That would be an exciting way to put an end to our enquiries.’

‘Who knows,’ said Powerscourt, feeling that if the case went on much longer, he would have to apply to train as a Delphic oracle.

‘But I am so glad you are back. I have an urgent task for you.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Let me put it like this. When you discover a secret, or somebody tells you a secret, what is the first thing you want to do?’

‘Tell somebody else about it,’ said Natasha. ‘It’s quite hard to resist the need to share a secret so that you’re not carrying it alone.’

‘And who would you be most likely to tell the secret to?’

‘To somebody you trusted,’ said Natasha. ‘That’s what I would do, anyway.’

‘Well, we have no way of knowing who, if anybody, Alexander talked to. He may have told his parents, but it’s not the same as telling somebody in London. They were so far away. He would have been most likely to have told somebody in his immediate circle. Isn’t that so?’

‘It is. I think I see what you want me to do, Lord Powerscourt. You want me to go back to all those girls in the corps de ballet and ask if Alexander told them he had a great secret. People always get excited if they think they are about to be told something special. Am I right?’

‘You are absolutely right, Natasha. But be careful not to give anything away. Not a word about mathematical equations or secret formulae, just general questions.’

‘I was never any good at mathematics, Lord
Powerscourt. Even the simple things they tried to teach us. Two – no, three – governesses gave up on me completely about the nine times tables.’

Rosebery, it seemed to Powerscourt, had already been on a Delphic oracle course before Powerscourt called at his house in Berkeley Square.

‘These matters around the Ballets Russes are difficult and dangerous, my friend. I have been able to discover a little more about the meeting at the Kingfisher. I presume you have discovered that is a hotel for the middle classes on the banks of the Thames. I have not, so far, been able to secure you an invitation, if that is the right word.’

‘Come on, Rosebery, surely you can tell me something of what it is about?’

‘That is precisely what I cannot do. I am told to warn you to be very careful. The whole thing could become very dangerous, especially for you.’

‘Will you be able to obtain an invitation of sorts before the thing starts? There is only a day and a bit left, for heaven’s sake. A man would want to get there the evening before, if possible. Or am I just to present myself at the gate and ask where the equations are kept?’

‘Whatever you do, my friend, do not, I repeat, do
not
turn up at this place without an invitation.’

‘And will my host be one person or am I going to meet a committee of some sort, advanced mathematicians all?’

‘Powerscourt, I have known and respected you for a number of years. I value our friendship very greatly.
It would cause me considerable pain to have to call for Leith the butler and ask him to show you the door.’

‘You’re throwing me out?’

‘It’s only for your own good, I promise you.’

Natasha Shaporova went to the Royal Opera House early the following morning and took the first three members of the corps de ballet across to the Fielding Hotel. But she found that a change had taken place in the girls. They simply refused to speak about the murder at all. They changed the subject or they talked about that evening’s performance. They complained about the English weather. Or they talked about how sorry they would be to have to leave London. But of diaries or letters or assignations or secrets, they would speak not a word. Even when Natasha tried another tack, asking who had spoken to them, emphasizing the virtues of silence, they would not break their silence.

‘They’re just not going to speak to me,’ she told Powerscourt later.

‘Can you guess who might have put the fear of God into them?’

‘I think there’s only one person who could have put the fear of God into them like this, Lord Powerscourt.’

‘And who would that be?’

‘Why, it’s the person who controls their careers and their livelihoods, the person who can decree that they will never dance for him again.’

‘I think I could make a guess, Natasha, but tell me who you think it must have been.’

‘There’s only person who could do it, and that is Sergei Diaghilev himself. He must have sensed that
some strange things were happening in his ballet and he has sworn them all to silence.’

Rosebery came to Markham Square at eleven o’clock the next morning, looking grave.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ he said to Powerscourt and Lady Lucy. ‘I’ve spent a great deal of political capital getting the result you wanted. You are to present yourself early this evening at the Kingfisher Hotel which, strictly speaking, is in Streatley, not Goring. There’s something about a bridge dividing them.

‘Believe me when I tell you that I do not know anything at all about what you may find there. If you hadn’t served as Head of Military Intelligence in South Africa, I doubt that these doors would have opened an inch. I told them that you were conducting an investigation into a recent murder and were not a contracted spy in the service of the German government. That much they did believe. That is all I have to say. May I wish you God speed and good luck.’

‘You can’t just slip away without answering a question or two, Rosebery,’ Lady Lucy remarked as the former Prime Minister was picking up his hat and heading for the door. ‘Is it dangerous? For Francis, I mean.’

‘I would be failing in my duty if I did not say it might be dangerous. But it might not, Lucy. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific than that.’

Frappé

A hitting or striking action of the foot where the foot is directed toward the floor using a strong extension of the leg. The foot starts in a wrapped position called
sur le cou-de-pied
where the heel of the foot is placed on the front of the leg directly below the calf, and the toes of the foot are wrapped around the leg toward the back, with the knee placed directly to the side. From this starting position, the leg strikes forward, leading with the heel, hitting the ball of the foot on the floor, and extending to a pointed position with the foot. The leg and foot then return to their original positions to begin the
frappé
again.

You could hear it before you could see it, Powerscourt said to himself, dressing reluctantly at a quarter to four in the morning in his vast bedroom looking out over the Thames. There they went, the dark waters of the river, swirling and slapping and gurgling on their long journey to the sea. The local birds were already
welcoming a new day. His reception on arrival late the previous evening had been curt.

‘Ah, Powerscourt,’ General Page had said as he presented himself, rather tired from his journey the evening before. There was a long pause. Page had been universally known as Silent Page, ever since his first days as a trainee Sub-Lieutenant many years before, when Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister. The pause went on.

‘Sir!’ Powerscourt replied, feeling that some form of dialogue might yet be possible. Page was now staring intently at a large black notebook in front of him. He made no entries.

‘Good of you to come,’ he managed at last, and sank back slightly in his chair, as if the effort of speech had exhausted him.

‘Sir!’ said Powerscourt, feeling that his replies in this attempt at conversation were somewhat limited. He waited. Silent Page was now looking intently at the river, as if enemy forces might suddenly disembark and seize the hotel. Then he inspected his pencil, as if it too might have hostile intent. Suddenly he leant forward and began inspecting a form in front of him. Powerscourt wondered if it contained the staff orders for the day or just the dispositions of his troops for the next twenty-four hours. Silent Page took a deep breath.

‘Got to get you to sign this,’ he managed at last. ‘Official Secrets Act 1911, you know. You’ll have seen about it in the papers.’

‘Why?’ asked Powerscourt, who had always had a reputation for questioning the orders of superior officers, especially when he considered them unnecessary. This time the pause was hardly there at all.

‘Just sign the bloody thing, damn you. I went to a lot of trouble to get you here. Thought you might be useful.’

By Silent Page’s normal standards, this was virtually the whole act of a Shakespeare play in one go. Powerscourt was so surprised he leant forward and signed it at once, without question. This time the silence reverted to its normal pre-Shakespearian mode. The General looked again at the river, checking perhaps for another arrival of enemy marines. He stared again at the black notebook in front of him.