Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (21 page)

‘She married quite late by Russian standards, Elizabeth Nicolaievna,’ Natasha went on. ‘She must have been twenty-three or twenty-four. Her husband was a cavalry man, very
tall, very handsome, they say. My granny says to this day that he was the best-looking soldier in St Petersburg.’ The girl fell silent, as if trying to remember her grandfather.

‘What became of him?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘It’s all rather sad, Lord Powerscourt. They had two children, my mother and her sister, and then my father was killed in a training accident. Some explosives went off when they
shouldn’t have done, just when he was inspecting them in fact, and he was blown to smithereens.’

Powerscourt thought, but did not say, that it sounded as if her grandfather had encountered by accident the same fate that was now being meted out on purpose to the ruling elite by the
revolutionaries.

‘Anyway, Lord Powerscourt, there she was, this Elizabeth, with two little girls, heaps of relations to help with the children, and plenty of money. I’m sure she looked quite hard for
another husband, though she would tell you, if you dared to ask, that she was far too busy looking after the children.’

They had entered the Bobrinsky Palace now, a slightly smaller version of the Shaporov, but with the same profusion of enormous mirrors and paintings on the walls. Sandy, the Embassy guard waited
in the entrance lobby. ‘What she did, my granny,’ Natasha went on, ‘was to pursue an interest in etiquette, who stands where on military parades, what kind of dances are suitable
for the unmarried, all that sort of stuff. Soon the foreign embassies were asking her for advice. Her library grew bigger and bigger with books of deportment and all that junk. Then the imperial
courtiers began checking things with her. By fifteen years ago she was the unquestioned expert on decorum and etiquette in St Petersburg, invited to every social function in the calendar.
That’s why she may be able to help. If our friend Mr Martin showed up at any of those dances or parties, she’ll have seen him. Let’s just hope she remembers him. She’s
bedridden now, poor old thing, I don’t suppose she’ll go to any more grand balls in this life.’

Natasha was now knocking firmly on a pair of very solid double doors. As they obeyed the instruction to enter, Powerscourt saw that they were in an enormous chamber, with three sets of huge
windows looking out towards the Neva. Two vast fires were burning in enormous grates, set in elaborate and ornate marble fireplaces. At one end, at right angles to the river, stood a huge bed,
surrounded by tables with books and newspapers, tables with drinks and cigarettes and one table totally covered with small notebooks which Powerscourt suspected might be the records of the balls or
the diaries of the social years gone by.

‘Natasha, my dear, how nice to see you, and you, young man, you must be Lord Francis Powerscourt, come from England to share in our troubles.’ Elizabeth the grandmother had a thin
voice that cracked from time to time. She was sitting up, resting on a profusion of pillows, in the centre of the bed. She was wearing what might once have been a white lace gown, with elaborate
work at the cuffs and around the neck. On top of that she had a dark grey jacket and her throat was circled with pearls. Elizabeth’s face was lined now, the grey hair receding slightly across
her forehead and tied in a bun at the back, each hair clearly visible under the surrounding lamps and reminding Powerscourt of an old lady’s hair under a white cap, painted by Rembrandt, that
he had seen in a gallery in Amsterdam some years before. It seemed appropriate in this most elegant of cities that life should imitate art.

Natasha’s granny pointed firmly to a tall silver jug. Natasha refilled the old lady’s glass, carefully avoiding Powerscourt’s eye as she did so. Powerscourt wondered if she
drank all day, lying here with the view and the flames in the fire and her memories.

‘Now then, Natasha, show me the picture of this man you want identified. You know him as Mr Martin from London, but he could be called anything here in St Petersburg.’

‘Well remembered, Granny,’ said Natasha, and drew the photograph from her bag. The old lady inserted a long Turkish cigarette into her holder and sucked in the smoke as she inspected
her victim.

‘Pity he’s wearing his gardening clothes, my dear,’ she said, frowning at the nondescript features. ‘You don’t have any more, I suppose?’

‘I’m afraid not, Grandmama,’ said Natasha.

‘Young man,’ the old lady took a fearsome swig of her glass, and peered closely at Powerscourt, ‘have you ever been to any of our grand balls or court balls here in St
Petersburg?’

‘I regret to say I have not had that privilege,’ said Powerscourt, bowing slightly.

‘I am going to have to paint a picture for you,’ the old lady said, taking in a further lungful of smoke, ‘a picture of what they’re like, to remind myself, and to see if
I can remember your gardener.’

She took another deep draught from her glass and waved at Natasha for a refill from the jug.

‘He was here in January last year and the two years before that, according to your information, this man Martin, Lord Powerscourt. Forget the dates of his other visits for the moment.
Something tells me he is dead, but we will leave that for a moment. Now, then, close your eyes, I want you to imagine Palace Square at night in January, my children. All of the three vast blocks of
the Winter Palace are blazing with light. Up above you can see the stars in a clear night sky.’ Elizabeth Bobrinsky held up her hands as far as they would go. ‘Around the Alexander
Column in the centre of the square, braziers are burning in defiance of the winter cold. There is a vast queue of carriages arriving in an unbroken line in front of the Winter Palace, and open
sledges bringing the young officers who do not fear the cold, their horses’ harness covered with blue netting to stop the snow blowing into their passengers’ faces. And from across the
square, my dears, you can just see the silhouettes of the women as they hurry across the few steps between the arriving carriage and the entrance to the Winter Palace. Everywhere tonight there is
fox, sable, silver fox, arctic fox, all are on parade with their human friends. Up the staircases of white marble they go, the male guests in their uniforms of cream and scarlet, spreadeagle
helmets of gold and silver, Hungarians and Caucasians bright in their national dress, diamonds and emeralds and pearls glittering on the princesses and the beautiful women.’

The old lady paused, absentmindedly polishing off her glass. Powerscourt suspected it was some form of vodka cocktail. She peered out at the flames in the fire opposite. ‘I cannot see him
yet,’ she said, ‘but I have not given up hope. Even a gardener may dance with a princess after all.’ There was another pause. She began to screw up her eyes in concentration and
waved rapidly at her glass with her right hand. Natasha poured the refill.

‘There are so many sorts of balls, my children, but let us pretend for a moment that this is a
bal blanc
such as my Natasha might attend, one for the young ladies who are not
married with rows of chaperons like me lining the walls, watching to see that no girl dances twice with the same partner.’ The old lady cackled suddenly. ‘Many times I have broken the
rules in these
bals blancs
. I would do it for you, Natasha, if you wanted, but don’t tell anyone I told you. I can’t see him here, your gardener, at a dance where waltzes are
forbidden, the two-step is regarded as not quite proper and most of the evening is spent in quadrilles with the young people advancing and retiring and forming circles over and over again. No,
I’m sorry, Mr Martin is not here.’

Silence, save for the crackle of the flames, filled the great room. ‘Would you like to have a rest, Granny?’ asked Natasha.

‘Rest, child? I’ve only just begun. I’m just getting into my stride. I think my glass is empty, mind you.’ The old lady closed her eyes and stared as hard as she could
into the past. ‘There were all sorts of balls at the Winter Palace, of course, concert balls and Hermitage balls.’ She paused. ‘I danced with the Tsar, not the present one, his
father, a great bear of a man but very light on his feet, every year from ’87 to ’92 at a Hermitage ball. There was a young Dane with lashings of blond hair, I remember, attached to the
Embassy, who danced with me at a concert ball in 1900, the best dancer I ever knew in my entire life. I even danced with Bismarck once, my children, at a Nicholas ball in the 1880s. He trod on my
feet. I can still remember that.’ She stopped, waiting, perhaps, for the memories to keep coming.

‘Some things were always the same of course, the flowers, the baskets of orchids, the thousands of palm trees, the exotic plants from the Crimea, the masses of lilac and tulips and roses
sent specially from the Riviera.’ She paused again, the look on her face abstracted as she swept through her recollections. ‘The food, the elaborate pastries, the special ices to cool
the dancers down, the plates of cold sturgeon, the chicken creams, the stuffed eggs, the three different kinds of caviar, the great blocks of ice standing about with holes cut in them filled with
tubs of champagne . . . And sometimes, when the numbers weren’t too big, you could walk with your partner away from the ball, my children, and go deep into the empty rooms of the Winter
Palace. The gentleman would take his partner on his arm – a famous admiral took me once – ’ Elizabeth Bobrinsky smiled at the memory of her naval escort, ‘and you could
wander through countless empty suites and end up in magical half-lit rooms with only the odd orderly officer to be seen somewhere in the distance, and those enormous windows, as high as a
cathedral, looking out over the Neva sparkling in the cold and the moonlight with maybe a light fall of snow come to dust the outside of the Winter Palace.’

Powerscourt and Natasha dared not speak a word. They waited. Elizabeth took another absentminded gulp of her vodka.

‘Where is he? The gardener?’ She spoke very fast, looking around her now, as if some faint memory was stirring. ‘He was here in St Petersburg in the January of 1903,
that’s not very long ago. Natasha, my dear, do you remember the famous ball of 1903? It was the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of St Petersburg and that was the last ball held in
the Winter Palace what with these common little assassins blowing up Ministers of the Interior and the war with those horrid yellow Japanese.’

She stopped suddenly as if she had lost her way. A sad, abandoned look came over her face as if she was six years old and lost in a strange park.

‘Natasha?’ she said quietly. ‘Natasha? Are you still here?’

‘Of course I’m still here, Grandmama,’ said the girl gently, reaching out to take her grandmother’s hand, ‘You were just telling us about the anniversary ball in
1903. Maybe Mr Martin was there.’

Elizabeth Bobrinsky paused once more. She looked as though she might have used up all her strength. ‘Early January,’ she said, speaking very slowly now, ‘there was a
performance of
Boris Godunov
in the Hermitage, then, two days later, the costume ball in the Nicholas Hall in the Winter Palace. Three thousand people, marshalled by those giant troopers of
the Chevalier Guards in white, silver and gold at every entrance and along all the staircases, and Cossack Life Guards in their crimson and blue, the Negro footmen dressed in scarlet from head to
foot.’ She stopped again and took a tiny sip of her drink. ‘Half past eight, the ball started. The guests were waiting in the Nicholas Hall as the Grand Master of Ceremonies appeared
and tapped three times on the floor with his ebony staff, embossed in gold with the double-headed eagle of the Tsar. The crowd fell silent as the great mahogany doors, inlaid with gold, swung open
and the Ceremony man called out “Their Imperial Majesties!” and fifteen hundred ladies curtsied in unison.’

Powerscourt noticed that she had changed tenses as if what happened twenty or thirty years ago was so vivid it came to her in the present, while events of two years before were consigned to the
past.

‘Everybody there was wearing seventeenth-century court dress. The Tsar was turned out as Alexis, the second Romanov Tsar, in a rich red caftan embroidered with gold thread and Alexandra
was dressed as his wife Maria, in a sarafan of gold brocade with a silver design inlaid with emeralds, pearls and diamonds. Everywhere you looked there were velvet gowns and gleaming golden
headdresses, dangling festoons and flashing ribbons.’ She smiled again at Natasha. ‘Do you know, child, I danced with four Grand Dukes that night! I haven’t danced since, mind
you. Now I’m going to have a serious look for that Martin.’

Elizabeth closed her eyes. There was a deep furrow of concentration on her brow. Powerscourt could hear strange leaden notes of music being hummed by the old lady. It sounded as if they were out
of tune. An old hand, the skin on the back like rumpled parchment, began to conduct an imaginary orchestra. Natasha was making dancing gestures at Powerscourt, swinging her arms round an imaginary
dance floor between the tables and the window. They thought they could hear her mutter No from time to time. Then the hand and the humming stopped. She seemed to frown even harder. The hand came
up, stayed steady for a few seconds or so and then conducted the tuneless humming into a dance that Powerscourt thought was a polonaise. This was followed by a waltz. Powerscourt suddenly realized
that for their benefit the old lady was conducting this titanic effort of will and memory, that, very probably, he and Natasha were witnessing this evening the last dance of Elizabeth Bobrinsky. He
wondered how many dances the old lady could hum out of tune and suspected the answer ran into thousands. He settled back for a long wait. Natasha, he noticed, had her arm on her grandmother’s
shoulder and looked close to tears. Suddenly the old lady’s left hand began scrabbling frantically round the tables. Natasha placed the photograph of Roderick Martin between her fingers. She
opened her eyes and stared hard at the image, as if she wished to lock into her memory every section of the photograph. Then she closed them again. Join us again for another evening of your
favourite dance tunes with the Winter Palace Orchestra . . . Powerscourt was lapsing into London music hall announcements. But not for long. With a loud shout of ‘Yes! There you are! You
can’t hide from me, Mr Martin!’ Elizabeth Bobrinsky opened her eyes and slammed her fist on the table. ‘I always had the feeling I’d seen him before. I’d forgotten
that at the costume ball we didn’t have national music only for the two hundredth anniversary. We had the usual stuff, waltzes and things as well for the non-Russians, diplomatic corps,
military attachés, visiting professors, those sorts of people. I saw that Mr Martin just now dancing a waltz with Tamara Kerenkova. I’ve just remembered, he may look like a gardener,
but he’s a beautiful dancer.’ She saw her granddaughter exchanging looks with the Englishman. ‘It’s not “is”, is it?’ she said suddenly, realizing the
truth behind those glances. ‘Poor Mr Martin’s dead, isn’t he? Poor man, he’ll never dance again.’