Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (28 page)

There were over twenty people out in the night air, men and women, standing in the clearing in the forest, dressed in home-made white robes. Three bonfires marked the limit of
their territory. In the centre of the area stood a man called the Pilot, the leader of the group and the Master of Ceremonies for this evening. Beside him was his wife, known as the Blessed Mother.
Behind them a group of drummers beat out a rhythm of ever-increasing frenzy. Each person carried a candle and as the candle burnt down they began to dance, slowly and reverently at first and then
with more vigour. The Pilot noticed that the stranger who had come to his house earlier that day and soothed his sick daughter was dancing particularly wildly, his dark head rolling vigorously as
if he was drunk. As the delirium grew and the dance grew wilder yet, the celebrants flung their robes to the ground and knelt before the Pilot to be whipped with birch rods. Then they began to whip
each other with the birch rods, the
khylysti
that gave their name to the sect, the drums beating faster still, the candles flung to the ground, their terrible hymn broadcast into the forest
air.

At the point when hysteria was about to engulf them all, the Pilot grabbed a woman and dragged her to the ground. According to the rules of the sect it was impossible for anybody to refuse a
member of the opposite sex at these orgies. The Pilot was followed by the other
khylysti
members until there was a mass of groaning, shrieking couples on the ground. There were more women
than men. The unfortunate just had to wait their turn. The Pilot noticed that the stranger seemed to be giving himself generously to the business. The drums beat on, calling the faithful to their
duty. This was the first necessity of their belief system. Without sin, there could be no repentance and no salvation. Without first indulging in these rites of darkness there could be no entry
into a state of grace. The Church frowned on these practices and they had been declared illegal by the state, even though there were said to be over a hundred thousand
khylysti
members
across Russia.

The stranger left early next morning, looking refreshed rather than exhausted by his exertions the night before.

‘Are you going back home now?’ asked the Pilot.

‘No, I am continuing my journey,’ the stranger replied.

‘May I ask where are you going to?’ the Pilot continued.

‘I am going to St Petersburg,’ said the stranger.

‘Will you tell me your name, in case we meet again?’ said the Pilot, holding out his hand for a farewell handshake.

‘One day,’ said the stranger, ‘everybody in Russia will know my name. I am a priest. I am called Rasputin, Father Grigory Rasputin.’

Powerscourt wondered if Lucy would come to meet him at Victoria station as his train arrived in the middle of the morning. As he strode down the long platform, packed with
porters and passengers, he peered at the crowd of welcomers at the far end. There was the usual collection of especially tall people only found at the great railway termini who blocked the view for
everybody else. And Lucy was not particularly tall. Then he saw the head of a small figure raised aloft on shoulders he could not see. There was a shout of Papa! three times and two tiny people
hurtled towards him as fast as their legs would carry them. Powerscourt was amazed at how effectively they dodged in and out of the surrounding traffic, navigating their way past porters with vast
trolleys and elderly ladies of uncertain gait. He waved vigorously from time to time even when he couldn’t see them to give the twins something to steer for. Then, laughing with excitement,
Juliet and Christopher were upon him, demanding to be lifted up at once for a better view of the station. They were both uncontrollably happy, peering into Powerscourt’s face from time to
time to make sure he was really home and giggling cheerfully when their inspection was proved right. So it was a heavily laden husband, with a twin on each shoulder and a porter carrying a suitcase
and a large shopping bag in each hand, who was reunited with his wife at the bottom of Platform 14, Ashford, the Dover Boat, Calais and Paris.

‘Francis, my love,’ Lady Lucy said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see you home.’ She squeezed whatever bits of her husband she could find.
‘They’ve been frantic, these two,’ she nodded at the twins, ‘ever since they heard you were coming back. They promised to be good if they were brought to the station to meet
you, and they were, staying ever so still, not fighting, not running round at all. I was quite taken in! I relaxed my guard, you see, so when I lifted Juliet up I didn’t have a firm hold on
Christopher and then they were off!’

‘Never mind,’ said Powerscourt, taking hold of a section of his wife’s shoulder and holding it tight. ‘We’re all here and we’re all fine.’

Forty-five minutes later the twins were still coiled round their father as he tried to have a conversation with Lucy over tea in the drawing room in Markham Square. She asked
him about his investigation. He remembered that these were perilous waters.

‘It’s been very sedate stuff really, Lucy. Lots of meetings with Interior Ministry people, diplomats from the Foreign Office, long conversations with a very clever Englishman in the
Embassy, a Russian princess, a very beautiful Russian princess who works as a lady-in-waiting to the Tsar’s family and discovered that our friend Mr Martin appears to have met the Tsar
shortly before he died.’

Lady Lucy had a vision of Russian sirens, seductive in fur, come to lure her Francis to his doom. ‘How old is this female, Francis?’

Powerscourt laughed. ‘Natasha? She’s about eighteen, but I think she’s falling in love with my translator. He’s all of twenty-five and works in London most of the time. I
don’t think you need to be concerned about the fair Natasha, my love.’

All this time Powerscourt had been conducting tickling and pushing games with Christopher and Juliet. Then he remembered something. He put the twins on the carpet in front of him and looked at
them as severely as he could.

‘Juliet! Christopher! I want you to stand still for a moment. Still! Now then. I have brought a present for each of you back from St Petersburg. I want you to go downstairs and bring up
that brown shopping bag I had at the station. It’s by the suitcase in the hall.’

With whoops of Present! Present! the twins shot off down the stairs. Powerscourt grinned. ‘It’s hard to imagine them ever being sort of stationary, isn’t it, you know, reading
a newspaper, looking at the wallpaper, anything like that. I’m going to tell you all about the investigation this evening when Johnny’s here, my love. He is coming to dinner this
evening, isn’t he?’

Lady Lucy smiled. No investigation of her husband’s would be complete without Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘He is coming, of course he’s coming. He asked me to give you a message,
Francis. He said he’s going to concentrate on the village and leave the house to you. He’ll meet you at the station for the train nearest to seven o’clock this evening.’

‘Very good,’ said her husband, thinking how meticulous Johnny had been. There was the customary sound of a minor earthquake, large animal in distress, small football crowd in pain
that heralded the arrival of the twins, dragging the bag along the floor.

‘Very heavy, Papa,’ said Juliet. ‘Big bag,’ agreed Christopher.

Powerscourt placed the bag on his knees and began to rummage around inside it. ‘That’s funny,’ he said after a while, ‘I’m sure I packed those things before I
left.’

He continued searching. The twins looked slightly less hopeful than before. ‘They must be down here in this corner, behind their mother’s present,’ he went on. ‘No,
they’re not there either. They must be on the other side.’ The twins were beginning to look rather anxious. Maybe their Papa had forgotten to put the presents in the bag. Lady Lucy was
trying very hard not to smile.

‘They’re not that big, well, they’re not that small either. Could they have slipped out of the bag when I put it on the luggage rack? That carriage must be halfway to Dover now
if it goes back the way it came.’

Visions of new possessions they had not yet seen heading back all the way to St Petersburg appalled the twins. They looked at each other sadly. Their faces fell. If he had been heartless,
Powerscourt might have wanted to place a bet on which one would burst into tears first.

‘Hold on!’ he said with the air of a man remembering at last where he has buried the treasure. ‘I know what’s happened. They’re stuck between Thomas and
Olivia’s presents!’ One final delve into the bag which might, Lady Lucy thought, have indicated to a cynical observer that Powerscourt knew all along where the presents were, and he
produced two packages cocooned in thick brown paper.

‘Oh dear,’ he said, looking at the expectant faces of his children, ‘I’m not quite sure which one is for which child.’ He began feeling the presents. The twins were
growing more impatient by the second. Then something seemed to make his mind up. ‘This one is for you, Juliet, and this one is for you, Christopher.’

There followed the normal rending and tearing sounds as the paper was ripped to shreds and thrown on the floor. Juliet had a wooden doll with four smaller dolls inside. Christopher had a Russian
Imperial Guardsman in full battle kit, a defiant moustache emphasizing his superiority. Powerscourt would not have confessed to anybody in the world that he had actually bought the things at Berlin
Lichtenberg station. But his present for Lucy had been purchased at a very fashionable shop on the Nevskii Prospekt itself.

‘I must go to Kent, my love,’ said Powerscourt, looking at his watch and at the twins who appeared to be arranging an assignation between the smallest of the dolls and the guardsman.
‘I was going to give you this tonight, but with all these presents going round . . .’

He handed Lucy a rectangular parcel, a book well covered in stout wrapping paper and string. There was a drawing of a very beautiful woman on the cover. The writing was in Russian. Lucy looked
at him.

‘I know it’s in Russian, my love,’ said Powerscourt gently, ‘but I don’t think it will matter when you know what it is. That,’ he nodded reverentially at the
book, ‘is a first edition of Tolstoy’s
Anna Karenina
. Do you remember you used to have that coat I called your Anna Karenina coat when we first met? I remember meeting you
wearing it one day in St James’s Square. ’

Lucy flicked through the pages, pausing now and then to look at the illustrations. ‘Oh, Francis!’ was all she could say. ‘Oh, Francis!’

The road down to Tibenham Grange was steep, twisting and turning its way through the woods. Powerscourt noticed two other dwellings on the way down. At the bottom of the hill
was a large lawn, big enough for croquet or tennis, with a lake on a raised level behind it. To the left was the house itself, a near perfect medieval moated manor house, described by some
historians, Powerscourt recalled, as one of the finest of its sort in England. As he paid off his cab, arranging for a pick-up at six thirty to return to the station, he saw a tubby police
constable of middling years eyeing him suspiciously.

‘This house is closed to visitors at present,’ the constable said, ‘even to architects. Especially to architects.’

‘I’m not one of those,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully, drawing on long years of experience with the various layers of the police force. ‘My name is Powerscourt. I’m
an investigator. I believe the Foreign Office will have told Inspector Clayton I’m coming.’

‘My apologies, sir, forgive me, please. Constable Watchett at your service, sir. I’ll bring you to the Inspector now, sir.’ Watchett led Powerscourt over a stone footbridge
that crossed the moat. ‘I don’t hold with these houses with water all around them myself,’ said the constable, glancing down into the depths. ‘Damp must come in something
rotten and everyone knows damp can be bad for houses, very bad.’

Constable Watchett shook his head as he showed Powerscourt into an elegant library, divided into sections by bays of bookshelves set at right angles to the windows. The Inspector was at the far
end. He was a tall, thin Inspector with a slight limp as he made his way down the library to greet his visitor. His hair was a light brown and his cheerful blue eyes showed that his calling had not
yet completely destroyed his faith in human nature. ‘Andrew Clayton, Lord Powerscourt,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘What a pleasure to meet you at last! I trust you have
recovered from your journey.’

‘Well recovered, thank you,’ said Powerscourt, staring intently at the young man. ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance. Have we met somewhere before?’

‘Only by reputation, my lord,’ said the Inspector, ‘in South Africa. I was wounded rather badly in a skirmish during your time there. Our colonel said that if it hadn’t
been for the intelligence provided by your department, we would have all been killed. I joined the police force after that.’

‘I’m sure it was nothing,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Quite soon we must have a long talk about South Africa, but for the moment, as you know at least as well as I do, we have
urgent business.’

‘Of course,’ said Clayton, leading the way back to his end of the library. He pointed out a comfortable armchair next to his own. ‘Could I make a suggestion, Lord Powerscourt?
My first inspector, when I was a humble sergeant, used to lay enormous stress on organizing the evidence, such as it was, in chronological order. D follows C which follows B which follows A, he
used to say. It got rather monotonous after a couple of cases, but still. I know the Foreign Office have an interest in this death here, my lord, and I know you have been in St Petersburg looking
into the passing of this poor lady’s husband. So perhaps you could tell me first about the Russian end, as it were, and then I can take it up from here.’

‘Very good,’ said Powerscourt and paused momentarily to organize his thoughts. He left nothing out: the despatch of Martin on his ultra secret mission to St Petersburg with only the
Prime Minister knowing the purpose of his visit; Martin’s late night meeting with the Tsar shortly before his death; the discovery of his body by a police station which later denied all
knowledge of him or his corpse; the Foreign Ministry’s conviction that he had never been in St Petersburg at all; the Interior Ministry’s knowledge not only of his current but of his
previous visits in earlier years; the sinister presence of the Okhrana with its torture chambers in the basement of the Fontanka Quai and its master’s collection of sadistic paintings in the
Hermitage; Martin’s mistress in exile out in the country who remembered her dancing days with Mr Martin in years gone by and whose husband told her he was coming to the city yet again. He
threw in, almost as an afterthought, the telegraph messages decoded by the Okhrana and his own possession of a secret channel outside their knowledge. He spoke of his inability to decide if Martin
was killed because of what he knew, or because he wouldn’t say what he knew and therefore had to die in case that information passed into the wrong hands; of his uncertainty over whether
Martin had sent any telegrams, and if so, to whom; of the complete absence of the body of the dead Martin.