Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (37 page)

‘Your Imperial Majesty! Lord Francis Powerscourt from His Britannic Majesty’s Foreign Office!’

The first thing Powerscourt noticed about Nicholas the Second, Tsar and Autocrat of All the Russias, was that he was quite short for an Autocrat. He must, Powerscourt thought,
have been about five feet seven inches tall. His father, Powerscourt remembered, had been a great bear of a man, capable of bending pokers into circles and other feats of strength guaranteed to
impress small children. The second thing was a quite remarkable similarity to his cousin George, Prince of Wales, second son of King Edward and Queen Alexandra. There was the same neatly trimmed
beard, the same shape of face, the same hair greying slightly at the temples. Nicholas had lines of strain running across his forehead, not surprising, Powerscourt thought, when you were presiding
over an empire in chaos, even less surprising when you thought of the haemophiliac son and heir, possibly bleeding to death even now in some upstairs nursery.

The Tsar was wearing a simple Russian peasant blouse, baggy brown trousers and soft leather boots. Standing in front of his desk, he ushered Powerscourt into an armchair. The room was quite
small with one window. There were plain leather chairs, a sofa covered with a Persian rug, some bookshelves, a table spread with maps and a low bookcase covered with family photographs and
souvenirs.

‘Lord Powerscourt, welcome to Tsarskoe Selo,’ said the Tsar. His English would not have been out of place in an Oxford quadrangle. ‘How may I be of service to you and your
government?’

‘I am not in the service of my government, sir. I am an investigator employed by the British Foreign Office to look into the death of a Mr Martin. Mr Martin, sir, was on the staff of the
Foreign Office. He came here to see you at the end of last year. Then he was killed.’

‘I heard that sad news, Lord Powerscourt. Tell me, you say you are an investigator. What, pray, do you investigate?’

Powerscourt thought the Tsar made investigating sound like a most disagreeable profession. Perhaps he imagined investigators scouring the files of his ministries for examples of administrative
incompetence or worse, looking into the inefficiencies of his armies, or, saddest of all, creeping round his household for long enough to tell his subjects that their future sovereign Alexis the
Tsarevich might have bled to death before he was one year old, never mind attaining his majority.

‘I am not alone in being an investigator, sir. There are a number at work in London at present. I only operate when people ask me to. Usually they ask me to investigate murders.’

The Tsar sounded faintly relieved to hear Powerscourt and his ilk were not contemplating opening a branch office in Moscow or St Petersburg. ‘Do you think Mr Martin was murdered, Lord
Powerscourt?’

‘I most certainly do, sir.’

‘And,’ the Tsar went one, ‘do you expect me to know who killed him?’

‘No, I do not, sir,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if the Tsar did actually know but wouldn’t say, ‘but I would find it very helpful to know what you talked about with Mr
Martin.’

‘I cannot help you there, I’m afraid, Lord Powerscourt. The matter was confidential.’

Confidential enough to get a man killed, Powerscourt thought bitterly. Confidential can mean fatal on a bad day in the Tsar’s palace at Tsarskoe Selo.

‘I fully appreciate that, sir,’ said Powerscourt, looking at a photograph of three very happy little girls draped round their papa on a yacht, ‘but I would like to appraise you
of what I propose to tell my government about your conversation with Mr Martin on my return.’

‘And why should that interest me?’ said the Tsar rather shortly, as if he had had enough of investigators.

‘It should interest you, sir, because it will contain my account of what transpired between you and Mr Martin. I give you my word that if you wish to correct my version in any way, I shall
not tell a single soul who provided the information. Come, sir,’ Powerscourt smiled suddenly at his host, ‘come on a little adventure with me. Put aside the cares of state for ten
minutes or so. Join the ranks of the investigators!’

The Tsar lit himself a cigarette. He returned the smile. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘for the moment I am your Mr Sherlock Holmes of 221b Baker Street. Sherlock Romanov perhaps. I
shall consider what you have to say. Begin please!’

Powerscourt drew a deep breath. Now was his opportunity. From Markham Square to Tsarskoe Selo, via the British Embassy, Kerenkov’s shipyard, Kerenkova’s dacha, the eyes of Natasha
Bobrinsky and the torture chambers of Okhrana boss Derzhenov was a long and complicated journey.

‘When I first began investigating the death of Mr Martin,’ he began, trying to be as honest as he could with the Tsar, ‘I thought that he had been sent here by the British
Government with some proposal or other. A new treaty perhaps, an alliance with the French against Germany, maybe. It was possible, I thought, that he had been killed because somebody didn’t
like the proposal or didn’t like your response to it. That all seemed perfectly possible.’

‘But you changed your mind, Lord Powerscourt. Why did you do that?’

‘I spent a lot of time, sir, trying to work out the dynamics of the meeting, who summoned who, that sort of thing. After a while I decided that the most likely sequence of events was
rather different. The first event was you sending a message to England, to the King, I think, with a request that he should only discuss it with his Prime Minister. I think the request was in the
form if not of a question, then something very like it. You see, sir, I began to think that the meeting had more to do with family than it did with affairs of state. That would explain why the
conversation, if you like, began as monarch to monarch rather than minister to minister. And the need for confidentiality, for secrecy, if you will, explains why a man had to come from London
rather than going through the British Embassy here.’

‘I was going to ask how you arrived at that conclusion but I shall save my questions for the end of this fascinating piece of investigation, Lord Powerscourt!’ Sherlock Romanov
finished his cigarette and immediately lit another. Powerscourt noticed that some of his fingers were deeply stained with nicotine.

‘The second event,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘was Mr Martin arriving here with the answer from London. Again I can only guess at what the answer was. And I can only speculate as to
why up until now no action has been taken.’

‘And what was the answer, Lord Powerscourt?’ The Tsar was now surrounded by a penumbra of smoke, his hand emerging from time to time to knock off the ash at the end of his
cigarette.

‘I think, sir, that the question sent by you or your agents to London went something like this: Would the British royal family, and by extension, the British Government, be happy to
welcome the Tsar’s wife and children to England while the present unrest in Russia continues. And,’ Powerscourt was reluctant to divulge this piece of news, ‘were there doctors in
London who were experienced in the treatment of haemophilia.’

‘God bless my soul!’ The Tsar had turned pale.

‘And the answer, brought by Mr Martin,’ Powerscourt carried on relentlessly now, ‘was Yes, as long as the Russian royal family were content to live quietly in the country and
didn’t expect to be taken round London on a never-ending quadrille of state banquets and ceremonial balls. A suitable place could be found for them in Norfolk, close to the Royal Family
establishment at Sandringham.’

The Tsar looked at Powerscourt with considerable pain in his eyes. His question now had a slightly desperate air. ‘There is a flaw, of course, in this theory of yours. Do you see what the
flaw is, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I am not sure it is a flaw, sir. I presume you refer to the fact that your wife and children are still here in Tsarskoe Selo, St Petersburg, not in Norfolk, England. But I do not believe
that invalidates any of the rest of the theory, sir. There has been a British frigate on patrol in the waters off the coast here for a number of weeks now. People are beginning to talk. It seems
possible to me, sir, that a number of factors could have intervened to modify the situation. The Empress might not have liked the plan. She might have preferred to stay with her husband in his hour
of duty and help him fulfil what she saw as his obligations as ruler of Russia. The Tsar’s advisers, if they heard of the plan, might have thought it an unhelpful act to send the Tsar’s
family and his heir out of the country. Hostile elements in society, not just the bomb-throwing fraternity, might have branded it cowardice, a vote of no confidence by the Tsar in the Tsar’s
own administration. And finally, sir,’ Powerscourt thought he must stop very soon, ‘if security is so bad at present that you cannot attend the funeral of one of your own relations,
blown to smithereens by the Kremlin walls, it might also be too bad to permit a party of six with all their attendants to make their way from here to a main-line railway station or to the English
frigate.’

The Tsar crossed his legs and stubbed out his cigarette. ‘You will be interested to hear, Lord Powerscourt, that almost all of what you said is true in one sense or another. I congratulate
you. But I have two questions for you. How did you know we were thinking of sending the children to England? And how did you know about my son?’

Powerscourt thought fast. He knew that if he mentioned the disappearing toys or the vanished Trans-Siberian Railway egg, Natasha would be in trouble. He did not dare rely on her testimony for
the haemophilia either. He decided to take a huge gamble, not with the first question, but with the second.

‘I have a politician friend, sir, who is intimate with members of the British royal family. Forgive me if I do not mention his name. I asked him to inquire among his contacts to see if
preparations were being made for the possible reception of a party of Russian royalty. His inquiries revealed that the answer was Yes. He also told me that inquiries were made about whether London
had doctors skilled in the treatment of certain diseases. No name was given to the disease but it was clear from the descriptions given that it was haemophilia. The disease is all too well known to
London doctors, unfortunately. Queen Victoria was a carrier.’ So far so good, Powerscourt thought, looking at the Tsar closely, now for a diversion. ‘When I considered where the British
royals would be likely to accommodate Russian royals, I felt London would be inappropriate. Too public, too many prying eyes from the journalists and members of the public. Windsor Castle? Large
enough, certainly, but there’s rather a lot of gloom and not much privacy. Sandringham is where they would send them. And when I asked a colleague to go and make inquiries in the area about
any plans that might have been made to receive a group of foreign royalty, the answer was Yes. No nationality was known, but a party of foreign royals including a number of children was expected,
had indeed been expected for some time.’ Powerscourt smiled faintly, as if apologizing for knowing too much, for being too well acquainted with the Tsar’s affairs.

‘I see,’ said Nicholas the Second, ‘I see.’ He looked like a man playing for time. Powerscourt remembered de Chassiron saying that the Tsar had plenty of charm but very
little in the way of brain. ‘This is all very interesting, Lord Powerscourt, but please enlighten me as to how it helps your investigations with Mr Martin, the dead Mr Martin.’

Powerscourt prayed that Nicholas was not going to look at his watch. That, the Ambassador had told him, in what must, Powerscourt thought, have been the only piece of useful information ever
imparted by His Nibs, was a certain sign that the Tsar wished the interview to end.

‘Let me try to explain, sir.’ Don’t patronize the man, for God’s sake, Powerscourt said to himself, don’t let him see I think he’s rather dim. ‘Suppose
you have two friends. You know they have met for a conversation. Almost immediately afterwards one of them is killed. Anybody trying to solve the mystery would wish to know what the two men talked
about. It might have a bearing on the reasons for their murder. The same thing applies to Mr Martin.’

‘Do you,’ asked the Tsar, possibly returning to the Sherlock Romanov mode, ‘have a list of suspects, as it were, for the killing?’

‘I do, sir, but forgive me if I do not put names to them,’ Powerscourt said. ‘I would not want you to carry round in your head a collection of possible murderers who might be
totally innocent. It would be as unfair on you as it might be unjust on them.’

‘And do you think, Lord Powerscourt, that this conversation we have just had will make it easier for you to catch the murderer?’

Powerscourt noted that the conversation had now reverted to the past tense. He did not tell the Tsar that he believed his best chance of finding the murderer still lay in the three or four hours
immediately after this interview.

‘I do, sir, and I am most grateful to you for your time and your patience in listening to my theories.’

‘I wish you good luck in your inquiries, Lord Powerscourt. Perhaps we shall meet again some day.’

‘I hope so, sir, I sincerely hope so.’

The interview was at an end. The symphony in gold braid and the footman with the plumed hat collected Powerscourt and the rest of the party and escorted them to their carriage. The symphony
wished them Good Evening. The plumed hat bowed slightly at the departing foreigners. Not too near the palace, probably just outside the park, Powerscourt expected the carriage to be stopped and
that he and Mikhail would be taken away. This was the gamble he had taken when he sent his message to the Embassy about being in a position to solve the mystery of Martin’s death inside a
week. Whatever happened to Martin had happened after he left the Tsar. Somewhere between Tsarskoe Selo and St Petersburg he had been killed.

They heard their adversaries before they saw them, a rattle of horses’ hooves hurrying across the snow. Then a party of six men came into view, all in some elaborate Russian army uniform
Powerscourt didn’t recognize, all with rifles slung across their backs, the leader with a pistol in his left hand. Powerscourt remembered an old army instructor telling him years before that
left-handed shots had to be treated with great care as they were often more accurate than right-handers.