Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (42 page)

‘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.

Nonetheless he thought he had the hang of the main points of the story. The Cherry Orchard belonged to a Mrs Ranevskaya who is returning home from Paris at the beginning of the play. The estate
and the Cherry Orchard will have to be sold to pay off the family debts unless she agrees to cut all the trees down and build villas for the new middle class on the site of the orchard and live off
the rental income. A local merchant, risen from the ranks of the former peasants, offers to help her do this, but she refuses. There are two of her daughters, one adopted, and her brother in the
cast, all going to be affected by the sale. There is an aged servant called Firs who regrets the passing of the old days of the serfs when everybody knew their place. There is a perpetual student
called Trofimov who boasts of not being thirty yet. All of these characters, Powerscourt felt, were out of place. They didn’t seem to belong to their own time, to their own space. They were
displaced persons in what had become, for them, almost a foreign country. They floated precariously between the old world of the Ranevskaya estate and the different world they would inhabit when it
was gone. Very near the end the stage was empty, with the sound of all the doors being locked with their keys, and all the carriages leaving. The silence was broken by the striking of a solitary
axe against a tree, a rather melancholy sound. The old servant appears. He has been forgotten, left behind. Suddenly Powerscourt felt very strongly that the Cherry Orchard, for Chekhov, was Russia.
The old order of long ago, of masters and serfs, has long gone. Nobody is sure what is going to replace it. Russia is being sold off to the new capitalist class, who will cut down the cherry
orchards and build the villas while the previous owners complete their abdication of responsibility by going back to their lovers in Paris.

‘Life has gone by as if I hadn’t lived,’ says the eighty-seven-year-old Firs at the very end, ‘you’ve got no strength left, nothing, nothing.’ There is the
distant sound of a string breaking, as if in the sky, a dying melancholy noise. Silence falls and the only thing to be heard is a tree being struck again with an axe far off in the orchard. The
final curtain falls. The old order is being cut down. Powerscourt wondered what Dr Chekhov would have made of Bloody Sunday and the current paralysis in his country. Would he have any
prescriptions? Or would he be content to describe the symptoms?

‘Can you tell me one thing, Lord Powerscourt?’ Natasha Bobrinsky and her young man Mikhail and Lord Francis Powerscourt were waiting for coffee at the end of their
dinner in the Alexander Hotel halfway along the Nevskii Prospekt. Their table was hidden away at the end of the dining hall, decorated like a London club, a rather expensive club with valuable
paintings all over the walls. To their right a small orchestra could be heard tuning up for the dancing which was due to commence in fifteen minutes. Two servants were lighting enormous candles on
the walls of the ballroom.

‘Of course, Natasha, whatever you like,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Well,’ said the girl, leaning forward to address Powerscourt more closely, speaking in her near perfect French, ‘I think I understand most of what has been going on when
I’ve not been there. Mikhail told me all about the wicked Major and what happened to him and what happened to Mr Martin and I think you were all very brave about that. I know about the little
boy.’ She paused briefly to look at a couple of violinists making their way towards the stage, tugging vaguely at their instruments. Powerscourt was impressed that she had chosen not to name
the disease.

‘But there are two things I don’t understand.’ Her long fingers began tapping out some unknown musical beat on the white linen tablecloth. Waltz? wondered Powerscourt. Foxtrot?
Mazurka? He suddenly remembered Natasha’s grandmother in that great bed, humming her way through the dances of her youth, trying to salvage Martin’s name from the depths of her memory.
‘Why didn’t Mr Martin tell Tamara Kerenkova he was coming? He’d always told her before.’

‘I’m not absolutely sure about that,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘but remember, the previous times he came he wasn’t working, if you see what I mean. He wasn’t
representing Great Britain or the Foreign Office, just himself. This time he was on business, very important business, and the Prime Minister must have told him he couldn’t even tell the
church mouse a thing about it. I think Kerenkov knew Martin was coming because the Okhrana read the telegrams from the Foreign Office giving the date of his arrival and told Kerenkov about it in
some ploy of their own.’

Natasha Bobrinsky nodded. ‘I see. My second question has to do with that meeting. How did you work out what happened between the Tsar and Mr Martin? How did you know that there was a plan
to send the family to England?’

Powerscourt smiled. It was difficult not to smile at Natasha, she looked so pretty this evening. ‘Part of the answer lies in the information you brought from the Alexander Palace,
Natasha.’ He paused while a waiter arrived with a tray of coffee. ‘I think it really started when I tried to analyse what had happened already. Mr Martin had been sent from London on a
mission of some kind. Our Foreign Office knew nothing about it. Our Ambassador here knew nothing about it. Why? If it was something routine like a treaty with all kinds of clauses and things, the
diplomats would all have been involved. Nothing they like better than criticizing each other’s drafts and correcting the Ambassador’s spelling. But no. Therefore it probably
wasn’t a treaty. But what was it? And why had somebody been killed? Was it because of what they said or what they refused to say? Then there were the words you overheard the Tsar saying to
his wife about how many dead members of their own family did she want to have before she followed the path of the dead Martin. If you think about it that means there is a way to keep the family
alive, Martin’s way, which must involve them not being in St Petersburg at all. When you mentioned to Mikhail about the Trans-Siberian Railway egg having disappeared, I didn’t think
very much of it at first. Gone to be cleaned perhaps, clockwork engine needs a service. But then you said that some other toys had gone and that Alexis was very devoted to the railway egg. I
thought of the French Revolution and the whole royal party trying to escape from their semi-imprisonment in the Tuileries in 1791, only to be recaptured at Varennes the following day. The toys were
sent ahead so the children, and especially the little boy, wouldn’t feel so homesick when they were moved. A British frigate has been on patrol in the Gulf of Finland now for weeks waiting to
take them all off. Surely in terrible times it would only be natural for any royal household to think of getting their women and children out before it may be too late. But that knowledge would be
dynamite in today’s Russia. The Tsar is sending his family away! He’s deserting his people! It could have meant the beginning of the end of the Romanovs. Maybe those security agencies
like Major Shatilov’s suspected something of the sort was afoot, some plot to send Alexandra and the children away. It must, as you know better than I, Natasha, be very difficult to keep
anything secret in that palace. That’s why they were so keen to know what happened between the Tsar and Martin and between me and the Tsar. The information was so important they were
prepared, quite literally to kill for it. Twice.’

Powerscourt paused and poured himself a cup of black coffee. The orchestra was tuning up, the first enthusiastic dancers beginning to form up on the floor.

‘Why England?’ asked Natasha. ‘Why not Sweden or somewhere closer?’

‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I think it could only be England in the end. You want to choose somewhere similar – I mean, if you’re a great power you’re only
going to be happy going to another great power. Sweden or Norway would have been slumming it, and perhaps a bit too close so your enemies might pop over the water and blow you to pieces. Germany
had the problem of the Kaiser nobody liked, France had a revolutionary tradition that might not welcome foreign royalty, but England was full of cousins and most members of the imperial family
speak English. So they sent a secret message to King Edward and Mr Martin brought the answer. That confused me for a long time. At first sight when you hear about a man going from London to St
Petersburg, you assume he’s bringing a message from London to St Petersburg. It’s only natural because you don’t know about the first message that has gone from St Petersburg to
London. But once you work it out, that Martin was bringing, not a question, but an answer, then everything begins to fall into place because there’s really only one question the Tsar of
Russia might want to send secret messages to the King of England about at this time of assassinations and explosions, and that’s to see if he could send his family there.’ Powerscourt
drank some of his coffee. ‘Clear?’ he said.

‘Perfectly clear,’ said Natasha. ‘But why haven’t they gone?’

‘Good question,’ said Powerscourt. ‘All I can say is what I said to the Tsar. Maybe the Empress didn’t want to go. Maybe the children didn’t want to go. Maybe they
thought it would look defeatist, as if they thought they were beaten. I’m not sure.’

‘Well, Lord Powerscourt, I’m now so well trained in telling you what’s going on in Tsarskoe Selo, that I have to make one last report. And this might, just might, have
something to do with why they’re not going. This might be your answer.’ Natasha glanced quickly over at the beginnings of the dance. ‘Tomorrow, out there at Tsarskoe Selo,
they’re expecting a visitor. Or, to be more precise, the Empress is expecting a visitor. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but the Tsar and the Tsarina are deep into mystics and
seers and tarot cards and psychics and all that rubbish. They had some crook of a Frenchman on board a couple of years ago. Now they think they’ve found another one, a man who calls himself
Rasputin, Father Grigory Rasputin. They say he can heal the sick. Alexandra has ordered at least eight reports about him, from fellow mystics, from priests, even from people he’s claimed to
have healed. Maybe she thinks he can help with Alexis. Maybe she thinks he’s the answer to all her prayers. Maybe this is why they haven’t gone to England, why they’ve stayed
here. Maybe she thinks he will cure the little boy. He’s due to call on her at two o’clock tomorrow.’

Powerscourt wondered if this was another piece of gossip he could report back to the Prime Minister in London. Then suddenly Natasha was by his side and she was pulling him to his feet.

‘You can’t leave St Petersburg without dancing, Lord Powerscourt. It’s not allowed. And you can’t leave St Petersburg without dancing with me. That’s not allowed
either. Come along, please.’

Thirty seconds later they were floating round the floor to a waltz by Johann Strauss. Powerscourt thought Natasha was a perfect partner. She leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

‘Will you come to our wedding, Lord Powerscourt? Me and Mikhail?’

‘Congratulations,’ said Powerscourt. ‘This is all very sudden. I didn’t know you were engaged. Mikhail didn’t mention anything. Is the wedding soon?’

‘Well,’ said the girl defensively, swinging round happily in Powerscourt’s arms, ‘it hasn’t really happened yet. I mean so far Mikhail hasn’t actually asked
me, but he will. He will do it very soon.’

Powerscourt thought of asking if she too had psychic powers but he thought better of it.

‘It’s my grandmother, Lord Powerscourt. She’s always told me that the girls decide on the marriages, the young men merely ask the question.’

On reflection, Powerscourt thought there might be something in it. Perhaps he should check with Lucy when he got back home. But Natasha hadn’t finished with him yet.

‘Anyway, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Natasha Bobrinsky, ‘I wanted to ask your advice. You’ve travelled a lot. You’ve been nearly everywhere. Where is the most romantic
place in the world to get married and have your wedding reception?’

Powerscourt hesitated for about five seconds before he gave his answer. Rome, Paris, London, Madrid, Vienna, Salzburg, all fell at the early hurdles.

‘There’s only one answer,’ he said, smiling at Natasha and feeling at least seventy years old, ‘Venice. You get married in the Basilica of St Mark, or if you can’t
manage that, San Giorgio Maggiore across the water. You have your reception in the Doge’s Palace. If that’s not possible, I’m sure you could rent a whole palazzo on the Grand
Canal. It would be wonderful. Mikhail’s father and yours might have to throw quite a lot of money about, but the Venetians have been taking bribes for centuries. Anyway, you should all feel
at home there.’

‘Should we?’ asked Natasha.

‘Of course you should,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully, ‘whole bloody city’s built on the water. Just like here.’

Shortly before two o’clock the following day Rasputin was within sight of the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. He had walked all the way from St Petersburg, believing
that this would give a better impression than coming by train. Holy men don’t need public transport. Up on the roof Alexandra had been watching the road for some time through her
husband’s binoculars. Was this new holy man going to be the answer to her prayers? Was he the greater figure Philippe had spoken of? Every single report she had received about him had been
favourable.