Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (7 page)

Mrs Martin began to cry slowly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted out between her tears, ‘I shouldn’t have said that very last bit. I think I’d better go
now.’

A watcher in Markham Square would have seen Mrs Martin climb back into the carriage she had come in at the other end of the Square. A very tall, very slim gentleman opened the door for her. He
waited for her to speak. Sir Jeremiah Reddaway was most curious to learn if his latest emissary to the Powerscourt household had been more successful than the last.

Lady Lucy stared blankly at the wall with the bookshelves. She knew that Francis had already decided where to put the first of his cathedral volumes when it was published. She wondered how much
pain she had caused him since the return from Positano. She wondered if he would be happier now. She wondered if she had loved him too much, trying to wrap him in a cocoon of love that would keep
out the rest of the world. She hoped not. She didn’t think you could love a man like Francis too much. She wondered what he would say when she told him he was released from his promise and
was now free to go to St Petersburg if that was what he wanted to do. She went and sat in the chair by the window that looked out over Markham Square and waited for Francis to come home.

Lord Francis Powerscourt had been told by the Foreign Office that they would provide an interpreter who would travel with him from London. It was, Powerscourt reflected
bitterly as he stared down the platform at Victoria station, just about all they had been able to tell him. Sir Jeremiah had, of course, known all the details of Roderick Martin’s early life
and career. Educated at Westminster School and New College Oxford, a brilliant linguist, fluent in French, German and Russian and able to cope in Italian, he had entered the Foreign Service with a
formidable reputation. Over time he developed a judgement of men and events that was as sharp as his ability at languages. As well as his education in diplomacy, Roderick Martin was trained in the
more mundane matters like codes and the use of telegraph machines. He had served in all the great capitals of Europe and by the time of his mission to St Petersburg at the age of thirty-eight, his
contemporaries were already speculating about when and where he would take up his first posting as Ambassador. But of the journey to Russia they knew nothing, except that his body had been found
early in the morning on the Nevskii Prospekt. Word had come from the Prime Minister that they were to send a man, their best man if possible, to St Petersburg. The Prime Minister himself would
brief him. He was to report only to the Prime Minister on his return. That was all. Martin’s wife, Martin’s parents knew no more than his employers. He had stepped into his compartment
on this very train, Powerscourt said to himself, he had gone to the Russian capital and he had been killed. That was all anybody seemed to know about him. Maybe the Embassy there would be able to
tell him more but they hadn’t been able to tell the Foreign Office very much at all. Even Sir Jeremiah Reddaway, as proper and punctilious as a man in his position should be, had heard the
rumours. Martin was having an affair with some diplomat’s wife and had been killed by hired thugs. He had merely run across a bunch of drunken peasants or workers in the wrong part of town
and been murdered for his wallet. The beauty of these theories, as Powerscourt saw clearly, was that they disconnected the murder from the mission. Powerscourt believed the opposite was the case.
Maybe, Sir Jeremiah had said hopefully, those long legs stretched out in front of his own Foreign Office fire, the mission had to do with the Russian sinking of a British fishing boat and the
deaths of two sailors as their navy sailed halfway round the world to fight the Japanese. Maybe they wanted a diplomatic alliance against the Germans. Powerscourt found it hard to believe any of
the rumours.

And where was his interpreter? There were only a few minutes to go before departure. Powerscourt had a very clear picture in his mind of the Russian Interpreter as he referred to him. He would
be middle-aged, portly, wear thick glasses and fuss a lot about his business. He would look rather like a bank manager going to seed. He would have little conversation outside the business of
interpreting and would prove dull company on his journey. He turned to the door of his compartment where a good-looking young man was preparing to stow his case on the luggage rack.

‘I’m afraid that seat is reserved,’ said Powerscourt.

‘I know it is,’ said the young man. ‘It’s reserved for me.’

‘For you?’ said Powerscourt, astonished. ‘That can’t be, I’m afraid. It’s reserved for my Russian interpreter.’

‘I know,’ said the young man with a smile, ‘I am your Russian interpreter. You are Lord Francis Powerscourt. I am Mikhail Shaporov, sent by your Foreign Office to assist you.
If you don’t want my services, just let me know.’

Now it was Powerscourt’s turn to smile. ‘Forgive me, please. Delighted to meet you. And my apologies for the confusion. To be perfectly honest, I was expecting somebody older. I had,
in fact, decided that my interpreter was going to be middle-aged and look like a bank manager going to seed.’

The young man laughed. Powerscourt saw that he was just under six feet tall with a broad forehead and a Roman nose. His cheekbones were high and he had very fair hair and soft brown eyes.
Powerscourt thought he could do considerable damage to the young ladies.

‘Perhaps I should tell you a little about myself, Lord Powerscourt, to reassure you that the young can be as good at interpreting as the middle-aged. My parents – well, I suppose
you’d have to call them aristocrats –live in an enormous palace or indeed palaces in St Petersburg. My father has branched out into banking and other sorts of financial business. I have
been working in his offices here in London to learn all about it. I lived the first sixteen years of my life in St Petersburg and then I was sent to school in England and then to Oxford, to Trinity
College, if you know it. So you see, Lord Powerscourt, I know both societies. I have done quite a lot of translating for my father. I think it must have been he, or your Ambassador in Russia, who
recommended me for this kind of work. I have often done it before. I rather enjoy it.’

‘I’m delighted to hear you know St Petersburg,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’m sure that will be a great advantage in our mission.’

‘Can you tell me something about that?’ said the young man doubtfully. ‘All I learned from the Foreign Office was that it was very secret and I had to set out for the station
as fast as possible.’

Very slowly the great train drew out of the station and began its journey towards the hop fields of Kent. A number of friends and relations were left waving disconsolately on the platform.
Powerscourt wondered how much he could tell young Shaporov and decided that nothing he knew was a secret worth preserving. So he told him everything.

‘That’s all rather exciting,’ said the young man, ‘except for the fact that this poor man is dead. And nobody, you say, knows what he was doing in St
Petersburg?’

‘Only the Prime Minister, as far as I can tell. Have you any idea at all what could bring about such a level of secrecy as far as Russia is concerned?’

‘Scandal?’ said Mikhail Shaporov happily. ‘Blackmail? Secrets of state? Diplomatic treaties that have to be kept hidden for a decade? It’ll be very disappointing, Lord
Powerscourt, if we just find that he hadn’t settled his debts at the casino or was carrying on with another man’s wife. Though,’ he went on rather sadly, ‘if people were
killed for adultery in St Petersburg, the population would drop very quickly.’ Powerscourt wondered if there was some personal pain hidden behind the sadness.

‘The thing is,’ the young man went on, ‘you did say that this poor dead diplomat was a very important sort of fellow, a top dog in the Foreign Office collection, so the chances
are that it has to do with great secrets. I do hope we can find out.’

Shaporov peered out of the window. ‘Forgive me, Lord Powerscourt, but your England always seems quite small to me. Some years ago my parents took us all on the Trans-Siberian Railway just
after it opened, thousands and thousands of miles of track. I thought it was splendid. My younger brother, mind you, he got claustrophobia after being kept in the train carriages for days and days.
He hardly ever goes in a train now if he can help it.’

Powerscourt wondered if the young Mikhail’s contacts in St Petersburg might be useful to him. The young man yawned.

‘Will you excuse me, Lord Powerscourt? I did not have very much sleep last night and then I had to prepare for our journey. Would you mind if I went next door and had a nap?’

When he had the compartment to himself again, Powerscourt began thinking about Lucy. He had found her, on his return from the London Library, sitting on the chair by the window in Markham
Square, looking out very sadly into the weak late afternoon sun. He thought she had been waiting for him. Close up, she looked more miserable still. He thought she had been crying.

‘Lucy, my love,’ he strode across the room to her, ‘whatever is the matter?’

She burst into tears and fell into his arms.

‘Don’t worry, Lucy. It can’t be that important. We still have each other. We still love each other.’

After a couple of minutes she composed herself. She took his hands in hers as she had those years before on the balcony in Positano.

‘Francis,’ she said, ‘I release you from your promise not to take on any more investigations. You are free to go to St Petersburg as far as I am concerned. I hope I have not
made you too unhappy in the meantime. It was my first husband, you see, who went away on the nation’s business and got killed. I couldn’t bear to have it happen again, I really
couldn’t. But I’ve got to let you go. I see that now. I hope you don’t think I’m some sort of jailer, Francis. Please forgive me for the whole thing.’

Powerscourt kissed the top of her head and held her very tight. ‘Might I ask, Lucy, what brought about this change of mind? Have you had a revelation? Has somebody been to talk to
you?’

She smiled. ‘I had a visit from Mrs Martin, the wife of the dead man in St Petersburg. His parents are still alive. It’s driving them all mad, not knowing what happened to Mr Martin,
you see. And when the Foreign Office told them they were sending a top investigator to find out the truth, they cheered up, they thought they were going to find out what had been going on. Then
they were even more despondent when they learnt the investigator wasn’t going. She said it wasn’t fair that I could keep you safe at home while he went off to die. She said Britain
would have lost every war it ever fought if the wives stopped their men going off to defend the country. She made me feel rather selfish, actually, Francis.’

‘Did you tell her you had changed your mind, Lucy?’

‘No, I didn’t. I hadn’t, you see, changed my mind, not then. That came later while I was sitting by the window waiting for you to come home.’

Powerscourt handled his wife very delicately in the two days that followed her change of mind before his departure. He could only guess at how much it must have cost her. He could not imagine
how she would worry while he was away. Whatever else he did, he must try to find the answers as quickly as possible. He took her out to her favourite restaurant. He promised to take her to Paris
when he returned. Above all, he told himself constantly, he must not crow, he must not boast, he must not sing for joy as he walked about the house. For Lord Francis Powerscourt would never have
told his wife. He would and did tell Johnny Fitzgerald. He was so happy to be back in harness, as he put it to himself, with a difficult case and a romantic location. The curious thing about his
elation was that Lady Lucy saw it too. After twelve years of marriage she could sense her husband’s mood without him having to speak a word. And, although she would not have told her husband
this, she was happy because he was happy.

Mikhail Shaporov slept all the way across the Channel. He slept through France. Powerscourt began to wonder if he was going to sleep all the way to Russia when he finally
appeared just outside Cologne. They had crossed the Rhine, the first of Europe’s great rivers the train would traverse on its long trek across a continent. It began snowing just before
Hamburg. The fields and the farmhouses disappeared in a soft carpet, the sharp edges of the buildings in the cities disappeared in a white blanket. Mikhail dragged Powerscourt to an open window,
admitting freezing wind and torrents of snow, to see the spray shooting up and curving gracefully backwards as the great dark engine pounded forward through the white snow. They were shedding
passengers now faster than the replacements were coming on board. Considerable numbers got off at Hannover. More got off for the architectural glories of Potsdam, more still for the pomp and
swagger of Berlin. There were only a few hardy souls left for the long haul to Warsaw and the final route through to the Baltic glories of Riga and Tallinn. At last, after three days’
travelling, at half past six in the evening, they arrived in St Petersburg. Mikhail had arranged transport for himself to his palace and for Powerscourt to the British Embassy. They arranged to
meet at the Embassy at nine o’clock the following morning. Powerscourt had made a number of appointments by telegraph before leaving London.

‘Leave your bags here, the porter will take them up.’ The voice was languid but powerful, its owner a beautifully dressed diplomat of some thirty-five years called
Rupert de Chassiron, Chief Secretary to the Embassy. He radiated an effortless charm. From time to time a hand would be despatched on an upward mission to check the status of his hair, which was
beginning to let him down by going thin on top. De Chassiron sported a very expensive-looking monocle which gave him, as intended, an air of great distinction. ‘His Nibs, that’s the
Ambassador to you and me, is off at some charity function with that frightful wife of his. I’m to take you to the feeding station.’

Powerscourt resisted the temptation to ask for further details of the frightful wife. He remembered from his time in South Africa that embassies could become very claustrophobic, always prone to
feud and faction. They were walking past the Alexander Monument, surrounded by the great buildings of the Admiralty and the Hermitage and the Winter Palace, powerful and menacing in the dark.