‘Mr Smythe,’ Powerscourt began, ‘thank you for coming to see us so promptly. I appreciate that.’
‘Thank you, Lord Powerscourt.’
‘I’d just like to ask you a couple of questions, if I may. We are, as I am sure you know, engaged in the mystery of the deaths at the Ballets Russes, not into the thefts of large sums of money from a hotel in Russell Square. Let me begin by asking, who approached whom: did you get in touch with Anastasia, or did she get in touch with you?’
George Smythe paused before he replied. He was going to do a lot of pausing in the course of the interview.
‘She got in touch with me, originally.’
‘And how did she know to get in touch with you? Why you, George Smythe, and not anybody else?’
This question seemed to cause a certain amount of thought.
‘I knew she would be coming.’
‘How did you know she would be coming?’
‘Somebody wrote to me from St Petersburg, saying that a girl called Anastasia would be in touch with me.’
‘And are you prepared to tell us who that person is?’
‘No, I am not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because, Lord Powerscourt, if I may say so, you are, in effect, behaving like a policeman in this matter. I do not wish to incriminate anybody, even in a country very far away.’
‘So the person who communicated with you came from St Petersburg?’
‘I can say no more than I already have.’
‘Very well. I can see your position. Would I be right in saying that your role in all this was, quite simply, to sell the jewels for the best possible price?’
‘Yes, my lord. It was.’
‘Could I ask how you sold them?’
‘I made enquiries. I found a firm called Johnston Killick in Hatton Garden. They took most of the jewels, as far as I know, to Antwerp and various places on the Continent where they had contacts. They offered to wire the money back to Russia. Anastasia wasn’t having that. She wanted the money delivered to the hotel in a suitcase. I put her in a taxi after our last meeting and asked the cabbie to take her to the Premier Hotel.’
‘You didn’t want to be seen at the hotel with her, is that right?’
‘It is.’
‘Why not?’
‘Lord Powerscourt, I’m sure you will understand. I’m not absolutely sure about the legality of my actions. I don’t see how I could be breaking the law selling some jewels. But I wasn’t sure. And I knew about the murders. It seemed to me the most prudent course would be to have as little as possible to do with the ballet people.’
‘That’s very helpful. And am I right in thinking that you are not prepared to tell us who contacted you from St Petersburg?’
‘No, I mean yes, you are right in thinking that.’
‘Not even if it was connected in some way with the ballet?’
‘You said earlier that you did not think there was a connection with the Ballets Russes.’
‘I did,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but now I’m not absolutely sure.’
19
Literally ‘to chase’. A slide forwards, backwards, or sideways with both legs bent, then springing into the air with legs meeting and straightened. It can be done either in a gallop (like children pretending to ride a horse) or by pushing the first foot along the floor in a plié to make the springing jump up. This step is generally found in a series, either with several of the same or a combination of movements. Like a glide.
A weary Inspector Dutfield arrived in the Powerscourt drawing room that afternoon. He carried a great bundle of notes in his briefcase.
‘There’s only one consolation about the second murder at Blenheim — always assuming it was murder,’ he began.
‘What’s that?’ asked Lady Lucy.
‘Why, it’s the fact that it happened at the evening rather than the afternoon performance. Think what it would have been like had it happened at the lake with all those people to interview. That could have taken days. This lot here — ’ he waved at the notes in his bag — ‘were bad enough. I have to tell you, my lord, my lady, that we are no better informed at the end of the interviewing process than we were at the beginning. Certain members of the aristocracy might have been enjoying company they shouldn’t have. That is not my business. It is impossible to establish any link with the previous murder, apart from the fact that they both involved the ballet people. What we hadn’t realized was that the entire troupe, the men and the women of the corps de ballet, were on standby in case they were required to do an encore after supper. It was Diaghilev’s idea. If you ask me, my lord, my lady, I don’t think many of those people at the Great Hall concert were much interested in the ballet. It was a social occasion — see and be seen, that sort of thing.’
‘But where were they all, all those Ballets Russes people?’
‘Well, they were still in their costumes and they were wandering round all over the place. The footmen kept them out of the State rooms, the bedrooms and so on, but they were given the run of the rest of the place. None of them have watches so nobody has any idea of the time. So nobody can give any information about when they might have seen the dead girl, Vera Belitsky. She was killed from that balcony, thrown down a long way onto the marble floor to be precise. The balcony’s the best place in the house to get a clear view of the hall; you can see up as well as down, which you can’t do so well from the ground floor. Each and every one of them, I think, must have wandered onto that balcony to have a look at some time or other. There was one occasion when they all rushed off to the other side of the house for a peep into the dining room from the servants’ passage, but I can’t establish if the dead girl was left behind or not. And there’s another thing.’
‘What’s that?’ said Powerscourt, looking closely at the pages and pages of notes the Inspector had brought with him, all apparently useless.
‘It’s this, my lord. The whole place was wide open. Bits of the stage downstairs were being taken away. Bits of the stage from the open-air show were being brought back into the house for storage round the back. It’s quicker if you go straight through the house rather than going round the back. There were carpenters and scene shifters and the like everywhere. A complete stranger could have walked in — a whole team of complete strangers could have walked in — and nobody would have been any the wiser. And all the while the guests were tucking into their caviar and whatever they had for the other courses.’
‘Presumably,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘the Blenheim Palace people would have thought they were Ballets Russes and the Ballets Russes would have thought they were Blenheim Palace people.’
‘You’re absolutely right, my lady. Inspector Jackson is asking round about if people remember seeing any strangers on the day. Even he admitted it was a very long shot. The whole bloody place was full of strangers. So that’s it, my lord, my lady. One last thing — Inspector Jackson, who is, I must say, a very capable officer, thinks that the answer lies inside the Ballets Russes. Like me, and, I suspect, the two of us, he believes the murders are linked. Is there a connection between Alexander Taneyev and Alfred Bolm and Vera, the poor dead girl in Oxfordshire? We shall do our damnedest to find out. And we still haven’t had that interview with Monsieur Diaghilev that he promised us up there at Blenheim.’
‘I shall have to leave you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘There is another complication in our relations with the Russians and the French and even, God help us, the Germans. French bonds have now taken a bow centre stage and I must go and talk to my brother-in-law.’
‘You said you wanted to talk to me about the recent upswing in sales of French government bonds, Francis,’ said his banker brother-in-law William Burke, now a mighty power in the City of London. Burke was sitting behind an enormous desk, operational headquarters of his financial activities. ‘If it were serious, it could cause a financial crisis across Europe.’