‘They’re just not going to speak to me,’ she told Powerscourt later.
‘Can you guess who might have put the fear of God into them?’
‘I think there’s only one person who could have put the fear of God into them like this, Lord Powerscourt.’
‘And who would that be?’
‘Why, it’s the person who controls their careers and their livelihoods, the person who can decree that they will never dance for him again.’
‘I think I could make a guess, Natasha, but tell me who you think it must have been.’
‘There’s only person who could do it, and that is Sergei Diaghilev himself. He must have sensed that some strange things were happening in his ballet and he has sworn them all to silence.’
Rosebery came to Markham Square at eleven o’clock the next morning, looking grave.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ he said to Powerscourt and Lady Lucy. ‘I’ve spent a great deal of political capital getting the result you wanted. You are to present yourself early this evening at the Kingfisher Hotel which, strictly speaking, is in Streatley, not Goring. There’s something about a bridge dividing them.
‘Believe me when I tell you that I do not know anything at all about what you may find there. If you hadn’t served as Head of Military Intelligence in South Africa, I doubt that these doors would have opened an inch. I told them that you were conducting an investigation into a recent murder and were not a contracted spy in the service of the German government. That much they did believe. That is all I have to say. May I wish you God speed and good luck.’
‘You can’t just slip away without answering a question or two, Rosebery,’ Lady Lucy remarked as the former Prime Minister was picking up his hat and heading for the door. ‘Is it dangerous? For Francis, I mean.’
‘I would be failing in my duty if I did not say it might be dangerous. But it might not, Lucy. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific than that.’
24
A hitting or striking action of the foot where the foot is directed toward the floor using a strong extension of the leg. The foot starts in a wrapped position called sur le cou-de-pied where the heel of the foot is placed on the front of the leg directly below the calf, and the toes of the foot are wrapped around the leg toward the back, with the knee placed directly to the side. From this starting position, the leg strikes forward, leading with the heel, hitting the ball of the foot on the floor, and extending to a pointed position with the foot. The leg and foot then return to their original positions to begin the frappé again.
You could hear it before you could see it, Powerscourt said to himself, dressing reluctantly at a quarter to four in the morning in his vast bedroom looking out over the Thames. There they went, the dark waters of the river, swirling and slapping and gurgling on their long journey to the sea. The local birds were already welcoming a new day. His reception on arrival late the previous evening had been curt.
‘Ah, Powerscourt,’ General Page had said as he presented himself, rather tired from his journey the evening before. There was a long pause. Page had been universally known as Silent Page, ever since his first days as a trainee Sub-Lieutenant many years before, when Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister. The pause went on.
‘Sir!’ Powerscourt replied, feeling that some form of dialogue might yet be possible. Page was now staring intently at a large black notebook in front of him. He made no entries.
‘Good of you to come,’ he managed at last, and sank back slightly in his chair, as if the effort of speech had exhausted him.
‘Sir!’ said Powerscourt, feeling that his replies in this attempt at conversation were somewhat limited. He waited. Silent Page was now looking intently at the river, as if enemy forces might suddenly disembark and seize the hotel. Then he inspected his pencil, as if it too might have hostile intent. Suddenly he leant forward and began inspecting a form in front of him. Powerscourt wondered if it contained the staff orders for the day or just the dispositions of his troops for the next twenty-four hours. Silent Page took a deep breath.
‘Got to get you to sign this,’ he managed at last. ‘Official Secrets Act 1911, you know. You’ll have seen about it in the papers.’
‘Why?’ asked Powerscourt, who had always had a reputation for questioning the orders of superior officers, especially when he considered them unnecessary. This time the pause was hardly there at all.
‘Just sign the bloody thing, damn you. I went to a lot of trouble to get you here. Thought you might be useful.’
By Silent Page’s normal standards, this was virtually the whole act of a Shakespeare play in one go. Powerscourt was so surprised he leant forward and signed it at once, without question. This time the silence reverted to its normal pre-Shakespearian mode. The General looked again at the river, checking perhaps for another arrival of enemy marines. He stared again at the black notebook in front of him.
‘Breakfast’s at four tomorrow morning. For God’s sake don’t ask me any questions. I might not be able to give you the answers. Official Secrets Act, don’t you know.’
That breakfast was the strangest meal Powerscourt had been present at in all his years on the planet. The General was there, of course, conducting a silent reconnaissance on a pair of kippers. There was a German officer in civilian clothes and a monocle whose name, Powerscourt discovered later, was Ludwig von Stoltenberg, attached to the German General Staff. There was a sleek Frenchman, wearing the finest civilian clothes the Parisian tailors could provide, called Jean-Pierre Poiret. The two foreigners had taken to addressing each other in the other’s language, so the Frenchman spoke to the German in impeccable German and the German spoke back to the Frenchman in near perfect French. A simple question of politeness about the direction of the marmalade became: ‘Passieren die marmelade, bitte,’ from the French side of the Rhine, and ‘Passer la marmelade, s’il vous plaît,’ from the other.
The usual strange Continental breakfast offerings of cold ham and cheese were provided as a gesture of friendship towards the foreigners, but all three of them polished off a plate of bacon and eggs. When the marmalade had stopped travelling, Silent Page burst into speech again. Powerscourt noted with interest that the hostile kippers had been completely routed, with only a few bones left on the General’s plate.
‘Ahem,’ he began, ‘ahem, we leave in five minutes. I advise you to wrap up well.’
Each man travelled in his own car, a silent driver at the wheel. After five minutes or so they were deep in the English countryside and had to stop at a serious-looking gate, manned by a couple of soldiers, guns at the ready. As far as the eyes could see, a very tall wall, about eight feet high, guarded what looked like an enormous park. There were no buildings to be seen as the four cars set off up a long and winding drive that Powerscourt thought might lead to a Blenheim Palace or a Castle Howard. Instead they came to a second guardhouse, manned again by armed soldiers with sentries marching up and down the length of another wall, this time a little shorter, perhaps six feet high. Powerscourt wondered if these sentries were condemned to an everlasting patrol like the horsemen who rode round the Tsar’s Palace at Tsarskoe Selo outside St Petersburg twenty-four hours a day.
The little fleet of cars finally stopped at what looked like a large birdwatchers’ hide. Inside there were seats and binoculars and four telescopes and a grandstand view over the countryside. Silent Page suggested they make themselves comfortable.
‘It should — ahem — be fully light in a few minutes. Then the action will begin.’ There was a long pause, as if he were a weatherman consulting his charts before producing the forecast for the day. He stared out at the fields in front of him. ‘I’m told there will be no wind. We should — ahem — be safe here.’