Not that there was any shortage of identifications of Roderick Martin from the blue-blooded clientele of the Imperial Yacht Club. He was, an elderly dowager informed Mikhail, undoubtedly the man in charge of the sleeping cars on the Moscow to St Petersburg express. She had had dealings with him only the week before. This was the fellow, a red-faced colonel told Natasha, who counted out the money for you in the Moscow Narodny Bank further up the Nevskii Prospekt. The colonel would put money on it.
Nonsense, said a society beauty, dazzling Mikhail with her most flattering smile, everybody knew this man: he was a senior official in the Ministry of Finance who had entered into a sensational wedding with an heiress some years before. The marriage, alas, had not lasted. Ability with figures, the beauty told Mikhail sadly, was not sufficient for a happy union. Powerscourt actually wondered if that might be true until he was told that the lady was a notorious liar.
The most plausible identification came from an elderly man who drank champagne faster than anybody Powerscourt had ever seen. ‘Dobrynin!’ he said. ‘Blow me down, it’s bloody Dobrynin! Haven’t seen the bugger for years!’
While Natasha waited for further enlightenment, the man downed the rest of his glass and held it out absent-mindedly for a refill. A Yacht Club waiter seemed to be in permanent attendance solely for the purpose of replenishment.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ the elderly gentleman said. ‘Has somebody killed the bastard at last? Surprising he’s lasted as long as he has really.’
Natasha did not mention that somebody had actually killed the bastard.
‘Who is he, sir?’ she asked in her most innocent voice.
‘Who is he?’ snorted the man, holding out his glass for yet another refill. ‘I should think,’ the man said, peering round the room, ‘that a large number of the people in this club have been through his hands. And I mean literally through his hands! A very large number indeed!’
The old man nodded as if he had solved the problem. Natasha waited. The old man peered at the photograph again.
‘Bloody man!’ he said again, memories coming back fast, probably speeded on their way by the Dom Perignon. Natasha looked at the old gentleman once more.
‘All right, all right!’ he said. ‘Women wouldn’t know about him. Bastard Dobrynin was head of mathematics in the lycee out at Tsarskoe Selo, place where Pushkin went to school,’ the last bit said condescendingly as if even a flibbertigibbet like Natasha must have heard of Pushkin, ‘and if you didn’t get your sums right, he would beat you and beat you and beat you until you did. Very painful subject, mathematics, for most of his pupils, even to this day.’
He peered again at the photograph. ‘Dead, did you say? No? Pity. Lost, that’s nearly as good.’ His arm shot out once more. Natasha moved away. So seriously did they take this witness that Natasha checked with the school when she was back at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. There had indeed been a Mr Dobrynin at the lycee. He was retired now, she was told. But he still lived in the village, just a few minutes’ walk from the palace. If Natasha or any of her friends needed help, Mr Dobrynin still offered coaching in mathematics.
7
They left Roderick Martin in the Imperial Yacht Club. Or rather they left his photograph, attached to the noticeboard with a message and quite a large reward for accurate information about him. Mikhail Shaporov’s father had been responsible for the reward, apparently telling his son that it would be enough for a down payment on somebody’s gambling debts.
Powerscourt was delighted about the replies to his messages to London. From Sir Jeremiah Reddaway, for the present, there was no news. From Johnny Fitzgerald there was a cheerful message, saying that he looked forward to working with his friend again. It would, he said, be like the old days up Hindustan way in India. Powerscourt had already cleared Johnny’s arrival with the Ambassador and de Chassiron. He had also sent a note to all the ministries where he had called, to the Interior Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, even the Okhrana, advising them of Fitzgerald’s coming.
But it was Rosebery who excelled himself in the despatch of messages to the Okhrana. Rosebery the politician had always been touchy, difficult, mercurial. He was notorious for it. He would angle for high office and then agonize for weeks over whether he would accept the position or not. Scarcely had he sat down in his Cabinet Ministry than he would be thinking of resigning. Indeed, his critics said that he took more pleasure from leaving office than most normal people did in accepting it. Morbid, over-sensitive, ever quick to take offence, prone to long fits of depression, Rosebery was said to be more highly strung than his strings of racehorses. But on this occasion he had served his friend well. Powerscourt wondered if he had divined that he was writing, not to the Foreign Office or to Powerscourt, but to the Russian secret police.
His message was addressed to the Foreign Secretary himself, with copies to Sir Jeremiah Reddaway and to Powerscourt at the British Embassy.
‘Dear Foreign Secretary,’ he began. Powerscourt suspected he had no intention of paying any attention to government directives about the high costs of international telegraph messages. ‘Please forgive me, as a previous holder of your distinguished office, for troubling you in these difficult times. I find, yet again, that my role in events just past is being misinterpreted, and that my position on some delicate events of recent weeks is in danger of being misconstrued.’
Nine out of ten on the pompous scale so far, thought Powerscourt with a grin. In his role of injured party, this was vintage Rosebery.
‘I propose to place on record my role in the unfortunate affair of Mr Roderick Martin for the elucidation of posterity and lest there be any misunderstandings in the present. The facts are clear. I was informed of the demise of Mr Martin by the Prime Minister and by yourself, as you will recall, at a meeting in Number 10 Downing Street late last year. On that occasion I was not told anything of Mr Martin’s mission or of his intentions in St Petersburg. To this day I know nothing of either of those matters. Rather I was consulted about the likelihood of Lord Francis Powerscourt being persuaded out of retirement to inquire into the death of Mr Martin. I undertook to use whatever capital and whatever credit I possessed in that quarter on the Government’s behalf.
‘To that end, I called, not upon Lord Powerscourt himself, but on his wife, who I believed was the principal obstacle to his returning to his former career as an investigator. I pointed out to Lady Powerscourt that she was hindering her husband in his career and probably making him a sceptic to the question of his own courage: that men of quality in the public sphere have no right to refuse to carry out their work merely because it might be dangerous: furthermore, that the nation would be ill served indeed if men like her first or her second husbands were to cower at home because of the off-chance of a bullet abroad. I believe my arguments may have had some purchase with Lady Powerscourt. She grew agitated and asked me to leave. At no point in our conversation did we discuss Mr Martin. That was not the point of my visit.
‘That, in short, is a full recapitulation of my role in this unfortunate affair. It grieves me more than I can say when it is rumoured abroad that I had inside knowledge of Mr Martin’s objectives or of his mission to the Russian capital. These rumours are an insult to the dead and an affront to the living. I had no such knowledge. I trust, nay, I have every confidence, sir, that you will do everything in your power to ensure that the truth prevails and that the reputation of the British Foreign Office and its servants for upright and honourable behaviour is upheld with as much vigour today as it has been in former times. Yours sincerely, Rosebery.’