Powerscourt smiled as he read the telegraph for the second time. He had, he felt, advanced a knight into the heart of the Okhrana defences, and the knight was well protected. He wondered what General Derzhenov would make of it when his decoders finally presented it. He wondered idly if they operated on a daily basis, the mathematics professors and the chess masters, transcripts of Embassy messages available to read on the day they arrived in St Petersburg. Would this be enough to persuade the old sadist Derzhenov, as Powerscourt mentally referred to him, that he, Powerscourt, knew nothing of what had brought Martin to St Petersburg?
Two days later Natasha Bobrinsky and an Embassy guard called Sandy escorted Powerscourt to the Bobrinsky household and the Bobrinsky grandmother in Millionaires’ Row near the Embassy. Ever since Powerscourt’s abduction by the Okhrana thugs, the Ambassador had decreed that he should be accompanied wherever he went. Natasha, looking very demure in her lady-in-waiting clothes, told Powerscourt a brief life history of her elderly relation on the way.
‘She’s my mother’s mother, Lord Powerscourt, so she started life as a Dolgoruky back in 1830 or something like that.’ Powerscourt thought the girl made the date sound as if it belonged to a different era altogether, Iron Age rather than Bronze, as it were.
‘She married quite late by Russian standards, Elizabeth Nicolaievna,’ Natasha went on. ‘She must have been twenty-three or twenty-four. Her husband was a cavalry man, very tall, very handsome, they say. My granny says to this day that he was the best-looking soldier in St Petersburg.’ The girl fell silent, as if trying to remember her grandfather.
‘What became of him?’ asked Powerscourt.
‘It’s all rather sad, Lord Powerscourt. They had two children, my mother and her sister, and then my father was killed in a training accident. Some explosives went off when they shouldn’t have done, just when he was inspecting them in fact, and he was blown to smithereens.’
Powerscourt thought, but did not say, that it sounded as if her grandfather had encountered by accident the same fate that was now being meted out on purpose to the ruling elite by the revolutionaries.
‘Anyway, Lord Powerscourt, there she was, this Elizabeth, with two little girls, heaps of relations to help with the children, and plenty of money. I’m sure she looked quite hard for another husband, though she would tell you, if you dared to ask, that she was far too busy looking after the children.’
They had entered the Bobrinsky Palace now, a slightly smaller version of the Shaporov, but with the same profusion of enormous mirrors and paintings on the walls. Sandy, the Embassy guard waited in the entrance lobby. ‘What she did, my granny,’ Natasha went on, ‘was to pursue an interest in etiquette, who stands where on military parades, what kind of dances are suitable for the unmarried, all that sort of stuff. Soon the foreign embassies were asking her for advice. Her library grew bigger and bigger with books of deportment and all that junk. Then the imperial courtiers began checking things with her. By fifteen years ago she was the unquestioned expert on decorum and etiquette in St Petersburg, invited to every social function in the calendar. That’s why she may be able to help. If our friend Mr Martin showed up at any of those dances or parties, she’ll have seen him. Let’s just hope she remembers him. She’s bedridden now, poor old thing, I don’t suppose she’ll go to any more grand balls in this life.’
Natasha was now knocking firmly on a pair of very solid double doors. As they obeyed the instruction to enter, Powerscourt saw that they were in an enormous chamber, with three sets of huge windows looking out towards the Neva. Two vast fires were burning in enormous grates, set in elaborate and ornate marble fireplaces. At one end, at right angles to the river, stood a huge bed, surrounded by tables with books and newspapers, tables with drinks and cigarettes and one table totally covered with small notebooks which Powerscourt suspected might be the records of the balls or the diaries of the social years gone by.
‘Natasha, my dear, how nice to see you, and you, young man, you must be Lord Francis Powerscourt, come from England to share in our troubles.’ Elizabeth the grandmother had a thin voice that cracked from time to time. She was sitting up, resting on a profusion of pillows, in the centre of the bed. She was wearing what might once have been a white lace gown, with elaborate work at the cuffs and around the neck. On top of that she had a dark grey jacket and her throat was circled with pearls. Elizabeth’s face was lined now, the grey hair receding slightly across her forehead and tied in a bun at the back, each hair clearly visible under the surrounding lamps and reminding Powerscourt of an old lady’s hair under a white cap, painted by Rembrandt, that he had seen in a gallery in Amsterdam some years before. It seemed appropriate in this most elegant of cities that life should imitate art.
Natasha’s granny pointed firmly to a tall silver jug. Natasha refilled the old lady’s glass, carefully avoiding Powerscourt’s eye as she did so. Powerscourt wondered if she drank all day, lying here with the view and the flames in the fire and her memories.
‘Now then, Natasha, show me the picture of this man you want identified. You know him as Mr Martin from London, but he could be called anything here in St Petersburg.’
‘Well remembered, Granny,’ said Natasha, and drew the photograph from her bag. The old lady inserted a long Turkish cigarette into her holder and sucked in the smoke as she inspected her victim.
‘Pity he’s wearing his gardening clothes, my dear,’ she said, frowning at the nondescript features. ‘You don’t have any more, I suppose?’
‘I’m afraid not, Grandmama,’ said Natasha.
‘Young man,’ the old lady took a fearsome swig of her glass, and peered closely at Powerscourt, ‘have you ever been to any of our grand balls or court balls here in St Petersburg?’
‘I regret to say I have not had that privilege,’ said Powerscourt, bowing slightly.
‘I am going to have to paint a picture for you,’ the old lady said, taking in a further lungful of smoke, ‘a picture of what they’re like, to remind myself, and to see if I can remember your gardener.’
She took another deep draught from her glass and waved at Natasha for a refill from the jug.
‘He was here in January last year and the two years before that, according to your information, this man Martin, Lord Powerscourt. Forget the dates of his other visits for the moment. Something tells me he is dead, but we will leave that for a moment. Now, then, close your eyes, I want you to imagine Palace Square at night in January, my children. All of the three vast blocks of the Winter Palace are blazing with light. Up above you can see the stars in a clear night sky.’ Elizabeth Bobrinsky held up her hands as far as they would go. ‘Around the Alexander Column in the centre of the square, braziers are burning in defiance of the winter cold. There is a vast queue of carriages arriving in an unbroken line in front of the Winter Palace, and open sledges bringing the young officers who do not fear the cold, their horses’ harness covered with blue netting to stop the snow blowing into their passengers’ faces. And from across the square, my dears, you can just see the silhouettes of the women as they hurry across the few steps between the arriving carriage and the entrance to the Winter Palace. Everywhere tonight there is fox, sable, silver fox, arctic fox, all are on parade with their human friends. Up the staircases of white marble they go, the male guests in their uniforms of cream and scarlet, spreadeagle helmets of gold and silver, Hungarians and Caucasians bright in their national dress, diamonds and emeralds and pearls glittering on the princesses and the beautiful women.’