Natasha laughed. ‘It’s all right, Lord Powerscourt,’ she said, ‘I thought three was going to be too many whatever happened. Anyway, I’ve got to get back to Tsarskoe Selo.’
‘Please remember,’ said Powerscourt, ‘how incredibly important anything you might find out there would be to our cause. And please be careful. I cannot over-emphasize that.’
As she skipped off to catch her train, Powerscourt and Mikhail began to compose a letter to Tamara Kerenkova, inviting her to call.
Lady Lucy Powerscourt embraced Johnny Fitzgerald on his arrival in Markham Square. The twins attached themselves to his lower legs like limpets on manoeuvres. Johnny knew how worried Lady Lucy must be, with Francis away on his dangerous mission. He was only too aware how one dead Englishman on some foreign shore could easily turn into two, particularly in a place as febrile as St Petersburg.
‘Have you heard from Francis, Lucy? Did he seem well? You can’t say much in messages on those telegraph machines.’
She smiled a huge smile. ‘I’ve had two letters from him so far. He spent most of his time describing the people in the Embassy. There’s a diplomat he rather likes called de Chassiron, I think. He doesn’t care very much for the Ambassador. And he says dealing with the Russian ministries reminds him of the bureaucracies of the states run by the Indian maharajahs, incredible torpor for days and days followed by sudden, inexplicable bursts of activity.’
‘The news is terrible, with all those people shot the other day,’ said Johnny tactfully, displaying a small fraction of his new knowledge, ‘but I don’t suppose that’s got anything to do with the death of Mr Martin.’
The twins at this point released themselves from Johnny’s legs and demanded that he organize running races round the dining-room table. The memory stayed with Johnny a long time, two small children doubled up with laughter and giggles as they bumped into table and chair legs and each other, and their mother watching from the side with a look of great sadness in her eyes.
Lord Francis Powerscourt felt sure he had been taken up to heaven like one of those people in Renaissance paintings. It was surprising, he thought, how white everything was. He knew, of course, that white was the colour of purity and of cleanliness and as such might be expected to feature heavily in any celestial colour scheme, but not, surely, to the detriment of everything else. He remembered vaguely the words of the Christmas carol about how we would wait around in heaven, all dressed in white. God himself, he recalled from the Book of Revelation, had a head and hairs that were white like wool, as white as snow. Powerscourt wondered how long you had to wait before you were called to action. Maybe there was no action at all up here, maybe the waiting was all. Better to be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of the ungodly. He wondered if there might be any detective work to be carried out in heaven. He was sure any decent investigator would be able to throw light on the motives of Pontius Pilate and the precise nature of the activities of Judas Iscariot. Powerscourt had always been doubtful about the thirty pieces of silver. Maybe he should ask William Burke to find out the exchange rate and the conversion tables so that the money that betrayed a son of God and started a world religion could be seen in the cold currency of English pounds. Then he told himself he was being remarkably silly. Surely God knew all that. He knew everything. Of all people in all places this was the last one to need investigators. Never mind. He would be a doorkeeper. He would watch out for the ungodly. It was, he reflected suddenly, rather noisy up here in heaven. He had thought that the engines of torment were down below rather than up here. There was a terrible screech and the St Petersburg to Volkhov train shuddered to a halt, its engine shrieking like a wounded animal.
Powerscourt looked up and checked his watch surreptitiously. He had only been asleep for a couple of minutes. Beside him Mikhail Shaporov was locked into his reading of Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo. Their destination was Volkhov, to the east of the capital. For they had discovered, by a complicated series of messages over a period of ten or more frustrating days, that Tamara Kerenkova was not in St Petersburg but currently resident on her husband’s estates some fifteen miles north of Volkhov, and that she would be happy to meet Lord Powerscourt and his interpreter early on the afternoon of Monday January 31st. ‘Exiled’, had been Mikhail Shaporov’s verdict – probably, Powerscourt thought, after a conversation with his father: ‘Bloody husband doesn’t want her parading round St Petersburg with the wretched Englishman, so he packs her off to the ancestral fields out in the back of beyond. Nobody to talk to. People go off their heads with boredom out there, they end up as characters in Chekhov plays for God’s sake, forever whining on about going to Moscow.’
Gradually the engine lurched back into life. Everywhere you looked outside, fields, hills, trees, all were white. There was nothing visible that was not white. Inside the long train various military men paraded up and down in their red and black uniforms, naval and army officers returning home on leave perhaps from the Russo-Japanese War. In the third class nobody was going to war but they seemed to have brought ample supplies with them, cooking pans, plates, food, vodka, all to sustain them on their journey. He remembered suddenly his conversation with de Chassiron the day before. Powerscourt had asked him what rules, if any, governed affairs between members of the aristocracy in St Petersburg.
‘Rules?’ de Chassiron had said, unscrewing his monocle with great care. ‘Rules? I’m not sure I know the rules, my friend, but I’ll try. I’ve never been involved in one of these affairs myself, they send us home on the first mule they can find if we do.
‘Let me put it like this, Powerscourt. You know the rules, the conventions, that govern what goes on in some upper class house parties in England. Not in all of them, of course, but the ones where almost all the guests are sleeping with other guests they’re not married to. Often involving the King when he was Prince of Wales, and presumably, continuing now he’s King, only more so. Adultery by Royal Command. Everybody knows where everybody else’s bedroom is – some hostesses, I believe, leave out a sleeping plan with the occupants of all the bedrooms named like a seating plan for dinner – so at a certain point the guests peel off and creep round the upper floors till they’ve found their lover. Much creaking of floorboards, squeaking of doors, seeking of nocturnal happiness and so forth. All very gentlemanly. No challenges. No duels. No pistols at dawn. All caused by a leisured class with too little to do where adultery becomes the sport of choice. Most dangerous option on offer after all. I think it’s probably the same here, more or less. Former Ambassador, man much more interested in human behaviour than the current one, swears he once overheard three young men at a party discussing which of five different men might have been their fathers. It’s a long time now since Pushkin went to his death in a ludicrous duel over his wife’s honour.’
‘I see,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But if all that is true, and I’m sure it is, why is the Kerenkova no longer in Petersburg? Why has she turned into the chatelaine of the family estates miles from anywhere?’
‘I can only guess, Powerscourt, maybe the husband has banished her. Maybe it had all got too serious – these affairs are tolerated, on the whole, because the rules stipulate that at some point everybody will go back to their husband or wife. Not necessarily for ever, but until the music starts again.’