Sitting in his railway carriage, with the white world flying past, Powerscourt suddenly wondered about the husband. They knew nothing about him. He would have to ask this Tamara not only about her lover, if he was her lover, but about the man she married as well.
A light snow was falling over the Alexander Park at the Tsar’s Village, Tsarskoe Selo. Natasha Bobrinsky and the four Grand Duchesses, daughters of the Tsar, each pulling a toboggan, were by the west side of the Toboggan Hill. The girls never tired of pulling their vehicles up this hill and hurtling down it as fast as they could go. The most daring, the most reckless was the third daughter of the Tsar and the Tsarina, Marie Nicolaievna. She persuaded her elder sister to push her as fast as she could on the top of the hill before she began her descent. This meant she travelled even faster going down. The light was beginning to ebb. The soldier on duty to their right seemed to have drifted off. Marie was embarking on what must, surely, be her last or her second last run of the day. Then it happened. Natasha said afterwards that it must have been because of the fading light. She had total faith in the girl’s ability to control herself and her machine. As the toboggan and the girl hurtled down towards the bottom of the hill Marie swerved suddenly to avoid a stone or some other obstacle in her way. The angle was too sharp. The toboggan turned over and Grand Duchess Marie was flung out, hitting her head on a tree trunk hidden in the snow and rolling over several times before she finally stopped.
‘She’s dead!’ shrieked Anastasia, the youngest.
‘She’s bleeding,’ shouted Olga, the eldest, wailing piteously, hunting in her pockets for a handkerchief to staunch the blood.
‘They’ll blame us for what happened!’ yelled Tatiana. ‘They’ll never forgive us if she dies!’ And she proceeded to cry and sob as though her heart would break.
‘Marie’s not going to die,’ said Natasha, trying to take control of the situation.
‘Girl! You!’ A young soldier rushed out of the bushes in front of the Krasnoselskie Gates. ‘Mind my place till I get back!’ He pointed to a small shed just inside the palace grounds. ‘I have been trained in first aid. I will take the girl to the Palace.’ With that he bent down and picked up Marie and held her tight. He began running towards the palace in great strides, shepherding the other girls beside him, telling them to be calm and not to cry.
Natasha reached the shed and went inside. There was a rough desk facing visitors and a large book sitting on it. Outside the gates, by the great wall that ran right round Tsarskoe Selo, was a security station. Here, visitors to the palace had to show their papers and were searched if the guard thought it necessary. The Captain of the Guard came for a brief word with Natasha.
‘I saw what happened, miss. You’ll have to wait here till he comes back or he’ll be dismissed the service for dereliction of duty. And you must enter the name and purpose of visit of anybody we send through in that big book.’ With that the captain returned to his post, aware that he too could be dismissed for dereliction of duty. Quite soon the Tsarskoe Selo piano tuner came through. Natasha smiled cheerfully at him and put his name in the book.
Then she looked out into the gloom that stretched towards the Alexander Palace. She checked that the captain and his men were all in their positions. Then she began turning back the pages of the visitors’ book. Faster and faster she went, in case the soldier returned. Her hand began to shake. Now she was back to the beginning of January, now back to the last days of December. Natasha thought her knees were knocking against each other. The light was really bad and she didn’t know where the lamps were kept and she didn’t think she had time to look for them. The handwriting changed with the year and the old 1904 script was much more difficult to read. Natasha wished she was one of those sensible people who go around with matches in a side pocket. December 31st, nothing there. December 30th, no. Is there anybody coming? Not yet. Her hands were really shaking now. Yes! At last! Here it was! December 22nd, British diplomat, Roderick Martin, time of arrival nine thirty in the evening, time of leaving, not there, purpose of visit, meeting with the Tsar. Meeting with the Tsar! The Tsar on his own! Nobody else! No diplomats, no heads of protocol, no members of the Imperial Security Service, no Foreign Minister. Natasha knew by now just how rare that was. She felt her heart was going to come right out of her chest as she turned the pages back to the present day. Hadn’t Lord Powerscourt said how important her role here was? And hadn’t she proved him right? Mikhail might swan about the city interpreting senior government officials, but she had found the pearl without price. She didn’t think she could bear the wait to pass on her news. As Natasha made her way back to the palace, having handed the sentry post back to the soldier, one further thought struck her.
Mr Martin hadn’t gone out through the Krasnoselskie Gates. Or if he did, they had taken care not to write it down. Had he left by some other route? Or had he never left at all? Had he been killed here and his body carried back to the frozen waters of the Neva?
‘You must be Lord Powerscourt! And you must be Mikhail Shaporov! You both must be cold and hungry after all that travelling. Come in and we’ll have some tea.’
Tamara Kerenkova greeted them on the porch of her house, bowing slightly as she addressed her visitors. The house was old, many of its external features hidden by the snow. She showed them into a long room with tall windows looking out into a garden. Powerscourt thought he saw rows and rows of cherry trees in the distance, their boughs laden with snow. There was a great fire blazing in the grate and a young borzoi asleep on one side. A liveried servant came to take their coats. Mrs Kerenkova disappeared briefly to organize tea and refreshments. Powerscourt knew there was something unusual but he couldn’t put his finger on it. It was Mikhail Shaporov, laughing, who filled him in.
‘You’ll get it any second now, my lord,’ he said.
‘Get what?’ Powerscourt replied.
‘Now then.’ Tamara Kerenkova had come back. ‘Please tell me how I can help you. Thank you for telling me about the death of Mr Martin in your letter, Lord Powerscourt. I am so glad you saw fit not to wait for personal contact.’
Powerscourt wanted to laugh but felt the circumstances were inappropriate. She was speaking perfect English, this Russian lady, she could have been conversing in a Mayfair drawing room. He didn’t need an interpreter. But then, remembering previous encounters of this sort in previous cases, perhaps he did. But he needed an interpreter of the female heart rather than of the Russian language.
‘May I compliment you on your English, Mrs Kerenkova?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Here I am with my excellent interpreter Mikhail and he’s not needed at all.’
‘I’m sure,’ said the lady with a smile, ‘that a young man of such wide education and such an excellent family will always be useful to you, Lord Powerscourt.’
She must have been about thirty, Tamara Kerenkova, of average height with very delicate features, a small nose and pale blue eyes that held you in their gaze. Her hair was blonde, falling in ringlets down the sides of her face, and every now and again she would toss her head to clear her face. Powerscourt couldn’t work out whether the gesture was natural, affectation or flirtation. Did she shake her locks like that when she was on her own? he asked himself. He didn’t know the answer.
‘We had an English nanny, Lord Powerscourt,’ she went on, ‘Mrs Harris, all the time we were growing up. Part of her job was to teach my sister and me English. She came from Brighton, our Mrs Harris. If you wanted to distract her from a boring spelling lesson, you could always ask her about the pier. For some reason she was mad about piers. If you were lucky she would draw the sea front and the chain pier for you in your art book. It might take up all the time allotted to the spelling! Mrs Harris always laughed when she realized what had been going on. Maybe she didn’t like spelling either.’