Powerscourt had a strange vision of two little Russian girls in a vast schoolroom up in a draughty St Petersburg attic learning English with a woman from Brighton who liked piers.
‘I’m afraid, Mrs Kerenkova, that some of the questions I may have to put to you may seem rather distasteful. May I offer my apologies in advance for any queries that may seem prurient or inappropriate.’
The young woman laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Lord Powerscourt, you don’t have to sound like the family solicitor. I’m sure we’ll get along very well.’
‘Could you tell us first of all how you met your husband?’ Powerscourt had decided in the train that it would be easier to start with Mr Kerenkov rather than Mr Martin.
‘My husband?’ Tamara sounded surprised but she carried on. ‘I met him nine years ago at a ball just before Easter. He was in the navy. He still is, as a matter of fact. We were married the following year.’
‘May I ask if you have any children?’
‘You may. We do not. Not yet anyway. There is still time.’ The slightly pained look with which Mrs Kerenkova began her reply was replaced with one of defiance at the end. Powerscourt wondered how much hurt lay behind the words. He wondered too if Roderick Martin had seemed to offer some sort of solution.
‘Ah, tea,’ said Mrs Kerenkova, as a footman entered with a tray, glad perhaps of the break in the interview. ‘Some cake for you, Lord Powerscourt? And a hefty slice for you, Mikhail – growing boys need plenty of food.’ She gave the interpreter a gargantuan piece of cake, spilling out over the edge of the plate, which he proceeded to demolish with amazing speed.
‘And Mr Martin?’ Powerscourt took a small sip of his tea. ‘Might I ask when and where you met him, Mrs Kerenkova?’
Tamara did not hesitate. It was as if, Powerscourt was to reflect later, she had been rehearsing her answers before they came. ‘We met in Berlin in 1901. In the autumn. My husband was on the staff of the naval attache there at the time.’
Powerscourt thought that in certain countries naval attache meant little more than spy. Regular visits to naval dockyards, earnest interest in the latest techniques of propulsion or navigation or armaments – all could be displayed as examples of naive enthusiasm when in fact they were merely cover for espionage.
‘Did you meet him at some diplomatic function? Some grand occasion at the Wilhelmstrasse, the Imperial German Foreign Office perhaps?’
‘We met at a ball, Lord Powerscourt, a ball given by the Austrian Ambassador.’ Tamara Kerenkova’s eyes drifted away. ‘It was fitting really. You see, my husband hated dancing. He didn’t really like parties of any sort, come to that. Roderick and I were dancing less than a minute after we were introduced. We got to know each other on the dance floor. He was such a beautiful dancer, Roderick, very formal one minute, then breaking all the rules and sweeping you right across the floor the next. It was so exhilarating. I think we fell in love on the dance floor, Lord Powerscourt, dancing a waltz or a two-step or a polonaise, it doesn’t matter now. One of the reasons he came when he did, at the beginning of all those years, was that January was the season for the great balls in St Petersburg. They were the grandest of their kind in Europe. Roderick and I were never happier than when we were dancing. The sprung floors beneath your feet, the beautiful women with their jewellery sweeping past, the men in their finest clothes, the officers in their gaudiest uniforms, and the arms of the man you love holding you tight as you whirl around the floor – time is simply annihilated as your lover guides you through the steps. Inside the form and the rhythm of the dance your mind and your heart can float away to a different world. Do you believe that, Lord Powerscourt?’
It was then that a truly terrible thought struck Powerscourt, one that was never to wholly leave him for his entire time in Russia. Suppose you were the espionage chief of the Okhrana, he said to himself, the spying equivalent of the terrible Derzhenov who was in charge of counter-terrorism. Suppose you had a spy in your employ, a really useful spy who could bring you the secrets of one of the Great Powers of Europe. So often with spies the problem lay with the sending of messages, the transmission of information. Powerscourt remembered the story in Herodotus of Histiaeus who wanted to send a message from the Persian court to his son-in-law Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, urging him to revolt. But Histiaeus suspected that any message might be intercepted with fatal results. So he shaved the head of his most trusted slave and tattoed the message on to his scalp. When the hair had grown back he sent the slave to Aristagoras with a message that he needed a haircut. In modern times there might not be enough room on a single scalp for the message. Elaborate systems of deception were often set up for the spy to meet and to debrief his handler. But suppose the handler was a woman and that she met her lover at the great balls of Berlin or Vienna or St Petersburg. Secrets could be whispered as they twirled round the room in the Viennese Waltz. Pages of information could be popped into a handbag or slipped down a decolletage during a two-step. The next rendezvous for the next exchange of information would be an innocent-sounding conversation towards the end of the evening about the next ball where they would see each other again. As a system, as cover, it was perfect. And, looking at Tamara Kerenkova, he thought she was cool enough to carry it off.
‘I am sure you are right about the appeal of the dance, Mrs Kerenkova, the poets have been enthusing about it for centuries.’ Powerscourt felt annoyed again at the contrast between Russian passion and English reserve. ‘Forgive me for asking a personal question, but where did Mr Martin stay when he was here?’
The young woman laughed. The borzoi awoke and shuffled over to the tea trolley. ‘Why, he stayed with me. My husband was away with his ship, most of those years. He would be away now, in Japan, fighting that terrible war, but he had to come back with a badly damaged ship that needed repairs.’ She broke a piece of cake into small pieces and gave the dog his tea. He seemed to like the cake. Mikhail Shaporov stroked his white coat as he listened to the conversation. He sensed that some dramatic thought had gripped Powerscourt a few minutes before but he had no idea what it was.
Powerscourt gave no sign at all of excitement now. ‘Do you mean that Mr Kerenkov is in St Petersburg right now, attending to the repairs?’
‘Why, yes, Lord Powerscourt, he has been here since the middle of December.’ She smiled at him. Powerscourt thought that naval officers must be pretty good shots with a revolver. Not a problem to shoot a foreigner in the heart and dump his body on the Nevskii Prospekt. He thought the young woman was daring him to ask the next question. He asked it.
‘Might I ask, Mrs Kerenkova, why you are here at the family estate when your husband is in St Petersburg?’
She laughed again and now she too began to stroke the borzoi. ‘See what questions they ask us, Potemkin,’ she began by addressing the dog. ‘I could say,’ there was another of those tosses of the head to clear the face of that blonde hair, ‘that I came here to prepare things for his coming a little later. But that is not the truth. Things are not very good between us just now. I am sure, Lord Powerscourt, that even in England the aristocratic husbands and their wives sometimes do not get on as they should. Is that so?’ Powerscourt nodded, betraying an entire class in an afternoon. ‘At first Vladimir did not care about me and Roderick. He thought it was just an infatuation, that it wouldn’t last. Even when we met up for all those Januarys he didn’t seem to mind.’
‘So what happened?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘How did he come to change his mind? I presume he sent you out here because of some family disagreement?’