‘Of course,’ said the heroine of the hour, wondering dreamily about romantic interludes with Mikhail. ‘Ask whatever you like, Lord Powerscourt.’
‘My first question relates to the missing Faberge eggs, the Trans-Siberian Railway egg and the Danish Palaces egg,’ he began. ‘Would you know if any of the children were particularly attached to those particular eggs?’
‘Why, yes, I do know the answer to that one. The two youngest girls were very devoted to the Danish Palaces egg. I suppose they remembered visiting some of the places in their summer holidays. Tatiana, the second daughter, was also devoted to the railway. But the real fan was the little boy, the Tsarevich. I only saw him watching the tiny train move across the carpet once. There were servants and big sisters everywhere making sure he couldn’t get near it in case he did any damage. But Olga told me the week after it went how upset he would be if he ever found out. He once watched it cross the carpet twenty-nine times in succession, she told me, and even then he could only be brought away by the offer of ice cream and chocolate in the kitchen.’
‘And have any more things disappeared, Natasha?’ Powerscourt asked quietly.
The girl looked at him in astonishment. ‘How did you know? Or how did you guess? A couple of bulky things seem to have disappeared in the last month or two. A rocking horse that all the children have played with in their time seems to have gone missing. And an old, very heavy dolls’ house that used to belong to the girls’ grandmother has vanished. They all used to play with that from time to time.’
Natasha was on the point of asking Powerscourt how he knew to ask about these things when there was a fierce rap at the door.
‘Come in,’ said Mikhail.
One of the Shaporov butlers drew himself to attention right there in the doorway and bellowed out his news.
‘Message for Lord Powerscourt.’ Mikhail and Natasha translated Russian into French virtually in unison. ‘Message from Mr de Chassiron at the British Embassy. Will he please return at once. There have been most significant developments, not for his inquiry, but for Russia.’
Once again Natasha and Mikhail translated together. Powerscourt did not know how they might all three be received at the Embassy, but he felt sure he could not just abandon them here. Mikhail they knew, and Natasha would, he felt sure, go down very well with de Chassiron. Maybe she would bewitch the Ambassador with her beauty.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go and find out what’s happening. I have a great urge to speak once more to the Embassy telegraph officer.’
Rupert de Chassiron had made a valiant job of tidying up his cables. There was now one very large pile of them, neatly shaped, at the far end of his table. There was another much smaller pile in front of him. He glanced down at it anxiously from time to time as if he thought it might leave the room. He seated Powerscourt opposite with Mikhail and Natasha on either side. Natasha he had greeted gravely with a severe bow almost to the floor.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he began. ‘The news is bad. It comes from Moscow. Let me tell you first of all what we know for certain.’ He paused and riffled through his pile of cables, finally selecting one that seemed to contain a very short message indeed.
‘This comes from the British Consul in Moscow. Grand Duke Serge, Governor General of Moscow, uncle and brother-in-law of the Tsar, has been assassinated. Revolutionary elements blew him up with a bomb by the Nikolovsky Gate on the way out of the Kremlin this morning. Death was instantaneous.’
Ricky Crabbe the telegraph operator came in with some more cables to add to de Chassiron’s pile. He nodded cheerfully at Powerscourt and stared long and hard at Natasha before returning to his post.
Nobody spoke. ‘There is other, unconfirmed information. The Grand Duke, as you know, was one of the most hated members of the imperial family. People said he boasted that he never slept in the same bed in the Kremlin for two nights running in case the revolutionaries came for him. He was a most determined opponent of the granting of any reforms whatsoever. According to some of the other reports, the bomb was thrown straight into his carriage. The coachman was mortally wounded but he took some time to die. The Grand Duke was in the epicentre of the explosion. His clothes were ripped off his body, his head was gone, all that was left of him was a hand and part of a foot. He was scattered into hundreds of fragments of blood and muscle and bone, some of them sticking to the walls of the gateway. There was a rumour that students from Moscow University hurried to the scene and carried tiny pieces of the Grand Duke’s flesh away as souvenirs.’
Outside the watcher in soldier’s clothes wondered how much longer the young lady was going to stay inside the British Embassy. He felt sure he would be well rewarded for this information. And though he wanted to be home he knew he could not desert his post now. He pulled his vodka bottle from his pocket and settled down to wait.
Natasha Bobrinsky had gone pale. ‘He was married to the Empress Alexandra’s elder sister, this Grand Duke, wasn’t he, Mr de Chassiron?’
The diplomat nodded.
‘I met him shortly after I’d gone to work for the Romanovs,’ she said sadly. ‘And to think of him now reduced to hundreds of pieces of flesh and blood, like minced meat. The Empress came to her sister Ella’s wedding to this Grand Duke years ago in the Winter Palace chapel. She told me about it just before Christmas, the great pillars in the chapel, the singing and chanting of the choir, the clergy in their rich vestments, and the jewels all over the society ladies. Alexandra said she felt like a German pauper.’
‘What do you think the reaction will be, de Chassiron?’ asked Powerscourt, wondering how it might affect his investigation. Anything that made Derzhenov and his thugs less interested in the strange death of Roderick Martin was to be welcomed.
‘It’ll make the imperial family even more security conscious than they are already. There’s a rumour that nobody is to be allowed to leave Tsarskoe Selo for the funeral when the body is brought up here from Moscow. They’re to remain inside the Alexander Palace, cowering behind the walls. God only knows what kind of example that sets their subjects if you’re unwilling to be seen burying your dead.’
‘But will there be reaction or reform?’ Powerscourt had scarcely asked the question when Ricky Crabbe burst in without knocking and handed a cable to Powerscourt.
‘This has just come from the Foreign Office for you, my lord. From Sir Jeremiah Reddaway, my lord.’
Powerscourt expected some freshly discovered details about Martin’s past or his financial affairs. Nothing had prepared him for this.
‘Corpse found lying in water at Tibenham Grange with severe head wounds consistent with fall from the tower of the house or assault and battery with blunt instrument. Body positively identified as Mrs Letitia Martin, wife of late diplomat, Roderick Martin. Please return soonest. Reddaway.’
10
Two more deaths, Powerscourt thought bitterly. The one in Moscow would surely bring more hatred and division to a country that already suffered from a surfeit of both. The one in Kent might bring an end to the family Martin, for, as far as Powerscourt knew, there were no children of the marriage. De Chassiron was scrabbling through a little booklet brought out from one of his desk drawers. Ricky Crabbe was hovering with intent by Powerscourt’s side, as if expecting a telegraph message to materialize almost instantly.
‘How terrible,’ said Natasha Bobrinsky. ‘Two more dead people. Will it never stop?’
‘I presume you will have to go back to London, Lord Powerscourt?’ asked Mikhail. ‘Would you like me to accompany you? It can be a long and tedious journey.’
Powerscourt managed not to say that he had no need of an interpreter in his own country. ‘That’s a very generous offer,’ he said, ‘but you need to stay here and keep watch over Natasha. I know you think I’m being absurdly old and fussing, Natasha, but I am sure you could be in very great danger if your employers or some of their staff find out that you are in touch with me and the British Embassy.’