There were over twenty people out in the night air, men and women, standing in the clearing in the forest, dressed in home-made white robes. Three bonfires marked the limit of their territory. In the centre of the area stood a man called the Pilot, the leader of the group and the Master of Ceremonies for this evening. Beside him was his wife, known as the Blessed Mother. Behind them a group of drummers beat out a rhythm of ever-increasing frenzy. Each person carried a candle and as the candle burnt down they began to dance, slowly and reverently at first and then with more vigour. The Pilot noticed that the stranger who had come to his house earlier that day and soothed his sick daughter was dancing particularly wildly, his dark head rolling vigorously as if he was drunk. As the delirium grew and the dance grew wilder yet, the celebrants flung their robes to the ground and knelt before the Pilot to be whipped with birch rods. Then they began to whip each other with the birch rods, the khylysti that gave their name to the sect, the drums beating faster still, the candles flung to the ground, their terrible hymn broadcast into the forest air.
I whip, I whip, I search for Christ,
Come down to us, Christ, from the seventh heaven,
Come with us, Christ, into the sacred circle,
Come down to us, Holy Spirit of the lord.
At the point when hysteria was about to engulf them all, the Pilot grabbed a woman and dragged her to the ground. According to the rules of the sect it was impossible for anybody to refuse a member of the opposite sex at these orgies. The Pilot was followed by the other khylysti members until there was a mass of groaning, shrieking couples on the ground. There were more women than men. The unfortunate just had to wait their turn. The Pilot noticed that the stranger seemed to be giving himself generously to the business. The drums beat on, calling the faithful to their duty. This was the first necessity of their belief system. Without sin, there could be no repentance and no salvation. Without first indulging in these rites of darkness there could be no entry into a state of grace. The Church frowned on these practices and they had been declared illegal by the state, even though there were said to be over a hundred thousand khylysti members across Russia.
The stranger left early next morning, looking refreshed rather than exhausted by his exertions the night before.
‘Are you going back home now?’ asked the Pilot.
‘No, I am continuing my journey,’ the stranger replied.
‘May I ask where are you going to?’ the Pilot continued.
‘I am going to St Petersburg,’ said the stranger.
‘Will you tell me your name, in case we meet again?’ said the Pilot, holding out his hand for a farewell handshake.
‘One day,’ said the stranger, ‘everybody in Russia will know my name. I am a priest. I am called Rasputin, Father Grigory Rasputin.’
Powerscourt wondered if Lucy would come to meet him at Victoria station as his train arrived in the middle of the morning. As he strode down the long platform, packed with porters and passengers, he peered at the crowd of welcomers at the far end. There was the usual collection of especially tall people only found at the great railway termini who blocked the view for everybody else. And Lucy was not particularly tall. Then he saw the head of a small figure raised aloft on shoulders he could not see. There was a shout of Papa! three times and two tiny people hurtled towards him as fast as their legs would carry them. Powerscourt was amazed at how effectively they dodged in and out of the surrounding traffic, navigating their way past porters with vast trolleys and elderly ladies of uncertain gait. He waved vigorously from time to time even when he couldn’t see them to give the twins something to steer for. Then, laughing with excitement, Juliet and Christopher were upon him, demanding to be lifted up at once for a better view of the station. They were both uncontrollably happy, peering into Powerscourt’s face from time to time to make sure he was really home and giggling cheerfully when their inspection was proved right. So it was a heavily laden husband, with a twin on each shoulder and a porter carrying a suitcase and a large shopping bag in each hand, who was reunited with his wife at the bottom of Platform 14, Ashford, the Dover Boat, Calais and Paris.
‘Francis, my love,’ Lady Lucy said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see you home.’ She squeezed whatever bits of her husband she could find. ‘They’ve been frantic, these two,’ she nodded at the twins, ‘ever since they heard you were coming back. They promised to be good if they were brought to the station to meet you, and they were, staying ever so still, not fighting, not running round at all. I was quite taken in! I relaxed my guard, you see, so when I lifted Juliet up I didn’t have a firm hold on Christopher and then they were off!’
‘Never mind,’ said Powerscourt, taking hold of a section of his wife’s shoulder and holding it tight. ‘We’re all here and we’re all fine.’
Forty-five minutes later the twins were still coiled round their father as he tried to have a conversation with Lucy over tea in the drawing room in Markham Square. She asked him about his investigation. He remembered that these were perilous waters.
‘It’s been very sedate stuff really, Lucy. Lots of meetings with Interior Ministry people, diplomats from the Foreign Office, long conversations with a very clever Englishman in the Embassy, a Russian princess, a very beautiful Russian princess who works as a lady-in-waiting to the Tsar’s family and discovered that our friend Mr Martin appears to have met the Tsar shortly before he died.’
Lady Lucy had a vision of Russian sirens, seductive in fur, come to lure her Francis to his doom. ‘How old is this female, Francis?’
Powerscourt laughed. ‘Natasha? She’s about eighteen, but I think she’s falling in love with my translator. He’s all of twenty-five and works in London most of the time. I don’t think you need to be concerned about the fair Natasha, my love.’
All this time Powerscourt had been conducting tickling and pushing games with Christopher and Juliet. Then he remembered something. He put the twins on the carpet in front of him and looked at them as severely as he could.
‘Juliet! Christopher! I want you to stand still for a moment. Still! Now then. I have brought a present for each of you back from St Petersburg. I want you to go downstairs and bring up that brown shopping bag I had at the station. It’s by the suitcase in the hall.’
With whoops of Present! Present! the twins shot off down the stairs. Powerscourt grinned. ‘It’s hard to imagine them ever being sort of stationary, isn’t it, you know, reading a newspaper, looking at the wallpaper, anything like that. I’m going to tell you all about the investigation this evening when Johnny’s here, my love. He is coming to dinner this evening, isn’t he?’
Lady Lucy smiled. No investigation of her husband’s would be complete without Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘He is coming, of course he’s coming. He asked me to give you a message, Francis. He said he’s going to concentrate on the village and leave the house to you. He’ll meet you at the station for the train nearest to seven o’clock this evening.’
‘Very good,’ said her husband, thinking how meticulous Johnny had been. There was the customary sound of a minor earthquake, large animal in distress, small football crowd in pain that heralded the arrival of the twins, dragging the bag along the floor.
‘Very heavy, Papa,’ said Juliet. ‘Big bag,’ agreed Christopher.
Powerscourt placed the bag on his knees and began to rummage around inside it. ‘That’s funny,’ he said after a while, ‘I’m sure I packed those things before I left.’