‘And how should I think of him when I talk to him, de Chassiron? Foreign Office official? Adjutant of regiment? Manager of a small bank out in the country?’
De Chassiron smiled and lifted his feet off his table in one quick, elegant movement.
‘Not the first, Powerscourt, not the second, maybe the third. How about this though? Think of him as a rather dim Captain of Cricket at school, chap who can barely add up, can’t remember much history, hopeless at languages but very popular with the boys and a good batsman. You must have met plenty of those, Powerscourt.’
Powerscourt agreed that he had. As they travelled the fifteen miles out to Tsarskoe Selo, Mikhail was bringing him up to date on the latest number of strikes that were slowly strangling the country. Johnny Fitzgerald was peering out into the darkness as if Russian birds, previously unknown to him but of fabulous size and plumage, were flying in formation around their carriage. Ricky Crabbe’s fingers, Powerscourt noted, were still tapping messages out on to the frame of the carriage widow. Maybe he did it in his sleep. The sergeant from the Black Watch went to sleep.
The Alexander Palace was made up of a centre and two wings. All the state apartments and the formal reception rooms were in the centre. The imperial family’s private apartments were in one wing, the ministers of the court and the attendant staff in the other. Ricky Crabbe decided to remain with the coachman. He would, he said, take a peep inside a bit later. In reality, he was rather overwhelmed by the grandeur of the surroundings, the troops of horsemen riding round the walls of the park on permanent patrol against terrorists, the soldiers and policemen who stopped the carriage at the entrance gate and peered carefully into all their faces before writing their names down in a book, the sentries in their long coats striding up and down the outside of the building at regular intervals as if they were mobile flower boxes.
Powerscourt and his two companions were guided on their journey to the Tsar by a symphony in gold braid and a footman with a plumed hat. Through the audience rooms they went, through the Empress’s private drawing room, down a long corridor leading to the private apartments. In the last room at the end of the corridor the Tsar’s personal aide-de-camp indicated that Johnny and Mikhail were to wait there with him. He began an animated conversation with Mikhail on the virtues of the capital’s most expensive restaurants. Powerscourt felt his mind going far away to the ice on the Nevskii Prospekt where a fellow countryman lay dead, ignored and forgotten by the authorities. A strangely clad Ethiopian was on guard outside the Tsar’s door. As he opened it the symphony in gold braid coughed slightly and announced in perfect English:
‘Your Imperial Majesty! Lord Francis Powerscourt from His Britannic Majesty’s Foreign Office!’
14
The first thing Powerscourt noticed about Nicholas the Second, Tsar and Autocrat of All the Russias, was that he was quite short for an Autocrat. He must, Powerscourt thought, have been about five feet seven inches tall. His father, Powerscourt remembered, had been a great bear of a man, capable of bending pokers into circles and other feats of strength guaranteed to impress small children. The second thing was a quite remarkable similarity to his cousin George, Prince of Wales, second son of King Edward and Queen Alexandra. There was the same neatly trimmed beard, the same shape of face, the same hair greying slightly at the temples. Nicholas had lines of strain running across his forehead, not surprising, Powerscourt thought, when you were presiding over an empire in chaos, even less surprising when you thought of the haemophiliac son and heir, possibly bleeding to death even now in some upstairs nursery.
The Tsar was wearing a simple Russian peasant blouse, baggy brown trousers and soft leather boots. Standing in front of his desk, he ushered Powerscourt into an armchair. The room was quite small with one window. There were plain leather chairs, a sofa covered with a Persian rug, some bookshelves, a table spread with maps and a low bookcase covered with family photographs and souvenirs.
‘Lord Powerscourt, welcome to Tsarskoe Selo,’ said the Tsar. His English would not have been out of place in an Oxford quadrangle. ‘How may I be of service to you and your government?’
‘I am not in the service of my government, sir. I am an investigator employed by the British Foreign Office to look into the death of a Mr Martin. Mr Martin, sir, was on the staff of the Foreign Office. He came here to see you at the end of last year. Then he was killed.’
‘I heard that sad news, Lord Powerscourt. Tell me, you say you are an investigator. What, pray, do you investigate?’
Powerscourt thought the Tsar made investigating sound like a most disagreeable profession. Perhaps he imagined investigators scouring the files of his ministries for examples of administrative incompetence or worse, looking into the inefficiencies of his armies, or, saddest of all, creeping round his household for long enough to tell his subjects that their future sovereign Alexis the Tsarevich might have bled to death before he was one year old, never mind attaining his majority.
‘I am not alone in being an investigator, sir. There are a number at work in London at present. I only operate when people ask me to. Usually they ask me to investigate murders.’
The Tsar sounded faintly relieved to hear Powerscourt and his ilk were not contemplating opening a branch office in Moscow or St Petersburg. ‘Do you think Mr Martin was murdered, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I most certainly do, sir.’
‘And,’ the Tsar went one, ‘do you expect me to know who killed him?’
‘No, I do not, sir,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if the Tsar did actually know but wouldn’t say, ‘but I would find it very helpful to know what you talked about with Mr Martin.’
‘I cannot help you there, I’m afraid, Lord Powerscourt. The matter was confidential.’
Confidential enough to get a man killed, Powerscourt thought bitterly. Confidential can mean fatal on a bad day in the Tsar’s palace at Tsarskoe Selo.
‘I fully appreciate that, sir,’ said Powerscourt, looking at a photograph of three very happy little girls draped round their papa on a yacht, ‘but I would like to appraise you of what I propose to tell my government about your conversation with Mr Martin on my return.’
‘And why should that interest me?’ said the Tsar rather shortly, as if he had had enough of investigators.
‘It should interest you, sir, because it will contain my account of what transpired between you and Mr Martin. I give you my word that if you wish to correct my version in any way, I shall not tell a single soul who provided the information. Come, sir,’ Powerscourt smiled suddenly at his host, ‘come on a little adventure with me. Put aside the cares of state for ten minutes or so. Join the ranks of the investigators!’
The Tsar lit himself a cigarette. He returned the smile. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘for the moment I am your Mr Sherlock Holmes of 221b Baker Street. Sherlock Romanov perhaps. I shall consider what you have to say. Begin please!’
Powerscourt drew a deep breath. Now was his opportunity. From Markham Square to Tsarskoe Selo, via the British Embassy, Kerenkov’s shipyard, Kerenkova’s dacha, the eyes of Natasha Bobrinsky and the torture chambers of Okhrana boss Derzhenov was a long and complicated journey.