Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (32 page)

‘About fifty or a few years more,’ said Ragg. ‘Forgive me if I was rude earlier on, Lord Powerscourt. I was feeling particularly unwell.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ said Powerscourt, rising to his feet and heading for the door. ‘There’s nothing to forgive, you have been most helpful.’

As he made his way towards the front door, he understood what an enormous effort Theodore Ragg must have been making during their conversation. The coughing in the room behind him began like a
slow rumble far off, then it turned into a great hacking shriek, and finally it ebbed away into sounds of weeping. Powerscourt could hear doors opening and closing as the partners went to offer
help and comfort to their dying colleague.

The telegraph office was but a hundred yards away down the High Street. Powerscourt was shown into the office of the manager, a dapper young man by the name of Charlie Dean,
who looked as if he and his clothes would have been happier in Finsbury Circus or Leadenhall Street in the City of London. He was quick to grasp the import of Powerscourt’s visit and the
importance of any possible messages from St Petersburg.

‘How long would we keep a message, you ask, my lord. Three months.’

Fine, thought Powerscourt. If Martin had sent any message to his wife here, and if, for some reason she had forgotten to collect it, the message should still be somewhere in the system.

‘And what kind of authority would you need before you handed the message over to somebody, Mr Dean?’

‘Company rules say we have to try three times to deliver to the recipient in person. Well, we tried and failed three times in this case so now it could be handed over to anybody with a
proof of connection with the address. If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, Lord Powerscourt, I don’t think anybody has been in here asking for cables they have no
business with. We know most of our customers in a place like this, you see.’ Charlie Dean sounded rather sad as he said that. Powerscourt thought he would be much happier somewhere very busy
in the metropolis where every customer was a perfect stranger, a new challenge, offering possibilities of fresh messages and fresh romance.

‘And suppose you wanted to send a message the other way, Mr Dean. Would you have a copy of anything Mrs Martin might have sent to Russia?’

‘That would be before she was killed, I suppose,’ said Charlie happily, glad to welcome murder to the Tonbridge telegraph office. ‘Well, there should be a copy of that too. If
you wait here, my lord, I’ll just go and make some inquiries.’

The walls of the little office were adorned with prints of great cricketers like C.B. Fry and Ranjitsinghi, interspersed with modern photographs of ancient telegraphic equipment. Powerscourt was
reflecting that a man who scored as fast as Fry could probably transmit a telegraph message at record speed when the manager returned, in a very excited state.

‘Look, Lord Powerscourt, it’s a message! From Russia!’ He handed Powerscourt the thin envelope used to protect the cable. It came from St Petersburg, dated December 22nd,
possibly the very date of Mr Martin’s death.

‘Has this been here ever since? Nobody has asked for it or anything like that?’ said Powerscourt.

‘It’s been here ever since,’ said Charlie Dean. ‘Aren’t you going to open it? The fiendish killer might be unmasked right here in this office, my lord.’

Powerscourt grinned. He wondered if Charlie was a regular reader of the adventures of heroes like Sexton Blake with their emphasis on excitement and melodrama rather than detection and analysis.
He looked at the envelope.

‘What are you thinking, my lord? Do you feel you may have the master criminal in your hands?’ Powerscourt was feeling rather nervous. This could be the answer to all his problems. It
could mean that he would never have to go back to St Petersburg. Above all, he thought of Roderick Martin. Did he send this message before he saw the Tsar or after? If it was after, had he put in
the cable the news that was to kill him, and might have killed his wife too? The message, after all, might have been in the hands of the Russian security services inside the hour. Plenty of time to
prepare an expedition to Tibenham Grange and push a widow into the moat beneath. And, maybe more important yet, how much longer did Martin have left to live when he wrote it?

Charlie Dean’s eyes were burning bright. His brain seemed to have taken off to some fictional Valhalla. ‘Maybe he’s going to tell of the deadly fight on the ice floe with the
Russian killers, my lord. Maybe the chief villain behind Mr Martin’s murder is going to be exposed at last!’

Powerscourt opened the envelope. He looked rather sadly at the message. He handed it over to Charlie.

‘Coming home tomorrow, Thursday,’ it read, ‘should be back in three or four days.’

‘It must be in code, my lord,’ said Charlie feverishly. ‘Tomorrow probably means enemies vanquished and Thursday means, well, coming home Thursday.’

‘I think we’ll find,’ said Powerscourt, folding the message carefully and putting it in his pocket, ‘that the message is more useful than might first appear.’

‘You mean there is a secret code, my lord?’ Hope died hard in Charlie Dean’s heart.

‘Not exactly,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘but think about what the message says. He must have done, or been about to do, whatever he went to St Petersburg for, don’t
you see, Charlie? Otherwise he wouldn’t be so confident about coming home tomorrow. Mission accomplished, that’s how I read that bit.’ Privately, Powerscourt wasn’t so sure.
It could mean, this has all been a complete disaster, so I’m coming home tomorrow, he said to himself, though he wasn’t convinced. And had he sent it during the day? Or in the evening
when Ricky Crabbe thought somebody else had been using his machines? And why – Powerscourt’s brain was circling round the problem like a bird of prey – hadn’t Mrs Martin
come to pick it up? Maybe her husband wasn’t in the habit of sending messages. After the shock of his death it could have passed completely out of her mind as she mourned for her husband.

‘And the other thing, Charlie,’ said Powerscourt, keen to bring as much excitement as possible to the young of Tonbridge, ‘is that sending this may have been one of the last
things he did alive.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Charlie. ‘Did the Cossack monsters charge in and drag him off the telegraph machine to his death?’

‘Not quite,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but he could have been killed very soon afterwards, outside in the snow.’

‘I’ll never forget this morning, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Charlie. ‘For me, it’s been so exciting. I know I read too many of those detective stories, but this has
been like a look through the door of one of them. I’m ever so grateful, my lord.’

‘I tell you what I’ll do, Charlie,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘When I know what happened, what really happened, I’ll let you know. I tell you what, even
better, I’ll send you a telegram.’

Forty minutes later Powerscourt was climbing up the little stone staircase that led to the top of the tower at Tibenham Grange. Of Inspector Clayton, or Constable Watchett,
keeping the property free of visiting architects, there was, at present, no sign. As he stood on the top once more Powerscourt gazed intently at every single stone in the surface, in case they had
all overlooked a vital clue. He stared into the woods, imagining a fifty-five year old man, bent on revenge for what had happened all those years before, inching his way towards the Grange. He saw
him helping himself to a weapon in the kitchen and presenting himself in front of an unsuspecting Mrs Martin in her favourite bay in the library. Then he saw her marched at knifepoint through the
house she loved towards the tower from where she would see it no more. He saw the man creeping back through the woods towards a train to London, secure in the knowledge that this time his claim on
the estate would surely win the day. He was woken from his reverie by a loud shout from Inspector Clayton who had appeared suddenly on the lawn.

‘Thank God you’ve come,’ yelled the Inspector. ‘See you in the library.’

There a panting Inspector delivered his message. ‘You’re to return to London, my lord, as soon as possible, your wife says. There’s news from Russia. Lady Powerscourt
didn’t say what it was, but it surely concerns the investigation.’

Before he set off for the station Powerscourt told Clayton all he had discovered about the earlier court case from Theodore Ragg, and he showed him the telegram from St Petersburg.

‘I wish that message had been more help to you, my lord,’ said the Inspector. ‘Do you think it likely that this old family feud has come to the surface?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but I’m sure we have to look at it closely. If we can eliminate the other Martin, as it were, we’re still left with the
original three contenders.’

‘Three?’ said Inspector Clayton.

‘Three,’ Powerscourt replied firmly. ‘Did she fall, did she jump, or was she pushed? Something tells me we may never find the answer.’

Powerscourt was lucky enough to secure a whole compartment to himself on the way back to London. He sat by the window and stared out over Kent. He hoped, he prayed, that the
news from St Petersburg was not what he feared it might be. He wondered if he should take Johnny Fitzgerald back with him or leave him working on the death of Mrs Martin. He wondered how upset Lady
Lucy would be if he disappeared into dangerous territory once again. He wondered, less seriously, if he should buy more dolls and soldiers for the twins.

The message was brief, sent by Mikhail Shaporov via his father’s private system to William Burke. ‘Natasha due to meet me at four o’clock yesterday,’ it said, ‘but
she did not appear. Nor has she come today. What should I do? Mikhail.’

Powerscourt swore violently to himself. It was what he had feared, that something would happen to the girl. Had she fallen into the hands of the Okhrana? Would she live to survive her
incarceration? Was Natasha Bobrinsky, young, beautiful and clever, about to meet the fate of Roderick Martin on the ice of the Nevskii Prospekt?

Powerscourt had composed his reply on the train. ‘Suggest no, repeat no activity for the present. There may be some domestic crisis at the Alexander Palace. Leaving
London for return to St Petersburg tomorrow. Regards. Powerscourt.’ He sent it off to William Burke’s office in the City and began pacing up and down his drawing room. He was debating
with himself the sending of a rather different cable to the Russian capital, one that would precipitate a crisis in his investigation. It might also, he reflected grimly, kill him. He thought of
Lady Lucy and knew that, for once, he could not ask for her advice. The one person he could ask, Johnny Fitzgerald, was not in London, although he might be later. He consulted a train timetable as
a diversion and discovered that if he left London that evening he would have time for a meeting in Paris in the morning and still connect with the service to St Petersburg. Then he found his mind
made up and he set off for the Foreign Office. Sir Jeremiah Reddaway was able to squeeze him in between a meeting of the Ottoman Empire working party and afternoon tea with the Icelandic
Ambassador.

‘God bless my soul,’ was the mandarin’s first reaction to Powerscourt’s request. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing before. It’s quite
unconstitutional.’ Powerscourt refrained from pointing out that as there was no written constitution it was difficult to break it. ‘Are you sure about this, man? What do you think you
will gain from it?’

‘I need to test a theory about Martin’s death, Sir Jeremiah.’

‘But what’s wrong with us here at the Foreign Office, Powerscourt? What’s wrong with me, for God’s sake?’

Once again Powerscourt held his tongue. ‘I want to speak to the best informed person I can find about Russia and the court of the Tsar. Our Embassy in St Petersburg’ – he did
not name de Chassiron – ‘believe that the best informed person is the head of the French secret service. The French Ambassador in St Petersburg is well informed, but M. Olivier Brouzet
is the man I wish to see. With your approval, of course, Sir Jeremiah. We are allies with France now, after all, are we not?’

The diplomat snorted. Rosebery had observed long ago that concluding an alliance of friendship with another country virtually guaranteed that relations would begin to deteriorate
immediately.

‘All right, man. I’ll sanction it,’ said Sir Jeremiah with bad grace. ‘If I didn’t, I presume you’d just go ahead and make the appointment anyway.’

Powerscourt made no comment. Ten minutes later he made his way to the telegraph office and dictated a message to go at once to de Chassiron in the Petersburg Embassy.

‘Returning St Petersburg tomorrow. Believe I should be in a position to know what happened to Martin in a week or so. Please request audience with Tsar for me on Martin related business.
Kind regards. Powerscourt.’

The real recipient was not de Chassiron. It was the Okhrana. Powerscourt hoped Mikhail Shaporov’s information about reading the messages was correct. He felt elated suddenly, as a man
might who is gambling with his life. The message might smoke Derzhenov out and force him to reveal what he knew about the death of Martin. And if he were granted an interview with the Tsar, it
might also produce the same result as before. Powerscourt could join Martin in a cold and icy grave.

The normal pattern of life at the Alexander Palace was in turmoil. The routine, the patterns by which this most regular of families lived their lives had been thrown into
chaos. The heir to the throne, His Imperial Highness Alexis Nicolaievich, Sovereign Heir Tsarevich, Grand Duke of Russia, was sick, very sick, and none of the doctors sent from the city could cure
him. It began with a haemorrhage which arose without the slightest cause and lasted for three days. Bandages were applied which sometimes showed blood. Then a bruise ruptured a tiny blood vessel
beneath the skin and Alexis’ blood began to seep slowly into surrounding muscle or tissue. The blood did not clot as it would in a normal person, it went on flowing for hours, leading to a
swelling the size of a grapefruit. Natasha Bobrinsky was now looking after the four girls virtually on her own. She had no time to visit the city or even to write letters. She went with the girls
on their visits to their infant brother and ushered them out a few minutes later. She noticed that the parents were reluctant to conduct any conversation with the doctors in front of the
princesses. This is the future of Russia, Natasha said to herself, standing by one of the nurses at the end of the crib and watching the infant toss from side to side, this child, this tiny Romanov
holds the fate of the empire in his hands. Should he die, the Emperor and Empress might never recover. When she wasn’t by her son’s side the Empress was praying, on her knees in front
of her icon of the Virgin, beseeching the cruel God who had done this to her child to take pity. Earthly sinners are urged to repent, she told herself, God can repent too and take back whatever
dreadful fate he has handed down to my Alexis, the awful horrors of joints that bled and would not stop, the terrible cries of pain from the child that could not be assuaged. Natasha would sink to
her knees beside her Empress when she could and join her in her prayers. She felt that this family were being asked to suffer too much. The thought of a lifetime punctuated by these bouts of
illness and uncertainty was more than she could bear. Late one afternoon Natasha accompanied two of the doctors from the sick room to the front door and the carriages that were waiting to take them
back to the city. She heard the word whispered between them when they thought nobody was looking or listening, only some servant girl. Natasha didn’t know what the word meant but she could
look it up in the library when she got a chance. She felt sure that Lord Powerscourt would like to know.