The Grand Duchess of Nowhere (18 page)

I said, ‘Well, that’s certainly not true because Rina’s not even in town.’

Stopford said, ‘Precisely. And as if she’d want that creature in her house anyway. But the police have been to see Felix. They wanted to know what company he had last night. Names and addresses. He says they’re only doing their job but he’s quite shaken. It was just a few friends, for cards and supper.’

Miechen wanted to know which friends, precisely. Stopford said he didn’t have the full guest list, it was only an impromptu card
evening, after all, but he believed Vladimir Purishkevich had been present.

Miechen said, ‘Purishkevich? That old thunderer? How extraordinary. Are he and Felix friends? No, you must be mistaken. Russian names can be so confusing.’

Vladimir Purishkevich had been a member of the Duma, a staunch supporter of the Emperor, a man who thought all reformers should be shot at dawn. He did sound like an unlikely playmate for dear Felix.

Stopford saved the juiciest morsel till last.

He said, ‘Well, whoever was there, it’s rather rotten luck that shots were heard during the course of their card party. Questions are bound to be asked.’

A night watchman on the Moika had reported hearing gunfire, very late and apparently coming from the Yusupov Palace. The police were summoned and Felix explained what had happened. A street dog had got inside the Yusupov courtyard and when the
dvornik
tried to shoo it back onto the embankment it had bared its teeth, as though to savage him. He’d cried out for help and Felix and his guests had rushed outside and shot the creature.

Miechen said, ‘Good. It’s the only thing to do when a dog runs mad. Who fired the shot?’

That was one question Bertie Stopford couldn’t answer. It wouldn’t have been Felix, I’m sure. And who on earth takes a loaded gun to an evening of cards?

Stopford said, ‘Whoever it was, they showed great presence of mind. And a steady hand too, after a glass or three of champagne. Oh, Dmitri Pavlovich was present too, by the way. Did I mention that? I expect you’ll get the full story from him. Felix was very piano. Well, no one likes a visit from the police.’

Dmitri Pavlovich. He was a much more likely guest at one of
Felix’s soirées. I thought Miechen would rush to telephone him immediately but she didn’t. She was unusually quiet.

I remember saying, ‘Presumably Felix showed the body to the police?’ Miechen and Stopford both looked at me rather absently.

Stopford said, ‘The body?’

I said, ‘The dog?’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Yes, the dog. Indeed. Well, no. Unfortunately its body had already been disposed of.’

Of course. Thrown into the canal.

Then Stopford said, ‘But we’ve strayed from the more interesting topic of the missing monk. Where can he be? Perhaps he’s decided to make a pilgrimage. Perhaps he’s walking to Jerusalem.’

Miechen said, ‘A pilgrimage under the Empress’s skirts, more like.’

Which caused Bertie Stopford almost to choke on his tea.

‘Naughty Grand Duchess,’ he said, ‘what a horrid image. They say you could grow potatoes in the dirt under his fingernails.’

‘Ask Ducky,’ Miechen said. ‘He offered to unlock something or other for her. And he
tutoyer
ed her.’

*

I didn’t see Cyril till evening.

‘Nothing new to report,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it amazing? This morning everyone was asking “where’s Rasputin?” Now all they’re concerned about is can they get a table at Donon’s. The fickleness of people.’

He’d seen Georgie Buchanan in the street but she wouldn’t be drawn into gossip. Yes, the British Embassy was aware of the rumours but it was none of their affair. The British Mission was almost deserted. Cuddy Thornhill was in Moscow and not expected back for several days. Alf Knox was away at the Stavka. No one could say where Oswald Rayner was.

I said, ‘I suppose you heard about Felix?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A mad dog destroyed. How thrilling. And the Moika used to be such a dull place to live.’

‘Stopford says Dmitri Pavlovich was there.’

Cyril looked at me.

He said, ‘We don’t know, do we, Ducky? We really know nothing at all. Therefore best to say nothing.’

*

I travelled back to Tsarskoe Selo the next morning. I wondered whether I should telephone Sunny when I got home, whether I should extend the hand of friendship. Her Beloved Grishka was missing and Emperor Nicky was at HQ. He’d taken Alyosha with him, to show the troops their young Tsesarevich and boost their morale. She’d be feeling lonely and anxious. I was still debating whether to make that call when my train pulled in to Tsarskoe Selo and who should I see on the platform but Dr Botkin.

You know, I was so full of my own thoughts I didn’t at all take in his mood at first. How was the Empress? Bearing up. Was there any news of Rasputin? He believed not. Then I noticed the catch in his voice, the fatigue in his face.

‘My boy,’ he said. ‘Yuri. Killed in action. I’ve lost two sons now, Highness. Two.’

He cried, but somehow there were no tears. Genya Botkin was a considerable figure. It was much harder than seeing a woman cry.

I tried to find some words. That it wasn’t fair, or something equally stupid. As though bullets and shells consult a book of rules. I took his hand and rubbed it, like you would a child’s grazed knee. What can one say?

It had become a little too easy for me to forget about the war. Cyril had a desk job. I knew he was safe. And, away from the hospitals, Petrograd was hardly any different. But to lose two sons?
I hoped Botkin could remember exactly why we were at war and find some consolation in it because I couldn’t. But through all his troubles and losses he was so staunch for Nicky and Sunny and our war effort. He still is.

‘Our
Batyushka
will lead us to victory,’ he said. ‘God save the Tsar!’

*

On Sunday morning our doorman Kuzma and the kitchen boy carried a small spruce into our yard so Peach and the girls could make a kind of Christmas tree for the birds. They hung it with bacon rinds and suet balls and then watched from a window for their favourite wren and greenfinches to come and feast. It ended in tears. A cock robin saw off every other bird, including another robin, and Kira was inconsolable.

‘Children have to learn,’ Peach said. ‘Life isn’t a story book.’

Peach was getting quite above herself. She made a great display of speaking to Kuzma in Russian and laughing gaily at his remarks.

Cyril telephoned just after lunch.

I said, ‘I think I may give Peach notice. She’s threatened to leave anyway. And now she keeps chattering to the
shveytsar
in Russian. They could be saying anything.’

He said, ‘Probably discussing the weather. Don’t trouble me with domestics, Ducky. Rasputin’s been found.’

A workman had noticed it first, downstream of the Petrovsky Bridge. He’d thought it was the body of a wolfhound, trapped just beneath the ice, but it turned out to be a long-haired man in a fur coat and one felt boot. It was Grigory Rasputin and he had a bullet hole in his head.

I believe everything began to change from that moment. Even though the excitement over Rasputin soon subsided, now I look back, his murder was the beginning of the end of our lovely life. When Cyril told me the news I wanted to go back into town where I could hear every theory at first hand.

But he said, ‘Why? Are you a detective all of a sudden? No, stay where you are and don’t gossip. Particularly not about a certain young relative of ours.’

‘You mean Dmitri?’

‘I’m serious, Ducky. This could get very unpleasant.’

It was all over Petrograd. The mad dog that had been shot in the courtyard of the Yusupov Palace was none other than the Empress’s beloved friend, and Felix was now talking about it quite openly. He seemed to think he and his friends had done the Emperor a great service.

Two things happened almost immediately. Special policemen went to Rasputin’s apartment and searched it. Ransacked it, his neighbours said. One had to feel sorry for his daughters. He may have been an unpleasant character but to lose one’s father and then to have one’s home turned upside down, it seemed terribly unfeeling.

Uncle Bimbo said they’d be looking for anything that might embarrass Sunny. Letters, gifts, anything that had her crest on it. And
while that was going on a great gathering of the Romanov men took place at Glinka Street. Cyril, brother-in-law Boris, Uncle Bimbo, Uncle Paul. Even Grand Duke Uncle Sandro rushed back from Kiev. Rasputin’s death had become a family matter. Felix Yusupov was Uncle Sandro’s son-in-law. And he’d now named those who’d been with him that evening and helped him despatch Rasputin. He saw no reason not to. He imagined Russia would thank them for it. Purishkevich was named, so Bertie Stopford had been right about that. And most worrying for us, Uncle Paul’s son, Dmitri Pavlovich.

You know, I still thought of Dmitri as a child though he must have been twenty-four or twenty-five by then. He’d seen active service. He’d been awarded the Cross of St George. And yet when the finger was pointed at him my first thought was to defend him, to say it was impossible for him to have been party to a murder. Dmitri himself made no pretence. He never denied his part in it. He was just surprised Rasputin’s body had been found so quickly. I suppose they’d all imagined the ice would keep their secret, that nothing would be discovered until the spring thaw.

When the body was found Dmitri wanted to go immediately to Sunny, to confess to his part in the killing and to explain himself.

‘She loves me. She’ll forgive me, with time,’ he said. ‘I was present but I have no actual blood on my hands. Eventually she’ll understand why it had to be done.’

Sunny was certainly fond of Dmitri. She and Aunt Ella had been special, kindly aunts to him, a dear little boy growing up without a mother. He was convinced he was the one who could make Empress Sunny see that Rasputin had been killed out of pure concern for her good name. But wiser heads prevailed. Uncle Paul ordered Dmitri to stay at home and speak to no one.

Sunny had shut herself away with Anna Vyrubova and her other ladies. We guessed she must be in a state of hysterical collapse.
Genya Botkin was in attendance but no one wanted to trouble him for information. Our chief concern anyway wasn’t that Sunny’s heart would break but what the aftermath might bring, when her hysteria subsided and she began plotting her revenge. A man had been murdered, after all. And then, what about the next time the Tsesarevich had a bleed?

Uncle Bimbo said, ‘Well, I suppose that’s when we’ll discover whether Rasputin really was a miracle-worker.’

Cyril felt everything depended on Nicky’s reaction. He might be quietly relieved to be rid of Rasputin. Perhaps he’d find a way to be lenient with those who’d done the dirty work. But Sunny didn’t wait to hear from Nicky. She ordered Dmitri and Felix to be placed under immediate house arrest and when Uncle Paul tried to talk to her, to plead their cause, she refused even to see him.

There were a hundred versions of what had happened on the night Rasputin died. Betsy Trubetskoy told Miechen that Felix had tried to poison him first, with cake. Bertie Stopford said that was nonsense. Rasputin preferred candy to cake, as any intending poisoner would surely have troubled to check. Gitta Radlova’s version was that he’d received a shot through the heart but then had risen from the dead and pursued his assassins through the Yusupov Palace, eyes blazing, unearthly howls issuing from his throat, until someone brought out a pistol loaded with silver bullets and felled him with one shot. Gitta was ever a great romancer.

There were stories about his body too. It had been taken to a police morgue and then to a secret address out of town but to listen to the talk around Petrograd you’d have thought the whole world and his wife had been allowed to inspect it. It was riddled with bullets. It was run through with a sabre. It didn’t have a mark upon it.

Uncle Sandro was more concerned about where the body was to be buried. He went to see someone he knew at the Prefecture.

‘All taken care of,’ he told Cyril. ‘It’s on a train already, going back whence it crawled into our lives.’

I said, ‘But Sunny won’t stand for that. She’ll want him buried here, so she can visit his grave.’

‘Precisely,’ Cyril said. ‘All the more reason to send him back to Siberia. It’s just a pity it’s winter. I hope they’ll be able to dig a deep enough hole. We don’t want a resurrection.’

Again and again we underestimated Sunny. Rasputin’s body wasn’t on its way to Siberia at all. A grave was being prepared for him at Tsarskoe Selo and Emperor Nicky was on his way home from the Stavka, coming to support his grieving wife and pay his respects. They buried him quickly and quietly, early one morning, before it was light. Dr Botkin said the entire family walked to the burial place through the snow. The Empress had wept a little, as was to be expected, but she’d been calm. She believed the spirit of her Grishka was at her side and would be for all eternity. He’d gone to a place where the likes of Felix Yusupov and Dmitri Pavlovich could do nothing more to harm him.

Cyril wasn’t happy.

He said, ‘So much for Sandro squaring everything away. Knowing Sunny she’ll be visiting the grave every day. She’ll make a shrine of it. In fact she’ll probably build another damned cathedral over it.’

Well, he was wrong about that. Rasputin didn’t rest there long enough even for a stone to be laid.

Nicky went back to the Stavka but before he left he dealt with Dmitri Pavlovich, privately. The crime was heinous, and all the more so for a family member being involved, but there was no sense in making the matter public. There would be no police investigation, no murder trial. Dmitri was banished, posted to Persia, to a Cossack Brigade, with no one but an orderly for company. He was to go immediately and not see or talk to anyone.
Felix had already defied his house arrest and slipped away to Crimea to join Rina and their baby. Purishkevich had returned quietly to his desk at the Red Cross and Oswald Rayner, whose name came up from time to time in connection with steady hands and skilled marksmanship, went blithely about his usual business, whatever that was.

As Cyril said, ‘Rayner’s with the British Mission. Even if he was in on it, Nicky can’t touch him.’

Uncle Paul was obedient to Emperor Nicky’s orders not to speak to Dmitri though it must have broken his heart to let his boy go off without seeing him. Persia. I’m not even sure where that is. Uncle Bimbo and Uncle Sandro were not so compliant to the Emperor’s order. They went to the station with Dmitri and stayed with him until the train pulled out.

Uncle Bimbo said, ‘Of course I went. What’s Nicky going to do about it? Have me hanged for seeing a lad off to war?’

I had wondered if Cyril might feel a pang and go to the station himself.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I see no point in all of us defying Nicky. We need to make him listen and he won’t do that if he feels the whole family is against him. We have to ride this out, Ducky. We have to coax Nicky into a more reasonable attitude, because the alternative is very worrying. If Nicky falls he might take us all down with him.’

I didn’t catch his meaning at first. If Nicky falls.

I said, ‘How can a Tsar fall?’

He said, ‘In Nicky’s case, rather easily. Look at him. He has one foot at the Stavka, one foot in Petrograd, his head’s in the sand and he has Sunny’s considerable weight perched on his little shoulders. I’d say it wouldn’t take much of a push. And then what? George Buchanan went to see him, you know? Told him straight, he needs to regain the confidence of the people and quickly. Damned plucky
of Buchanan. Know what Nicky said? “It’s not
I
who need to regain their confidence.
They
need to regain mine!”’

Cyril said the best we could hope for was that Nicky would retire, ‘abdicate’ is actually the word he used.

‘And then?’

‘Misha could take over. Until Alexis is of age.’

‘Misha! With Natalya Brasova as Empress?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. He’d have to reign without a consort.’

‘They might ask you instead. Promise you won’t. I don’t want to be Empress.’

He laughed.

He said, ‘Don’t worry, they’d no more have you than they would Brasova. A divorcée? No darling, you’re perfectly safe.’

‘Who else does that leave? If Nicky goes and Misha doesn’t want the throne?’

‘Plenty of candidates,’ he said. ‘The question is rather what if Russia doesn’t want any of us?’

*

We went to the Mariinsky to see
Sleeping Beauty
and then had dinner at the Europa. There was a blizzard raging when we came out but Cyril said he had to go to the base. Urgent naval business. He wanted to drop me at Glinka Street but I preferred to walk. It was no distance at all and I love the snow when it’s still clean and powdery.

I didn’t sleep well. I tried running through the names of all the Grand Dukes, trying to find someone who was qualified to be Tsar, but it wasn’t like counting sheep. The exercise left me even further from sleep, with the worry of how unsuitable we all were. Uncle Paul was doubly damned, in disgrace because of Dmitri and the Rasputin affair, and resented for having run off and married Olga Paley. Cyril’s brothers, Boris and Andrei, liked their freedom too much. Uncle Bimbo wanted a quiet life. Uncle
Gogi had the problem of an estranged wife. The only possibilities seemed to be Uncle Nikolasha, who was old and had no heir, or Uncle Sandro. He was the one. In fact the more I thought about it the more obvious it was.

Grand Duke Uncle Sandro was ideal. He was married to Nicky’s sister, Xenia, so she’d know how to conduct herself as Empress. She’d learned it at her mother’s knee. Also, she and Sandro had a whole palace full of heirs. Half a dozen sons at least. After I’d settled that, I was able to sleep, but the next morning I felt distinctly unwell. I thought perhaps it was the pickled herrings we’d had at the Europa. Miechen was supposed to come for lunch. I tried to put her off but she said she’d come anyway. She was never one to allow someone else’s indisposition to ruin her plans.

‘Just take a little clear soup, darling,’ she said. ‘But I must see you.’

Cyril had warned her to be careful what she said on the telephone. She needed to see me face to face, and no servants in the room or even outside the door.

‘We must be very careful,’ she said. ‘Cyril believes we’re being listened to.’

I said, ‘Uncle Bimbo’s thought so for a long time.’

‘Oh, that old fool,’ she said. ‘Who’d eavesdrop on him? All he talks about is moths. And pollination. But we’re a different matter. Sunny’s always regarded me as a threat. So now, do you know what I do? If Betsy calls me or Bertie Stopford, we’ll chat away and every so often I’ll say, “What do you think about that, Sunny?” Just so she knows I know she’s listening.’

We talked about Emperor Nicky, about who might replace him. If Nicky falls.

Miechen said, ‘Well, of course it should be you and Cyril. You’d be perfect.’

I said, ‘But obviously it won’t be, because of my divorce. Plus, we don’t have a son. I think Sandro and Xenia are the obvious couple.’

But Miechen wouldn’t have that.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘That might have been true, once upon a time, but not now. They’re tainted. Felix has seen to that.’

In my midnight calculations, I’d overlooked the Rasputin connection. Uncle Sandro’s daughter Rina was married to Felix. Felix had lured Rasputin to his death. He’d conspired in a man’s murder, even if he hadn’t fired a shot. People might fête him for it. People might condemn him and everyone connected to him. With Russians you could never tell.

Miechen said, ‘This
vinegret
is delicious. Remind me, did I give you your cook? Why aren’t you eating anything?’

Then she looked at me.

She said, ‘Great heavens, Ducky. I do believe you’re expecting!’