Death Comes to the Ballets Russes (38 page)

‘Look here, Lucy, I didn’t put the date in when I was reading it out. As you said, this last page was written three days before he was killed.’

‘So we don’t know whether he talked to Bolm, we don’t know whether he walked into a police station and asked to speak to somebody – we know nothing at all. He, in his turn, could also have done nothing at all, merely got so agitated that he forgot to put an entry in his diary that evening,’ observed Lucy.

‘The rest is certainly silence,’ said Powerscourt, riffling through the empty pages. ‘I know almost nothing of the secret world and the armaments race, though it is costing us all a great deal of money. I shall have to go and call on Rosebery at once. He knows even less about military equations than I do, but he knows people who do. And what of this entry at the end in three days’ time. Kingfisher? Goring? Six a.m.? What on earth is all that about?’

Inspector Dutfield was told the secrets of the diary.

‘Looks like that young lady made her journey all the way to St Petersburg in vain, my lord, my lady. I know
nothing of the secret world, nothing at all. There’s a whole department that checks out all the foreigners for coronations and royal funerals and that sort of major ceremonial event with lots of foreign leaders, but I don’t know anything about that other world. I tell you what, my lord. I shall find out what I can about Kingfisher at Goring from the local force. I’ll find out if the young man did go and call on any English authorities, police stations and so on. That should just take five minutes on the phone. With your track record as the chap in charge of Military Intelligence in the Boer War, my lord – well, at least that gives you a head start on the rest of us.’

‘Inspector,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘do you think this knowledge is dangerous? For whoever comes across it, I mean.’

‘I should say it’s very dangerous, my lady. Two people have been murdered. We don’t know whether this caused it or not, but it’s the strongest lead we have got so far and that’s a fact.’

Rosebery was reading the reports from his racing trainer when Powerscourt arrived in Berkeley Square.

‘Bloody depressing news, Powerscourt. The one wretched animal I possess with a chance of winning the St Leger has gone lame. Unlikely to improve in time for the big race. Another year without a major winner.’

Powerscourt wondered if Rosebery had made the acquaintance of William Burke’s head porter who carried racing results round in his head the way other people do football scores.

Rosebery looked very grave when Powerscourt told him about Alexander’s diary entry and the secret papers.

‘Equations?’ he said. ‘Pages and pages of them? God help us all. I was a History man, at Oxford, as you know. I know nothing at all about mathematics and all that stuff. Perhaps it has something to do with gunnery, naval gunnery maybe. They’re always asking boffins who can’t speak properly and never learnt how to hold a fork to produce different ways of firing guns. Accuracy, that’s what they’re on about, particularly when the ship may be going up and down in the swell and you can’t actually see the enemy. And you say the poor boy might have been killed for his pains? Worse and worse. You’ve got the police working with you, I presume? They should be able to find out what Kingfisher Goring means. I suppose you want me to see if I can manage an invitation for you, would that be right?’

‘Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that, Rosebery, but that would be kind. Naval gunnery at dawn, what a prospect.’

‘Let me go and knock on a few doors that a former Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister is allowed to visit, my friend. I can’t promise you any kind of response in that time, but I’ll try my best. Let’s meet again tomorrow afternoon and I’ll see how many doors I’ve been able to open. That is, if I’ve been able to open any at all.’

‘Thank you so much. That’s most kind.’

‘Just one thing, Powerscourt. These people in this secret world are not to be trusted. They will tell me whatever it suits them to tell me. They will leave out whatever does not suit them. They will want to use
you for their own purposes. They will not be concerned with your safety or your health, only what they can get out of you. It’s important that you understand that right from the start. You probably remember it anyway from your time with the bloody Boer in South Africa and all those devious princelings you dealt with in India. Don’t, for God’s sake, forget it now.’

‘Kingfisher Goring, my lord,’ he began, ‘is more usually known as the Kingfisher Hotel; it lies between Goring and the adjacent village of Streatley.’ Inspector Dutfield was the first caller of the day at the Powerscourt residence.

‘It is a handsome establishment with a number of the principal rooms, like the dining room and the drawing room, right on the riverside. The Thames flows right past the back door. You can, Inspector Huntley of the local force told me, watch one fish go past while you eat another. It is not cheap, my lord. It appeals to customers with high-quality food. But, just at the moment, the Kingfisher Hotel is closed to visitors. They are not allowed to return for a month. In the meantime the place has been taken over by some people holding a conference with a lot of important visitors from abroad. They’ve brought all their own staff. The locals have all been sent home on full pay. That’s pretty suspicious for a start, if you ask me. That could mean anything: European criminals, money men planning their next raid on the financial markets; God only knows what’s going on up there. But there are signs all the way from the railway station to the hotel that it is closed.’

‘And the young man, Alexander Taneyev? Is there
any evidence that he might have walked into a police station and told them the contents of his diary?’

‘None at all. We have checked all the central stations and the two closest to where his uncle lives, but no such call was made. No young man hurried away to the War Office or the Navy to tell his secrets.’

‘Do you think he might have told somebody in the Ballets Russes; somebody like Fokine, for example?’

‘You’d have to ask him, my lord. If it were me, I’d be too worried about who else might be involved in this business at the ballet. You could have been jumping right out of the frying pan into the fire.’

Colonel Olivier Brouzet of the French Secret Service was the next visitor to Markham Square that day. A note had arrived the previous evening. They spoke in Brouzet’s immaculate English.

‘Forgive me for taking up your time at this difficult point in your investigation. I felt bound to come, as I have some information which may be of some assistance to you.’

‘Thank you so much for coming all this way.’ Powerscourt told him about the diary and the strange symbols and the mysterious meeting at the Kingfisher Hotel at Goring. ‘I suspect that these are state secrets; I just don’t know exactly what Alexander Taneyev saw.’

‘I too have some state secrets for you, my lord, ones that are more or less home-grown. Let me begin with the immediate reason for my visit. I recently had good reason to speak to a man who was suspected of sending secret military information to the enemy. We thought the fellow was giving it to the Germans, but
this was not the case – it was the Russians who were to be the beneficiaries of his knowledge of French military tactics. When he was asked how he was supposed to send his knowledge to Russia, he was told to take it to the Ballets Russes.’

‘Bolm perhaps, Monsieur Brouzet? Alfred Bolm?’

‘We did not have a name. It appears that the ballet may be a clearing house for secret information of one sort or another. If you think of it, it’s a very neat solution to an old problem. It has always been very difficult for a spy to get his message home. He may be watched. The boats and the trains may all have people looking out for him. But, my lord, if he has a clearing house – a post office, if you will, he can present his information there. There it is given to a different courier, or it is simply carried on to France or Germany or whichever country the ballet is going to next. They carry mountains of luggage of every shape and size: clothes, costumes, make-up. Maybe the agent just carries it in his head if it is a simple message. The information is then passed on, not in Britain where the authorities may be watching, but in another country where the authorities are looking for somebody completely different. It would all depend on the urgency of the information. If speed is of the essence, then a different courier might take it on. If it was very secret it may be carried on when the ballet moves on, the information, like your top-secret document, safely hidden in the luggage, described as a new part of a new script for the ballet perhaps, a ballet of spies and secrecy, who knows?’

‘That is fascinating, Colonel Brouzet. So somebody like Alfred Bolm in the Ballets Russes might have been the spy carrying information on to France, or he could
have been the intermediary who met the courier in his dressing room, or at his chess club, where he was a regular visitor.’

‘Chess club? What is this chess club? You have chess clubs for spies here in London?’

Powerscourt laughed. ‘It is near our British Museum, a place where historians and scholars go to write their books; it has an enormous collection of ancient statues and sacred figures from all over the world. That’s where the Elgin Marbles are kept. A number of the people who work there – some Russians, a number of Eastern Europeans – go to this chess club and test their wits against the locals. Bolm was a regular customer in his time in London.’

‘That is not all, my friend. What I am going to tell you now is much more serious. We have reason to believe that the Okhrana in St Petersburg recently sent a top man to London with the code name Andrei Rublev, who was – as you know – a famous painter of Russian icons back in the fifteenth century. Whether his namesake is going to carry out any religious artwork here in London, I rather doubt. He has been sent to secure the position of Alfred Bolm, if it is indeed Bolm who is responsible, and to make sure that none of those bothering him at present continue to do so. This is how they would do things in Russia, secure in the knowledge that nobody is going to ask questions about the doings of the Okhrana.’

‘Do I understand that you think I would be regarded as one of those bothering Monsieur Bolm at present? And what would be my fate, do you suppose?’