To Kill Rasputin: The Life and Death of Grigori Rasputin (Revealing History) (5 page)

Purishkevich, the eccentric member of the Duma, steamed out of the city at ten o’clock that Saturday night on his hospital train. It was he who had first boasted of Rasputin’s murder to a policeman, yet, according to extant records, nobody had questioned him further.

At midnight, a couple of miles away across the icy Neva and the woods of Petrovski Island, Fyodor Kyzmin was to due to finish his shift at midnight. The beat policeman he’d seen in the morning came over to his hut shortly beforehand, and as soon as he had handed over to the night guard, Kyzmin and the policeman set off together through the snow to the police station with the boot. (From now on, most accounts refer to it as a single, brown boot).

A police inspector took it, at three o’clock in the morning on Sunday, to 64 Gorokhovaya Street. Most of the household were still up and Rasputin’s friend Aron Simanovich was with the girls. The boot was identified by Simanovich, Maria and Varvara Rasputina, two Okhrana agents and the lady
dvornik
, or concierge, of the block, as belonging to the missing Grigori Rasputin.

Dmitri Pavlovich’s party in the Sergei Palace reportedly continued until half-past seven on Sunday morning, and was ‘of a most riotous description’.
³²

P
rince Felix Yusupov was interviewed by General Popov of the Gendarmerie. The date on his statement is Sunday 18 December, and it seems likely that this interview took place early, because by the end of the morning Yusupov, by his own account, had moved out of the palace where he had been ordered to remain.

Yusupov began by explaining how he and Rasputin had become acquainted:

I had first met Grigori Efimovich Rasputin about 5 years ago at Mournya Evgenievna Golovina’s house. During the following years I saw him a couple of times at Golovina’s house. This year, 1916, I saw him in November also at Golovina’s house and he made a better impression on me than during previous years. I suffer from chest pains and my medical treatment does not help substantially. I discussed this with Mournya Evgenievna Golovina and she advised me to go to Rasputin’s apartment and talk to him about it. He had cured many people and could be of help to me. At the end of November I went to Rasputin accompanied by Golovina. Rasputin did his passes and I thought that my condition had improved slightly. During my last visits Rasputin told me ‘we will cure you completely, but we still need to go to the gypsies, you’ll see good women there and your illness will completely disappear’. These words made an unpleasant impression on me.

Questioning then apparently turned to Rasputin’s alleged visit to the Yusupov Palace on the night of Friday 16 December. Having had the best part of a day to concoct and perfect his version of events, Yusupov was clearly at pains to explain the circumstances surrounding the rumours:

Around 10th December Rasputin telephoned me and suggested we went to the gypsies. I refused and gave him an excuse that I had to sit exams the next day. During our meetings Rasputin initiated conversations about my wife, where and how we live. He said that he wished to meet my wife. I evasively responded that a meeting could be arranged when she returned from the Crimea. However, I did not want to introduce Rasputin to my household.

Having emphasised his reluctance to invite Rasputin to the Yusupov Palace, Yusupov was now pressed to give his account of the night of 16 December:

I’d had the rooms of my Moika house refurbished and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich suggested I have a house warming party. It was decided to invite Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich, several officers and society ladies to the party. Given the obvious reasons I do not want to name the ladies who attended the party. I also do not want to name the officers who were at the party because this may create rumours and damage the careers of these innocent people. The party was planned for 16th December. In order not to embarrass the ladies, I ordered my servants to serve the tea and dinner in advance and not to enter the room later. The majority of guests were supposed to arrive not at the front entrance of the building at 94 Moika, but to the side entrance at number 92. I kept the key to that entrance on me. I arrived home at around 10.00p.m. I think that I entered the apartment through the side entrance at number 92, although I can’t be certain. Everything was ready for the guests in the dining room and the study. Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich arrived at around 11.30p.m.; he came through the front entrance, then the other guests started to arrive as well. All the ladies without doubt arrived at the side entrance at number 92. I can’t remember where the male guests arrived. The guests had tea, played the grand piano, danced and had dinner.

Yusupov continued to maintain that Rasputin had never visited the palace that night, although he had indeed spoken with him:

At around 12.30-1.00am I went upstairs to my study in the same building and heard a telephone ring. It turned out to be Rasputin who invited me to visit the gypsies with him. I replied that I was not able to come because I had guests. Rasputin suggested that I should leave the guests and come with him, but I refused. I asked Rasputin where he was calling from, but he refused to answer. I asked Rasputin this question because on the telephone I could hear voices, some noise and even female squeals, therefore I came to the conclusion that Rasputin was not calling from home, but from a restaurant or from the gypsies. Following that conversation I went downstairs into the dining room and said to my guests; ‘Gentlemen, Rasputin spoke to me a minute ago and invited me to the gypsies’. The guests cracked jokes and laughed, suggesting that we go, but everyone stayed and continued with the dinner.

Popov was clearly already familiar with the shot-dog story, which he must have heard anecdotally, and did not accept it as uncritically as Balk and the Minister of Justice, Makarov, had done. The Prince was asked to be specific. Who had fired the shot? Where and when? Yusupov said:

At around 2.30-3.00a.m. two ladies decided to go home and left through the side entrance. The Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich left with them. When they went out I heard a gunshot in the yard, so I rang the bell and ordered one of the attendants to go out and have a look. The servant returned and reported that everyone had left and there was nothing in the yard. Then I went out to the yard myself and noticed a dead dog by the fence. When I came out to the yard a person hurriedly walked away from the dog. He was wearing a grey shirt, similar to a military uniform, he was slim, but I could not see him well because it was dark. When I came back to the apartment I ordered the servant to remove the dog from the yard. I called the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich straight away and told him about the dead dog. His Imperial Highness told me that he had killed the dog. I remonstrated that there had been no need to do that, as it had created a noise and the police would be coming and the fact that I had a party with ladies in attendance would become public. Dmitri Pavlovich replied that it was nothing wrong and there was no need to worry. I then ordered to call a policeman from the street and told him that if there were to be enquiries about the gunshots, he was to say that my friend had killed a dog.
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Yusupov’s account of the murder night is a mixture of truth, fabrication and omission that others later contradicted with different truths and more fabrication and omission. Whilst not central to the account of the night’s events, some have questioned the basis on which Yusupov claimed he initially re-established contact with Rasputin, namely to seek relief from chest pains. Although his story was corroborated by family friend Mounya Golovina when questioned by Popov, Rasputin’s family and associates have subsequently denied this. Both his daughter Maria and his secretary Aron Simanovich have maintained that Yusupov sought Rasputin’s help to cure him of his homosexual desires.
²

By Sunday lunchtime he had been driven to the Sergei Palace on the Nevski Prospekt to stay in a room provided by Dmitri Pavlovich. At least Dmitri, as a Grand Duke, would not be bothered by policemen. And a move would also take the heat off Yusupov’s parents-in-law and especially his wife’s young brothers. As Romanovs, the family had nothing to fear from the law, but Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia would prefer to avoid incurring the Tsar’s displeasure by harbouring a suspect.

The Sergei Palace was an imposing stone building on a prominent corner of the Nevski Prospekt, Petrograd’s busiest thoroughfare. It overlooked the Anichkov Bridge over the Fontanka Canal, and was opposite the palace of Maria Fyodorovna, the Tsar’s mother. Above its lower floors there rose a tall
piano nobile
or ballroom floor adorned on the outside with pilasters. The upper levels were occupied by the Anglo-Russian Hospital, one of many such charitably funded hospitals founded to deal with casualties brought back from the front. Dmitri Pavlovich had donated the space and a 200-bed hospital was installed in 1915. Its staff and equipment were a ‘gift from Britain to Russia’, having been funded by public subscription and promoted by the Foreign Office and the British Red Cross. Lady Muriel Paget and Lady Sybil Grey ran the hospital with the help of British doctors and nurses and a small complement of Russian Red Cross officials. Dmitri was glad to do something to help –
noblesse oblige,
and all that – and besides, his butler had hanged himself in the building so he did not want to be rattling around, when on leave, in a great shell of a place that had felt spooky ever since. The hospital had moved in during the winter of 1915, when plumbing and baths, sadly lacking before, had been installed. Family retainers (‘swarms’ of them, according to the exasperated Lady Grey) continued to occupy the attics. Dmitri’s apartment was accessible by a door from the main entrance hall and by a concealed staircase which led up to the doctor’s rooms.

As a Romanov, Dmitri could be constrained only by the Tsar himself. Yusupov must have felt relatively safe. The two young men had plenty to discuss, not least the detention in her own home of Madame Marianna Derfelden, the stepdaughter of Dmitri’s father. She was one of their own circle and, it was said, a former lover of Dmitri’s. Somebody must have told the investigators that she had been among the women present at the Yusupov Palace. She loathed Rasputin’s influence over the Tsarina but was the sister of one of his leading supporters. Her detention, as it turned out, did not cause her great hardship. Her mother wrote later:

When we arrived at 8 Theatre Square, where Marianna lived, we were stopped by two soldiers who let us through only after taking down our names. All the highest society was at Marianna’s! Some ladies she barely knew arrived in order to express their sympathy with her. Officers came up to kiss her hand.
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Another hot topic was Dmitri’s telephone call to the Tsarina before the party the previous Saturday night. He had heard that she suspected him of involvement, and had rung Tsarskoye Selo and asked to see her. She refused. This was serious, for the imperial family had taken Dmitri under their wing when he was a boy, treated him fairly and knew him well. For the Tsarina to snub him like this, she must be sure that he and Felix Yusupov had something to hide.

And worse was to come. At lunchtime, a telephone call from an aide-de-camp at Tsarskoye Selo informed Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich that the Tsarina ordered him to remain at the Sergei Palace under house arrest. He was furious, knowing that only the Tsar could legally issue such an order. The Tsarina had married into the royal family over twenty years ago and had never fitted in; the Romanovs, Yusupovs, Obolenskis and Galitzines – the aristocrats of Russia – had never liked her; she was prissy and boring and dull. But Tsar Nicholas, everyone knew, did exactly what the Tsarina told him to, and he was an autocrat who could do anything. Dmitri accepted her command. What else could he do?

Visitors started to appear. And among them all afternoon – indeed for days afterwards – the British Ambassador’s friend Nikolai Mikhailovich made a trying companion.

The Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich came several times a day, or telephoned the wildest, most improbable news, couched in such mysterious terms that we never really knew what it was all about. He always tried to bluff us that he knew all about the conspiracy, hoping by this means to worm our secret out of us.

He took an active part in the search for Rasputin’s body. He warned us that the Tsarina, convinced of our complicity in Rasputin’s assassination, demanded that we be shot at once…
⁴

The Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich was known to loathe Rasputin. But he was not usually so curious, and had probably been asked to probe as deeply as possible. Sir George Buchanan wanted to know what had really happened because he had his own suspicions. Perhaps he also wanted to know whether Yusupov and Dmitri, a couple of social butterflies, were capable of sticking to their story. Because by now, London had heard something.

General Popov and Lt-Col. Popel got into their stride. Having yesterday had time to interview only Yusupov’s servants at the Moika, and Mounya Golovina, they now descended on several locations in swift succession. Popov interviewed Maria and Varvara Rasputina, and Katya their maid, at 64 Gorokhovaya Street. Popel took statements from Anya, the niece, and the building attendants at 64, and then headed uptown for the Moika, where there were police witnesses. After that he went out to the Islands and saw the bridge guard.

Rasputin’s daughters, having identified their father’s footwear, were desperately worried and willing to tell Popov anything they knew that might help. Maria, the elder girl, admitted that her father had been expecting to see Yusupov ‘the Little One’ late on Friday night, and that Mounya Golovina had seemed concerned yesterday after she had spoken to the Prince on the telephone.